20 D.H. Lawrence, Forever on the Move: Creative Writers and Place Louise DeSalvo Even at the end of his life, when D.H. Lawrence was seriously ill with tuberculosis, so ill and invalided that he spent most of his time in bed, he was one of the most peripatetic writers who ever lived. During 1927 (when Lawrence experienced the first of a series of serious hemorrhages), through 1930 (the year of his death), Lawrence and his wife Frieda lived in a series of inns, hotels, borrowed houses, and rented villas; they also visited friends and family for extended periods. All this time, though much weakened, though moving from place to place, Lawrence composed Lady Chatterley’s Lover, one of his masterworks. In these last years, with little energy to spare from the difficult work of simply staying alive and writing – the Lawrences needed his income from writing and were often nearly destitute – Lawrence and Frieda lived in the Villa Mirenda at San Polo Mosciano, southwest of Florence; with friends in Forte dei Marmi; with Frieda’s sister Johanna at Villach in Austria to see if it helped Lawrence breathe more easily (it did, for a time). They moved into a borrowed house in Irschenhausen in Bavaria; moved back to the Villa Mirenda; considered moving back to Eastwood, in the Midlands, where Lawrence lived as a child, but didn’t; joined their friends the Huxleys at Les Diablerets in Switzerland; considered moving back to their ranch in Questa, New Mexico but didn’t (it was a gift to Frieda from Mabel Dodge Luhan); moved to the Grand Hotel in Chexbres-sur-Vevey, on the north side of Lake Geneva in Switzerland, to escape the summer’s heat in Italy; lived in a rented chalet, the Chalet Kesselmatte in Gsteig in Switzerland, for a summer; visited Frieda’s mother in Baden-Baden where the Lawrences decided to give up the Villa Mirenda; moved to Le Lavandou near Toulon; lived with friends for the winter in La Vigie in the island of Port Cros, but A Companion to Creative Writing, First Edition. Edited by Graeme Harper. © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Published 2013 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. (c) 2013 Kogan Page Ltd. All Rights Reserved 308 Louise DeSalvo Lawrence became increasingly ill there, so they decided to move on; journeyed by boat to Toulon, and then along the coast for a few weeks; settled in the Hotel Beau- Rivage in Bandol where Lawrence felt at home for the first time in a long while; journeyed to Paris to see to the private publication of Lady Chatterley’s Lover; moved to Majorca; returned to visit the Huxleys in Forte dei Marmi; lived in his publisher’s flat in Florence; moved into the Hotel Lowen in Baden-Baden; visited Kurhaus Platig in the Black Forest, where his condition worsened; moved to Rottach-am-Tegernsee in the Bavarian Alps, where Lawrence came to believe the altitude was wrong for him – here, they had virtually no furnishings, but they had a potted gentian bush, about which Lawrence wrote the poem “Bavarian Gentians”; moved to the Beau-Rivage in Bandol, where Lawrence believed he was able to breathe more easily; moved into the bungalow Villa Beau Soleil in Bandol, right on the sea, with wonderful air and light; moved into the sanatorium Ad Astra in the mountains of Vence (for this move, Law- rence packed his own trunk, and tidied the villa for Frieda before moving); moved into the Villa Robermond in Vence because he believed the sanatorium wasn’t doing him any good and because he didn’t want to die there; dreamed of returning to his ranch in New Mexico, but couldn’t, because now he was near death; died in the Villa Robermond in Vence. All told, Lawrence moved over a hundred times during his lifetime – he was only in his mid-forties when he died, and didn’t begin to move often until he was in his late twenties – averaging five to six moves a year, when others as sick as he was would have stayed put. While some might claim that a settled life is necessary for a writer to be prolific, that moving from one place to another disturbs the rhythm of a writer’s work habits, Lawrence’s example proves that this truism doesn’t hold for every writer. Lawrence remarked several times that he moved so often because he was searching for a place where he could breathe freely – both literally and metaphorically: in Austria, he felt he needed to leave because, he said, “I feel I can’t breathe” (Letters, iv.63–64). He thought that the mountain air would be good for him, and so moved to New Mexico; he thought that he might breathe better in the south, and so moved to Mexico. Having lived, in childhood, in the mining town of Eastwood in the Midlands, having suffered, from childhood, from a respiratory illness caused by the effects of breathing soot-filled air, he wanted, more than anything, to live in a place free from the harmful effects of industry. He preferred unspoiled places away from people who might interfere with his work. He needed to live where he felt free from people’s demands and so, when he felt people were trying to control him – as when Mabel Dodge Luhan wanted him to revitalize her – he resisted, packed up, and moved on. And though he never found a domestic Eden – for wherever he moved soon displeased him – that very restlessness, that search, that seeking and not finding, seemed essential for his work. Lawrence knew he needed to move to spark his creativity. Though Frieda didn’t want to leave Kiowa Ranch in Questa, New Mexico, in 1925, Lawrence’s decision to (c) 2013 Kogan Page Ltd. All Rights Reserved Creative Writers and Place 309 move back to Europe prevailed (Letters, v.28). Lawrence knew that a settled life would not work for him. He needed to feel that he could move at any time. Paradoxically, he continually searched for the perfect place to live, suspecting he wouldn’t find it. This tug of war – wanting to find a domestic Eden, needing to move on – seemed necessary for his work. He did not question his impulses and moved when he thought another place might suit him better. When it didn’t, he moved again. He knew he needed to leave England after The Rainbow was banned and after he and Frieda were forced to leave their cottage in Cornwall because they were accused of being spies; he knew that staying in England would kill him and would forestall his ability to write, and so he and Frieda moved to Europe. He knew he needed to leave Europe because the aftermath of the Great War profoundly affected him, and so he journeyed to Ceylon, Australia, and America: the “War finished me: it was the spear through the side of all sorrows and hopes” (Letters, ii.68). He knew when he needed to travel to rejuvenate his art and to find new subject matter. So he journeyed to Sardinia and wrote Sea and Sardinia; to Australia and wrote Kangaroo; to Etruscan sites and wrote Etruscan Places; to New Mexico, where he hoped to write a novel about Indians, and where he penned essays about them, poems about the landscape, and The Woman Who Rode Away, St Mawr, and The Princess; to Mexico, where he wrote The Plumed Serpent; to Italy, where he wrote Lady Chatterley’s Lover, after he became very ill in America and realized that life on the ranch in New Mexico was too hard. Write what you know well, that truism beginning writers are taught. And for the first several of his novels, D.H. Lawrence did write what he knew: from The White Peacock through Women in Love, Lawrence’s novels were set in England and examined his current thinking about relationships between men and women based upon his own relationships. In Aaron’s Rod, Lawrence used his journey from England to Italy, his adulterous relationship with Rosalind Baynes, and his belief about the corrupt state of Europe, as sources. Early on, Lawrence believed he could become an insider to high British culture because of his achievements. But he learned that although people like Lady Ottoline Morrell and Bertrand Russell might lionize him, they treated him more as a curious specimen – the son of a miner who’d become a famous writer – than an equal. Law- rence was an outsider, as John Worthen has observed in D.H. Lawrence: The Life of an Outsider. He did not belong in his parents’ mining community; he never gained entry into the center of British intellectual and artistic life. No matter how brilliant he was, no matter how groundbreaking his work, he could never be completely accepted: “I do not belong . at all, at all” (Letters, ii.33). This enraged him, yet Lawrence understood that his outsider position was necessary for his art, and he cultivated it, forcing a distance between himself and others, writing long haranguing letters criticizing his friends for their behavior, and exposing their peccadilloes in his work. From the margins, he could launch ferocious attacks against whatever or whomever he observed, for he wanted people to change their ways to reflect his ideals. When he lived in England, he savaged Ottoline Morrell in (c) 2013 Kogan Page Ltd. All Rights Reserved 310 Louise DeSalvo Women in Love, and he couldn’t understand why the people he criticized in his work objected, and even initiated lawsuits against him (DeSalvo 197).