James Walker letters, literary locations, Locating Lawrence, Photo Essay

Locating Lawrence March 1922

Lawrence is never happier than when in the middle of the sea, between journeys, with the excitement and expectation of what lies ahead fuelling his enthusiasm.

Out on the sea, Lawrence has time to inform friends of ‘our great plunge![i]’ A little exaggeration is required, though, to convince him he’s made the right decision. Taormina, he informs Norman Douglas, ‘would have been the death of me after a little while longer[ii].’

Lawrence loves the liminal state of the sea, observing that ‘time passes like a sleep’ creating ‘the curious sense that nothing is real except just this ship[iii]’ This is because they are travelling along the 88 miles of the Suez Canal at five miles an hour. He occasionally spots black porpoises ‘that run about like frolicsome little black pigs[iv]’ which is a more pleasing image than the one reserved for Mount Sinai which is ‘like a vengeful dagger that was dipped in blood many years ago.[v]’

He stops off for a few hours in Port Said and observes it’s ‘still just like Arabian Nights, with water-sellers and scribes in the streets, and Koran readers and a yelling crowd[vi].’ His description of female Muslims in veils as ‘black women parcels’ would offend modern sensibilities, so take some comfort in that ‘one of the women drew back her veils and spat at us’ which he believes is because ‘we were hateful Christians.[vii]’

He remains optimistic ‘that once beyond the Red Sea one does not feel any more the tension and pressure one feels in England.[viii]’ But when he arrives in Kandy on 13 March, it is so hot that ‘if one moves one sweats.[ix]’ This leads him to worry ‘I don’t believe I shall ever work here[x]’ and before you know it, the familiar doubt kicks in: ‘I do think, still more now I am out here, that we make a mistake forsaking England and moving out into the periphery of life (…) I really think that the most living clue of life is in us Englishmen in England.[xi]’

To see other video essays from 1922 see our playlist here. To read from the original source, see The Cambridge Edition of The Letters of D.H. Lawrence, Vol IV 1921 – 24 edited by Warren Roberts, James T. Boulton and Elizabeth Mansfield.

References   

  • [i] Letter to Lady Cynthia Asquith, 28 Feb 1922 (L2467)
  • [ii] Letter to Norman Douglas, 4 March 1922 (L2468)
  • [iii] Letter to S.S. Koteliansky, 7 March 1922 (L2469)
  • [iv] Letter Baroness Anna von Richthofen, 7 March (L2470)
  • [v] Letter to S.S. Koteliansky, 7 March 1922 (L2469)
  • [vii] Letter Baroness Anna von Richthofen, 7 March (L2470)
  • [viii] Letter to Rosalind Baynes, 8 March 1922 (L2472)
  • [ix] Letter to Emily King, 24 March 1922 (L2476)
  • [x] Letter to Catherine Carswell, 25 March 1922 (L2478)
  • [xi] Letter to Robert Pratt Barlow, 30 March 1922 (L2480)
James Walker letters, literary locations, Locating Lawrence, Modernism, Photo Essay

Locating Lawrence: Feb 1922

On the 2 February James Joyce published his modernist masterpiece Ulysses. Meanwhile, Lawrence was preparing to set sail on the R.M.S Osterley for his slow detour to America.

After negotiating a 20% commission for signing copies of Women in Love[i], Lawrence realises his other books could be earning him a bit more and suggests a similar rate after the first 2000 copies of Sea and Sardinia ‘or at least after the first 3000.[ii]’

He reads the poems of Jean Starr Untermeyer (1886-1970) ‘most of them aloud to my wife.[iii]’ He seems impressed, suggesting ‘the greatest achievement is when pure speech goes straight into poetry, without having to put on Sunday clothes.[iv]’ These were both published by Benjamin W. Huebsch (1876 –1964) who was also the first American publisher of Sons and Lovers and James Joyce’s Dubliners.

Lawrence gets very excited about the arrival of a fountain pen from Mary Cannon, a ‘wildly expensive gift’ which he hopes will ‘stay with me all my life, and seal all my affairs of state and solemnity.[v]’

It will come in handy as he’s on the move again, departing from Naples on 26 Feb via the RMS Osterley. Although leaving ‘our home and the people of Sicily[vi]’ gives him ‘a sinking feeling[vii]’ he must ‘forget it’ and instead ‘only think of palms and elephants and apes and peacocks.[viii]’

He begins packing up stuff at Fontana Vecchia and getting his affairs in order. Curtis Brown is sent the manuscript of Studies in Classical American Literature and asked to confirm copyright law between England and America, given the recent passing of Giovanni Verga, the Sicilian author Lawrence is currently translating.[ix]

The Lawrence’s were relatively light travellers; their worldly possessions consisting of ‘four trunks, one household trunk, one book trunk, Frieda’s and mine – and then two valises, hat-box, and the two quite small pieces: just like Abraham faring forth into a new land.[x]’

The Osterley is ‘so comfortable’ and ‘quite perfect’ because ‘the people are so quiet and simple and nobody shows off.[xi]’ And then he gives a detailed breakdown of why: ‘Mornings, 7 o’clock, the steward comes with a cup of tea and inquires whether one wants to take his bath (…) At 8 o’clock breakfast is sounded: and such a menu: stewed pears, porridge, fish, bacon, eggs, fried sausages, beefsteak, kidneys, marmalade (…) eleven o’clock the steward comes with a cup of Bovril[xii]’ and on and on he goes. Not showing off at all.

Still, the food does sound more appetising than the ‘thick giblet soup, nutty gizzards,’ and ‘the inner organs of beasts and fowls[xiii]’ that Leopard Bloom ate with relish in James Joyce’s masterpiece Ulysses, published on the 2 Feb 1922 by Sylvia Beach. Together, but in very different ways, the two writers would define modernist literature.   

To see other video essays from 1922 see our playlist here. To read from the original source, see The Cambridge Edition of The Letters of D.H. Lawrence, Vol IV 1921 – 24 edited by Warren Roberts, James T. Boulton and Elizabeth Mansfield.

References

  • [i] Letter to Martin Secker, 21 Jan 1922 (L2427)
  • [ii] Letter to Curtis Brown, 1 Feb 1922 (L2437)
  • [iii] Letter to Jean Starr Untermeyer, 2 Feb 1922 (L2439)
  • [v] Letter to Mary Cannon, 12 Feb 1922(L2444)
  • [vi] Letter to Baroness Anna von Richthofen, 19 Feb 1922 (L2455)
  • [vii] Letter to Mary Cannon, 12 Feb 1922 (L2444)
  • [viii] Letter to Baroness Anna von Richthofen, 19 Feb 1922 (L2455)
  • [ix] Letter to Curtis Brown, 18 Feb 1922 (L2453)
  • [x] Letter to Baroness Anna von Richthofen, 19 Feb 1922 (L2455)
  • [xi] Letter to Mary Cannan, 28 Feb 1922 (L2465)
  • [xii] Letter to Baroness Anna von Richthofen, 28 Feb 1922 (L2466)
James Walker literary locations, Locating Lawrence

Locating Lawrence: January 1922

Another year, another home. But will literature’s most notorious fidget end up in America as planned or will he find a detour? I think we all know the answer to this one…

‘I am weary of Taormina, and have no desire to stay in Sicily or in Europe at all.[i]’ Lawrence informs Earl Brewster on the 2nd January 1922. One source of frustration with Sicily is the recent collapse of Banco di Sconto, meaning ‘it is impossible to cash anything here in the village[ii]’ although to be fair, that’s still a problem today.

Earl Brewster tries to lure him over to Kandy, but he’s not ready for the inner tranquillity offered by the Buddha. ‘Meditation and the inner life are not my aim (…) I do not want peace nor beauty nor even freedom from pain (…) I want to fight and to feel new Gods in the flesh (…) even the influenzas and the headache are part of the fight and the fulfilment.[iii]’

Mountsier is sent manuscripts of The Ladybird – ‘quite new’ , England, My England – ‘all rewritten’ and handwritten versions of The Fox and Captain’s Doll ‘so that I needn’t cart them about[iv]’.  With no major new projects on the horizon, he is unwilling to begin ‘anything else,[v]’ except, perhaps, a translation of Giovanni Verga’s Mastro-don Gesualdo which he deems it to be ‘one of the genuine emotional extremes of European literature: just as Selma Lagerlof or Knut Hamsun may be the other extreme, northwards[vi].’

Thomas Secker requests Lawrence signs 50 copies of a special edition of Women in Love. He is happy to oblige but ‘wants to be paid for the signatures[vii] and negotiates a 20% commission on sales. This would help offset the ‘Heseltine blackmail money[viii]’. Phillip Heseltine had taken exception to the portrayal of him in Women in Love, forcing Lawrence to rewrite passages. The edited version was republished in November 1921.

Having experienced so much poverty in his life, Lawrence is always fighting for his brethren. His latest cause is J.W. Nylander who is ‘very poor[ix]’ and so he sends Robert Mountsier Seevolk – a volume of his short stories  – to see if he can get them published in magazines. He tries to butter up Catherine Carswell to translate the stories but she’s having none of it[x].       

If he wasn’t a writer, Lawrence would have made a brilliant travel agent. Cecily Lambert is advised on travel times across Italy, when to tip – ‘a porter at the station gets about a Lira for every piece of luggage he carries for you’ and why you should ‘never arrive in a place like Rome without having your hotel room ready booked[xi]’ – they book up quickly in Spring.

But his own travel plans are all over the place, changing every few days or so. Jan Juta, who had illustrated Sea and Sardinia, asks him to go to Nyasaland (Malawi) and trek across Lake Tanganyika[xii] which Lawrence turns down, instead requesting him to join him on a proposed trip to Taos in March.

But wherever he goes next, he must leave Sicily, no matter how beautiful it may be. ‘We sit in our salotta, warm and still, with the lamp on the table. Outside, through the door I see (…) the moon through the begonia leaves of our terrace: and all quite still, only from time to time the stove crackles. When I think of going away, I’m also a bit melancholy. But inwardly I am certain that I must go. This is a lovely end, but better a difficult beginning than an end only.[xiii]’

‘I feel it is my destiny at least to try the States, if only to know I hate them.[xiv]’ Then a week later he changes his mind and takes up Earl Brewster’s offer to visit him. ‘We had almost booked our passage to America, when suddenly it came over me I must go to Ceylon.[xv]’ Perhaps it was the realisation that what awaited him in Taos was arty and literary types, or as Lawrence put it, ‘smoking, steaming shits[xvi]’.   

To see other video essays from 1922 see our playlist here. To read from the original source, see The Cambridge Edition of The Letters of D.H. Lawrence, Vol IV 1921 – 24 edited by Warren Roberts, James T. Boulton and Elizabeth Mansfield.

References

  • [i] Letter to Earl Brewster, 2 Jan 1922 (L2405)
  • [ii] Letter to Robert Mountsier 9 Jan 1922 (L2407)
  • [iii] Letter to Earl Brewster, 2 Jan 1922 (L2405)
  • [iv] Letter to Robert Mountsier 9 Jan 1922 (L2407)
  • [v] Letter to Baroness Anna von Richthofen 10 Jan 1921 (L2411)
  • [vi] Letter to Thomas Seltzer 9 January 1922 (L2408)
  • [vii] Letter to Martin Secker, 11 Jan 1922 (L2413)
  • [viii] Letter to Robert Mountsier, 18 Jan 1922 (L2422)   
  • [ix] Letter to Robert Mounstier, 20 Jan 1922 (L2425)
  • [x] Letter to Catherine Carswell, 24 Jan 1922 (L2429)
  • [xi] Letter to Cecily Lambert and Miss Furlong, 14 Jan 1921 (L2419)
  • [xii] Letter to Thomas Seltzer 9 January 1922 (L2408)
  • [xiii] Letter to Baroness Anna von Richthofen 10 Jan 1921 (L2411)
  • [xiv] Letter to S.S. Koteliansky 14 Jan 1921 (L2418)
  • [xv] Letter to Catherine Carswell, 24 Jan 1922 (L2429)
  • [xvi] Letter to Mabel Dodge Sterne, 27 Jan 1922 (L2435)
James Walker letters, literary locations, Locating Lawrence

Locating Lawrence: September 1923

Lawrence’s latest support of a fellow writer goes to Mollie Skinner (1876 – 1955). His feedback on The House of Ellis is that it contains ‘good stuff’ but ‘without form’ it is ‘like the world before creation’ meaning ‘as it stands you’d never find a publisher.[i]’ But he is prepared to ‘make a book of it’ and so begins a collaboration that will later produce The Boy in the Bush. Meanwhile, he is trying to get Thomas Seltzer to publish Fredrick Carter’s Dragon of the Alchemists but requests permission ‘to punctuate a little more, and sometimes rearrange your words, a trifle, where you are a bit obscure.[ii]’ John Middleton Murry is advised ‘one has to be an absolute individual, separate as a seed fallen out of the pod’ and for his editorship of the Adelphi to be successful, he must ‘build a new place of skulls, the skulls of the imbecile enemy.[iii]’

During his stay in Los Angeles he witnesses a total eclipse on 10 September[iv] as well as the ‘gruesome sight’ of the Honda Point disaster when ‘seven torpedo boats smashed on the rocks.[v]’ This was deemed a navigation error and resulted in the largest single group of officers ever court-martialled in U.S. Naval history[vi].

His views on California, as with all places, changes dramatically. After eighteen days ‘time slips by quickly’ as ‘it is a loose, easy, rather foolish world here’ and he is grateful that ‘falseness is left out.[vii]’ Five days later it is ‘a great bore. Drunk with trivial externalities[viii]’ but given that he’s about to leave for Navojoa, Mexico, to ‘put a new peg in the world, a new navel, a new centre[ix]’ his castigation of current location is true to form.    

Lawrence is consistently disappointed by people who ‘are such shells of emptiness[x]’ and so his journeying down the Southern Pacific has a purpose of sorts. But anyone he meets or anywhere he goes will inevitably disappoint. Their role is merely to propel him onwards.  

To see other video essays from 1923 see our playlist here. To read from the original source, see The Cambridge Edition of The Letters of D.H. Lawrence, Vol IV 1921 – 24 edited by Warren Roberts, James T. Boulton and Elizabeth Mansfield. 

References

  • [i] Letter to Mollie Skinner, 2 September 1923 (L2910)
  • [ii] Letter to Frederick Carter, 15 September 1923 (L2913)
  • [iii] Letter to John Middleton Murry, 17 September 1923 (L2917)
  • [v] Letter to Margaret King, 12 September 1923 (L2911)
  • [vii] Letter to S.S. Koteliansky, 17 Sept 1923 (L2915)
  • [viii] Letter to Thomas Seltzer, 22 September 1923 (L2918)
  • [ix] Letter to John Middleton Murry, 17 September 1923 (L2917)
  • [x] Letter to Thomas Seltzer, 22 September 1923 (L2918)