In spite of this addition he was very anxious to try what could be done. He was longing to 'meet and have a little happy time together'. So he came south in March.
Murry has given us his own story. He has told us that he welcomed, though with some natural trepidation, the idea of contributions from Lawrence. He became editor in January, 1919. On April 11th, under the pseudonym of 'Grantorto', Lawrence's beautiful and suitable essay, 'The Whistling of Birds' appeared. But the next essay, says Murry, was unsuitable and was returned as such, whereupon 'Lawrence was annoyed, and sent us nothing more.'
From this one would naturally infer that these two efforts covered the extent of contributions tendered by Lawrence. But such is not the case. Other articles were submitted, some at least of which must have been suitable enough. To my own knowledge there were then in existence some of the essays which later appeared in the collection, Assorted Articles, none of which could have given serious offence to readers of the Athenaeum even in 1919. After telling us that Lawrence sent nothing more, but without connecting the two events, Murry admits that he went himself in May, by Lawrence's request, to stay a few days at Hermitage and 'talk things over'. He admits too that he then found Lawrence 'ill and weary', as well as poor and depressed, and despairing of his life in England. It was the period of Lawrence's greatest need of English literary support. Murry has denounced with eloquence the English literary men who earlier withheld this. We have already seen that as a comparatively unimportant reviewer he avoided doing what he might for The Rainbow. Now that he had some standing, we find not only that he could risk nothing to give Lawrence a hand, but that as time went on he lost few opportunities of disparaging Lawrence in public. Perhaps he thought Lawrence was finished, and he had his own growing reputation as a critic to safeguard. The next two novels by Lawrence that appeared were murderously handled in the Athenaeum. It was not until 1922, when Lawrence was well enough established neither to need a hand nor to involve any risk for those who gave it, that Murry discovered a masterpiece in a book of far less significance than either The Rainbow or Women in Love, a book that is certainly not superior as a novel to The Lost Girl - namely, Aaron's Rod. With that and the Fantasia of the Unconscious, he declares, Lawrence reached the 'pinnacle of his achievement', before wallowing once more in the disintegration - this time a final one - of his later work.
12
It was at Whitsun, falling in the latter part of May, that we three went down to Hermitage for a few days to stay at the local midwife's cottage, which was quite close to Chapel Farm Cottage where the Lawrences were. Lawrence had taken the rooms for us there, and we had goat's milk for the child, who was now weaned, from a white nanny that was tethered in the back garden.
Again it seems to have been mostly good weather that summer, though I remember some slashing showers one day when Lawrence and Donald and I went to Silchester in fond hopes of seeing something spectacular by way of Roman remains. We missed the last train back, and had to walk a long way home, without having set eyes on anything more exciting than some grass-covered mounds.
Usually Lawrence was to be found sitting on a kitchen chair, under the apple tree, in the garden that was open to the road, writing steadily and rapidly on his knee. (He had asked us to sell his typewriter for him, and my brother bought it for four pounds, which seemed a lot to all of us.) He was putting the finishing touches to the history book and writing short stories. That spring, too, after 'gnashing his teeth in vain' over something more acceptable upon the controversial subject of education for The Times Educational Supplement ('I couldn't write the educational stuff,' he said in a letter to me, 'I tried so hard - it wouldn't work in me - no go') he wrote the play Touch and Go.
Between-whiles at Hermitage we went wooding with a rickety pushchair among the sheets of bluebells, which were just past their best, and so were outshone by the suits of bright blue coarse linen worn by the Lawrences. Frieda and Lawrence were justly proud of these suits, which they had themselves cut out and made. As a woodman Lawrence excelled, collecting twice as much as anybody else and constantly rejecting our faggots as worthless. With all he had to do, in and out of the house, he found time to help the midwife's little daughter every day with her lessons, and he was ready at any time to take a turn in minding John Patrick, our boy, who was now of an age to walk round the kitchen table by clutching its edge. For the first time I had the chance to see how good Lawrence was with children. He made no special business of them, but knew how to include them warmly and naturally in his life. He was devoid of tricks with them, either old-fashioned or modern, and I was struck by the children's response to a certain light astringency in his treatment of them. It was either here or at the Forest of Dean that seeing me bathe John Patrick, he remarked with a sigh, 'He won't be having any chest trouble!' And again, with a little grin, 'I suppose he'll grow up into what they call a virile man!'
Lawrence himself was looking delicate, and as if still waiting to be delivered of that 'contained fury' of his. His chief hope now lay in the expected visit of Huebsch, his American publisher, who would, he said, make arrangements for an early visit to America. His failure with the Athenaeum had given him an additional shove towards the wilderness. England was become more than ever distasteful. As late as the July of that year, Lawrence's letters to Pinker and others showed signs of having been tampered with. Frieda was 'in accord' with him that go they must. Of their plans he wrote to me, 'Don't tell anybody what I say here. I don't tell anybody but you.' And his parting advice to me was, 'Don't be cast down, don't get used up. Above all, conserve yourself, and live only in marriage, not elsewhere.'
There had been talk of them coming to us in August - this time to the New Forest, where we were friendly with one of the agisters, lived in a rough farm, and got any amount of riding on the forest ponies.
But we had no more than a glimpse of them in town in the early summer, when they were on their way to the Midlands. After that, being offered a cottage at Pangbourne by Rosalind Baynes, they went there, and Lawrence's sisters came to stay alternately till the middle of September. We then saw them again in London, when they stayed with Koteliansky. As Ada, since getting home, had been very ill, Lawrence made yet another trip to the Midlands. But it was his farewell. Now he was really on the wing. Somebody had told him of a farm at Caserta, near Naples, and this made a good enough objective. The passports were ready at last. Lawrence has somewhere described vividly how he saw Frieda off, with a malicious grin on her face, to see her mother in Germany. Attached as he was to the old Baroness, he shrank just then from visiting Germany. He would go later. For the present he asked us to find through friends in Rome a 'very simple room' there. He would wait for Frieda in Florence, and they would go south together to prospect, staying in Rome on their way. Except by introduction he knew nobody in Italy.
Now he ran down alone to Berkshire to sell at Reading what books he had in the cottage. Lawrence never collected much of a library, as he was obliged so often to disperse his belongings. And, anyhow, he never wanted a library. On this occasion he gave us his tattered but complete set of De Quincey's works, with the hope that someday we might be rich enough to have them rebound. He wrote: 'He is a very nice man. I can go on reading and reading him. I laughed over "Goethe" yesterday. I like him, De Quincey, because he also dislikes such people as Plato and Goethe, whom I dislike.' Lawrence's De Quincey still remains in his original state on our shelves.
For the understanding of Lawrence it is needful to remember how completely he disliked and wished to transcend that classic ideal of human balance which was initiated by Plato, and of which Goethe was the great modern embodiment. The whole current of Lawrence's life and work represents a movement towards a new and different kind of balance that would be consistent with all human imperfections.
We, on our side, gave as a parting present a somewhat worn coat-lining of natural camel's hair, which we afterwards learned was 'a godsend' in Sicily in winter. And he accepted with protest, but obvious p
leasure, a voluminous black and white shepherd's plaid which had been my mother's and grandmother's! This was destined to figure in Sea and Sardinia, but ultimately to fall into the hands of an Italian robber.
We both went to see the solitary pilgrim off. So far as I remember, nobody else was at the station except Koteliansky. Lawrence felt the wrench of the departure, but he was glad, very glad, to be going. He was helped on his way by a small legacy, left to him by Rupert Brooke, that came to him that summer.
Part Three
AET.34-36
PROSE
Aaron's Rod The Lost Girl (completed)
Introduction to Memoirs of the Foreign Legion
Sea and Sardinia (travel essays)
The Ladybird, etc. (3 novelettes)
Fantasia of the Unconscious
VERSE
Birds, Beasts and Flowers (in part)
Tortoises
TRANSLATIONS
Mastro Don Gesualdo (Verga)
Little Novels of Sicily (Verga)
* * *
'It is hard to hear a new voice.'
1
Some friend had beforehand made known the date of his coming to Norman Douglas, who had taken a room for him at ten lire a day at the Pensione Balestri (called the 'Cavalotti' in the introduction to Magnus's Memoirs of the Foreign Legion). Douglas and Magnus were themselves living at the Balestri. In that same introduction we read how on the dark, wet, wintry evening, after his through journey from London, Lawrence found the kindly and practical note of directions waiting for him at Cook's, and how on his way to the Piazza Mentana he was overtaken at the Ponte Vecchio by Douglas with Magnus in tow. No account of the days that followed could hope to rival that given by Lawrence in the Magnus introduction. He said to me once that he considered this the best single piece of writing, as writing, that he had ever done.
On the evidence contained therein, it seems to me that Lawrence's activity with the typewriter, which, on a third visit eighteen months later, was to cause so much amusement - of the friendliest sort - in both Douglas and Rebecca West when they welcomed him again to Florence, was not of the precipitate order they fancied. It was more probably an endeavour, with Magnus's Memoirs in mind, to provide his 1919 impressions with the refreshed significance furnished by his 1921 arrival. The sordid tragedy of poor Magnus had been played to a finish during the period between the two visits.
I had two postcards from the Balestri, the first beginning: 'Am here in the rain, waiting for Frieda, of whom I hear nothing yet. Italy is rather spoiled by the War - a different temper - not so nice a humour by far.' In the second he said he had a really sunny room over the Arno, with good wine, an easy-going padrone and altogether such 'a nice carelessness' that he felt he would 'loaf away all his substance'.
When Frieda joined him, he waited on there with her yet a while before they went on together to Rome, where my friend had found what she thought was a suitable pension. In Rome during a short stay they met with two calamities. They were turned out of the first pension (whether English or Italian I am not sure, though I think it was Italian) on the discovery that Frieda was German. Given eager hospitality then by my friend, who, as it happened, was the heroic support of a strangely mingled household, they were robbed of the greater part of their ready money. The position was painful in more ways than one. Lawrence had at once conceived a real liking for his hostess, who, moreover, though by no means wealthy, had refused to consider payment from him. He knew not only that she was herself above suspicion, but that, whether the thief were discovered or not, she would insist upon refunding the lost money (something like ten pounds, which had just been changed into Italian notes). He decided accordingly to say nothing about it. As the household is now broken up by death and other causes, I feel at liberty to narrate the incident, which the Lawrences told me in confidence years after it happened.
In Florence, too, either on this or some later visit, Lawrence was robbed of his much-needed cash. He was getting on to the crowded train at Fiesole when his wallet was taken from his pocket. He described to me his feelings when he made the discovery - first the sensation as if his heart had dropped from his breast through the soles of his feet, then the mounting fury that flushed him to the roots of his hair. But yet more characteristic of him was his philosophical summing up of the mishap. 'It is a good lesson,' he announced with crisp emphasis. 'One gets into a silly soft way of trusting one's fellows. One must not trust them, for they are not trustworthy. One must live as the wild animals live, always wary, always on one's guard against enemies. It makes one more alive, anyway, and not really more suspicious. It is best to recognise the truth that most people will do you if they can.'
Such a determination in Lawrence was compatible with an enviable lightness over losses. He never made moan and never wasted time over them, blaming his own softness as much or more than the cupidity or dishonesty of the other fellow. The trouble, already referred to, over the American rights of Sons and Lowers was another case in point.
When asked why he did not make such a matter public and fight for his legal rights, Lawrence only shrugged his shoulders. It was not that he claimed or possessed the orthodox Christian emotion or that he was non-resistant on principle. He resented such injuries, and made no pretence of forgetting or forgiving them. But neither would he let them prey upon him. In this, as in so much else, he evinced a sense of life which might be called transcendentally practical. He never forgot the limits of a man's time and strength, especially when that man is handicapped by poverty and 'unhappy bronchials'. To the loss of money - always partly due to one's own fault - he would not add the expenditure of more precious forms of energy. He was profoundly philosophic, and, had he been both stronger and richer, I am sure his view would have remained unchanged. For him the law, though admittedly necessary, was always 'an ass'. He would not even allow, what I was at times inclined to urge, that one must on occasion fight for one's clear rights, if only to discourage villains and encourage the other victims of villainy. He admitted the need of courts of justice; but, 'No,' he would say, 'let others do as they like or as they must. For me it is nothing but waste to invoke justice or to inflict punishment.' After all, such an episode as that concerning Sons and Lovers could be 'counted off', said he, with a light arrogance, as 'the price of fame'. So, perhaps, could the later striking depletion of his profits by the folly and failure of an American publisher, who meant no ill, but reckoned on a better turn of fortune for himself and a longer life for Lawrence than was decreed.
Lawrence's point of view was vitally aristocratic. That is to say, it was the point of view of the man so assured of his rights that he feels no obligation to fight for them. He allowed himself immediate fury in plenty and a warning memory of the chicaneries, slights and breaches of faith which it was his lot to suffer. But they were permitted no abiding place in his life save by that heightened awareness which he took to be an element in vital being. This, I take it, though he framed it courteously, was what he meant when, long after the event, he told Murry that he bore no grudge for the review of Women in Lave. To bear a grudge was a sin against life. But he felt no call to 'forgive' Murry's sin against the heart. Once more, as it seems to me, Lawrence, by repudiating the Christian doctrine, discovered its soul afresh, and that in a way which would have been impossible without initial repudiation. For him the emotional tenet of Christian forgiveness was closely connected with that organised revenge from which came the Great War.
Almost certainly the theme of Aaron 's Rod, as well as its charming and unusual opening, belonged to the period before Lawrence left England. Both theme and opening must have suggested themselves during his visit to the Midlands for the Christmas of 1918. In a letter written in February, 1920, he speaks of a half-finished novel in manuscript being held up with Frieda's luggage in Germany owing to a railway strike, and a fortnight later tells of having just 'started a novel'.
The second mentioned, I take it, was Aaron's Rod, the first The Lost Girl of seven year
s earlier.
The failure to find a resting-place in the neighbourhood of Caserta was certainly productive of the memorable Italian section of The Lost Girl, which Lawrence completed in May, 1920. Such a dovetailing of literary circumstance works havoc with the psychic pattern, or clinical picture designed for us by Murry in Son of Woman. The hard light of chronology is equally unkind to his attempt to explain his Athenaeum review (Reminiscences. Adelphi Jan. 1931, pp. 327, 329).
After some wandering from place to place during the early part of December 'in a state of restlessness', the Lawrences were at Picinisco. But they found that it was impossible. 'Beautiful beyond words but so primitive, and so cold.' Almost they thought they would have died. 'Mountains stood round in a ring, glittering like devils,' and on the Saturday before Christmas it snowed all day long. So, as he wrote me early in January from Capri, they extricated themselves on the Monday by getting up at 5.30, walking five miles to Atina, catching the post-omnibus there which carried them ten miles to Cassino, which was the only station, and reaching Naples by train in time to catch the 3 p.m. boat to Capri. As they left the bay the sea rose, and by 7.30, when they came into the shallow port of Capri, it ran so high that the boats could not put out to land them. There was nothing for it but to go back and seek the semi-shelter of Sorrento, there to roll horribly all night with a shipload of moaning Italians. Luckily neither Frieda nor Lawrence was sick.
At Capri for 160 francs a month they took the top floor of the old and 'extremely beautiful' Palazzo Ferraro which had 'a staircase like a prison, not a palace', and was 'on the very neck of the little town, on the very neck of the island', so that they felt they could almost touch 'the queer bubbling Duomo' from their balcony, and they overlooked all the island life as well as the bay of Naples and Ischia on their right, and on their left 'the wide open Mediterranean'. They had two large rooms to themselves and shared a kitchen with a young Roumanian Socialist, who lost no opportunity of pouring his Socialism into Lawrence's ear. Down to the sea was only a short, steep mile, and though they sometimes felt the need of a fire in the evenings, the days were warm and stormy. 'The narcissus flowers still are many in the rocks, but passing: sweet they are, Greece. A few pink cactus flowers, too.'
Complete Works of D.H. Lawrence Page 1126