The Life of D. H. Lawrence Blackwell Critical Biographies General Editor: Claude Rawson

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A Critical Biography

Andrew Harrison This edition first published 2016 © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd Registered Office John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, The Atrium, Southern Gate, Chichester, West Sussex, PO19 8SQ, UK Editorial Offices 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148‐5020, USA 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford, OX4 2DQ, UK The Atrium, Southern Gate, Chichester, West Sussex, PO19 8SQ, UK For details of our global editorial offices, for customer services, and for information about how to apply for permission to reuse the copyright material in this book please see our website at www.wiley.com/wiley‐blackwell. The right of Andrew Harrison to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, except as permitted by the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, without the prior permission of the publisher. Wiley also publishes its books in a variety of electronic formats. Some content that appears in print may not be available in electronic books. Designations used by companies to distinguish their products are often claimed as trademarks. All brand names and product names used in this book are trade names, service marks, trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners. The publisher is not associated with any product or vendor mentioned in this book. Limit of Liability/Disclaimer of Warranty: While the publisher and author have used their best efforts in preparing this book, they make no representations or warranties with respect to the accuracy or completeness of the contents of this book and specifically disclaim any implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. It is sold on the understanding that the publisher is not engaged in rendering professional services and neither the publisher nor the author shall be liable for damages arising herefrom. If professional advice or other expert assistance is required, the services of a competent professional should be sought. Library of Congress Cataloging‐in‐Publication Data Names: Harrison, Andrew, 1973– author. Title: The life of D. H. Lawrence / Andrew Harrison. Description: 1 | Chichester, Sussex : Wiley-Blackwell, 2016. | Series: Wiley blackwell critical biographies | Includes index. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2015044565 (print) | LCCN 2016001782 (ebook) | ISBN 9780470654781 (hardback) | ISBN 9781119072683 (ePub) | ISBN 9781119101291 (Adobe PDF) Subjects: LCSH: Lawrence, D. H. (David Herbert), 1885-1930. | Authors, English–20th century–Biography. | BISAC: LITERARY CRITICISM / European / English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh. Classification: LCC PR6023.A93 Z63125 2016 (print) | LCC PR6023.A93 (ebook) | DDC 823/.912–dc23 LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015044565 A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Cover image: D. H. Lawrence in the cloisters of the cathedral at Cuernavaca, Mexico, c.5 April 1923. (Manuscripts and Special Collections, The University of Nottingham, La WB 1/13.) Set in 10/12pt Bembo by SPi Global, Pondicherry, India

1 2016 Contents

List of Illustrations vii Acknowledgements ix Abbreviations xi Preface xvi

Part I Literary Formation, 1885–1912 1 1 Early Voices, September 1885–October 1908 3 2 Literary London, October 1908–April 1910 31 3 ‘A Small but Individual Name’, April 1910–May 1912 49

Part II UnEnglished, 1912–1914 79 4 ‘Coming Out Wholesome and Myself’, May 1912–May 1913 81 5 Forging a Career, June 1913–August 1914 106

Part III The Bitterness of the War and its Aftermath, 1914–1919 125 6 ‘The Real Fighting Line’, August 1914–December 1915 127 7 Outlaw, December 1915–April 1918 150 8 ‘Laid Up’, May 1918–November 1919 177

Part IV Europe Again, 1919–1922 197 9 Italy and Sicily, November 1919–December 1920 199 10 End of the Line, January 1921–February 1922 218

v Contents

Part V New Worlds and Old Worlds, 1922–1925 235 11 Ceylon and Australia, February–August 1922 237 12 On to America, August 1922–November 1923 247 13 Broken Bonds, December 1923–July 1924 270 14 Writing for the Race, August 1924 –September 1925 283

Part VI Returning, 1925–1927 303 15 Understanding, September 1925–April 1926 305 16 Writing and Painting, April 1926–March 1927 319

Part VII ‘Unfailing Courage’, 1927–1930 339 17 Friendship and Isolation, March 1927 –May 1928 341 18 ‘Dropping a Little Bomb in the World’s Crinoline of Hypocrisy’, May 1928–August 1929 363 19 ‘Living on his Spirit’, August 1929 –March 1930 394

Afterword 406 Bibliography 411 Index 420

vi List of Illustrations

1 The Lawrence family, c.1895. Back row: Emily, George, Ernest. Front row: Ada, Lydia, Bert (D. H. Lawrence), Arthur. (Manuscripts and Special Collections, The University of Nottingham, La R 8.) 6 2 The Chambers family outside Haggs Farm, c.1899: May, Bernard, Mollie, Edmund, Ann, David, Jessie, Hubert, Alan. (Manuscripts and Special Collections, The University of Nottingham, La Ch 60.) 9 3 D. H. Lawrence, March 1905. Photograph by George Holderness. (Manuscripts and Special Collections, The University of Nottingham, La R 8.) 14 4 The copy of Maurice Greiffenhagen’s painting ‘An Idyll’ made by Lawrence for his sister Ada and begun on the day of his mother’s death, 9 December 1910. (Manuscripts and Special Collections, The University of Nottingham, La Pc 2/7.) 55 5 Frieda Weekley with two of her children, Monty and Barbara, Nottingham, c.1905. (Manuscripts and Special Collections, The University of Nottingham, La We 6/2.) 73 6 Frieda Weekley and D. H. Lawrence, Bavaria, late April or May 1913. (Photography Collection, D. H. Lawrence Literary File P–59, Harry Ransom Center, The University of Texas at Austin.) 103 7 D. H. Lawrence, London, late summer 1915. (© National Portrait Gallery, London.) 141 8 D. H. Lawrence and his nephew, Jack Clarke, Mountain Cottage, Middleton‐by‐Wirksworth, Derbyshire, c.18–20 May 1918. (Manuscripts and Special Collections, The University of Nottingham, La Z 8/1/1/7.) 178 9 D. H. Lawrence and Kai Gøtzsche working at the Del Monte Ranch, New Mexico, December 1922. (Courtesy of Steffen Lange.) 253 10 Pencil drawing by Kai Gøtzsche of D. H. Lawrence, Knud Merrild and Gøtzsche on horseback in New Mexico, c.January 1923.

vii List of Illustrations

(The D. H. Lawrence Papers, Collection No. 1976.013. Department of Special Collections and University Archives, McFarlin Library, The University of Tulsa. Tulsa, Oklahoma.) 254 11 D. H. Lawrence in the cloisters of the cathedral at Cuernavaca, Mexico, c.5 April 1923. (Manuscripts and Special Collections, The University of Nottingham, La WB 1/13.) 258 12 D. H. Lawrence milking Susan, his cow. (Photography Collection, D. H. Lawrence Literary File P‐292N, Harry Ransom Center, The University of Texas at Austin.) 296 13 Back row: Harwood Brewster, Earl Brewster. Front row: , Achsah Brewster and D. H. Lawrence. Capri, 27 February–c.10 March 1926. (Press Photograph. Source – Eve: The Lady’s Pictorial, 31 March 1926, p. 625.) 313 14 Lawrence and Frieda posing by the well at the Villa Mirenda, San Polo Mosciano, Florence. (Manuscripts and Special Collections, The University of Nottingham, La Phot 1/27.) 321 15 A family photograph taken outside St Peter’s Church, Markby, Lincolnshire, week of 22–26 August 1926. Back row: D. H. Lawrence, Emily King, Maude Beardsall, Ada Clarke, Gertie Cooper. Front row: Joan King, Jack Clarke, Bert Clarke. (Manuscripts and Special Collections, The University of Nottingham, La Pc 2/8/26.) 325 16 D. H. Lawrence, self‐portrait in red crayon, June 1929. First published as the frontispiece to the unexpurgated edition of Pansies. 385 17 Lawrence’s paintings hanging in the Warren Gallery, London. (Photography Collection, D. H. Lawrence Literary File P‐591, Harry Ransom Center, The University of Texas at Austin.) 386

viii Acknowledgements

I am grateful to Pollinger Limited, acting on behalf of the Estate of Ravagli, for permission to quote from the letters and works of D. H. Lawrence. The following kindly provided assistance with acquiring illustrations for the book and granted permission to reproduce them: Harry Ransom Center, The University of Texas at Austin; Manuscripts and Special Collections, University of Nottingham; McFarlin Library, University of Tulsa; National Portrait Gallery, London; Steffen Lange; Deborah and Neil Matthews. I would like to thank the School of English at the University of Nottingham for awarding me research leave to work on the book, and the Faculty of Arts for granting me Dean’s Fund money to support my research. My greatest debt of gratitude is to my family, and especially to my mother, who has offered much love and guidance to me during my work on this book. D. H. Lawrence biography has been extremely well served by scholars and critics, and I am happy to record here the extent of my indebtedness to them. Firstly, I must acknowledge the extraordinary work of the authors of the three‐volume Cambridge biography of Lawrence: John Worthen, the late Mark Kinkead‐Weekes and David Ellis. John Worthen in particular has afforded me a great deal of support, and has been extremely kind and considerate in encouraging my work on Lawrence over the years – I would like to take this opportunity to thank him and his wife, Conni, for their greatly valued friendship. Michael Squires and Lynn K. Talbot have been very g­enerous in sharing their research findings on Lawrence and Frieda. I have benefited e­normously from consulting the research papers of the late Émile Delavenay, James T. Boulton and Keith Sagar in Manuscripts and Special Collections at the University of Nottingham. One volume which has remained constantly open on my desk throughout my work on this biography is A D. H. Lawrence Chronology by the late Peter Preston; I feel fortunate­ in having had the opportunity to discuss Lawrence with Peter, and his understanding and insight remain an example to me. I would like to thank John Worthen, Keith Cushman and Claude Rawson for their very helpful and detailed comments on an early draft of the biography. I take sole responsibility for aspects of the book which do not meet the scrupulous standards of these scholars.

ix Acknowledgements

Special thanks to: Steffen Lange, Pia Gøtzsche, Ida Lange, Hanne Reumert and all the Gøtzsche family for their great kindness in inviting me to Denmark to look at and discuss family material relating to Kai Gøtzsche and his friendship with Lawrence; Emma Bennett, Deirdre Ilkson, Bridget Jennings, Roshna Mohan, Divya Narayanan and Ben Thatcher at Wiley‐Blackwell for their guidance and support; Katherine Carr for her exemplary copy‐editing; Mark Dorrington, Dorothy Johnston, Corinne Fawcett, Linda Shaw, Caroline Kelly, Jayne Amat, Amy Bowler, Mark Bentley, Eleonora Nicchiarelli and all the staff in Manuscripts and Special Collections, University of Nottingham, for their invaluable help and assistance; Claire Bates, Jackie Greaves, Emma Herrity, Carolyn Melbourne, Liz Moran and their many colleagues at D. H. Lawrence Heritage in Eastwood for their co‐operation and friendship; Malcolm Gray and the council members of the D. H. Lawrence Society for their encouragement of my work; Annalise Grice for her invaluable contributions to the book; and my students in Darmstadt and at the University of Nottingham for engaging so energetically and enthusiastically in discussions of Lawrence’s life and works. I am also grateful to the following individuals for their particular help, support and camaraderie: Keith and Janet Alldritt, Martin Ballund, Helen Baron, Michael Bell, Howard J. Booth, Robert Caserio, Nick Ceramella, Cath Collison, Elena Danielson, Sarah Davison, Jenn Donner, Ed Downey, Paul Eggert, Annika Eisenberg, Anne Fernihough, David and Jenny Game, Ron Granofsky, Eleanor Green, Julika Griem, Josephine Guy, Kevin Harvey, Dominic Head, Alan and Joanne Hedges, Hilary Hillier, G. M. Hyde, Bethan Jones, Malcolm Jones, Roger Jones, Mara Kalnins, Richard Kaye, Gerri Kimber, Leena Kore‐Schröder, Eric Leese, Katy Loffman, Jonathan Long, Stephen Lowe, Kerry Mason and the pupils at Hall Park Academy, Deborah and Neil Matthews, Sean Matthews, Stephen McKibbin, Stefania Michelucci, James Moran, Stephen Mumford, Linda Briscoe Myers, Richard Owen, Nancy Paxton, Jim Phelps, Lesley Pollinger, Christopher Pollnitz, Paul Poplawski, Lynda Pratt, Barbara Preston, N. H. Reeve, Sue Reid, Neil Roberts, Jo Robinson, Adam Rounce, Ginette Roy, Judith Ruderman, Julie Sanders, Anke Schulz, Steve Thuell, John Turner, Jeff Wallace, Jason Ward, Jan Wilm, Vivienne Wood.

x Abbreviations

Wherever possible, quotations from the letters and works of D. H. Lawrence in the main text and notes refer readers to the Cambridge Edition, using the short forms listed below.

Letters of D. H. Lawrence

1L The Letters of D. H. Lawrence Volume I: September 1901–May 1913, ed. James T. Boulton (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1979). 2L The Letters of D. H. Lawrence Volume II: June 1913–October 1916, ed. George J. Zytaruk and James T. Boulton (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1981). 3L The Letters of D. H. Lawrence Volume III: October 1916–June 1921, ed. James T. Boulton and Andrew Robertson (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1984). 4L The Letters of D. H. Lawrence Volume IV: June 1921–March 1924, ed. Warren Roberts, James T. Boulton and Elizabeth Mansfield (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1987). 5L The Letters of D. H. Lawrence Volume V: March 1924–March 1927, ed. James T. Boulton and Lindeth Vasey (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1989). 6L The Letters of D. H. Lawrence Volume VI: March 1927–November 1928, ed. James T. Boulton and Margaret H. Boulton with Gerald M. Lacy (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1991). 7L The Letters of D. H. Lawrence Volume VII: November 1928–February 1930, ed. Keith Sagar and James T. Boulton (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1993). 8L The Letters of D. H. Lawrence Volume VIII: Previously Uncollected Letters and General Index, ed. James T. Boulton (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2000).

xi Abbreviations

Works of D. H. Lawrence

A Apocalypse and the Writings on Revelation, ed. Mara Kalnins (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1980). AR Aaron’s Rod, ed. Mara Kalnins (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1988). BB , with M. L. Skinner, ed. Paul Eggert (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1990). EmyE England, My England and Other Stories, ed. Bruce Steele (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1990). FLC The First and Second Lady Chatterley Novels, ed. Dieter Mehl and Christa Jansohn (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1999). Fox , The Captain’s Doll, , ed. Dieter Mehl (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1992). FWL The First ‘’, ed. John Worthen and Lindeth Vasey (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1998). IR Introductions and Reviews, ed. N. H. Reeve and John Worthen (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2005). K , ed. Bruce Steele (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1994). LAH Love Among the Haystacks and Other Stories, ed. John Worthen (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1987). LCL Lady Chatterley’s Lover and A Propos of ‘Lady Chatterley’s Lover’, ed. Michael Squires (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1993). LEA Late Essays and Articles, ed. James T. Boulton (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2004). LG , ed. John Worthen (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1981). MEH Movements in European History, ed. Philip Crumpton (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1989). MM and Other Essays, ed. Virginia Crosswhite Hyde (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2009). MN , ed. Lindeth Vasey (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1984). Plays The Plays, ed. Hans‐Wilhelm Schwarze and John Worthen (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1999). PM Paul Morel, ed. Helen Baron (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2003). PO The Prussian Officer and Other Stories, ed. John Worthen (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1983). Poems The Poems. 2 Vols., ed. Christopher Pollnitz (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2013). PS , ed. L. D. Clark (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1987). PFU Psychoanalysis and the Unconscious and Fantasia of the Unconscious, ed. Bruce Steele (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2004).

xii Abbreviations

Q Quetzalcoatl, ed. N. H. Reeve (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2011). Paintings The Paintings of D. H. Lawrence (London: Mandrake Press, 1929). R , ed. Mark Kinkead‐Weekes (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1989). RDP Reflections on the Death of a Porcupine and Other Essays, ed. Michael Herbert (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1988). SCAL Studies in Classic American Literature, ed. Ezra Greenspan, Lindeth Vasey and John Worthen (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2003). SEP Sketches of Etruscan Places and Other Italian Essays, ed. Simonetta de Filippis (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1992). SL , ed. Helen Baron and Carl Baron (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1992). SM St. Mawr and Other Stories, ed. Brian Finney (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1983). SS Sea and Sardinia, ed. Mara Kalnins (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1997). STH Study of Thomas Hardy and Other Essays, ed. Bruce Steele (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1985). T , ed. Elizabeth Mansfield (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1981). TI Twilight in Italy and Other Essays, ed. Paul Eggert (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1994). VicG The Vicar’s Garden and Other Stories, ed. N. H. Reeve (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2009). VG The Virgin and the Gipsy and Other Stories, ed. Michael Herbert, Bethan Jones and Lindeth Vasey (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2006). WL Women in Love, ed. David Farmer, Lindeth Vasey and John Worthen (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1987). WP , ed. Andrew Robertson (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1983). WWRA and Other Stories, ed. Dieter Mehl and Christa Jansohn (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1995).

Biographical and Scholarly Sources

Ada Ada Lawrence and G. Stuart Gelder, Young Lorenzo: Early Life of D. H. Lawrence (Florence: G. Orioli, 1931). Brett Dorothy Brett, Lawrence and Brett: A Friendship. [1933]. New Edition, with Introduction, Prologue and Epilogue by John Manchester (Santa Fe, NM: The Sunstone Press, 1974).

xiii Abbreviations

Brewster Earl and Achsah Brewster, D. H. Lawrence: Reminiscences and Correspondence (London: Martin Secker, 1934). Bynner Witter Bynner, Journey with Genius: Recollections and Reflections Concerning the D. H. Lawrences (London: Peter Nevill, 1953). Carswell Catherine Carswell, The Savage Pilgrimage: A Narrative of D. H. Lawrence (London: Chatto and Windus, 1932). Corke Helen Corke, In Our Infancy: An Autobiography, Part I, 1882–1912 (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1975). Death and the Author David Ellis, Death and the Author: How D. H. Lawrence Died, and was Remembered (New York: Oxford UP, 2008). Draper D. H. Lawrence: The Critical Heritage, ed. R. P. Draper (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1969). Ellis David Ellis, D. H. Lawrence: Dying Game, 1922–1930 (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1998). E. T. E. T. [ Jessie Chambers], D. H. Lawrence: A Personal Record (London: Jonathan Cape, 1935). Frieda Frieda Lawrence, “Not I, But The Wind …” (Santa Fe, NM: The Rydal Press, 1934). Kinkead‐Weekes Mark Kinkead‐Weekes, D. H. Lawrence: Triumph to Exile, 1912–1922 (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1996). Luhan , Lorenzo in Taos (London: Martin Secker, 1933). Merrild Knud Merrild, A Poet and Two Painters: A Memoir of D. H. Lawrence (London: George Routledge and Sons, 1938). Murry , Reminiscences of D. H. Lawrence (London: Jonathan Cape, 1933). Nehls D. H. Lawrence: A Composite Biography. 3 Vols. Gathered, Arranged, and Edited by Edward Nehls (Madison: U of Wisconsin P, 1957‐9). Neville G. H. Neville, A Memoir of D. H. Lawrence (The Betrayal), ed. Carl Baron (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1981). Outsider John Worthen, D. H. Lawrence: The Life of an Outsider (London: Allen Lane, 2005). Roberts Warren Roberts and Paul Poplawski, A Bibliography of D. H. Lawrence. Third Edition (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2001). Spencer Roy Spencer, D. H. Lawrence Country: A Portrait of his Early Life and Background with Illustrations, Maps and Guides (London: Cecil Woolf, 1979). Tedlock Frieda Lawrence: The Memoirs and Correspondence, ed. E. W. Tedlock (London: Heinemann, 1961).

xiv Abbreviations

Turner John Turner, ‘D. H. Lawrence in the Wilkinson Diaries,’ D. H. Lawrence Review, Vol. 30, No. 2 (2002), 5‐63. Worthen John Worthen, D. H. Lawrence: The Early Years, 1885–1912 (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1991). Zytaruk ‘The Collected Letters of Jessie Chambers,’ D. H. Lawrence Review, Vol. 12, Nos. 1–2 (Spring-Summer 1979).

Journals

DHLR D. H. Lawrence Review (1968–). JDHLS Journal of D. H. Lawrence Studies (2006–), formerly The Journal of the D. H. Lawrence Society (1976‐2005).

xv Preface

On 5 December 1927, D. H. Lawrence wrote to his friend Donald Carswell to congratulate him on his recently published volume Brother Scots, a collection of six biographical essays on prominent modern figures in Scottish public life. Lawrence considered the essays ‘psychologically very sound,’ but complained that his friend had underestimated the ‘vital quality’ of the men in question by judging them against standards of ‘English detached efficiency’: ‘one feels they are miserable specimens, all told, by the time one winds up with Robertson Nicoll.’ The attention Lawrence paid to this book led him to think of Donald’s wife Catherine, and of her recent plan to write a biography of Robert Burns:

Cath’s idea of a Burns book I like very much: I always wanted to do one myself, but am not Scotchy enough. I read just now Lockharts bit of a life of Burns. Made me spit! Those damned middle‐class Lockharts grew lilies of the valley up their arses, to hear them talk. If Cath is condescending to Burns, I disown her. He was quite right, a man’s a man for a’ that, and it’s not a bad poem. He meant what he says. My word, you can’t know Burns unless you can hate the Lockharts and all the estimable b­ourgeois and upper classes as he really did – the narrow‐gutted pigeons. Don’t, for God’s sake, be mealy mouthed like them. I’d like to write a Burns life. Oh, why, doesn’t Burns come to life again, and really salt them? (6L 231–2)

Lawrence’s comments reveal features of his own belief in the ideal nature and purpose of biography, and its potential pitfalls. Firstly, he presupposes the importance­ for a biographer of possessing a genuinely sympathetic and immersive understanding of his or her subject. Lawrence’s affinity with Burns as a working‐class poet writing in dialect and outspokenly addressing aspects of sexual and emotional experience obviously informs his desire to write his own biography of the man. He had first read J. G. Lockhart’s Life of Robert Burns (1828) a decade and a half earlier, in December 1912, during his first period of residence in Italy with his future wife, Frieda Weekley.1 At that time he had begun writing, but then abandoned, his own ‘life of Burns’; it was to have been a fictionalised account based on incidents in

xvi Preface

Burns’ early life, but transplanting the young Scottish poet from the Highlands to an area in the English Midlands close to Lawrence’s own birthplace in Eastwood.2 Whatever the reasons may have been for his swift abandonment of the fragment, by 1927 Lawrence had decided that he was insufficiently attuned to Burns’ Scottishness to carry it off. If Lockhart’s middle‐class values prevented him from really ‘knowing’ Burns, then a failure properly to appreciate formative elements of the writer’s social and cultural background might be equally disabling. Lawrence considered Catherine Carswell well placed as a Scottish author to understand Burns, and to situate his life in the context of historical events.3 A congruence of nationality, class, experience and temperament is viewed as crucial if the biographer wishes to understand the writing and not pay mere lip‐service to its meaning. The letter also implies that Lawrence’s primary motivation for recounting the life of Burns would be to drive home the importance of the poet’s convictions and insights, using them to attack the attitudes of contemporary readers. As a critic and translator, Lawrence’s energies were often invested in promoting the works of authors under‐appreciated by the establishment: those whose writings might be said to offer sobering insights into the nature of modern life. In Studies in Classic American Literature (1923), he praised authors like Richard Henry Dana, James Fenimore Cooper and Herman Melville for their celebration of the physical world in the structure and symbolism of their works. Likewise, he championed the writings­ of the Sicilian author Giovanni Verga against the negative opinions of critics and the indifference of even Italian readers by stressing Verga’s ‘genuine sympathy with peasant life’ and his sharp satirical treatment of ‘the sophistications of the city life of elegant little ladies’ (IR 164–5). Lawrence’s critical interest lay in foregrounding the challenge which figures like Burns, the American writers and Verga offer to our current modes of thinking and living. This entailed discovering narrative forms in his own writing about them, or translations of them, which undermine received wisdom. The surviving fragments of Lawrence’s fictional biography of Burns directly engage the imaginative sympathy of the reader with a dramatic, re‐contextualised version of the author’s life as it was lived; his American essays upset academic convention by their abrupt shifts of tone and register; and his translations eschew faithful transliteration in an attempt to capture the spirit of the original.4 Lawrence was temperamentally opposed to critical writings which recount biographical details in order to sanitise literary works. He understood the importance for publishers of using biographical details about authors in order to advertise their work, but he disliked producing autobiographical sketches for this purpose and expressed little enthusiasm for the accounts of his own life and writings which circulated during his lifetime, from W. L. George’s article on him in the February 1914 number of the Bookman and Edwin Björkman’s introduction to the first American edition of The Widowing of Mrs. Holroyd (1914) to the first full‐length

xvii Preface monograph on his writings, Herbert Seligmann’s largely biographical D. H. Lawrence: An American Interpretation (1924).5 This does not mean, however, that he dismissed the importance of using biographical and historical context as an inter­ pretive tool for making sense of his own (and others’) work. In May 1928, in a Note to his Collected Poems, he observed that ‘no poetry, not even the best, should be judged as if it existed in the absolute, in the vacuum of the absolute. Even the best poetry, when it is at all personal, needs the penumbra of its own time and place and circumstance, to make it full and whole’ (Poems 656). During the same month, he wrote to upbraid one of his critics for finding fault with a selective quotation from one of his war‐time poems, telling him: ‘You shouldn’t nip things from their context’ (6L 400).6 Lawrence recognised the legitimacy of considering writing in its histori­ cal and biographical contexts, since a writer’s work inevitably speaks from and to its historical moment, but he was critical of any approach which began with the bare facts of an author’s life and used these to set interpretive parameters for a work. He understood very well that creative writing can be a duplicitous business, expressing the unconscious desires of an author as well as his conscious intentions, so that life and fiction rarely map on to one another in simple or straightforward ways. Lawrence’s instinct throughout his career was always to send people to his more autobiographical early prose fiction if they wished to learn more about him. For example, when he was filling in details about his early life in a letter to his artist‐ friend Ernest Collings in November 1912, he recommended that Collings should look up ‘’ in a back number of the English Review because it was ‘a story full of my childhood’s atmosphere’ (1L 471). In the same way, when the literary director of a French publishing house requested him to provide a potted biography in the summer of 1928, he grudgingly complied but told the manager of his agent’s Foreign Department: ‘read Sons and Lovers and The Rainbow and he’s got all he wants – and be damned to him’ (6L 465). His impatience reveals an understandable suspicion of the literary world’s motives in wanting constantly to remind readers of his working‐class origins. It also exposes Lawrence’s innate belief that what one makes of one’s circumstances and environment says more about one’s identity than any simple list of dates and details. ‘Odour of Chrysanthemums’, Sons and Lovers (1913) and The Rainbow (1915) draw closely on his early life and the lives of his family and friends, but they are also carefully fashioned works of art, shaped by the demands of literary commerce and by deliberate and painstaking efforts of detachment and self‐analysis. The young Lawrence was fascinated by the way in which another writer with whom he felt some affinity, George Borrow, mixed autobiographical detail and fiction in Lavengro (1851).7 Referring his own readers to his autobiographical fiction, and to the transformation he had wrought on his early life in and through his writing, would have seemed far more meaningful to Lawrence than giving them facts and asking them to make imaginative links which the majority could not – or would not – make.

xviii Preface

Lawrence would have been irritated, but not surprised, by the ways in which several modern biographies of him have taken the radical edge off his writings by offering stylised accounts of his life in order to substantiate and contest prevailing perceptions of his work. The first modern biography, Harry T. Moore’s The Intelligent Heart: A Life of D. H. Lawrence (1954), was re‐titled The when it was extensively revised and re‐issued in 1974. In the short preface to the revised v­olume, Moore stated that he had wanted to use the later title from the outset, but ‘ran into walls of opposition’;8 the objections had obviously disappeared in the intervening decades, during which F. R. Leavis had argued for Lawrence’s central importance to a great tradition of English writing in D. H. Lawrence: Novelist (1955) and Edward Nehls had published his invaluable composite biography of Lawrence (3 volumes, 1957–1959). The controversial epithet which Moore used for his revised edition (taken from a tongue‐in‐cheek letter which Lawrence wrote to a female friend on Christmas Day 1912)9 must have seemed even more fitting and marketable in the wake of the Chatterley Trial in 1960. Subsequent mass market biographies by Jeffrey Meyers, Elaine Feinstein and Brenda Maddox in 1990, 1993 and 1994 respectively attempted to capture the Zeitgeist in different ways by offering strong readings of Lawrence’s relationships, sexuality and marriage.10 The challenge of his actual writings­ and the energy he spent in fashioning a career for himself as a distinctive and out­ spoken voice in the diverse and fragmented literary marketplace of his day were to a certain degree marginalised in accounts which emphasised his supposed repressions, and his status as an embattled prophet or spokesperson for sexual freedom. Lawrence has now gone from being the poster boy for free speech (and for forms of permissiveness which he would have deplored) to a degree of academic respectability as an historical canonical author. Recent Lawrence biographies have had to take account of the extensive scholarly attention paid to the composition of his works since 1968,11 and to the wealth of information contained in over 5500 extant letters (the majority of which were unavailable to Moore when he revised his biography in the early 1970s). The publication of The Cambridge Edition of Lawrence’s Letters (8 volumes, 1979–2000) and Works (1980–) has provided detailed insights into Lawrence’s writing practice and interactions with the literary world. The three‐volume Cambridge biography of Lawrence by John Worthen, Mark Kinkead‐Weekes and David Ellis (1991–1998) synthesised much of this new mate­ rial and research to offer a far more comprehensive and balanced account of the life than had been attempted before; it also provided a more complex understanding of the relationship between the life and the writings, tacitly acknowledging the c­onflicted nature of the author’s identity through its multi‐author format. This immediately established itself as the standard academic biography of the writer. John Worthen’s D. H. Lawrence: The Life of an Outsider (2005) draws closely on the ground‐breaking research associated with the Cambridge biography in order to address popular misconceptions about Lawrence, stressing the importance of

xix Preface

Lawrence’s actual writing as the place in which he explored his experiences and worked through the conflicts in his identity. New biographical evidence has continued to surface, however, and recent single‐volume biographies have used it to offer fresh interpretations of the life. Living at the Edge: A Biography of D. H. Lawrence and Frieda von Richthofen (2002) by Michael Squires and Lynn K. Talbot, and Squires’ later volume D. H. Lawrence and Frieda: A Portrait of Love and Loyalty (2008), draw upon the letters of Frieda Lawrence to provide accounts focusing on the dynamics of Lawrence’s marriage; the earlier book also considers Frieda’s role in securing Lawrence’s legacy after his death. David Ellis’ Death and the Author: How D. H. Lawrence Died, and was Remembered (2008) examines recently discovered medical documents relating to the final years of Lawrence’s life, re‐considering among other things the nature of Lawrence’s illness and his attitudes to conventional medicine. Popular perceptions of Lawrence continue, though, to hinder recognition of both the complexities of his character and the full range, nature and significance of his work. During his own lifetime, Lawrence complained of being pigeon‐holed as a ‘lurid sexuality specialist’ (5L 611) or treated as a literary curio, ‘a queer sort of animal in a cage – or should be in a cage – sort of wart‐hog’ (6L 221). By drawing attention to Lawrence’s reputation as a spokesperson for marriage, and as an exile and maverick, the titles of recent single‐volume biographies have perpetuated such stereotypes even while their texts have sought to challenge them. If Lawrence’s marriage to Frieda was a matter of love and loyalty, then it was also characterised by a good deal of conflict and even treachery. If he was (and is) in some senses a m­arginal figure in English literature – an ‘outsider’ who related antagonistically to the major intellectual and literary currents of the early twentieth century – he was also a gregarious and sociable man with wide‐ranging cultural interests who freely collaborated with others and was particularly generous in supporting the work of friends and contacts. My primary intention in writing this book has been to draw closely on Lawrence’s letters, on textual scholarship, on the biographical record, and on the most authoritative biographies and biographical articles, to offer a clear, detailed and up‐to‐date account of the life and a comprehensive insight into the range of Lawrence’s intellectual interests and creative output in any given period. I am particularly keen to stress the extent and nature of his dealings with literary advisers, editors, agents, publishers and printers to show just how hard he worked to sustain his career as a professional writer. Several new biographical discoveries have been incorporated into the book, and where it has proved helpful I have made reference to the letters and postcards written by Lawrence which have come to light since the publication of the final volume of the Cambridge Letters.12 I have chosen to high­ light a number of Lawrence’s lesser‐known writings in different genres, and to discuss his late paintings, in order to stimulate an appreciation of important aspects

xx Preface of his oeuvre which are often ignored or dismissed. While I can hardly hope to meet my subject’s stringent demands to preserve the radical spirit of his writings, I have throughout attempted to foreground the more innovative, subversive and challenging aspects of his art and thought. My hope is that readers will be e­ncouraged to approach Lawrence – or to re‐assess his work – with an open mind, reading into, and across, his writings with a fresh sense of perspective and understanding.

Notes

1. See 1L 487 (17 December 1912). 2. The so‐called ‘Burns Novel’ fragments are printed in LAH 201–11. 3. In a letter to Catherine Carswell of 28 February 1928, Lawrence wrote: ‘Don’t put too much history in your Burns book – you can suggest it as you go.’ 6L 303. 4. For an account of Lawrence’s work as a translator, see G. M. Hyde, D. H. Lawrence and the Art of Translation (London: Macmillan, 1981). 5. See 2L 144 (7 February 1914) and 174 (16 May 1914). W. L. George’s article was pub­ lished in the Bookman, Vol. XLV (February 1914), 244–6. 6. D. H. Lawrence to William Roberts, 13 May 1928. Roberts had commented on the impenetrability of certain lines from Lawrence’s poem ‘Débâcle’ in an article entitled ‘D. H. Lawrence: Study of a Free Spirit in Literature,’ Millgate Monthly (May 1928). The article has been reprinted, with an editorial note by James T. Boulton, in Renaissance and Modern Studies, Vol. XVIII (1974), 5–16. 7. See E. T. 110: ‘He said that Borrow had mingled autobiography and fiction so inextricably in Lavengro that the most astute critics could not be sure where one ended and the other began.’ 8. Harry T. Moore, The Priest of Love: A Life of D. H. Lawrence (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1974), vii. 9. The recipient of the letter was Sallie Hopkin. See 1L 493. 10. See Jeffrey Meyers, D. H. Lawrence: A Biography (London: Macmillan, 1990), Elaine Feinstein, Lawrence’s Women: The Intimate Life of D. H. Lawrence (London: Harper Collins, 1993), and Brenda Maddox, The Married Man: A Life of D. H. Lawrence (London: Sinclair‐ Stevenson, 1994). 11. The first significant critical essay on Lawrence to draw extensively on modern textual scholarship was Mark Kinkead‐Weekes, ‘The Marble and the Statue: The Exploratory Imagination of D. H. Lawrence,’ in Imagined Worlds: Essays on Some English Novels and Novelists in Honour of John Butt, eds Maynard Mack and Ian Gregor (London: Methuen, 1968), 371–418. 12. Short articles announcing some of these discoveries have been published in the course of my research. See Andrew Harrison, ‘“Dear Mrs Murry”: A Little‐Known Manuscript Letter from D. H. Lawrence to Katherine Mansfield,’ Katherine Mansfield Studies, Vol. 3 (2011), 112–17; ‘The Lawrences, Katherine Mansfield and the “Ricordi” Postcard,’ Katherine Mansfield Studies, Vol. 5 (2013), 149–53; ‘Meat‐Lust,’ Times Literary Supplement,

xxi Preface

29 March 2013, 15; and ‘The Date of Composition of D. H. Lawrence’s “Laura Philippine”,’ Notes and Queries, Vol. 61, No. 4 (December 2014), 591–2. Other new f­indings – identifying, for example, the source of the Italian Futurism volumes which Lawrence read in summer 1914, and adding detail to our understanding of Lawrence’s friendship with the Danish painter Kai Gøtzsche – are presented here for the first time. Newly discovered correspondence, edited by James T. Boulton (2006–2009) and John Worthen and Andrew Harrison (2010–), has been published in JDHLS.

xxii Part I

Literary Formation 1885–1912

1 Early Voices September 1885–October 1908

(i) Eastwood

D. H. Lawrence was born on Friday 11 September 1885 in Eastwood, an expanding mining village eight miles north‐west of Nottingham. He was the fourth child, and the third son, of Arthur John Lawrence, a butty at the nearby Brinsley Colliery, and Lydia Lawrence (née Beardsall), the daughter of an engine fitter, who was born in Manchester and lived in Sheerness in Kent before moving with her family to Sneinton, a notoriously rough suburb of Nottingham, to live as cheaply as possible close to her father’s relatives. Although accounts of Lawrence’s background often refer to his father as a coalminer and his mother as middle class, the reality was far more complex. As a butty, Arthur was a skilled workman who effectively employed his own team of daymen at the pit and could earn good money, while Lydia, who had aspired at one time to be a teacher,1 had been reduced by a catastrophic a­ccident suffered by her father in Sheerness in 1870 to working as a lace drawer in the Nottingham lace industry. Lawrence’s parents met through family connections, since Lydia’s maternal uncle, John Newton, was married to Arthur’s maternal aunt, Alvina Parsons. Lydia and Arthur attended a Christmas party thrown by John and Alvina at their home in New Basford (a northern suburb of Nottingham) in 1874, and experienced a deep mutual attraction to each other. They married a year later, on 27 December 1875. She was 24; he was 27. They initially lived in Brinsley (a village neighbouring Eastwood), in a house which Arthur rented from his mother, but thereafter they

The Life of D. H. Lawrence: A Critical Biography, First Edition. Andrew Harrison. © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Published 2016 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

3 Early Voices were forced to move where the work was, so they stayed for short periods in New Cross, South Normanton and Old Radford before settling in Eastwood in 1883.2 The life and culture of Eastwood at this period are in many ways profoundly alien to us. The census records the population as 4363 in 1891 (it had been 2540 in 1871); there were ten pits within walking distance of the village, and 98% of people relied upon coal mining as their primary source of income. The local m­ining com­ pany, Barber Walker & Co., owned six mines in the area. It is difficult to i­magine the living conditions which resulted from the extent of the local industry. Dust in the air created a host of respiratory and pulmonary problems for residents; tuber­ culosis and bronchitis caused the largest percentage of fatalities in the district, but there were also regular epidemics of measles, diphtheria, diarrhoea, scarlet fever and whooping cough. Lawrence was a delicate and sickly baby; problems with his lungs would haunt him throughout his life (he suffered two near‐fatal bouts of pneumo­ nia, in 1901–1902 and 1910–1911, and he may have fallen ill earlier than this, too, around autumn 1889, when there was a serious outbreak of whooping cough in Eastwood).3 The life of his father and fellow workmen down the pit was very demanding. Arthur recalled having started work at the pit at the age of seven; he had his first proper job underground when he was ten.4 In 1892 there were up to 288 persons employed underground at Brinsley Colliery at any one time.5 Working from six in the morning until four in the afternoon in dark and often dangerous conditions, there was always the risk of an accident which could reduce a family to poverty by crippling or killing the principal wage‐earner (one of Lawrence’s p­aternal uncles, James Lawrence, died in a mining accident at Brinsley in 1880). Lydia Lawrence never felt herself to be part of this tight‐knit community, and to a certain degree she held herself aloof from it. Although she had endured straitened circumstances with her parents and siblings from 1870 (the family having lived beyond its means before this time), the Nottingham Beardsalls on her father’s side were said to have once been important landowners in the area; her mother’s family (the Newtons) could boast of having a composer in its lineage.6 It is significant that, in spite of their financial plight, Lydia’s five sisters all married respectably into the upper‐working or middle class. Lydia spoke with a Kentish intonation which struck her neighbours as well‐to‐do, and in some senses pretentious. One family living three doors away from her and Arthur during Lawrence’s childhood felt that ‘Mrs Lawrence, having chosen to marry a collier might have tried harder to make a collier’s­ wife’;7 Lydia’s sense of identity was invested in a determined resistance to the outlook and values of her working‐class neighbours. Arthur, on the other hand, was surrounded by family members in Eastwood. At the time of their move to 8a Victoria Street in 1883, his brother Walter was living just a short walk away in Princes Street; his parents ( John and Louisa), his brother George, and his two married sisters (Emma and Sarah) were all nearby in Brinsley. Arthur was thoroughly at home in the colliery village, and he seems to have been

4 September 1885–October 1908 popular with his workmates and respected for his skills as a miner. His own line of descent is more obscure than his wife’s, so that even establishing his date of birth has proved problematic.8 He repeated to his family a romantic story about his paternal grandfather being a refugee from the French Revolution, ‘a Frenchman’ who had ‘fought in the battle of Waterloo’ and married an English barmaid.9 He loved d­ancing and was remembered in the area as ‘an attractive character, lively and gay, with an infectious laugh and a good singing voice’ and ‘a genial old chap who loved his children.’10 The attraction which had drawn him and Lydia together gave way to disillusion­ ment and resentment once his wife came to appreciate the realities of life as the wife of a butty. Lydia, with her proud Wesleyan Methodist upbringing and interest in religious and intellectual matters, insisted on looking above and beyond Eastwood for her fulfilment, fully intending to lift her children out of their present circum­ stances. She was an active member of the Eastwood Branch of the Women’s Co‐Operative Guild, and she was known to entertain the local minister (the Reverend Robert Reid) in discussing religious and philosophical issues; she was also a staunch teetotaller, strongly opposed to the drinking habits of the miners and what she considered their deleterious consequences. Lydia made sure that all of her children signed up to the Band of Hope, a Christian temperance association which urged young and old alike to renounce alcohol.11 Through stringent habits of domestic economy she sought to save money to draw upon in times of need, and to maintain some small, but significant, degree of distinction for her family.12 Before Lawrence’s birth she had begun to supplement the family’s income by selling lace and linen from the front room of their house in Victoria Street; to be a shopkeeper or merchant­ was important because these were ‘respectable’ professions.13

(ii) ‘In‐betweens’

Lawrence grew up, then, in a family riven by profound divisions; he was caught between his father’s sense of joy and belonging to the community and the dissatisfaction of his mother, with her aspiring religious and intellectual values. According to his mood, he could find inspiration in the idea of both a hymn‐ w­riting relation and a revolutionary Francophile ancestry, but the home conflict between spirituality and passion, morality and carelessness, intellect and the non‐ intellectual was also confusing and unsettling for a young mind. Accounts of uncontrollable childhood tempers and bouts of unmotivated crying suggest that he experienced a strong feeling of insecurity during his earliest years, responding to the upset of his parents before he could fully comprehend its cause.14 The tension at home is explored in a late poem entitled ‘Red‐herring’, in which Lawrence describes himself and his siblings as ‘in‐betweens’ and ‘little non‐descripts’ (Poems 425),

5 Early Voices speaking received pronunciation inside the house and the less respectable dialect outside it. The breach between the two forms of speech was stark and p­olarising; Lawrence’s awareness of it would have been formative. Although he retained an ability to speak the dialect into adulthood, and an extraordinary facility to convey a version of it in his writing, there was little doubt where his early a­llegiance lay as Lydia Lawrence’s youngest son, particularly after his mother’s a­ffections transferred to him following the death of his brother Ernest from erysipelas on 11 October 1901. He felt that he had to hate his father ‘for Mother’s sake.’15

Figure 1 The Lawrence family, c.1895. Back row: Emily, George, Ernest. Front row: Ada, Lydia, Bert (D. H. Lawrence), Arthur. (Manuscripts and Special Collections, The University of Nottingham, La R 8.)

6