And wide in ecstasy I sit and watch
The unknown flower issued magic-wise.
And day by day out of the envious bud
My treasure softly slips uncurled,
And day by day my happiness vibrates
In wide and wider circles round the world.
Lawrence's birthday came as we were crossing the Alps. I had no present to give him but some edelweiss. That evening we danced and drank beer with the peasants in the Gasthaus of the village we were passing through. His first birthday together. It was all very wonderful. New things happened all the time.
Here is a poem Lawrence wrote:
MEETING AMONG THE MOUNTAINS
The little pansies by the road have turned
Away their purple faces and their gold;
And evening has taken all the bees from the wild thyme
And all the scent is shed away by the cold.
Against the hard pale-blue evening sky
The mountains' new-dropped summer snow is clear
Glistening in steadfast stillness - clear
Like clean pain sending on us a chill down here.
Christ on the cross, his beautiful young man's body
Has fallen forward on the nails, and hangs
White and loose at last, with all his pain
Drawn on his mouth, eyes broken in the final pangs.
And slowly down the mountain road, a belated
Bullock waggon comes: Lo I am ashamed
To gaze any more at the Christ, whom the mountain snows
Whitely confront, my heart shrinks back, inflamed.
The breath of the bullock steams on the hard chill air;
The band across its brow, it scarcely seems
To draw the load, so slow and dull it moves
While the driver sits on the left-hand shaft and dreams.
Surely among your sunbrowned hand, some face, something
That vexes me with memory! He sits so still
Here among all this silence, crouching forward
Dreaming and letting the bullock take its will.
I stand on the grass to let them go,
And, Christ, again have I met his eyes, again
The brown eyes black with misery and hate, that look
Full into mine, and the torment starts again.
One moment the hate leaps at me standing there,
One moment I see the stillness of agony
Something frozen in silence, that dare not be
Loosed; one moment the darkness frightens me.
Then among the averted pansies, below the high
White peaks of snow, at the foot of the sunken Christ,
I stood in a chill of anguish trying to say
The joy I bought was not too highly priced.
But he was gone, motionless, hating me,
Enduring as the mountains do, because they are strong
But a pale dead Christ on the crucifix of his heart
And breathing the frozen memory of his wrong.
Still in his nostrils the frozen breath of despair,
And in his heart the half-numbed agony;
In his clenched fist the shame and in
His belly the smouldering hate of me.
And I, as I stand in the cold averted flowers,
Feel the shame that clenches his fists like nails through my own,
Feel the despair on his brow like a crown of thorns
And his frozen anguish turning my heart to stone.
Tuxtal
How I want to recapture the gaiety of that adventurous walk into Italy, romantic Italy, with all its glamour and sunshine.
We arrived at Trento, but alas for the glamour! We could only afford a very cheap hotel and the marks on the walls, the doubtful sheets, and worst of all the W.C.s were too much for me.
The people were strangers, I could not speak Italian, then.
So, one morning, much to Lawrence's dismay, he found me sitting on a bench under the statue of Dante, weeping bitterly. He had seen me walk barefoot over icy stubble-, laughing at wet and hunger and cold; it had all seemed only fun to me, and here I was crying because of the city-uncleanness and the W.C.s. It had taken us about six weeks to get there.
We took the train to Riva on the Lago di Garda. It was an Austrian garrison town at that time. Elegant officers in biscuit-coloured trousers and pale-blue jackets walked about with equally elegant ladies. For the first time I looked at Lawrence and myself; two tramps with rucksacks! Lawrence's trousers were frayed, Miriam's trousers we called them, for he had bought them with 'Miriam.' I had a reddish cotton crêpe dress all uneven waves at the skirt; the colour of the red velvet ribbon had run into my panama hat. I was grateful to the three ladies who took us into their pensione and, instead of fearing the worst for their silver, sent us yellow and blue figs and grapes to our room, where we cooked our meals on the spirit lamp for economy, in fear and trembling of the housemaid. Then we got our trunks.
My sister Johanna had sent me lovely clothes and hats, some 'Paquins,' much too elegant for our circumstances; but we dressed up proudly and set forth in triumph.
At Gargnano we found Villa Igea to spend the winter.
Lawrence for the first time had a place of his own. The first floor of a large villa, our windows looking over the lake, the road running underneath, opposite us the Monte Baldo in rosy sunsets. 'Green star Sirius dribbling over the lake,' as Lawrence says in one of his poems.
Here began my first attempt at housekeeping. It was uphill work, in that big bare kitchen with the 'fornelli' and the big copper pans. Often the stews and 'fritti' had to be rescued, and he would come nobly from his work, never grumbling, when I called: 'Lorenzo, the pigeons are burning, what shall I do?'
The first time I washed sheets was a disaster. They were so large and wet, their wetness was overwhelming. The kitchen floor was flooded, the table drenched, I dripped from hair to feet.
When Lawrence found me all misery he called: 'The One and Only' (which name stood for the one and only phoenix, when I was uppish) 'is drowning, oh, dear!' I was rescued and dried, the kitchen wiped and soon the sheets were hanging to dry in the garden where the 'cachi' were hanging red from the trees. One morning he brought me breakfast in bed and in the Italian bedroom there was a spittoon and to my horror a scorpion was on it. To Lawrence's surprise I said, when he killed it: 'Birds of a feather flock together.'
'Ungrateful woman... here I am the faithful knight killing the dragons and that's all I get.'
One of the favourite walks was to Bogliacco, the next village on the Garda, where we drank wine and ate chestnuts with the Bersaglieri who seemed quiet and sad and didn't say much. My window high up over the road was a joy to me. Bersaglieri came past in their running march with a gay spark of a tenente at their head, singing: Tripoli sara' Italiana.' Secretly people did their bargaining under my windows, at night the youths played their guitars; when I peeped Lawrence was cross.
He was then rewriting his 'Sons and Lovers,' the first book he wrote with me, and I lived and suffered that book, and wrote bits of it when he would ask me: 'What do you think my mother felt like then?' I had to go deeply into the character of Miriam and all the others; when he wrote his mother's death he was ill and his grief made me ill too, and he said: 'If my mother had lived I could never have loved you, she wouldn't have let me go.' But I think he got over it; only, this fierce and overpowerful love had harmed the boy who was not strong enough to bear it. In after years he said:. 'I would write a different "Sons and Lovers" now; my mother was wrong, and I thought she was absolutely right.'
I think a man is born twice; first his mother bears him, then he has to be reborn from the woman he loves. Once, sitting on the little steamer on the lake he said: 'Look, that little woman is like my mother.' His mother, though dead, seemed so alive and there still to him.
Towards the end of 'Sons and Lovers' I got fed up and turned against all this 'house of Atreus' feeling, and I wrote a skit cal
led: 'Paul Morel, or His Mother's Darling.' He read it and said, coldly: 'This kind of thing isn't called a skit.'
While we were at Villa Igea Lawrence wrote also 'Twilight in Italy,' and most of the poems from 'Look! We Have Come Through!'
His courage in facing the dark recesses of his own soul impressed me always, scared me sometimes.
In his heart of hearts I think he always dreaded women, felt that they were in the end more powerful than men. Woman is so absolute and undeniable. Man moves, his spirit flies here and there, but you can't go beyond a woman. From her man is born and to her he returns for his ultimate need of body and soul. She is like earth and death to which all return.
Here is a poem:
THE MOTHER OF SONS
This is the last of all, then, this is the last!
I must fold my hands, and turn my face to the fire,
And watch my dead days fusing into dross,
Shape after shape, and scene after scene, from the past
Sinking to one dead mass in the dying fire
Leaving the grey ash cold and heavy with loss.
Strange he is to me, my son, whom I waited like a lover;
Strange as the captive held in a foreign country, haunting
The shore and gazing out on the level sea;
White, and gaunt, with wistful eyes that hover
Always upon the distance, as his soul was chaunting
The dreary weird of departure from me.
Like a young bird blown from out of the frozen seas,
Like a bird from the far north blown with a broken wing
Into our sooty garden, he drags and beats
From place to place perpetually, and seeks release
From me, and the hound of my love that creeps up fawning
For his mastership, while he in displeasure retreats.
I must look away from him, for my fading eyes
Like a cringing dog at his heels offend him now,
Like a toothless hound pursuing him with my eyes,
Till he chafes at my cringing persistence, and a sharp spark flies
Into my soul from the sudden fall of his brow
And he bites his lip in pain as he hears my sighs.
This is the last - it will not be any more -
All my life I have borne the burden of myself,
All the long years of sitting in my husband's house,
And never have I said to myself, as he closed the door:
'Now I am caught. - You are hopelessly lost, O self,
You are frightened with joy, my heart, like a frightened mouse.'
Three times have I offered my soul - three times rejected
It will not be any more - no more, my son, my son!
Never to know the glad freedom of obedience, since long ago
The angel of childhood kissed me and went. - I expected
A man would take me, and now, my son, oh my son
I must sit awhile and wait and never know
A bridegroom, till 'twixt me and the bright sun
Death, in whose service is nothing of gladness, takes me. —
For the lips and the eyes of God are behind a veil,
And the thought of the lipless voice of the Father shakes
With fear and fills my eyes with tears of desire,
But the voice of my life is dumb and of no avail,
And the hands in my lap grow cold as the night draws nigher.
And always again the mail and tragedy. I was so sure I would be able to be with my children but finally my husband wrote: 'If you don't come home the children have no longer any mother, you shall not see them again.' I was almost beside myself with grief. But Lawrence held me, I could not leave him any more, he needed me more than they did.
But I was like a cat without her kittens, and always in my mind was the care, 'Now if they came where would I put them to sleep?' I felt the separation physically as if something tore at my navel-string. And Lawrence could not bear it, it was too much for him. And then again I would turn to him and be healed and forget for a while.
Everybody seemed to condemn us and be against us and I couldn't for the life of me understand how the whole world couldn't see how right and wonderful it was to live as we did; I just couldn't. I said: 'Lorenzo, why can't people live as happily and get as much out of life as we do? Everybody could, with the little money we spend.' And he answered: 'You forget that I'm a genius,' half in fun and half seriously.
I wasn't impressed by the genius at that time, making a long nose at him, taking everything like the wind and the rain, but now I know that the glamour of it all was his genius.
He was always absolutely sure of himself, sure that the Lord was with him. Once we had a big storm on our way to Australia and I said, afraid: 'Now, if this ship goes down ' He answered: 'The ship that I am on won't go down.'
Here follow some letters he wrote to my sister Else:
Villa Igea Villa di Gargnano Lago di Garda 14 Dec. 1912
Dear Else:
I was not cross with your letter. I think you want to do the best for Frieda. I do also. But I think you ask us to throw away a real apple for a gilt one. Nowadays it costs more courage to assert one's desire and need, than it does to renounce. If Frieda and the children could live happily together, I should say 'Go' because the happiness of two out of three is sufficient. But if she would only be sacrificing her life, I would not let her go if I could keep her. Because if she brings to the children a sacrifice, that is a curse to them. If I had a prayer, I think it would be 'Lord, let no one ever sacrifice living stuff to me - because I am burdened enough. '
Whatever the children may miss now, they will preserve their inner liberty, and their independent pride will be strong when they come of age. But if Frieda gave all up to go and live with them, that would sap their strength because they would have to support her life when they grew up. They would not be free to live of themselves - they would first have to live for her, to pay back. It is like somebody giving a present that was never asked for, and putting the recipient under the obligation of making restitution, often more than he could afford.
So we must go on, and never let go the children, but will, will and will to have them and have what we think good. That's all one can do. You say 'Lawrence kommt mir vor wie ein Held' - I hope he may 'gehen dir aus' similarly. He doesn't feel at all heroic, but only in the devil of a mess.
Don't mind how I write, will you?
Yours sincerely, D. H. Lawrence
Villa Igea Villa di Gargnano Lago di Garda (Brescia) 10 Feb. 1913
Dear Else:
You don't expect me to stay here, gaping like a fish out of water, while Frieda goes careering and carousing off to Miinchen, do you? Je vous en veux.
About the article - Frieda is a nameless duffer at telling anything - the English Review - a shilling monthly, supposed to be advanced and clever - asked me to write an article on modern German poetiy - about three thousand words. It is the modem, new stuff they want to hear about - say that which is published in the last ten years-such people as Dehmel, and Liliencron, Stefan George, Ricarda Huch, Eisa Laska Schule. Haven't you got a strong opinion about modem German poetry - pottery, as father calls it? Well, do write about what you think - say Dehmel is ranty and tawdry, if you like, but don't be too classical. If you like, the English Review will listen with great respect to dithyrambs on beautiful printing and fine form in book issuing.
It will adore tendency, and influences. And for heaven's sake, put in plenty of little poems or verses as examples. - It would be rather a cute idea to write about: 'The Woman-Poets of the Germany of Today' or 'The Woman-Poets of Germany Today.'
It would fetch the English Review readers like pigeons to salt. And surely Die Frau has got articles on the subject. I should love doing it myself if I knew enough about it. (Nicht wahr-I have reviewed, in England, two anthologies of modem German Poetry.)
Do write about the women - their aims and ideals - and a bit about them personal
ly, any you know and how they'd rather paint Pictures than nurse children, because any motherly body can do the fotter, while it needs a fine and wonderful woman to speak a message.
Didn't somebody tell you that? Did she have red hair? Put it all in.
'The Woman-Poets of Germany Today,' it sounds lovely. Do write it in German - I can read your letters quite easily, because you don't write in Gothic hieroglyphs.
It is beautiful weather here. We are finding the first violets. There are bunches of primroses everywhere, and Leber Blumen, lovely little blue things, and lilac-coloured crocuses. You must come, you would love it, and we should feel quite grand having you for a visitor.
Mrs K... has written, forwarding a lawyer's letter which was sent to..., and which says: 'We should advise... to refer... to the Court, pending the divorce proceedings. Any request she had to make concerning the children, should be made to the Court. ' That of cours'e necessitates the engaging of a solicitor.
Frieda says, it is too long to let the children wait another six months without seeing her - they would become too much estranged. Perhaps that is true. Heaven knows how we are going to untangle these knots. At any rate, the divorce is going forward; in England, after the first hearing, the judge pronounces a decree nisi - that is, the divorce is granted unless something turns up; then at the end of the six months the divorce is made absolute, if nothing has turned up. Then Frieda is free again. Till the divorce is absolute, E... must have nothing to do with Frieda. So arrangements should be made through lawyers. But the children have holidays only at Easter, and can anything be settled before then? We shall have to see. This is to put you au courant. Send that wonderful book do. The sixty francs have come.
Frieda is sending a picture that I want to have framed for Prof Weber at Icking, but she says it is for you. And a thousand thanks.
Complete Works of D.H. Lawrence Page 1099