If you must go to England - must you? - go before I leave Waldbrol. Don't leave me stranded in some unearthly German town. How are you? I am not going to sound worried over you, because I am so a bit. You might write to me and tell me a few significant details. The tragedy will begin to slacken off from now, I think.
I wrote to you yesterday, but it wasn 't a nice letter, so I didn't send it. Things are better, surely, and growing better - oh yes!
Waldbrol - Mittwoch I have had all your three letters quite safely. We are coming on quickly now. Do tell me if you can what is E...'s final decision. He will get the divorce, I think, because of his thinking you ought to marry me. That is the result of my letter to him. I will crow my little crow, in opposition to you. And then after six months, we will be married - will you? Soon we will go to Munich. But give us a little time. Let us get solid before we set up together. Waldbrol restores me to my decent sanity. Is Metz still bad for you - no? It will be better for me to stay here - shall I say till the end of next week? We must decide what we are going to do, very definitely. If I am to come to Munich next week, what are we going to live on? Can we scramble enough together to last us till my payments come in? I am not going to tell my people anything till you have the divorce. If we can go decently over the first three or four months - financially - I think I shall be able to keep us going for the rest. Never mind about the infant. If it should come, we will be glad, and stir ourselves to provide for it - and if it should not come, ever - I shall be sorry. I do not believe, when people love each other, in interfering there. It is wicked, according to my feeling. I want you to have children tome - I don't care how soon. I never thought I should have that definite desire. But you see, we must have a more or less stable foundation if we are going to run the risk of the responsibility of children - not the risk of children, but the risk of the responsibility.
I think after a little while, I shall write to E... again. Perhaps he would correspond better with me.
Can't you feel how certainly I love you and how certainly we shall be married? Only let us wait just a short time, to get strong again. Two shaken, rather sick people together would be a bad start. A little waiting, let us have, because I love you. Or does the waiting make you worse? - no, not when it is only a time ofpreparation. Do you know, like the old knightf, I seem to want a certain time to prepare myself - a sort of vigil with myself Because it is a great thing for me to marry you, not a quick, passionate coming together. I know in my heart 'here's my marriage.' It feels rather terrible - because it is a great thing in my life - it is my life - I am a bit awe-inspired - I want to get used to it. If you think it is fear and indecision, you wrong me. It is you who would hurry, who are undecided. It's the very strength and inevitability of the oncoming thing that makes me wait, to get in harmony with it. Dear God, I am marrying you, now, don't you see. It's a far greater thing than ever I knew. Give me till next week-end, at least. If you love me, you will understand.
If I seem merely frightened and reluctant to you -you must forgive me.
I try, I always try, when I write to you, to write the truth as near the mark as I can get it. It frets me, for fear you are disappointed in me, and for fear you are too much hurt. But you are strong when necessary.
You have got all myself - I don't even flirt - it would bore me very much - unless I got tipsy. It's a funny thing, to feel one's passion - sex desire - no longer a sort of wandering thing, but steady, and calm. I think, when one loves, one's very sex passion becomes calm, a steady sort offorce, instead of a storm. Passion, that nearly drives one mad, is far away from real love. I am realizing things that I never thought to realize. Look at that poem I sent you - I would never write that to you. I shall love you all my life. That also is a new idea to me. But I believe it.
Auf Wiedersehen
D. H. Lawrence
Alr. Herrn Karl Krenkow Waldbrôl - Rheinprovinz 14 May 1912
Yes, I got your letter later in the day - and your letter and E..,'s and yours to Gamett, this morning. In E...'s, as in mine to E..., see the men combining in their freemasonry against you. It is very strange.
I will send your letter to Garnett. I enclose one of his to me. It will make you laugh.
With correcting proofs, and reading E..,'s letter, I feel rather detached. Things are coming straight. When you got in London, and had to face that judge, it would make you ill. We are not callous enough to stand against the public, the whole mass of the world's disapprobation, in a sort of criminal dock. It destroys us, though we deny it. We are all off the balance. We are like spring scales that have been knocked about. We had better be still awhile, let ourselves come to rest.
Things are working out to their final state now. I did not do wrong in writing to E... Do not write to my sister yet. When all is a fait accompli' then we will tell her, because then it will be useless for her to do other than to accept.
I am very well, but, like you, I feel shaky. Shall we not leave our meeting till we are better? Here, in a little while, I shall be solid again. And if you must go to England, will you go to Munich first - so far? No, I don't want to be left alone in Munich. Let us have firm ground where we next go. Quakiness and uncertainty are the death of us. See, tell me exactly what you are going to do. Is the divorce coming off? Are you going to England at all? Are we going finally to pitch our camp in Munich? Are we going to have enough money to get along with? Have you settled anything definite with '...?- One must be detached, impersonal, cold, and logical, when one is arranging affairs. We do not want another fleet of horrors attacking us when we are on a rather flimsy raft - lodging in a borrowed flat on borrowed money.
Look, my dear, now that the suspense is going over, we can wait even a bit religiously for one another. My next coming to you is solemn, intrinsically - I am solemn over it - not sad, oh no - but it is my marriage, after all, and a great thing - not a thing to be snatched and clumsily handled. I will not come to you unless it is safely, and firmly. When I have come, things shall not put us apart again. So we must wait and watch for the hour. Henceforth, dignity in our movements and our arrangements - no shufflings and underhandedness. And we must settle the money business. I will write to the publishers, if necessary, for a sub. I have got about £30 due in August - £24 due - and £25 more I am owed. Can we wait, or not, for that?
Now I shall do as I like, because you are not certain. Even if I stay in Waldbrol a month, I won't come till our affair is welded firm. I " can wait a month - a year almost - for a sure thing. But an unsure thing is a horror to me.
I love you - and I am in earnest about it - and we are going to make a great - or, at least, a good life together. I'm not going to risk fret and harassment, which would spoil our intimacy, because of hasty forcing of affairs.
Don't think I love you less, in being like this. You will think so, but it isn't true. The best man in me loves you. And I dread anything dragging our love down.
Be definite, my dear, be detailed, be business-like. In our marriage, let us be business-like. The love is there - then let the common-sense match it.
Auf Wiedersehen D. H. Lawrence
This poetry will come in next month's English. I'm afraid you won't like it.
DHL.
And I love you, and I am sorry it is so hard. But it is only a little while - then we will have a dead cert.
Waldbrol - Thursday
I have worked quite hard at my novel today. This morning we went to see the Ascension Day procession, and it rained like hell on the poor devils. Yesterday, when we were driving home, luckily in a closed carriage, the hail came on in immense stones, as big as walnuts, the largest. The place seemed covered with lumps of sugar.
You are far more ill than I am, now. Can 'tyou begin to get well? It makes me miserable to think of you so badly off the hooks. No, I am well here. I am always well. But last week made me feel queer - in my soul mostly - and I want to get that well before I start the new enterprise of living with you. Does it seem strange to you? Give me till t
omorrow or Saturday week, will you? I think it is better for us both. Till the twenty-fourth or twenty-fifth, give me. Does it seem unloving and unnatural to you? No? See, when the airman fell, I was only a weak spot in your soul. Round the thought of me-all your fear. Don't let it be so. Believe in me enough.
Perhaps it is a bit of the monk in me. No, it is not. It is simply a desire to start with you, having a strong, healthy soul. The letters seem a long time getting from me to you. Tell me you understand, and you think it is-at least perhaps, best. A good deal depends on the start. You never got over your bad beginning with E...
If you want H..., or anybody, have him. But I don't want anybody, till I see you. But all natures aren't alike. But I don't believe even you are your best, when you are using H... as a dose of morphia - he's not much else to you. But sometimes one needs a dose of morphia, I've had many a one. So you know best. Only, my dear, because I love you, don't be sick, do will to be well and sane.
This is also a long wait. I also am a carcass without you. But having a rather sick soul, I'll let it get up and be stronger before I ask it to run and live with you again.
Because, I'm not coming to you now for rest, but to start living. It's a marriage, not a meeting. What an inevitable thing it seems.
Only inevitable things - things that feel inevitable - are right. I am still a trifle afraid, but I know we are right. One is afraid to be born, I'm sure.
I have written and written and written. I shall be glad to know you understand. I wonder if you'll be ill. Don't, if you can help it. But if you need me - Frieda!
Vale!
D.H. LAWRENCE
Waldbrol - Friday That was the letter I expected - and I hated it. Never mind. I suppose I deserve it all. I shall register it up, the number of times I leave you in the lurch: that is a historical phrase also. This is the first time. 'Rats' is a bit hard, as a collective name for all your men - and you 're the ship. Poor H..., poor devil! Vous le croquez bien entre les dents. I don't wonder E... hates your letters - they would drive any man on earth mad. I have not the faintest intention of dying: I hope you haven't any longer. I am not a tyrant. If I am, you will always have your own way. So my domain of tyranny isn't wide. - I am trying to think of some other mildly sarcastic things to say. Oh - the voice of Hannah, my dear, is the voice of a woman who laughs at her newly married husband when he's a bit tipsy and a big fool. You fling H... in my teeth. I shall say Hannah is getting fonder andfonder of me. She gives me the best in the house. So there!
I think I've exhausted my shell and shrapnel. You are getting better, thank the Lord. I am quite better. We have both, I think, marvellous recuperative powers.
You really seriously and honestly think I could come to Munich next Saturday, and stay two months, till August? You think we could manage it all right, as far as the business side goes? I begin to feel like rising once more on the wing. Ich komm - je viens - I come - advenio.
We are going to be married, respectable people, later on. If you were my property, I should have to look after you, which God forbid.
I like the way you stick to your guns. It's rather splendid. We won't fight, because you'd win, from sheer lack of sense of danger.
I think you're rather horrid to H... You make him more babified-baby-fied. Or shall you leave him more manly?
You make me think of Maupassant's story. An Italian workman, a young man, was crossing in the train to France, and had no money, and had eaten nothing for a long time. There came a woman with breasts full of milk - she was going into France as a wet nurse. Her breasts full of milk hurt her - the young man was in a bad way with hunger. They relieved each other and went their several ways. Only where is H...to get his next feed? - Am I horrid?
Write to me quick from Munich, and I will tell them here. I can return here in August.
' Be well, and happy, I charge you (tyranny)
I found these letters by accident in my mother's writing desk after Lawrence's death. At the time he wrote them, I was in such a bewildered state of mind, the depth of their feeling did not touch me, all I wanted was to be with him and have peace. I have not found my letters to him.
Isartal
Last night I looked into the flames that leap in the big adobe fireplace that Lawrence built with the Indians, here at the ranch, in my room. He found an iron hoop to make the large curve of the fireplace. I don't know how he did it but the chimney draws well, the big logs burn fast. Those leaping flames seemed he himself flickering in the night. This morning I found the wild red columbines that I had first found with him. There they were at my feet, in the hollow where the workmen have been cutting the logs for the new house. A delicate blaze of startling red and yellow, in front of me, the columbines, like gay small flags.
A rabbit stood still behind an oak shrub and watched me. A humming-bird hummed at me in consternation, as startled at me as I was at him. These things are Lawrence to me.
I shrink from remembering and putting down that almost too great intensity of our life together. I resent committing to paper for others to read what was so magic and new, our first being together. I wanted to keep it secret, all to myself, secretly I wanted to exult in the riches he gave me of himself and me and all the world.
But I owe it to him and myself to write the truth as well as I can. I laugh at the claims of others that he might have loved them and that he didn't care for me at all. He cared only too much. I laugh when they write of him as a lonely genius dying alone. It is all my eye. The absolute, simple truth is so very simple.
I laugh when they want to make him out a brutal, ridiculous figure, he who was so tender and generous and fierce.
What does it amount to that he hit out at me in a rage, when I exasperated him, or mostly when the life around him drove him to the end of his patience? I didn't care very much. I hit back or waited till the storm in him subsided. We fought our battles outright to the bitter end. Then there was peace, such peace.
I preferred it that way. Battles must be. If he had sulked or borne me a grudge, how tedious!
What happened, happened out of the deep necessity of our natures. We were out for more than the obvious or 'a little grey home in the West.' Let them jeer at him, those superior people, it will not take away a scrap of his greatness or his genuineness or his love. To understand what happened between us, one must have had the experiences we had, thrown away as much as we did and gained as much, and have known this fulfilment of body and soul. It is not likely that many did.
But here I am far from the little top floor in the Bavarian peasant-house in the Isartal.
Lawrence had met me in Munich.
He had given up the idea of a lectureship at a German University and from now on he lived by his writing. A new phase of life was beginning for both of us. But on me lay still heavily the children I had left behind and could not forget. But we were together, Lawrence and I. A friend had lent us the little top flat with its balcony, three rooms and a little kitchen. The Alps floated above us in palest blue in the early morning. The Isar rushed its glacier waters and hurried the rafts along in the valley below. The great beechwoods stretched for hours behind us, to the Tegernsee.
Here we began our life together. And what a life! We had very little money, about fifteen shillings a week. We lived on black bread that Lawrence loved, fresh eggs, and 'ripple'; later we found strawberries, raspberries, and 'Heidelbeeren.'
We had lost all ordinary sense of time and place. Those flowers that came new to Lawrence, the fireflies at night and the glow-worms, the first beech leaves spreading on the trees like a delicate veil overhead, and our feet buried in last year's brown beech leaves, these were our time and our events.
When Lawrence first found a gentian, a big single blue one, I remember feeling as if he had a strange communion with it, as if the gentian yielded up its blueness, its very essence, to him. Everything he met had the newness of a creation just that moment come into being.
I didn't want people, I didn't want anything, I onl
y wanted to revel in this new world Lawrence had given me. I had found what I needed, I could now flourish like a trout in a stream or a daisy in the sun. His generosity in giving himself: 'Take all you want of me, everything, I am yours'; and I took and gave equally, without thought.
When I asked him: 'What do I give you, that you didn't get from others?' he answered: 'You make me sure of myself, whole.'
And he would say: 'You are so young, so young!' When I remonstrated: 'But I am older than you.' - 'Ah, it isn't years, it's something else. You don't understand.'
Anyhow I knew he loved the essence of me as he loved the blueness of the gentians, whatever faults I had. It was life to me.
'You have a genius for living,' he told me.
'Maybe, but you brought it out in me.'
But there were awful nights when he was still ill and feverish and delirious and I was frightened. Death seemed close. But the shadow of sickness soon vanished in the healthy, happy life we lived. He became strong, and full of energy and hope.
He would do nearly all the work of the small flat, bring the breakfast to me with a bunch of flowers that Frau Leitner had left on the milk jug in the early morning.
Frau Leitner had a shop underneath, with shoestrings and sweets, and bacon and brooms and everything under the sun. She gave Lawrence, whom she called 'Herr Doktor,' tastes of her 'Heidelbeerschnapps,' talking to him in her Bavarian dialect, while I, in a dream of wellbeing, would let time slip by. When I spilt coffee on the pillow I would only turn the pillow over. Nothing mattered except feeling myself live, and him. We talked and argued about everything. Vividly he would present to me all the people he had known in his youth, Walker Street with all its inhabitants, the close intimate life of what, for a better word, I called the common people; his mother, such a queen in her little house, and his father, down at the pit, sharing his lunch with the pit-pony. It all seemed romantic to me. And the colliers being drunk on Friday nights and battles going on inevitably, it seemed, every Friday night in nearly all the houses, like a weekly hysteria. I listened enchanted by the hour. But poverty in his home was grievous. Lawrence would never have been so desperately ill if his mother could have given him all the care he needed and the food she could not afford to buy for him with the little money she had.
Complete Works of D.H. Lawrence Page 1097
