We stayed only a little while near Perth and went a long way into that strange vague bush, everything so vague and dim, as before the days of Creation. It wasn't born yet. Vague, remote, and unborn it made one feel oneself. There we stayed with Miss Skinner, whose manuscript Lawrence was looking over: 'The Boy in the Bush.' Later on, as I look back, it's all vague to me. Then, after a few weeks, we went on to Sydney.
We arrived in Sydney Harbour - nice it was not knowing a soul.
A young officer on the boat had told me: 'The rain on the tin roofs over the trenches always made me think of home.' Sydney.
And there they were, the tin roofs of Sydney and the beautiful harbour and the lovely Pacific Coast, the air so new and clean. We stayed a day or two in Sydney, two lonely birds resting a little. And then we took a train with all our trunks and said: 'We'll look out of the window and where it looks nice we'll get out.' It looked very attractive along the coast but also depressing. We were passing deserted homesteads: both in America and Australia, these human abandoned efforts make one very sad. Then we came to Thirroul, we got out at four and by six o'clock we were settled in a beautiful bungalow right on the sea. Lined with jarra the rooms were, and there were great tanks for rain water and a stretch of grass going right down to the Pacific, melting away into a pale-blue and lucid, delicately tinted sky.
But what a state the bungalow was in! A family of twelve children had stayed there before us: beds and dusty rugs all over the place, torn sailing canvases on the porches, paper all over the garden, the beautiful jarra floors grey with dust and sand, the carpet with no colour at all, just a mess, a sordid mess the whole thing. So we set to and cleaned, cleaned and cleaned as we had done so many times before in our many temporary homes! Floors polished, the carpet taken in the garden and scrubbed, the torn canvases removed. But the paper in the garden was the worst; for davs and days we kept gathering paper.
But I was happy: only Lawrence and I in this world. He always made a great big world for me, he gave it me whenever it was possible; whenever there was wonder left, we took it, and revelled in it.
The mornings, those sunrises over the Pacific had all the wonder of newness, of an uncreated world. Lawrence began to write 'Kangaroo' and the days slipped by like dreams, but real as dreams are when they come true. The everyday life was so easy, the food brought to the house, especially the fish cart was a thrill: it let down a flap at the back and like pearls and jewels inside the cart lay the shiny fishes, all colours, all shapes, and we had to try them all.
We took long walks along the coast, lonely and remote and unborn. The weather was mild and full of life, we never got tired of the shore, finding shells for hours that the Pacific had rolled gently on to the sand. I Lawrence religiously read the 'Sydney Bulletin.' He loved it for all its stories of wild animals and people's living experiences. The only papers Lawrence ever read were the 'Corriere della Sera,' in the past, and the 'Sydney Bulletin.' I wonder whether this latter has retained the same character it had then; I haven't seen it since that time. It was our only mental food during that time.
I remember being amazed at the generosity of the people at the farms where we got butter, milk, and eggs; you asked for a pound of butter and you were given a big chunk that Was nearly two pounds; you asked for two pints of milk and they gave you three; everything was lavish, like the sky and the sea and the land. We had no human contacts all these months: a strange experience: nobody bothered about us, I think.
At the library, strangely enough, in that little library of Thirroul we found several editions of Lawrence's condemned 'Rainbow.' We bought a copy - the librarian never knew that it was Lawrence's own book. Australia is like the 'Hinterland der Seele.'
Like a fantasy seemed the Pacific, pellucid and radiant, melting into the sky, so fresh and new always; then this primal radiance was gone one day and another primeval sea appeared. A storm was throwing the waves high into the air, they rose on the abrupt shore, high as in an enormous window. I could see strange sea-creatures thrown up from the deep: sword-fish and fantastic phenomena of undreamt deep-sea beasts I saw in those waves, frightening and never to be forgotten.
And then driving out of the tidy little town into the bush with the little pony cart. Into golden woods of mimosa we drove, or wattle, as the Australians call it. Mostly red flowers and yellow mimosa, many varieties, red and gold, met the eye, strange fern trees, delicately leaved. We came to a wide river and followed it. It became a wide waterfall and then it disappeared into the earth. Disappeared and left us gaping. Why should it have disappeared, where had it gone?
Lawrence went on with 'Kangaroo' and wove his deep underneath impressions of Australia into this novel. Thirroul itself was a new little bungalow town and the most elegant thing in it was a German gun that glistened steely and out of place there near the Pacific.
I would have liked to stay in Australia and lose myself, as it were, in this unborn country but Lawrence wanted to go to America. Mabel Dodge had written us that Lawrence must come to Taos in New Mexico, that he must know the pueblo Indians, that the Indians say that the heart of the world beats there in New Mexico.
This gave us a definite aim, and we began to get ready for America, in a few weeks.
Darlington West Australia 15 May 1922
My dear Mother-in-Law:
So the new Jews must wander on. Frieda is very disappointed. She had hoped to find a new England or new Germany here, with much space and gayer people.
The land is here, sky high and blue and new as if you 'd never taken a breath out of it: and the air is new, new, strong, fresh as silver. And the country is terribly big and empty, still uninhabited. The bush is grey and without end. No noise - quiet - and the white trunks of the gum trees, all a little burnt: a wood and a prewood, not a jungle: something like a dream, a twilight wood that has not seen the day yet. It needs hundreds of years before it can live. This is the land where the unborn souls, strange and unknown, that will be born in five hundred years, live. A grey, strange, spirit, and the people that are here are not really here: only like ducks that swim on the surface of a lake. But the country has a fourth dimension and the white people float like shadows on the surface. And they are not new people: very nervous, neurotic, they don't sleep well, as if they always felt a ghost near. I say, a new country is like sharp wine in which floats like a pearl the soul of an incoming people, till this soul is melted or dissolved. But this is stupid.
Thursday we go on by the P & 0 boat 'Malwa' to Adelaide, Melbourne, and Sydney. We stay at Adelaide a day, sleep a night at Melbourne, and'arrive at Sydney on the twenty-seventh: nine days from Fremantle. That will be interesting. We have our tickets from Colombo to Sydney. It does please me to go on further. I think from Sydney we may go on to San Francisco, and stay a few weeks at Tahiti. And so round the world.
Oh, mother-in-law, it must be so! It is my destiny, this wandering. But the world is round and will bring us back to Baden.
Be well.
D. H. L.
(Translated from the German)
'Wyewurk' Thirroul New South Wales Australia 28 May 1922
Meine liebe Schwiegermutter:
Diesmal schreibe dir auf Englisch, ich muss schnell sein. We got to Sydney on Saturday, after a fine journey. I like the P & 0 boats, with the dark servants. But that was a frightful wreck of the 'Egypt' in the Bay of Biscay. We heard of it in Adelaide. Our captain of the 'Malwa ' changedfrom the 'Egypt ' only this very voyage. He was very upset - so was everybody. They say the Lascar servants are so bad in a wreck - rushing for the boats. But I don't believe all of it.
Anyway, here we are safe and sound. Sydney is a great fine town, half like London, half like America. The harbour is wonderful - a narrow gateway between two cliffs - then one sails through and is in another little sea, with many bays and gulfs. The big ferry steamers go all the time threading across the blue water, and hundreds of people always travelling.
But Sydney town costs too much, so we came down into th
e country-We are about fifty kilometres south of Sydney, on the coast. We have got a lovely little house on the edge of the low cliff just above the Pacific Ocean. - Der grosse oder stille Ozean, says Frieda. But it is by no means still. The heavy waves break with a great roar all the time: and it is so near. We have only our little grassy garden - then the low cliff-and then the great white rollers breaking, and the surf seeming to rush right under our feet as we sit at table. Here it is winter, but not cold. But today the sky is dark, and it makes me think of Cornwall. We have a coal fire going, and are very comfortable-Things go so quietly in Australia. It will not cost much to live here, food is quite cheap. Good meat is only fivepence or sixpence a pound - 50 Pfg. ein Pfund.
But it is a queer, grey, sad country - empty, and as if it would never be filled. Miles and miles of bush -forlorn and lost. It all feels like that. Yet Sydney is a huge modern city.
I don't really like it, it is so raw - so crude. The people are so crude in their feelings - and they only want to be up-to-date in the 'conveniences ' - electric light and tramways and things like that. The aristocrats are the people who own big shops - and there is no respect for anything else. The working people very discontented - always threaten more strikes - always more socialism.
I shall cable to America for money, and sail in July across the Pacific to San Francisco - via Wellington, New Zealand, Raratonga, Tahiti, Honolulu - then to our Taos. And that is the way home - coming back. Next spring we will come to Germany. I've got a Heimweh for Europe: Sicily, England, Germany.
Auf Wiedersehen.
D. H. L.
I must hurry to catch the mail which leaves here tonight - leaves Sydney tomorrow, for Europe. Write to me:
care of Robert Mountsier 417 West 118 Street New York City I shall get your letters in America. Frieda ist so gliicklich mit ihrem neuen Hans - macht allés so schon.
Thirroul, N.S.W. Australia 9 June 1922
My dear Mother-in-Law:
We had two letters today - Anita's wedding letter, also the news that Nusch wants to leave Max. Oh, God! Revolution and earthquake. From your letters you seem to be a little angry. Are you angry that we wanderedfarther away, we wandering Jews? I tell you again, the world is round and brings the rolling stone home again. And I must go on till I find something that gives me peace. Last year Ifound it at Ebersteinburg. There Ifinished 'Aaron's Rod' and my 'Fantasia of the Unconscious. ' And now 'Aaron' has appeared and this month the 'Fantasia' will appear in New York. And I, I am in Australia, and suddenly I write again, a mad novel of Australia. That's how it goes. I hope I can finish it by August. Then, mother-in-law, again to the sea. We want to take the ship 'Tahiti, ' that leaves Sydney on the tenth of August, and arrives on the sixteenth in Wellington, New Zealand; then to Raratonga and Papeete, capital of Tahiti, in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, and then, September fourth, we arrive at San Francisco, California. From San Francisco to Taos, N"w Mexico. And I believe, in the spring, you will see us again in Baden-Baden. I've only just enough money to take us to Taos. And then nothing. But it always comes.
It is nice here. You'd like this house very much: the large room with open fireplace and beautiful windows with red curtains, and large verandas, and the grass and the sea, always big and noisy at our feet. We bathe at midday when the sun is very hot and the shores quite lonely, quite, quite lonely. Only the waves. The village is new and crude. The streets are not built, it is all sand and loam. It's interesting. The people are all very kind and yet strange to me. Postman and newspaper boy come riding on horses and whistle on a policeman's whistle when they have thrown in the letters or newspaper.
Meat is so cheap. Two good sheep's tongues ten cents, and a huge piece of beef enough for twelve people forty cents. We also have lovely fruit - apples, pears, passion-fruit, persimmons - and marvellous butter and milk.
And heaven and earth so new as if no man had ever breathed in it, no foot ever trodden on it. The great weight of the spirit that lies so heavily on Europe doesn't exist here. You feel a little like a child that has no real cares. It is interesting - a new experience.
It is your birthday in a little while. I send you a few cents, you can still have teas with old women. Greet all. Poor Else! I'm writing to her.
Leb wohl, D. H. L.
(Translated from the German)
'Wyewurk' Thirroul South Coast, N.S.W. Australia 13 June 1922
Dear Else:
I have been wanting to write to you. The Schweigermutter says that Friedel is ill with jaundice. I am so sorry, and do hope it is better by now.
I often think of you here, and wonder what you would think of this. We're in a very nice place: have got a delightful bungalow here about forty miles south of Sydney, right on the shore. We live mostly with the sea - not much with the land - and not at all with the people. I don't present any letters of introduction, we don't know a soul on this side of the continent: which is almost a triumph in itself. For the first time in my life I feel how lovely it is to know nobody in the whole country: and nobody can come to the door, except the tradesmen who bring the bread and meat and so on, and who are very unobtrusive. One nice thing about these countries is that nobody asks questions. I suppose there have been too many questionable people here in the past. But it's nice not to have to start explaining oneself, as one does in Italy.
The people here are awfully nice, casually: thank heaven I need go no further. The township is just a scatter of bungalows, mostly of wood with corrugated iron roofs, and with some quite good shops: 'stores. ' It lies back from the sea. Nobody wants to be too near the sea here: only we are on the brink. About two miles inland there is a great long hill like a wall, facing the sea and running all down the coast. This is dark greyish with gum-trees, and it has little coal-mines worked into it. The men are mostly coal-miners, so I feel quite at home. The township itself - they never say village here - is all haphazard and new, the streets unpaved, the church built of wood. That part is pleasant - the newness. It feels so free. And though it is midwinter, and the shortest day next week, still every day is as sunny as our own summer, and the sun is almost as hot as our June. But the nights are cold.
Australia is a weird, big country. It feels so empty and untrodden. The minute the night begins to go down, even the towns, even Sydney, which is huge, begins to feel unreal, as if it were only a daytime imagination, and in the night it did not exist. That is a queer sensation: as if life here really had never entered in: as if it were just sprinkled over, and the land lay untouched. They are terribly afraid of the Japanese. Practically all Australians, and especially Sydney, feel that once there was a fall in England, so that the Powers could not interfere, Japan would at once walk in and occupy the place. They seriously believe this: say it is even the most obvious thing for Japan to do, as a business proposition. Of course Australia would never be able to defend herself. It is queer to find these bogies wherever one goes. But I suppose they may materialize. I Labour is very strong and very stupid. Everything except meat is exorbitantly expensive, many things twice as much as in England. And Australian apples are just as cheap in London as in Australia, and sometimes cheaper. It is all very irritating.
This is the most democratic place I have ever been in. And the more I see of democracy the more I dislike it. It just brings everything down to the mere vulgar level of wages and prices, electric light and water closets, and nothing else. You never knew anything so nothing, nichts, nullus, niente, as the life here. They have good wages, they wear smart boots, and the girls all have silk stockings; they fly around on ponies and in buggies - sort of low one-horse traps - and in motor-cars. They are always vaguely and meaninglessly on the go. And it all seems so empty, so nothing, it almost makes you sick. They are healthy, and to my thinking almost imbecile. That's what the life in a new country does to you: it makes you so material, so outward, that your real inner life and your inner self die out, and you clatter round like so many mechanical animals. It is very like the Wells story - the fantastic stories. I fee
l if I lived in Australia for ever I should never open my mouth once to say one word that meant anything. Yet they are very trustful and kind and quite competent in their jobs. There's no need to lock your doors, nobody will come and steal. All the outside life is so easy. But there it ends. There's nothing else. The best society in the country are the shopkeepers - nobody is any better than anybody else, and it really is democratic. But it all feels so slovenly, slipshod, rootless, and empty, it is like a kind of dream. Yet the weird, unawakened country is wonderful and if one could have a dozen people, perhaps, and a big piece of land of one's own - But there, one can't.
There is this for it, that here one doesn't feel the depression and the tension of Europe. Everything is happy-go-lucky, and one couldn't fret about anything if one tried. One just doesn't care. And they are all like that. Au fond they don't care a straw about anything: except just their little egos. Nothing really matters. But they let the little things matter sufficiently to keep the whole show going. In a way it's a relief-a relief from the moral and mental and nervous tension of Europe. But to say the least, it's surprising. I never felt such a foreigner to any people in all my life as I do to these. An absolute foreigner, and I haven't one single thing to say to them.
Complete Works of D.H. Lawrence Page 1104