Complete Works of D.H. Lawrence

by D. H. Lawrence

  That was the time of air raids over London, the time there was such a strain on people's nerves. During the air raids we were supposed to go into the cellar, but Lawrence always refused to go; he stayed in bed. And it was certainly very depressing being in the cellar with all the other gloomy people. So I spent my time during air raids running up and down stairs imploring Lawrence to come to the cellar. But he'd never do it.

  We met Gertler in those days and he used to tell us funny stories about his experiences during air raids, especially one sudden one when he lost his head and kept running up and down the stairs of a strange house. Campbell also told about air-raid experiences, how once in Hampstead Heath he'd found himself buried under a heap of terrified housemaids coming home from a dinner party.

  Yet underneath all this gaiety, we were so dulled and bitter. 'Dancing while Rome burns.' But if Nero enjoyed his burning Rome, we did not. And Lawrence's helplessness to stem this lavaflood of death to all that is best in man made him savage underneath and again I had a bad time... It was torture to live, and to live with him.

  I felt helpless and an outcast, and only a burden and a difficulty for Lawrence.

  I, the Hunwife in a foreign country!

  Then we went to Hermitage in Berkshire. The country there is so quiet and English with its woods. Our simple life in the cottage healed him a lot.

  I saw my son, who was in the O.T.C., and it seemed terrible that he would have to fight against his own relations, perhaps, and I said: 'Let me hide you somewhere in a cave or in a wood, I don't want you to go and fight, I don't want you to be killed in this stupid war.' But he was shocked.

  All this time we were followed by detectives. Detectives had even gone to my first husband and asked him if he knew anything against me.

  While we were there in Hermitage the armistice came. I nearly said peace came. But it was not peace, it is not peace yet. The war has bred not peace but awful gargoyle children of hate and resentment, and has only left death as the desirable, clean thing, almost.

  Lawrence and My Mother

  Lawrence and my mother were fond of one another; she was a wonderful mother to us, her three daughters. We were all three different and yet she helped and understood us, and was there for us in our hours of need — alas, there were plenty of them for the three of us. But she was equal to all the awful situations we found ourselves in. My eldest sister Else wanted to study, when studying for women in Germany was still infra dig. I remember walking through the crowds of men students into a lecture hall at Heidelberg with my sister at sixteen and feeling like a real martyr. My sister Johanna had lovely names for my mother, like 'Goldfasanchen,' my little golden pheasant — it was so quaint to hear her, worldly and elegant, being so tender with my mother, and she half loving it and saying: 'What do you want now?' She had taught me the love for poetry from early childhood. Especially after the war she and Lawrence became great friends. She lived in her 'Stift,' at Baden-Baden, a kind of home for women, mostly widows of distinguished men, Excellencies and so on. It was a very dignified life. We three sisters loved to meet there and stay with my mother. We had to be on our best behaviour, except in my mother's beautiful rooms, where all the wildness of our childhood came back, especially for my sister Johanna and me. Lawrence sat on the sofa, happily, while my mother tried to give him all the things for tea that he liked - 'Pumpernickel' and 'Truffelleberwurst' - and we played wild games of bridge.

  Sometimes, when Lawrence wanted to complain about me she would say: 'I know her longer than you, I know her.'

  He wrote his 'Fantasia of the Unconscious' in the woods behind the Altes Schloss. We stayed in a rough little inn at Ebersteinburg. I remember that we had some friends to dinner and a chicken flew into the soup tureen.

  Then Lawrence, in the meagre after-the-war days, would scour the country for some cream for her.

  She was very happy in Lawrence's life and mine, it meant so much to her, but she always trembled that the women in the Stift might read his books.

  He was so polite to them and they liked him, again he was the Herr Doktor.

  At Ebersteinburg he would go out in the morning and take his book and fountain pen. I would find him later on, leaning against a big pine tree; it was as if the tree itself helped him to write his book, and poured its sap into it.

  Then we would go down to Baden to my mother in the afternoon and take her our wildflowers or some honey or fruit or nuts; or we would go for long walks and make the place our own as usual. Looking over the Rheintal or listening to the music in the Kurpark. Baden was no longer the Baden of Turgeniev and archdukes and grand dukes and the Prince of Wales; no, it was after the war, would-be elegant.

  Lawrence and my mother in her wisdom and ripeness understood each other so well. She said to me: 'It's strange that an old woman can still be as fond of a man as I am of that Lorenzo.'

  Happy was their relationship. Only the last time, when my mother was so frail and old herself, being with Lawrence who was so very ill, they got on each other's nerves, and when she saw him often so irritable with me, she said: 'He isn't grateful to you for all you do for him.' But I did not feel like that myself; I was glad to do everything for him I possibly could. It seemed little enough.

  Then when she and I were going to meet for the first time after his death, we were afraid to meet. She knew what his death meant to me and I what it meant to her. So we avoided our common grief; there was no need of words.

  I remember after she had been indoors for weeks, coming to Baden and taking her out on one of those first tender spring days we get in the north, just the first whisper of spring. To feel her respond to this coming renewal of the earth in an almost sacred happiness was very moving to me.

  I think after Lawrence's death her desire to live left her. Less than a year after he died telling me: 'You have many friends, you have much to live for yet,' I got a telegram: 'Come.'

  I went but it was too late. In the train I listened as it were to the sound of the wheels: 'Is she still alive? Is she dead?' At the door of the Stift I was told: 'The Frau Baronin died two hours ago.'

  She lay for the last time in her bedroom, the rocks of the Altes Schloss looking in through the window. 'Lawrence is there for me,' she had said. We, her three daughters, stood by her bedside, she for the first time not welcoming me with open arms as always. She lay with her silver hair like thistledown, in gentle and peaceful death.

  She who had sustained our lives for half a century with the strength and harmony of her nature.

  I remember my mother saying to me once: 'But it's always you in Lorenzo's books, all his women are you.' There was an expression on her face I could not get. Is she pleased at this or is she not? My sister Nusch was the only person that ever could take a liberty with him. She could lightly jump on his knee and say in her broken English:

  'O Lorenzo, you are so nice, I like your red beard.' He felt happy in the atmosphere of my mother and of us three sisters, so free and open and gay. Only when my sister Nusch and I had our long female talks, he did not like it, he had to be in it.

  We spent some weeks at Zell-am-See with Nusch, her husband and children at her villa. We bathed and boated and Lawrence wrote his 'Captain's Doll' there.

  One day the peasants from my sister's shooting-lodge high up in the mountains brought us some honey and left. The honey was found to be full of worms. 'Hadu,' said Lawrence, full of rage, to my nephew, 'you and I will take this honey back to them.' So up they marched to the lodge, in the heat of the afternoon, Lawrence and Hadu, and arrived at the peasant's hut to find them in the midst of a meal; in the very middle of the table Lawrence planted the jar of honey and left without a word. The peasants remained petrified. 'If honesty, common-and-garden honesty goes,' Lawrence told me once, 'then all is lost, life becomes impossible.'

  After the War

  The first snow has fallen, it's a still, black and white world. All the gold of the autumn has gone. On the mountains it was green-gold where the aspens turned, and
the oakbrush was red-gold and there was yellow-gold in the tall sunflowers all along the road to Taos. The sage brush bloomed pale yellow and the fields and openings of the woods were yellow with small sunflowers. The mountains looked like tigers with their stripes of gold and dark pine trees. And the golden autumn sun lit it all. Now it has gone, this golden world: the frost and the snow have taken it away. I am writing in the sun on the snowy hill behind the cabins, where the Indians had their camp; where Lawrence and I slept in the summer, years ago, and again a grey squirrel scolded me for intruding; I wonder if it is the same grey squirrel. The snow drips from the cedar trees that are alive with birds; it is melting fast; in the desert below it has gone. The pinto ponies look bright like painted wooden toys against the snow. The black and white pigs follow me grunting and the black cats look shiny and black on the whiteness, delicately trotting after me. I have seen tracks of wild turkeys, of deer and bears, in the Gallina. I am now leaving that English autumn there in Berkshire, with its blackberry hedges and mushroom fields and pale sunsets behind a filigree of trees.

  I am leaving Lawrence behind, who doesn't want to come to Germany so soon after the war. I go on my journey, a nightmare of muddle, my trunks stolen. I arrive in Baden, so glad to see my sisters and my mother, but, oh, so many, many dead that had been our life and our youth. A sad, different Germany.

  We had suffered so much, all of us, lost so much. And money was scarce.

  Meanwhile Lawrence had gone to Florence and I went to join him. I arrived at four o'clock in the morning. 'You must come for a drive with me,' he said, 'I must show you this town.' We went in an open carriage, I saw the pale crouching Duomo and in the thick moonmist the Giotto tower disappeared at the top into the sky. The Palazzo Vecchio with Michelangelo's David and all the statues of men, we passed. 'This is a men's town,' I said, 'not like Paris, where all statues are women.' We went along the Lungarno, we passed the Ponte Vecchio, in that moonlight night, and ever since Florence is the most beautiful town to me, the lily town, delicate and flowery.

  Lawrence was staying at a pensione on the Lungarno with Norman Douglas and Magnus.

  The English there in Florence had still a sense of true hospitality, in the grand manner. And yet it struck me all as being like 'Cranford,' only it was a man's 'Cranford.' And the wickedness there seemed like old maids' secret rejoicing in wickedness. Corruption is not interesting to me, nor does it frighten me: I find it dull.

  Nobody knows Norman Douglas that doesn't know him in German. When he talks German you know something about him that you don't know if you only know him in English. I was thrilled at the fireworks of wit that went off between Lawrence and Douglas. They never quarrelled. I understood that Douglas had to stand up for his friend Magnus and to Lawrence's logical puritanical mind Magnus presented a problem of human relations. When we had gone to Capri and Magnus was in trouble at Montecassino, Lawrence went there and lent him some money, and yet we had so very little then.

  Later Magnus appeared at our Fontana Vecchia at Taormina, having fled from Montecassino. He came almost taking for granted that we would be responsible for him, that it was our duty to keep him. This disturbed Lawrence.

  'Is it my duty to look after this man?' he asked me.

  To me it was no problem. Had I been fond of Magnus, had he had any meaning, or purpose - but no, he seemed only anti-social, a poor devil without any pride, and he didn't seem to matter anyhow. With the money Lawrence had lent him, he stayed at the best hotel in Taormina, to my great resentment, we who could not afford to stay even in a second-rate hotel. I felt he made a fool of Lawrence, and afterwards, when we went to Malta, crossing second class from Palermo, whom should I discover gaily swanking and talking to an English Navy officer but Magnus on the first-class deck! The cheek of the man! He had written to Lawrence: 'I am sweating blood till I am out of Italy.' I knew his sort, people always sweating blood and always going to shoot themselves. But Magnus, anyhow, did commit suicide at the end. It was a shock, but there was nothing else for him to do. It seemed to me he had put his money on the wrong horse. He thought the splendour of life lay in drinking champagne, having brocade dressing gowns, and that kind of thing. But Lawrence felt deeply disturbed by Magnus and did feel a responsibility for him.

  There is a letter from Douglas to Lawrence in which Douglas says: 'Go ahead, my boy, do as you like with Magnus's work.' Lawrence wanted to pay the Maltese young men who had helped Magnus, hence the publication of Magnus's memoirs with Lawrence's introduction.

  From Florence we went to Capri. I didn't like Capri; it was so small an island, it seemed hardly capable to contain all the gossip that flourished there. So Lawrence went to Sicily and took Fontana Vecchia for us, outside Taormina.

  Living in Sicily after the war was like coming to life again. Fontana Vecchia was a very simple but big-roomed Here are letters of Lawrence to my mother:

  Fontana Vecchia Taormina Sicilia 16 March Meine liebe Schwiegermutter:

  Your post card came this morning. I do hope you will be feeling better. Frieda is in Rome, doing her passport. I hope by the time you have this card she will be with you. It will make her happy to nurse you and get you better. Soon you must be about walking - and then I will come to Germany and perhaps we can all go away into the Schwarzwald and have a good time. Meanwhile I sit in Fontana Vecchia, and feel the house very empty without F. Don't like it at all: but don't mind so long as you will be better.

  I am having my portrait painted: hope that today will be the last sitting, as I am tired. I look quite a sweet young man, so you will feel quite pleasant when I send you a photograph. The weather is once more sunny and beautiful, the sea so blue, and the flowers falling from the creeper.

  I have no news as yet from Rome, but hope she is managing everything easily. I am all right in Taormina: people invite me to tea and dinner all the time. But I don't want to go very badly. I am correcting the MS. of my diary of a Trip to Sardinia, which I think will amuse you. Give my love to Else. Tell me if there is anything I can send: and do get better soon.

  Fontana Vecchia Taormina, Sicily

  Sunday, Dec. 10

  Dear Mother-in-Law:

  I am glad you got the cheque. But don't trouble about being grateful. The money is there, all right, and enough said.

  Frieda does not want any. We had a piece of luck. The professor of English Literature in Edinburgh gave me a prize: a hundred pounds for 'The Lost Girl. ' That is a piece of luck. I hope to have the money next week. A hundred pounds is a nice little sum.

  Please, mother-in-law, send 500 marks to Hadu and the rest. We don't send any Christmas parcels, the post is so difficult here in Italy. But when the book arrives I will send it to you. I am so glad that you are feeling well. But go carefully before Xmas. Go on still, small feet and don't get overbearing and drunk.

  D. H. L.

  A thousand white horses on the hard blue sea and the sailing ships run anxiously with half a wing.

  Frieda has made a hundred good 'Seckerle, ' very good - made them this morning.

  (Translated from the German)

  Fontana Vecchia

  I am not working at the present time. I wrote three long stories since we are here - that will make quite a nice book. I also collected my short stories ready for a book. So, for the moment I am free, I don't want to begin anything else, only perhaps translate a grey Sicilian novel 'Maestro Don Gesualdo' by Giovanni Verga. It is pure Sicilian and you can see in it how heavy and black and hopeless are these Sicilians inside. Outside so beautiful, inside horror and money. No, mother-in-law, here out of Europe nothing new can come forth. They can only go on chewing the same old strings. The Banca di Sconto, perhaps the biggest bank in Italy, has failed, does not pay and such a black cloud over the people here. Money is the blood of an Italian. He says it himself: 'Vuole il sangue mio - he wants my blood,' if he has to pay. But it is also cruel. Very likely the Government will come and help the people...

  (Translated from the German)

&
nbsp; Fontana Vecchia Taormina, Sicily

  Dear Mother-in-Law:

  We must find a good ship. Maybe we'll leave next month, but not for sure. And if we go to America and I can earn some money, we can easily return to Germany and see you. If one only has the dollars, then America is no further from Baden than Taormina, perhaps not as far. You know it well.

  I have had a little influenza, it. was very cold, the snow came nearer and nearer down the mountains. Monte Venere was white, also our own Monte Riretto. But right near to us the snow could not reach, the sea said no, and now, thank God, it is warm as summer, the snow has flown away, the sea is blue, and the almonds are busy flowering. Many thousands of birds came down with the cold - goldfinches, blackbirds, redbreasts, redtails, so gay and coloured, and thank goodness, cartridges are so dear that the Italians can't buy them.

  Frieda also wants to write a word. We sit in the salotto, warm and still, with the lamp on the table. Outside, through the door, I see like twilight, the moonlit sea; and the moon through the begonia leaves of our terrace; and all is quite still, except from time to time the stove crackles. If I think that we are going away I feel melancholy. But inside I feel sure, that I must go. This is a beautiful end, but better a difficult beginning than only an end.

  Greet all. Tell Else I had all the letters: and Friedel writes English so well. He'll think little of my German. I am so glad you have Annie with you and are not alone these long winter evenings.

  Keep well always. I'll write again soon. Make a bow for me to all the ladies of the Stift in my name.

  Your son-in-law,

  D. H. Lawrence (Translated from the German)

  Fontana Vecchia Taormina Sicily Sunday

  My dear Mother-in-Law:

  We sit waiting to depart - 4 trunks - one household trunk, 1 book trunk, Frieda's and mine, two small valises, a hatbox, and two very small bags: just like Abraham going to a new land. Ny heart is trembling now, mostly with pain - the going away from home, and the people and Sicily. But I will forget it and only think of palms and elephants and monkeys and peacocks. Tomorrow at 10.34 we leave here: eat at Messina, where we must change, arrive at 8:30 at Palermo, then to the Hotel Panormus where our friend lives. Thursday to Naples by boat, there at the Hotel Santa Lucia. Then on the S.S. 'Osterley,' Orient Line to Ceylon. The ship goes on to Australia. You have the address - Ardnarce, Lake View Estate, Kandy, Ceylon. Think, it is only 14 days from Naples. We can always return quickly when we've had enough. Perhaps Else is right and we shall return to our Fontana. I don't say no: I don't say anything for certain. Today I go, tomorrow I return. So things go. I'll write again from Palermo if there's time. I think of you.