One day the charming old mother of Mme Douillet who was at the Hôtel Beau Rivage brought us two gold-fish in a bowl; 'Pour amuser Monsieur,' but, alas, Micky thought it was 'pour amuser Monsieur le chat.' With that fixed, incomprehensible cat-stare he watched those red lines moving in the bowl... then my life became an anxious one... the gold-fish had to go in the bathroom on a little table in the sun. Every morning their water was renewed and I had to let it run for half an hour into the bowl. That was all they got, the gold-fish, no food. And they flourished... 'Everything flourishes,' I said to Lawrence imploringly, 'plants and cats and gold-fish, why can't you?' And he said: 'I want to, I want to, I wish I could.'
His friend Earl Brewster came and massaged him every day with coconut oil... and it grieved me to see Lawrence's strong, straight, quick legs gone so thin, so thin... and one day he said to me: 'I could always trust your instinct to know the right thing for me, but now you don't seem to know any more...' I didn't... I didn't know any more...
And one night he asked me: 'Sleep with me,' and I did |.. all night I was aware of his aching inflexible chest, and all night he must have been so sadly aware of my healthy body beside him... always before, when I slept by the side of him, I could comfort and ease him... now no more... He was falling away from life and me, and with all my strength I was helpless...
Micky had his eye on the gold-fish. One sad evening at tea-time the bathroom door was left open... I came and found both gold-fish on the floor, Micky had fished them out of the bowl. I put them in quickly, one revived, a little sadder and less golden for his experience, but the other was dead. Lawrence was furious with Micky. 'He knew we wanted him to leave those gold-fish alone, he knew it. We feed him, we take care of him, he had no right to do it.'
When I argued that it was the nature of cats and they must follow their instincts he turned on me and said: 'It's your fault, you spoil him, if he wanted to eat me you would let him.' And he wouldn't let Micky come near him for several days.
I felt: 'Now I can do no more for Lawrence, only the sun and the sea and the stars and the moon at night, that's his portion now...' He never would have the shutters shut or the curtains drawn, so that at night he could see the sky. In those days he wrote his 'Apocalypse'; he read it to me, and how strong his voice still was, and I said: 'But this is splendid.'
I was reading the New Testament and told Lawrence: 'I get such a kick out of it, just the same as when Azul gallops like the wind across the desert with me.'
As he read it to me he got angry with all those mixed-up symbols and impossible pictures.
He said: 'In this book I want to go back to old days, pre-Bible days, and pick up for us there what men felt like and lived by then.'
The pure artist in him revolted! His sense of the fitness of things never left him in the lurch! He stuck to his sense of measure and I am often amused at the criticism people bring against him... criticisms only reveal the criticizers and their limitations... If the criticizer is an interesting person his criticism will be interesting, if he isn't then it's a waste of time to listen to him. If he voices a general opinion he is uninteresting too, because we all know the general opinion ad nauseum. 'My flesh grows weary on my bones' was one of Lawrence's expressions when somebody held forth to him, as if one didn't know beforehand what most people will say!
One day Lawrence said to himself: 'I shan't die... a rich man now... perhaps it's just as well, it might have done something to me.' But I doubt whether even a million or two would have changed him!
One day he said: 'I can't die, I can't die, I hate them too much! I have given too much and what did I get in return?'
It sounded so comical the way he said it, and I ignored the depth of sadness and bitterness of the words and said: 'No, Lawrence, you don't hate them as much as all that.' It seemed to comfort him.
And now I wonder and am grateful for the superhuman strength that was given us both in those days. Deep down I knew 'something is going to happen, we are steering towards some end,' but every nerve was strained and every thought and every feeling... Life had to be kept going gaily at any price.
Since Doctor Max Mohr had gone, we had no doctor, only Mme Martens, the cook. She was very good at all kinds of tisanes and inhalations and mustard plasters, and she was a very good cook.
My only grief was that we had no open fireplaces, only central heating and, thank goodness, the sun all day. Lawrence made such wonderful efforts of will to go for walks and the strain of it made him irritable. If I went with him it was pure agony walking to the corner of the little road by the sea, only a few yards! How gallantly he tried to get better and live! He was so very clever with his frail failing body. Again one could learn from him how to handle this complicated body of ours, he knew so well what was good for him, what he needed, by an unfailing instinct, or he would have died many years ago... and I wanted to keep him alive at any cost. I had to see him day by day getting nearer to the end, his spirit so alive and powerful that the end and death seemed unthinkable and always will be, for me.
And then Gertler sent a doctor friend to us, and when he saw Lawrence he said the only salvation was a sanatorium higher up...
For the last years I had found that for a time mountain air, and then a change by the sea, seemed to suit Lawrence best. Lawrence had always thought with horror of a sanatorium, we both thought with loathing of it. Freedom that he cherished so much! He never felt like an invalid, I saw to that! Never should he feel a poor sick thing as long as I was there and his spirit! Now we had to give in... we were beaten. With a set face Lawrence made me bring all his papers on to his bed and he tore most of them up and made everything tidy and neat and helped to pack his own trunks, and I never cried... His self-discipline kept me up, and my admiration for his unfailing courage. And the day came that the motor stood at the door of our little house, Beau Soleil... Micky the cat had been taken by Achsah Brewster. She came before we started with armfuls of almond blossoms, and Earl Brewster travelled with us... And patiently, with a desperate silence, Lawrence set out on his last journey. At Toulon station he had to walk down and up stairs, wasting strength he could ill afford to waste, and the shaking train and then the long drive from Antibes to the 'Ad Astra' at Vence... And again he had to climb stairs. There he lay in a blue room with yellow curtains and great open windows and a balcony looking over the sea. When the doctors examined him and asked him questions about himself he told them: 'I have had bronchitis since I was a fortnight old.'
In spite of his thinness and his illness he never lost his dignity, he fought on and he never lost hope. Friends brought flowers, pink and red cyclamen and hyacinths and fruit... but he suffered much and when I bade him 'good night' he said: 'Now I shall have to fight several battles of Waterloo before morning.' I dared not understand to the full the meaning of his words. One day he said to my daughter:
'Your mother does not care for me any more, the death in me is repellent to her.'
But it was the sadness of his suffering... and he would not eat and he had much pain... and we tried so hard to think of different foods for him. His friends tried to help him, the Di Chiaras and the Brewsters and Aldous and Maria Huxley and Ida Rauh.
Wells came to see him, and the Aga Khan with his charming wife. Jo Davidson did a bust of him.
One night I saw how he did not want me to go away, so I came again after dinner and I said: 'I'll sleep in your room tonight.' His eyes were so grateful and bright, but he turned to my daughter and said: 'It isn't often I want your mother, but I do want her tonight to stay.' I slept on the long chair in his room, and I looked out at the dark night and I wanted one single star to shine and comfort me, but there wasn't one; it was a dark big sky, and no moon and no stars. I knew how Lawrence suffered and yet I could not help him. So the days went by in agony and the nights too; my legs would hardly carry me, I could not stay away from him, and always the dread, 'How shall I find him?' One night I thought of the occasion long ago when I knew I loved him, when a tender
ness for him rose in me that I had not known before. He had taken my two little girls and me for a walk in Sherwood Forest, through some fields we walked, and the children ran all over the place, and we came to a brook... it ran rather fast under a small stone bridge. The children were thrilled, the brook ran so fast. Lawrence quite forgot me but picked daisies and put them face upwards on one side of the bridge in the water and then said: 'Now look, look if they come out on the other side.'
He also made them paper boats and put burning matches into them; 'this is the Spanish Armada, and you don't know what that was.’ ‘Yes, we do,' the older girl said promptly. I can see him now, crouching down, so intent on the game, so young and quick, and the small girls in their pink and white striped Viyella frocks, long-legged like colts, in wild excitement over such a play-fellow. But that was long ago... and I thought: 'This is the man whom they call sex-obsessed.'
I slept on his cane chair several nights. I heard coughing from many rooms, old coughing and young coughing. Next to his room was a young girl with her mother, and I heard her call out: 'Mama, Mama, je souffre tant!' I was glad Lawrence was a little deaf and could not hear it all. One day he tried to console me and said: 'You must not feel so sympathetic for people. When people are ill or have lost their eyesight there is always a compensation. The state they arc in is different. You needn't think it's the same as when you are well.'
After one night when he had suffered so much, I told myself: 'It is enough, it is enough; nobody should have to stand this.'
He was very irritable and said: 'Your sleeping here does me no good.' I ran away and wept. When I came back he said so tenderly: 'Don't mind, you know I want nothing but you, but sometimes something is stronger in me.'
We prepared to take him out of the nursing home and rented a villa where we took him... It was the only time he allowed me to put on his shoes, everything else he always did for himself. He went in the shaking taxi and he was taken into the house and lay down on the bed on which he was to die, exhausted. I slept on the couch where he could see me. He still ate. The next day was a Sunday. 'Don't leave me,' he said, 'don't go away.' So I sat by his bed and read. He was reading the life of Columbus. After lunch he began to suffer very much and about tea-time he said: 'I must have a temperature, I am delirious. Give me the thermometer.' This is the only time, seeing his tortured face, that I cried, and he said: 'Don't cry,' in a quick, compelling voice. So I ceased to cry any more. He called Aldous and Maria Huxley who were there, and for the first time he cried out to them in his agony. 'I ought to have some morphine now,' he told me and my daughter, so Aldous went off to find a doctor to give him some... Then he said: 'Hold me, hold me, I don't know where I am, I don't know where my hands are... where am I?'
Then the doctor came and gave him a morphine injection. After a while he said: 'I am better now, if I could only sweat I would be better...' and then again: 'I am better now.' The minutes went by, Maria Huxley was in the room with me. I held his left ankle from time to time, it felt so full of life, all my days I shall hold his ankle in my hand.
He was breathing more peacefully, and then suddenly there were gaps in the breathing. The moment came when the thread of life tore in his heaving chest, his face changcd, his cheeks and jaw sank, and death had taken hold of him of... Death was there, Lawrence was dead. So simple, so small a change, yet so final, so staggering. Death!
I walked up and down beside his room, by the balcony, and everything looked different, there was a new thing, death, where there had been life, such intense life. The olive trees outside looked so black and close, and the sky so near: I looked into the room, there were his slippers with the shape of his feet standing neatly under the bed, and under the sheet he lay, cold and remote, he whose ankle I had held alive only an hour or so ago... I looked at his face. So proud, manly and splendid he looked, a new face there was. All suffering had been wiped from it, it was as if I had never seen him or known him in all the completeness of his being. I wanted to touch him but dared not, he was no longer in life with me. There had been the change, he belonged somewhere else now, to all the elements; he was the earth and sky, but no longer a living man. Lawrence, my Lorenzo who had loved me and I him... he was dead...
Then we buried him, very simply, like a bird we put him away, a few of us who loved him. We put flowers into his grave and all I said was: 'Good-bye, Lorenzo,' as his friends and I put lots and lots of mimosa on his coffin. Then he was covered over with earth while the sun came out on to his small grave in the little cemetery of Vence which looks over the Mediterranean that he cared for so much.
Conclusion
Now that I have told my story in such a condensed way, letting blow through my mind anything that wanted to blow, I know how little I have said - how much I could say that perhaps would be more interesting. But I wrote what rose up, and here it is.
Frieda Lawrence Kiowa Ranch San Cristobal New Mexico
THE SAVAGE PILGRIMAGE by Catherine Carswell
One of Lawrence’s most loyal friends, Catherine Carswell wrote this intimate biography of the author’s life shortly after his death, at a time when his reputation was still suffering due to the controversy of Lady Chatterley’s Lover. The biography features faithful accounts of Lawrence’s humble working class background, descriptions of his life during the Great War and the agonies he underwent when The Rainbow was banned and he struggled to have any of his work printed. Carswell’s close friendship with Lawrence allowed her to illustrate such a detailed and vivid account of the author, which has enabled scholars to develop a much richer understanding of his work and genius.
Catherine Carswell
CONTENTS
Author's Introductory Note
Part One
1
2
Part Two
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2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
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12
Part Three
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2
3
4
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6
Part Four
1
2
3
4
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6
Part Five
1
2
3
4
Part Six
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3
4
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7
The first edition of the biography, published in 1932
Author's Introductory Note
Barring some youthful poems, D. H. Lawrence had just twenty years of writing life. Throughout these years - which included and were in a special way harried by the incidence of the War - he was severely encumbered by circumstances. He had to reckon with poverty, with illness, with the misapprehension of friends, and the malice of strangers. None the less we find that, besides wresting from the most unpromising elements a life that was rich and adventurous, he was a prolific writer. Indeed, if we allow for the various nature of his output and take for comparison the twenty most productive years of any other accepted author, he would appear to have been the most prolific writer our country has had since Sir Walter Scott. In addition to a dozen full-length novels he wrote short stories, essays, translations, pamphlets, books of travel and of philosophy, plays and many poems. Over the same period his correspondence, whether measured by interest or by bulk, bids fair to rival the correspondences of our most communicative English men of letters. It is worth noting that from the very beginning most of Lawrence's correspondents have had the instinct to preserve what he wrote to them, and it may be safely predicted that his letters will be included with his more formal works in a particular sense that is faintly paralleled only in the case of Keats. They contain a free expression of his findings about life in the very accents he was accustomed to use in speech - accents that are
fresh and inimitable. With their richness of human admission they do away with the charges of morbidity and impotence as with the contention that there was a sad or bad discrepancy between the man and the writer. Further works - letters and other things - still await print. For Lawrence as a writer it will be seen that all things have worked in the end together for good. The very difficulties of publication during his lifetime will justify, now that he is dead, his early and confident adoption of the phoenix as his emblem. Meanwhile, he is like Joey in the Punch and Judy show. He will not 'stay put', but bobs up serenely and repeatedly from the grave to mock those who would reduce him to a formula. His unholy ghost will not be pigeon-holed.
It is one of the marks of those who dislike him that they evince a lust for simple and final pronouncements - a lust as notable as their disparagement of anything in the nature of hearty praise.
For final pronouncements the critics must abide the verdict of the future reader. Lawrence as a whole remains to be read and to be reread. He has to create the taste for his work, and this takes time. But it is a taste that grows. Not only so: it is a taste that delicately transforms the palate and renews it for the retrial of other tastes, ancient and modern. His books are easy to read but hard to understand. Therein lies part of their potency. 'A book,' said Lawrence, who had pondered deeply upon such matters, 'lives as long as it is unfathomed.' Or again, 'The mind understands; and there's an end of it.' Therein also lies their vital difference from the books of such writers as Joyce or Proust, which are hard at first to read, but comparatively easy to understand once the initial difficulty is overcome. These have evolved a new technique, but they belong themselves to an outworn way of life. What they do - and it is much - is to interpret and express the old in a fresh language. Lawrence, on the contrary, except that the drum-tap and emphasis of his style are as original to himself as they are at first irritating to many readers, has elected to speak in a familiar language. But his story-shapes, his incidents, his objects and his characters are chosen primarily as symbols in his endeavour to proffer a new way of life. That there can indeed be a new way of life - though possibly only by a recovery of values so remote in our past that they are fecund from long forgetting, and as far out of mind as they are near to our blind fingers - is the single admission he seeks from his readers, as it was the belief that governed his actions. Most, however, even of those who have vocally admired him, will make any admission except just this. It includes, they know, the admission that his prescience was unique in his generation. Here is much for one man to ask of his fellows. So they prefer to continue with simplifications that are away from the point, with 'patterns' and with set phrases, which serve at the best to show how evocative Lawrence is - as a mere name more evocative than Lenin or than Freud. If Lawrence invariably committed himself, his critics infallibly give themselves away. Of all moralists he is the most demoralising.
Complete Works of D.H. Lawrence Page 1115