To return. In Huxley we get a man whose awareness of suffering had led him to pillory in his books each form of cruelty in turn. But this awareness was no neurosis with him - as with so many writers of today, who wallow in horrors - but a real heart wound that made him aloof and gentle. He was therefore immediately attracted to Lawrence, both because Lawrence admitted suffering and because Lawrence in some way had freed himself from its trammels. The effect is apparent in everything written by the younger man since the two became acquainted. It has been so deep that, at this date and in his last book, Huxley finds that a painless life might well be intolerable.
As for Lawrence, he was in certain respects past the stage when he could give himself in friendship. But he was glad and grateful to find an Englishman to whom he could talk and a heart on which he could rely. For the time that remained Huxley was simply and charmingly devoted to him, and proved dependable to the last.
4
After Christmas Lawrence was perplexed as to how best to scheme for health throughout the difficult coming months. The Huxleys, marking the seriousness of his condition, pressed the wisdom of an escape from the uncertainties of a Florentine midwinter. They were themselves going in January to Les Diablerets. A separate little flat could be found in the snow there for Lawrence and Frieda. Lawrence hated the snow. He was now told, however, after a re-examination by his doctor, that the altitude of Les Diablerets (4,000 feet) was just right for his healing. At the same time, in the doctor's opinion, the altitude of the ranch, even in summer, had become dangerous, and must be put out of all question. Upon this Lawrence reserved his own judgement, but he would follow the immediate counsels of doctor and friends. He promised to go to Switzerland shortly after the middle of January.
'I want really to try and get myself better,' he wrote to me on the 10th. 'Cough still troublesome - and I want to lay hold of life again properly. Have been down and out this last six months.' It was the second time he had used this phrase 'down and out', and it came now at the end of the-longest passage concerning his health that had ever occurred in a letter to me. We knew he must be ill then, though still we did not take it as really serious.
But he had finished Lady Chatterley, keeping quiet about it as usual till it was finished. This was the first I heard of it.
I wrote a novel last winter and rewrote it for the 3rd time this - and it's very verbally improper - the last word in all its meanings! - but very truly moral. A woman in Florence said she'd type it - she's done 5 chapters - now turned me down. Says she can't go any further, too indecent!... But will you find me some decent person who'll type it for me at the usual rates? You'd do it, I know, if you were a person of leisure. But you're not. So turn over in your mind some decent being, male or female, who I could trust not to let me down in any way and who'd do the thing for the proper pay, and write me soon.
Then I think I shall publish my novel privately here in Florence, in March-April - a thousand copies, two gns each; and so, D.V. earn myself a thousand pounds, which I can do very well with - rather low water. I'll call it Tenderness - the novel.
But please don't talk about to anybody - I don't want a scandal advertisement.
I do hope I'm not bothering you. But I feel I must get another blow in at the lily-livered host. One's got to fight.
To someone else he wrote of this book: 'It'll infuriate mean people: but it will surely soothe decent ones.'
When Lawrence said this of Lady Chatterley he meant, as I understand it, that the book was a manifesto to a modern world which doubts the sufficiency of bodily love even at its best. It is not, Lawrence would say, the body that fails - it is the modern man and woman, who despise or fear or exploit for sensational ends the subtle simplicities of nature. The intellect and spirit have tried by turns to deny the flesh, and degrade it, and the flesh has had its revenge by turning physical love into mere frictional excitation, of which the fruit is apples of Sodom.
Four days later he sent a postcard to say that an attack of influenza had driven him to bed and postponed his journey to Les Diablerets. It was 'misery' but 'not bad', he insisted. 'Seems to me I always decide to go away a bit too late - or the 'flu gets me a bit too soon. It's my unhappy bronchials that lacerate so easily.'
The delay, so that he was caught again by the dampness of Florence, was probably due to a variety of causes - to his shrinking from the snow, to his arrangements for the Florentine production of Lady Chatterley, which had to be made at once, and to his growing dislike of moving. 'One gets older,' he had written to Ada a week earlier, telling how he longed to find a place in which he could really settle. He even thought of trying 'Devonshire or somewhere there for a time, and if it suits me, really make a home there'. The Mirenda, though he loved it, provided a home neither for midsummer nor for midwinter. Nor was it a place in which to take to one's bed, even for a short spell.
By the end of January he was able to 'creep up' to Les Diablerets with Frieda. He did not like it, finding himself unable to walk the slopes, still more debarred from the mildest of winter sports. But in a very few weeks he felt greatly the better for being there.
Though much wishing to do it, I had been unable to undertake the typing of Lady Chatterley myself for Lawrence. But I had arranged to have it done for him, and he had sent the first half of the manuscript to me, retaining the last chapters to be typed by Maria Huxley. He wanted to know which tide I preferred. Lady Chatterley's Lover, My Lady's Keeper or Tenderness. I did not care much for any of them, but have forgotten my own alternatives. Actually, owing to an unforeseen delay, I was obliged to sit up two nights typing the last few thousand words myself. Lawrence was in more of a hurry than I had realised. The typescript was in his hands, however, by the 1st of March.
At Les Diablerets, with the breaking of the snow in March, the atmosphere had gone 'warmish and cloudy'. Lawrence dreaded the descent 'to the levels and the germs', but it was time to go. Everybody up there was starting a cold.
He went down alone to Florence on the 6th; and though it was to find the Mirenda veiled in sleet after a frost that had killed outright the first crop of peas and beans, he felt so much better that five days later we find him writing home to say he was thinking of the ranch for the summer. Up at Les Diablerets he had spoken much of it to the Huxleys, and he believed that they would go with him, and Brewster as well. The doctor was not necessarily right on the subject of altitudes. What could an Italian doctor know about the air of the Rockies in summer?
Meanwhile the weather in Florence convinced him that he must give up the Mirenda. Throughout the latter part of the month it poured cold rain upon him; and if it had not been for Lady Chatterley, he would have given his landlord notice there and then and fled the place. His term was due to expire at the end of April. He must see the book through, however, and of course there were delays. The little Florentine printer knew no English: he was short of type: he ran out of the special paper, which had to be handmade. But, except for the difficult question of copyright, prospects were encouraging. Order forms had been sent out earlier: now they came back filled in with cheques attached. For the first time one of his books was going to bring a solid sum safe to his pocket.
During the difficult printing he fell ill. Frieda, who had gone from Les Diablerets to see her mother, was not yet back from Germany. But Pino Orioli, who was acting as publisher and distributor of the book, came out every night all the way from Florence at great inconvenience (though with his accustomed cheerfulness, which nothing ruffles) to sleep at the Mirenda, bringing with him a load of comforts, material and otherwise. On the news Frieda returned. Lawrence was soon up and about again. But it meant the end of the Mirenda for them. He could never live there now. At the same time he must have seen that the ranch would be impossible, for that summer at least.
It is not too much to say that he had sacrificed it to his book. Because, upon first leaving Les Diablerets, he had felt quite strong enough for the journey to New Mexico, where he believed he would re-establish hi
s health. But the task of production was not completed till the middle of June. This obliged him to take on the Mirenda, though he would not stay there himself once Lady Chatterley was launched. Friends could have the house if they cared to come for the holidays. I do not think that it was occupied that summer after the Lawrences left; but during May, while they were still there, they had a fortnight's visit from Enid and Laurence Hilton, who came out from London. Enid Hilton's mother had been Lawrence's mother's dearest friend long before at Eastwood, and her father a staunch friend since Lawrence's boyhood. Later she and her husband were to be of great service to Lawrence in London over the Lady Chatterley troubles.
A second small trip with Millicent Beveridge, for which he had hoped, had to fall through because he was not strong enough for it. Better obey the doctor and go to Switzerland again. After a couple of months there to 'fix up his chest', he would go to England in August. The question of exhibiting his pictures that autumn was under discussion.
'. . . make a few more enemies', as he wrote to me. 'But you'd like some of them. I'll tell you.' Dorothy Warren thought highly of those he had sent for her to see and she was willing to undertake a one-man show for him at the Warren Gallery. She was a good friend whom he had known since the Garsington Manor days.
5
Soon after the middle of June Lawrence and Frieda were at Chexbres-sur-Vevey. I had a postcard to say that he did not like it much but found it 'good for his bronchials', so they would stay awhile.
They stayed about a month, after which they went for two months to a peasant chalet up on the mountain-side at Kesselmatte. It was like a little, double-decked wooden ship that sailed high above the valley, and they had it entirely to themselves. Lawrence was unable to walk the mountains, but he began to paint again, and the intelligent young Swiss postman came and stared at his pictures, wondering at them, sometimes liking them very much, never at all shocked. The peasant proprietors of the chalet, who lived during the summer in their hay-hut across the valley, brought over baskets of bilberries and cranberries. Sometimes Lawrence and Frieda drove across the pass to revisit Les Diablerets, which in summer was quite a different place.
August came and went. England would have to be postponed, as Lawrence did not feel up to it.
For the first time he was frankly despondent about his health as surveyed over 'this last year', and found that it was 'useless thinking of going anywhere till his cough went'.
But in September they must move on. The signal came with the cowbells as the beasts moved down from the high Alps. Summer was over. Where next? There was some talk of trying the French Alps near Grenoble, this time with Brewster. But, as so often before when no definite step presented itself, they went to Baden-Baden. From there Frieda could visit England by herself, see the picture-show, now fixed for October, and bring back the reports. She was to have our studio.
Lawrence wrote to Ada advising her in good time not to visit the Warren Gallery. 'You won't like the things. Best leave 'em alone.'
The show, however, was put off, and Frieda did not come to England. After little more than a week at Baden Lawrence left her there, and with her elder daughter Eisa he went to where the Huxleys were at Le Lavandou, near Toulon. When Frieda had seen to things at the Mirenda she would follow them there.
The place and the sea agreed with Lawrence; and when Eisa and the Huxleys left, and Frieda arrived bringing old friends with her - Richard Aldington and others - they made a good company. Together they crossed the ten miles of sea to the Island of Port Cros, there to picnic in the little rooms of La Vigie, fortified and moated on the top of the highest hill. The only trouble was that Lawrence 'with his cold' could never make one of the daily bathing expeditions. La Vigie was an hour's climb from the sea - the wonder was that he had got there at all - and even had he been able to accompany the others he could not have bathed. The experience at Forte dei Marmi had been enough of a warning for that.
If I know anything of Lawrence, his disabilities in such a party must have been hard to bear, for he hated to be a mere onlooker, and alone with Frieda he was always very much the leader. Possibly this had something to do with the fact that the beauty of the green island, with its umbrella pines and 'the blue sea and the other isles', while he admitted it, did not much move him, and as the others disported themselves he kept thinking of the strikes that were forward in the Midlands. At the same time the notorious John Bull article on Lady Chatterley - 'Famous Novelist's Shameful Book' - 'A Landmark in Evil' (this time unsigned) appeared in London, together with a picture (unrecognisable) of the 'bearded satyr' and 'world-famous novelist, who has prostituted art to pornography'.
Still he would not let such a thing affect him deeply. The neighbourhood of Le Lavandou had seemed to suit his health. And when the weather broke, with such gales that no boat could bring bread, and the fortified walls proved no defence against the wet, and the holiday party had to pack up and at the first opportunity make for the mainland, the Lawrences thought they could not do better than try that coast for the winter. On November 14th they went to the Hotel Beau Rivage, Bandol, where, as it chanced, Katherine Mansfield had stayed during an early stage in her illness.
In noticing this coincidence Murry appears to have made yet another mistake in his dates. According to his Reminiscences he had written through Curtis Brown in March after a silence of two years, to ask a trivial favour of Lawrence; and he gives us to understand that without undue delay Lawrence replied from the Beau Rivage. But as Lawrence in March was first in Switzerland and then in Florence, and did not reach Bandol till mid-November, Murry, if correct, must have waited eight months for any response, by which time the response would not be of the practical use he sought. Neither was it like Lawrence that if he were going to answer at all, he should have waited so long. What seems most likely is that Murry did not write until the following March (1929), which would make the silence between him and Lawrence longer by a year. It would also fit with the fact noted by Murry (as if in support of his 'pattern' of Lawrence's restlessness, though actually it deranges that pattern) that the Mirenda had already been given up. However these things may be, Lawrence remained at the Beau Rivage from November 28th till the first days of March, 1929. The poems in Pansies, which he designated as his 'rag-poems', were all written before Christmas.
At Christmas he had a visit from Ada. On the whole this brought sadness. As always, Lawrence was glad to see her; but he knew that now, save in his affections, he was out of touch with this dearest member of his family who was also the sole remaining link with his youth. Such a situation is always most sharply realised upon a face-to-face meeting.
And in this case it was no doubt aggravated by Ada's restrained sadness at the sight of her brother's increased fragility. Lawrence hated restrained sadness, and he disliked any sisterly attempts at treating him as an invalid. That winter he did not spend a single day in bed, and on Christmas Day he spoke hopefully of starting for the ranch in spring, if only for six months there. The hope persisted throughout January and February, until on March 2nd he confessed that it was 'no good', that though he was better and never needed to lie in bed, he was 'not well enough', and that it would be best to sell the ranch. It was then that he uttered one of his rare complaints before quoted: 'O why can't one make oneself tough}'
With Ada, as with most others who loved him, Lawrence had to stand up against the knowledge that, while she delighted in his gifts and himself, she wanted him to be the sort of 'great man' that she and the world were accustomed to. She wanted for him the acceptance and honour which she felt were his due. Again, she could not help resenting the awful discomfort of Lawrence's genius, which was brought about by just that 'demon' of his, to which obedience meant everything to him - that 'Balaam's ass in his belly', that would not let him move along the path of accredited success and loving ease. So he was obliged to break deep down with Ada, or rather to withdraw from her in essentials for the time being, causing a suspension of vital contact. At the same t
ime the bond of affection would always hold between them. On her side there was the goodwill that can exist without understanding, eternally if need be, and on his a tenderness that could forgo understanding while it went on hoping. In human relations it was only where there was neither understanding nor natural warmth, but merely the jargon of love, that Lawrence could make an absolute break, as we shall see. Indeed what Murry called 'love' was that very thing that stank in Lawrence's nostrils as the festering of lilies - the emotional collapse due to the Christian ideals, which bore a noble name, but was false and death-dealing and the cause of the War. Because of it, said Lawrence, we must give up using the word. Tenderness would do for a change. In tenderness there was still a living test of a man's fidelity, while love was heavy with generations of betrayal.
As ever, with Ada as with myself, he was patient, hopeful, wise and extremely gentle. Almost immediately after she had left to go home, he wrote a letter as unconquerably kind as it was free from egotism. He faced the situation squarely and intimately, making none of the familiar excuses of self-pity decked in playful or touching phrases which are so often the last vanity and refuge of the consumptive. Neither by his illness nor by his gifts did he put her at a disadvantage. The phrases are light and quivering with real sweetness. It is among other things a final refutation of Murry's picture of Lawrence in his last phase. And as such, though it appears also in Ada's book, it may be reproduced at least in part here:
... But don't be miserable - or if you must be, at least realise that it's because of a change that is happening inside us, a change in feeling, a whole change in what we find worth while and not worth while. The things that seem to make up one's life die into insignificance, and the whole state is wretched. I've been through it these last three years - and suffered, I tell you. But now I feel I'm coming through, to some other kind of happiness. It's a different kind of happiness we've got to come through to - but while the old sort is dying, and nothing new has appeared, it's really torture. But be patient, and realise it's a process that has to be gone through - and it's taken me three years to get even so far. But we shall come through, and be really happy and in touch. You will see, the future will bring great changes - and I hope one day we may all live in touch with one another, away from business and all that sort of world, and really have a new sort of happiness together. You'll see - it will come - gradually - and before not so very many years. This is the slow winding up of an old way of life. Patience - and we'll begin another, somewhere in the sun.
Complete Works of D.H. Lawrence Page 1140