Lawrence’s opening correspondence in November is very upbeat. William Hawk, his former neighbour at the Del Monte ranch, is congratulated on the birth of a son and Knud Merrild is advised to ‘get someone to insure you against yourself[i]’ after recently setting himself on fire and quitting his job. Adele Seltzer is sent a ‘native Tlaquepaue’ vase, a bargain at four pesos and he shares his amusement of the fiesta days of Todos Santos and Todos Muertos where ‘they make All Souls Day a great feast: and sell toys of skeleton men on skeleton horses, skeletons in coffins (…) skeletons of marzipan – skeleton bull-fighters fighting skeleton bulls[ii]’
The tone changes when he writes to Mabel Dodge Luhan warning her she cannot save the Indians due to her ‘salvationist but poisonous white consciousness.’ He then reminds her that in terms of their own friendship ‘your will was evil masquerading as good’. And as if oblivious to the offence caused, signs off with ‘before very long I hope to come and see you again.[iii]’ Bet she can’t wait.
He has to return to England because Frieda ‘cables me I must go there.[iv]’Although eager to see her, he begrudges it somewhat and has a right moan to his schwiegermutterr. ‘You are nice and old and understand’ that ‘today a man needs to be a hero, and more than a husband.’ It his destiny to ‘go back and forth, through the world’ and so he ‘does not ask for love from his wife.’ Instead ‘one needs strength and courage and weapons.’ He then starts ranting about ‘battle-strength, weapon-strength, fighting-strength,’ before realising ‘I don’t know if my German can be understood.’
He finishes The Boy in the Bush on the 14 November[v] and sends it to Curtis Brown the next day to be typed up. Now all that’s left to do is book his place on the Toledo Hamburg-Amerika boat which leaves Vera Cruz towards the end of the month, though he is certain ‘Mexico will feel my tread once more – unless a bolshy bullet stops me.’
Now his affairs are in order, he treats himself to a serape ‘dark brown with big white stripes and boca – eleven pesos[vi]’ and in a letter to Bessie Freeman, even manages to pay Mabel Dodge Luhan a compliment, ‘I know there is something bigger in her than in most folks.[vii]’ Indeed, Luhan later receives a stroppy and uncharacteristically defeatist confession that ‘I don’t want much to go to England – but suppose it is the next move in the battle which never ends and in which I never win.[viii]’
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 Knud Merrild, 3 November 1923 (L2952)
[ii] Letter to Thomas Seltzer, 3 November 1923 (L2953)
[iii] Letter to Mabel Dodge Luhan, 8 November 1923 (L2954)
[iv] Letter to Mabel Dodge Luhan, 8 November 1923 (L2954)
[v] Letter to Mollie Skinner, 15 November 1923 (L2957)
[vi] Letter to Willard Johnson, 19 November 1923 (L2965)
[vii] Letter to Bessie Freeman, 19 November 1923 (L2966)
[viii] Letter to Mabel Dodge Luhan, 20 November 1923 (L2972)
D.H. Lawrence: A Digital Pilgrimage 