Stories from Limpsfield Chart

David Ellis reading one of Lawrence’s poems at the bottom of the Cearne. Photo James Walker.

During the 20th Century, Limpsfield Chart was a hotbed of intellectual and revolutionary activity. D.H. Lawrence would regularly visit Edward Garnett, the literary critic, writer and editor who provided various forms of support to Lawrence from August 1911 to November 1914.

On the 2 July, I joined Catherine Brown, David and Genevieve Ellis, and Alan Wilson for a walking tour of Limpsfield Chart under the expert tutelage of Dudley and Jane Nichols. Dudley is the nephew of Louie Burrows, Lawrence’s former fiancé (December 1910 until February1912), back from that strange period of his life when he briefly assumed the role of lothario. The trip was arranged in collaboration with the London Group of the D.H. Lawrence Society.   

We set off from Limpsfield Chart, right in the heart of the Surrey countryside, and meandered through ancient woodland to uncover homes of influential cultural figures. This included the home of Sidney Olivier (1859 – 1943), Governor of Jamaica and Secretary of State for India in the first government of Ramsay MacDonald. He was also the uncle of Laurence Olivier. But of greater interest were his four daughters Margery (1886 – 1974), Brynhild (1887 – 1935), Daphne (1889 – 1950), and Noël (1892 -1969).

These enigmatic ‘noble savages’ lived life to the max; skinny dipping with the Bloomsburys, marching the suffrage cause, and embracing a bohemian outdoor lifestyle. From their hidden den in the woods, they were more interested in discussing land reform and secularism than pursuing sexual gratification. Virginia Woolf half-mockingly labelled them ‘Neo-Pagans.’ Mostly Cambridge educated, the teenage sisters made a future pact to meet up in Basel, Switzerland on 1 May 1933, where they would vanish ‘from the knowledge of men forever’ and carve out a ‘new world’ together[i]. They didn’t. But their intentions were honourable, and symptomatic of others trying to cope with the changes brought about by modernity, industrialisation and war.

Their mother, Margaret, relocated the family from London to Limpsfield in the 1890s after embracing Edward Carpenter’s principles of the ‘Simple Life[ii]’. Carpenter, an advocate of ‘spiritual democracy’ as well as an early gay rights activist, would later be an influence on Lawrence’s ideas of sexual liberation[iii].  Here they joined a community of progressive Fabian intellectuals where home-schooling and flouting of social conventions was the norm. Neighbours included Edward Pease (1857 –1955) who helped form the Fabian Society on 4 January 1884 and J.A. Hobson (1858 –1940), the economist and social scientist. But what really made this area such fertile ground for activism was the presence of Russian anarchists and exiled writers, most of whom had a link to Edward and Constance Garnett, the main reason for our visit.

Before visiting the Garnett’s family home, we stopped for lunch at the Carpenter’s Arms, a cosy country pub dating back to the 1800s. Mary Soames, the youngest daughter of Winston and Clementine Churchill, remembers the pub fondly in her 2011 memoir as a ‘fruitful recruiting ground’ to help with the yearly Nativity play[iv]. We discovered we had all recently reread The White Peacock (1911), whose floral descriptions I imagine would have appealed to the Arcadian desires of the Olivier sisters as well as fashion designer Laura Ashley, whose curtains adorned the walls of the new Church Hall in 1960 – Ashley taught at the Sunday school.

Once fed, we made our way to the Cearne, home of Edward and Constance Garnett from 1896. On route we passed the home of Constance Garnett’s sister, Grace. Elsie and Ford Maddox Hueffer lived here during 1898/99. As we enjoy the tour and walk freely through open space it is worth remembering that Hueffer suffered from agoraphobia between 1903-06. ‘The memory of those years’ he wrote ‘is of one uninterrupted mental agony.[v]’

Hueffer played an important role in Lawrence’s development as a writer though Lawrence would later observe Hueffer ‘left me to paddle my own canoe. I very nearly wrecked it and did for myself. Edward Garnett, like a good angel, fished me out.[vi]’

Garnett and Hueffer had a strained relationship with different visions for the role of Lawrence as well as literature in general. While a reader at Unwin, Garnett, then eighteen, had recommended Hueffer’s first book, The Brown Owl (1891) for publication as part of Unwin’s ‘Children’s Library’ series[vii]. Garnett was ruthless with his criticism. Olive Garnett, Edward’s sister, recalled in her diary some damning feedback on a biography Hueffer was working on: ‘German – cumbrous – slovenly – vague – will generalise about things of which he knows nothing.[viii]’ Ouch. The rented cottage is where Garnett introduced Hueffer to Joseph Conrad. The two would collaborate on novels and a novella together, but that’s another story.  

The shed at the bottom of the Cearne. Photo James Walker.

The Garnett’s home, the Cearne, is accessed via a wooded path and sits snuggly above the Weald, an area of South East England between the parallel chalk escarpments of the North and South Downs. At the bottom of the sloping garden is a rickety old shed where Lawrence sat and composed poems during his visits, some of which we recited. One of these poems, the aptly named ‘At the Cearne,’ has been illustrated and is framed inside the stone cottage on the upstairs hall, near the bedroom Lawrence and Frieda stayed in. The current owners are well versed on the history of the cottage and were happy to share stories that had been passed on, as well as providing books and articles detailing the history of the home and its many guests.

The illustration of Lawrence’s poem ‘At the Cearne’. Photo James Walker.

Edward Garnett (5 January 1868 – 19 February 1937) was a writer, editor and critic who started life at T. Fisher Unwin (1887–99) at the age of nineteen but was quickly promoted as a reader. One of his most significant contributions was helping to launch Unwin’s ‘Pseudonym Library’ series (1890–6) which encouraged unknown writers to submit manuscripts. ‘When the author became better known and wanted to claim credit for the work,’ writes Analise Grice, ‘the writer’s identity could be revealed by a press interview or review, which sparked further interest in the volume.[ix]’ Garnett had a brief spell at Heinemann (1900-01) before moving to Duckworth (1901-15), a smaller company that encouraged him to take the initiative.

From August 1911 to November 1914 Garnett provided Lawrence with support on all aspects of his literary career. In addition to finding publication outlets for his plays, novels and poems he even advised which books to review for the English Review[x]. Mark Kinkead-Weekes describes Garnett, who was seventeen years older than Lawrence, as ‘an ideal father-figure[xi]’. This is evident in a letter dated the 17 April 1912 when Lawrence enquired, ‘Why do you take so much trouble for me?[xii]’ He would inscribe Garnett’s copy of Sons and Lovers with: ‘To my friend and protector in love and literature Edward Garnett from the Author.’ 

One of the things an editor had to protect writers from was falling foul of the various morality lobbying groups that sprung up over the 19^th and 20^th centuries. One of these was the Circulating Libraries Association, formed on 30 November 1909. Publishers were asked to submit books prior to publication so they could be classified as either satisfactory, doubtful, or objectionable. This hidden form of censorship meant objectionable books were not displayed and were only requested if the public knew of their existence.   

Garnet was sensitive to these parameters having experienced censorship as a writer after his 1907 play, The Breaking Point, was refused a licence on the grounds of its alleged indecency.[xiii]’ He would vent his frustration in ‘The Censorship of Public Opinion’, printed in the Fortnightly Review in July 1909, stating that ‘a censorship must necessarily embody and crystallise the ideas and prejudices of the average person; whereas it is the aim of art to transcend those ideas and prejudices[xiv]’. Lawrence couldn’t have been in better hands. However, despite a firm edit, Sons and Lovers would be classified by the Circulating Libraries Association as doubtful.

Lawrence visited the Cearne on the weekend commencing Friday 13 October 1911. The following month he was invited back to meet Scott-James, the literary editor of the Daily News. He would write three dialect ballads at the Cearne (‘The Collier’s Wife’, ‘Whether or Not’ and ‘The Drained Cup’) and Garnett would find a home for his Eastwood-based mining plays. This helped Garnett achieve an ambition he outlined in 1907: ‘We have not had a single novelist of insight to-day who has analysed or mirrored the life of the great manufacturing centres, of the relations of the ‘classes’ to the industrial population, from Birmingham to Newcastle. Consider that from modern fiction we can gather more knowledge about the life of the Kaffirs, the Malays, the Hindus, than about the life of the Yorkshire miners, the Lancashire mill-hands or the Staffordshire ‘Black Country[xv]’.

Although Garnett wanted working class culture to be represented, he was no reductionist. He encouraged Lawrence to develop in other ways, such as challenging perceptions about sexuality. For this reason, Lawrence would acknowledge in 1928 ‘I always look on the Cearne as my jumping-off point into the world.[xvi]’

It should be noted that Garnett’s liberal attitude towards sexuality extended beyond the page; he had an open marriage. As Analise Grice points out: ‘Garnett’s notorious battle with censorship, his high standards for literature, his attempts to become a creative writer, his anti-institutional sentiments, unconventional marital arrangements and his advocacy of the rights of women to claim their sexual independence help us to understand how it was that he and Lawrence got on so well.[xvii]’ 

Constance Garnett (nee Black, 19 December 1861 – 17 December 1946) married Edward in Brighton on 31 August 1889. In the summer of 1891, then pregnant with their only child, she was introduced to the Russian exile Feliks Volkhovsky, who began teaching her Russian. She would go on to translate 71 volumes of Russian literature into English during her prolific career.

Cottage where Sergius Stepniak lived and commemorative plaque. Photo James Walker.

Plaque on the side of the former home of Sergius Stepniak. Photo James Walker.

Edward was friends with numerous Russian exiles who were either Anarchists or ‘Populists’ (narodniki) or members of secret organisations. Of particular interest was Sergius Stepniak (Kravchinskii), who fled Russia after assassinating the Head of the St Petersburg Secret Police. He was an enigmatic figure and would elicit attention from both Constance and Edward’s sister, Olive[xviii]. We passed by Pastens Cottage from where he frequently visited Constance to assist with translations in their temporary accommodation in neighbouring Froghole during the summer of 1895.

Once in exile, the dissidents put down their weapons and attempted to exert change via more diplomatic channels, focussing on ‘the close ties between the British and Russian royal families’ and hoping ‘the important role of Britain in European politics could help initiate changes in Russia via British public opinion[xix].’ One outcome of this strategy was the formation of the Friends of Russian Freedom[xx] with British socialists. This would be parodied in Ford Maddox Hueffer’s novel The New Humpty-Dumpty (1912), published under his pseudonym of ‘Daniel Chaucer’. Although Hueffer could identify with their struggle, he was aware it came with consequences. Writing in his diary, he observed that ‘thousands of heroic young people whom his (Stepniak) titanic conspiracies sent to die in exile[xxi]’

Garnett believed ‘that the English novel at the turn of the twentieth century was damagingly insular, in dire need of rejuvenation and that salvation was to be found abroad’ and was ‘adamant that the Russians were the only true exemplars. Not only did Garnett send his protégés away to read the Russian masters, he tirelessly promoted their work in his critical columns and wrote several introductions to his wife Constance’s translations.[xxii]’ He had a phenomenal impact on Lawrence at the very beginning of his career, as well as devoting unsurmountable energy to other causes and writers, helping to build a better world with words.  

This article was originally published as a review for Catherine Brown’s D.H. Lawrence London Group. Catherine is a VP of the D.H. Lawrence Society. See her website for information on monthly talks.

References

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• [i] Sarah Watling. Noble Savages: The Olivier Sisters. A Biography. 2019, Oxford University Press.

• [ii] Edward Carpenter. England’s Ideal: And Other Essays on Social Subject. 1887.

• [iii] Emile Delaveny. D. H. Lawrence and Edward Carpenter: A Study in Edwardian Transition. 1971, New York: Taplinger Publishing Company.

• [iv] Mary Soames. A Daughter’s Tale: The Memoir of Winston and Clementine Churchill’s Youngest Child. 2011, Transworld. p.67.  

• [v] Ford, Ford Madox. Return to Yesterday. Ed. Bill Hutchings. Manchester: Carcanet, 1991. Pp 202-204.

• [vi] Letters I, 471.

• [vii] Annalise Grice. D. H. Lawrence and the Literary Marketplace: The Early Writings, Edinburgh University Press, 2021. p.107.

• [viii] Olive Garnett, diary entry. ‘Saturday 28th’ [September] 1895, in Olive & Stepniak: The Bloomsbury Diary of Olive Garnett 1893-1895, ed. Barry Johnson, Birmingham: Bartletts Press, 1993.

• [ix] Analise Grice p. 108.

• [x] Ibid: 105.

• [xi] Ibid: 104.

• [xii] Letters, I, 383.

• [xiii] Analise Grice p. 122

• [xiv] Edward Garnett. ‘The Censorship of Public Opinion’ (1909) p.137–48.

• [xv] Edward Garnett. ‘The Novel of the Week’ (review of Arnold Bennett’s Anna of the Five Towns) (1907): p.642.

• [xvi] Letters, VI, p.520.

• [xvii] Analise Grice. p.141.

• [xviii] Sergius Stepniak and his close relationship to Constance is described in detail by her grandson Richard Garnett in Constance Garnett: A Heroic Life (Sinclair-Stevenson Ltd, 1991)

• [xix] Anat Vernitski. ‘The Complexity of Truth: Ford and the Russians’ in Ford Madox Ford’s Literary Contacts, Brill, 2007, p.103.

• [xx] Anat Vernitski. ‘Russian Revolutionaries and English Sympathizers in 1890s London: The Case of Olive Garnett and Sergei Stepniak’, Journal of European Studies 35:3 (2005), 299–314.

• [xxi] Anat Vernitski. ‘The Complexity of Truth: Ford and the Russians’ in Ford Madox Ford’s Literary Contacts, Brill, 2007, p.104.

• [xxii] Helen Smith. ‘Opposing Orbits: Ford, Edward Garnett and the Battle for Conrad’ in Ford Madox Ford’s Literary Contacts, Brill, 2007, p.83.

How Best To Celebrate Literary Heritage?

Distracted from distraction by distraction on Margate Pier. Photo Aly Stoneman.

This summer I visited a couple of literary heritage sites to try and gain inspiration and ideas for the D.H. Lawrence Memory Theatre. This article was published this month in the Journal of D.H. Lawrence Studies.

This summer I’ve been on various literary pilgrimages. My first stop was Rochester which is very much a shrine to Charles Dickens in the same way that Eastwood is to Lawrence. Various landmarks have featured in his novels, enabling shops to allude to the Victorian scribe through punning names that vary in nuance. My favourite was the confectionary ‘Sweet Expectations’. There is always the danger of turning a town into a literary theme park. Getting the balance right is tricky. But the most important literary artefact in Rochester is Dickens’s Swiss chalet, where he penned five of his novels. Unfortunately, it’s a rotting carcass in desperate need of restoration.

Rochester (L: High Street, M: Themed shops R: Dickens’ Swiss writing chalet. Photo by James Walker.

Next up was Margate to find the shelter where T. S. Eliot penned part of The Waste Land (1922). He was suffering from a nervous breakdown at the time, and I suspect Thanet council were trying to replicate this condition in tourists by making it impossible to find. I took the lack of information and contempt for iconic modernist locations as a challenge and was rewarded when I spotted a blue plaque on the side of an adjacent toilet – rather than the actual shelter!

I sat down and slurped on a Mr. Whippy, wondering what Geoff Dyer would have to say about such things, remembering his apathy on finally finding Lawrence’s home in Florence:

We stood silently. I knew this moment well from previous literary pilgrimages: you look and look and try to summon up feelings which don’t exist … You say, ‘I am standing in the place he stood, seeing the things he saw . . .’, but nothing changes, everything remains exactly the same.[1]

I specialise in digital literary heritage projects and have been contemplating how best to drag Lawrence kicking and screaming into the twenty-first century. What’s more, how do you represent someone as complex and contradictory as Lawrence given that his reputation and influence waxes and wanes each decade? It’s worth taking a brief potted history of the problem of defining him to understand the approach I’ve decided to take.              

When F. R Leavis declared D. H. Lawrence “novelist” in 1955 his intention was to restore Lawrence back to the Canon. Kate Millet wasn’t convinced, accusing Lawrence of misogyny and sexism. Her three main criticisms were of his heroines and villainesses who had congenital and submissive personalities, the domineering and bullying male counterparts, exemplified by the phallocentric Mellors, Birkin and Paul Morel, and, lastly, a condemnation of Lawrence’s message.[2]

“I shall always be a priest of love” wrote Lawrence on Christmas Day, 1912, after completing an early draft of Sons and Lovers (1L 493). Harry. T. Moore agreed and republished his 1955 book The Intelligent Heart as The Priest of Love (1974) in recognition of Lawrence’s sensual message, taking a distinctly different view to Millet.  

Original image from the publisher with added quote.

In the latest biography, Frances Wilson presents three versions of Lawrence via Dante’s Inferno. Focusing “on the decade of superhuman energy and productivity between 1915 when The Rainbow was prosecuted, and 1925 when he was diagnosed with tuberculosis”, she identifies these as Inferno (England) Purgatory (Italy) and Paradise (American Southwest), explaining that “Lawrence, who was a different man in every place, was never in the same place for more than a few months”.[3] Rather than viewing him as a “novelist”, like Leavis, Wilson credits him for his autofiction and his lesser-known work, such as his introduction to Maurice Magnus’s Memoirs of the Foreign Legion (1924). “His subject in the Memoir is, among other things, conflict, and Lawrence’s response to Magnus was, as ever, conflicted” writes Wilson. “He liked Magnus, he hated Magnus, he was attracted to Magnus, he was repelled by Magnus…”.[4]

So, there are multiple versions of Lawrence, literary critics can only agree to disagree on his value, and within his own writing, Lawrence is full of contradictions. Pinning him down, then, is a difficult, perhaps impossible task, and may explain why Aldous Huxley observed it’s “remarkable how everyone who knew Lawrence felt compelled to write about him? Why, he’s had more books written about him than any writer since Byron”.[5] Huxley himself was a willing testifier to Lawrence’s magnetism, writing:

To be with Lawrence was a kind of adventure, a voyage of discovery into newness and otherness … He looked at things with the eyes … of a man who had been at the brink of death and to whom, as he emerges from the darkness, the world reveals itself as unfathomably beautiful and mysterious. For Lawrence, existence was one continuous convalescence; it was as though he were newly reborn from a mortal illness every day of his life.[6]

Clearly Lawrence means many things to many people and, as culture does not exist in a vacuum, these meanings will continue to grow, transform and change as the world around us changes, which is why a literary heritage project attempting to explain his influence needs to be reflexive and fluid.

Photographs taken at D.H. Lawrence Birthplace Museum. Memory Theatre circle designs by Paul Fillingham.

This is partly the reason why Paul Fillingham and I decided to celebrate Lawrence through a travelling “memory theatre” or a “cabinet of curiosities”. Cabinets of curiosities (also known as Kunstkabinett, Wunderkammer; Cabinets of Wonder, and wonder-rooms) allowed collectors to accumulate objects and then define and classify them. One such collector was John Tradescant whose broad assortment of oddities provided a microcosm of the world. It was aptly named the Ark (1634). When he opened up his home to the public, Britain’s first public museum was born. 

In the D. H. Lawrence Memory Theatre we are piecing Lawrence’s life together through artefacts rather than oddities. We want to do this via themes rather than chronologically. We have an open submissions policy whereby anyone can submit ideas. Our hope is that we will then be able to develop a broad and diverse appraisal of his work that captures the good, the bad and the ugly – those wonderful contradictions that Frances Wilson notes. Whereas memory theatres of the 15^th to 17^th century were very much about reinforcing the social capital of the owner, ours is more open and about creating a space for different writers to provide their own definitions and categories. 

The first artefact in the D.H. Lawrence Memory Theatre was Mr Muscle.

For example, our first artefact is ‘Mr. Muscles’ because Lawrence “loved to do the jobs you hate” and was always prepared to get his hands dirty. As Mabel Dodge Luhan observed in her memoir:

I don’t believe I ever saw Lawrence just sit. He was forever doing something … He always did the baking, and at least half of the cooking and dish washing … Lawrence really had very little sense of leisure.[7]

Knud Merrild, who would later join Lawrence for one winter up in the mountains of New Mexico, observed that Lawrence’s work ethic was born out of connecting to his immediate environment. He recalls Lawrence warning that “The more machinery intervenes between us and the naked forces, the more we numb and atrophy our own senses. Every time we turn on a tap to have water, every time we turn a handle to have fire or light, we deny ourselves and annul our being”.[8] Being busy is about being alive, sentiments which are understandable in a man for whom death was always lurking around the corner.

Frieda Lawrence explains this work ethic through a more spiritual connection. “To me his relationship, his bond with everything in creation was so amazing, no preconceived ideas, just a meeting between him and a creature, a tree, a cloud, anything. I called it love, but it was something else – Bejahung in German, ‘saying yes’”.[9]

Currently, the memory theatre lives a digital existence and is dispersed across the social media platforms Twitter, YouTube and Instagram as well as having presence through a project website and blog. This is partly a result of Covid-19 but also in recognition of the way in which are reading habits are changing. If Lawrence is to engage with modern audiences then our project needs to be accessible across different platforms as well as in different formats and lengths. But it has always been our intention to build a physical memory theatre, inspired by Lawrence’s personalised travel trunk (that can be viewed at the Birthplace Museum), and set it on route to retrace Lawrence’s steps.    

Design James Walker.

Lawrence was a notorious fidget who Dyer describes as “nomadic to the point of frenzy”.[10] Catherine Carswell observed he “disliked an air of everlastingness about a home. For him it must have something of the tent about it”.[11] Therefore, he never owned property. Or a tent. Earl Brewster witnessed this restlessness in Ceylon when Lawrence became infuriated by Buddha statues, complaining “Oh I wish he would stand up!”[12]. It’s for these reasons that I’m so against statues of Lawrence. To see him rendered static in bronze is antithetical to his nature. If we truly want to capture the essence of his personality, the fluidity with which he lived, then the form must reflect the content and so our memory theatre will retrace his “savage pilgrimage” rather than gather dust.     

Lawrence meant different things to different people at different times. He was in a constant state of flux. He produced work in each place he lived, and this seems to have been the trigger to propel him onto the next destination. It is important to try to capture these sentiments in a literary heritage project and so it is not good enough to simply fill our memory theatre with artefacts. Like Lawrence, these need to grow in provenance as they move along and transform in meaning as they encounter different people.

An example of how this will work is through audience interaction with the memory theatre. For example, one of our forthcoming artefacts is a book of pressed flowers to represent Lawrence’s connection with nature. This is based on a letter he sent to Catherine Carswell who recorded it in her memoir:

With my box of Derbyshire flowers there was a small floral guide, written by Lawrence, describing each plant and making me see how they had been before he picked them for me, in what sorts of places and manner and profusion they had grown, and even how they varied in the different countrysides.[13]

We will collect flowers from Eastwood with a local naturalist and place them in a book. When the memory theatre arrives at each new location around the globe, we will commission locals to collect flowers and add them to our book so that it continues to change and transform as it moves.

And movement is the most important factor when celebrating Lawrence. He opens Sea and Sardinia (1921) with “COMES over one an absolute necessity to move. And what is more, to move in some particular direction”. We hope that our project helps propel him into the 21^st century and provoke more questions, arguments and uncertainties.

This article was originally published in the Journal of D.H. Lawrence Studies, Volume 6, Number 1 (2021)

   References

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• [1] Geoff Dyer, Out of Sheer Rage (Canongate, 1997), 60.
• [2] Kate Millett, Sexual Politics (Columbia University Press, 2016).  
• [3] Frances Wilson, Burning Man: The Ascent of D. H. Lawrence (Bloomsbury Circus, 2021), 1.
• [4] Ibid., 154.
• [5] Ibid., 1.
• [6] Aldous Huxley. The Olive Tree and Other Essays (London: Chatto & Windus, 1960), 232
• [7] Mabel Dodge Luhan, Lorenzo in Taos (London: Martin Secker, 1933), 75.
• [8] Knud Merrild, A Poet and Two Painters: A Memoir of D. H. Lawrence (New York: The Viking Press, 1939), 84.
• [9] Janet Byrne. A Genius for Living: The Life of Frieda Lawrence (Harper Collins,1995), 376.
• [10] Geoff Dyer, Anglo-English Attitudes: Essays, Reviews, Misadventures. 1984-1999 (London:  Abacus, 1999), 157.
• [11] Catherine Carswell, The Savage Pilgrimage (London: Martin Secker, 1932), 26.
• [12] Earl Brewster & Achsah Brewster. D. H. Lawrence: Reminiscences and Correspondence (London: Secker, 1934), 49.
• [13] Catherine Carswell, The Savage Pilgrimage, 130.

Three ways museums are making classic literature more attractive to young readers

Engaging young people is a challenge for museums. Pixel-Shot/Shutterstock

Heather Green, Nottingham Trent University

For many lovers of classic literature, opportunities to devour the works of undiscovered authors can be enough to make people’s eyes light up. For those who aren’t as keen on the genre, the appeal of these titles is a little less obvious. In fact, it’s one of the reasons museum professionals are running into issues when it comes to inspiring new generations to read such works.

Engaging young people is a challenge for museums and the traditional approaches that literary heritage museums take when dealing with classic authors is becoming a problem. This is because literary heritage museums usually focus on presenting the biographical story, personal effects or archival collection of an author. Relevant and interesting perhaps to those already familiar with an author’s works, but perhaps less successful at engaging would-be readers. The language of some of these authors can also be a barrier to new readers, as can the difficulty of reading “a classic” – which might be seen as irrelevant or out of touch with the modern world.

As the community, learning and engagement officer at Wirksworth Heritage Centre in Derbyshire, my role is to engage audiences of all ages with the local history of Wirksworth. A key element to Wirksworth’s heritage is its literary connections to writers (including George Eliot, DH Lawrence and Daniel Defoe) and the inspiration they took from the people and the landscape of Wirksworth. My PhD research considers how literary heritage is presented in museums throughout the country. I have a particular interest in Nottingham, which was awarded the Unesco City of Literature bid in 2015 due to its rich literary heritage, but also has some of the lowest literacy levels in the country.

Since COVID-19, finding new ways to share our literary heritage both inside and outside of museum walls has become incredibly important. So how should museums show that these authors remain relevant in the 21st century? Literary heritage museums are doing this in a whole host of ways, but here are the three examples of approaches I believe are particularly successful.

1. Retelling stories

From the Austen Project to the many graphic novel retellings and classic novels reimagined as text messages, retelling stories with a contemporary twist is a well-trodden (if not always well-reviewed) path. It’s also a method of interpretation that literary heritage museums are beginning to embrace.

Using new and creative formats can remove some of the barriers to young people wanting to experience these stories and can inspire them to try the “real thing”. As part of my own curatorial work with Dorking Museum, I wrote a book entitled Forster in 50 which accompanies the exhibition Forster at 50. The book provides visitors with an overview of five of Forster’s novels in only 50 words with illustrations, providing more of an accessible introduction to EM Forster’s work.

2. Using technology to draw audiences in

Technology and literature may have seemed like a mismatch once upon a time, but more and more museums are using different technologies to engage audiences with their collections. Before its closure in 2016, the DH Lawrence Heritage Centre presented the 1915 censorship trial of Lawrence’s The Rainbow through a series of Twitter posts in their exhibition No Right to Exist: The Rainbow and Other Books Which Shocked. This condensed the complexities of the trial into a series of 140 character posts, allowing younger audiences to explore the debate in a familiar format and go on to consider what we consider scandalous in literature today.

My own work has included the co-production of Walking with Lawrence, a digital walking tour written from Lawrence’s perspective which allows the listener to connect the author with the city they see today. The use of a creative narrative which is listened to rather than read provides a format that’s easier to understand, removing some of the barriers created by large amounts of text.

3. Collaborating with creative partners

Working with creative partners such as artists and writers can help museums to reach new audiences, providing more approachable information for younger generations in particular. Graphic novels and comic books are incredibly helpful in this respect. I’m working with Wirksworth Heritage Centre’s writer in residence Helen Greetham, who’s currently producing a graphic novel about the literary heritage of George Eliot in Wirksworth.

A similar project is underway in Eastwood, Nottinghamshire, working with young people to produce their own Lawrence-inspired graphic stories. The Eastwood Comics project aims to engage “700 further young people (who) will learn about the author and his birthplace by taking part in activities inspired by the young writers’ research”. Here, participation in creative projects and reading new stories help new generations to connect with Lawrence’s heritage in more meaningful ways than regurgitating information about the author.

The pandemic has provided an unprecedented challenge to the heritage sector, but the closure of our sites doesn’t mean we can’t continue to connect people to our history. These new and innovative ways that museums have engaged and inspired younger generations can continue regardless of whether physical buildings are open. In the months ahead, I hope more buildings take similar approaches.

Heather Green, PhD Candidate, Literary Heritage, Nottingham Trent University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Five tourist trips in England inspired by classic novels

Heather Green, Nottingham Trent University

Some books can really bring to life the place in which they’re set. Their words knit together in such a way that whole landscapes or entire floorplans of buildings you’ve never visited before spring forth in your mind.

Often these settings are based upon real places. So with domestic travel restrictions set to be relaxed from April, that might be the opportune moment to discover some of the UK’s best literary heritage sites. From violently beautiful windswept moors to boisterous town squares, here are five such places and the books they inspired:

1. Greenway, Devon in Agatha Christie’s Dead Man’s Folly

Poirot commented on the geography of the property, ‘So many paths, and one is never sure where they lead’ … They passed the Folly and zig-zagged down the path to the river.

Agatha Christie’s house at Greenway on the River Dart is the setting for her 1956 novel Dead Man’s Folly. About a charity game of murder that becomes a bit too real, this Hercule Poirot mystery vividly came to life on my visit to Greenway.

Not only is the Georgian house itself perfectly depicted, but the zig-zagging path to the murder scene in the boathouse is so uncannily described that to visit it is chilling. The house and grounds are so evocative that Greenaway was used in ITV’s 2013 adaptation of the book.

2. Nottingham in Alan Sillitoe’s Saturday Night and Sunday Morning

Market Square lights danced all around him.

Sillitoe’s cult novel set among the working class in Nottingham follows Arthur Seaton (rebel, thinker, drinker and womaniser) after he puts away 11 pints and seven gins one Saturday night.

Nottingham’s Market Square. Destinos Espetaculares/Shutterstock

Nottingham might have changed somewhat since 1958, but Sillitoe’s detailed descriptions of the city’s streets are still wonderfully recognisable. Nothing says Nottingham like wondering amid the drunken revellers in Market Square or experiencing the cacophony of the annual Goose Fair, one of the largest funfairs in the UK. The many locations Seaton visited over his fateful weekend can be further explored on The Sillitoe Trail.

3. Wirksworth, Derbyshire in George Eliot’s Adam Bede

Look at the canals, an’ th’ acqueducs, an’ th’ coal-pit engines, and Arkwright’s mills there at Cromford.

George Eliot’s Adam Bede (1859) provides a snapshot of the rural Midlands at the beginning of the 18th-century. Eliot’s aunt was a Methodist preacher in Wirksworth, and the local landscape, coupled with her aunt’s reminiscences, became the germ of the novel

Arkwright’s Mill, Cromford, Derbyshire. Daniel Matthams/Alamy

Thoough Eliot irritably rejected suggestions that any of her characters or settings were carbon copies of real life, Wirksworth can certainly be found in the industrial landscape that she conjures. Arkwright’s mills can be still be explored, the canal strolled along, and the remains of the mining industry discovered.

4. The West York Moors in Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights

But it was one of their chief amusements to run away to the moors in the morning and remain there all day, and the after-punishment grew a mere thing to laugh at.

Wuthering Heights (1847) is a tale of obsessive love. Divided in life, Cathy and Heathcliff are finally joined in death and their spirits roam the Yorkshire moors. For me, Emily Brontë’s classic is more about the landscape than love. When first reading the novel, my interest in Cathy and Heathcliff’s undying love was secondary to my imaginings of the moorland that is their playground and escape. The windswept barren landscape feels synonymous with freedom.

The ruins of the Top Withins farmhouse. Julian Hodgson/Shutterstock

You can walk in the Brontë sisters’ footsteps by following the Brontë Stones, which are situated between Thornton, where the girls were born, and Haworth, where they wrote their classic novels. The Emily Walk is marked by a poem carved into a rocky outcrop from Kate Bush, whose 1978 number one Wuthering Heights was inspired by the novel. The walk leads you away from civilisation and takes in the lovely ruins of Top Withins farmhouse, which is believed to be the inspiration for the Earnshaw home in Wuthering Heights.

5. Eastwood, Nottinghamshire in DH Lawrence’s Sons and Lovers

The Bottoms consisted of six blocks of miners’ dwellings, two rows of three, like the dots on a blank-six domino, and twelve houses in a block.

Lawrence’s most autobiographical novel, Sons and Lovers (1913), follows the fates of a mining family in Nottinghamshire.

The once coal-mining town of Eastwood and the surrounding landscape has been recreated in detail gleaned from Lawrence’s memories of his childhood, from The Breach where his family lived (“The Bottoms” in the novel) to descriptions of the Moon and Stars pub (actually the Three Tuns). Visiting The DH Lawrence Birthplace Museum, visitors can step inside a typical mining family home of the period.

Heather Green, PhD Candidate, Literary Heritage, Nottingham Trent University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

How to celebrate heritage when your subject is ‘nomadic to the point of frenzy’

Image from Dawn of the Unread. EH logo from wikimedia. Design James Walker.

In November 2020 I gave a talk to the London Group of the D.H. Lawrence Society about progress of the D.H. Lawrence Memory Theatre. This is a project that Paul Fillingham and I have been working on for five years or so now. But the main purpose of the talk was to discuss the best way to celebrate heritage. This is a subject I’m very passionate about. Here’s a couple of examples of how it can go horribly wrong.

Culture imposed from above

VIDEO: What's left of Jean-Pierre Raynaud's 1987 "Dialogue with History" Paris gift to Quebec City #cbcmtl pic.twitter.com/wBBZuBeIYF

— Catou MacKinnon (@CatouYOW) June 17, 2015

Culture that’s imposed from above can cause antagonism and resentment. An example of this would be a sculpture plonked into a community with little consultation or awareness of those left to gawp at it every day. Instead of inspiring individuals, it becomes a totem of discontent: ‘the money would have been better spent cleaning up graffiti’; ‘they could have built a playpark for kids’, etc. An example of this is Jean-Pierre Raynaud’s Dialogue with History (1987) which attempted to commemorate the arrival of French settlers to Canada through a series of white cubes but looked like a Rubik’s Cube with the colour stickers peeled off. Nicknamed the toilet, it was criticized for failing to fit in with its 18th century surroundings. It was flattened in 2015.

Vanity projects for the artist

A Sculpture to Mary Wollstonecraft by Maggi Hambling. Photo by Grim23 – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, wikimedia.

Some heritage is so divisive that discussions focus on the artist rather than the subject. An example of this is Maggi Hambling’s naked statue of feminist pioneer Mary Wollstonecraft, author of the A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792). It is appalling. Can you imagine someone commissioning a naked statue of Winston Churchill or Oliver Cromwell? Of course not. It wouldn’t happen. Hambling argued that her Silver Surfer statue wasn’t meant to represent Wollstonecraft, rather it’s for her. “Clothes define people,” she said, “As she’s Everywoman, I’m not defining her in any particular clothes.” But she’s not everywoman. She is slender, well- toned and perfectly formed. She is drawn from the male gaze, reinforcing the perfect body types that have oppressed women for decades. In terms of arousing public disgust, it is more offensive than Vasile Gorduz’s naked monument to Romania’s stray dogs, which is quite a feat…

The same old same old

DHL statue at Newstead Abbey. Phoenix in Eastwood.

Blue plaques and statues are great for selfies but rarely serve their purpose –capturing the spirit or essence of the person they claim to be celebrating. There is also a danger of over celebrating the life of a famous individual, and this is a problem I have with D.H. Lawrence’s birthplace of Eastwood.

Eastwood is in danger of becoming a Disney Park to Lawrence. Café’s, the Rainbow bus line, the Phoenix snooker hall, the local Wetherspoon, all bear some relation to his life and work. Some of this is done well, others not so. It must be suffocating for the locals to be constantly reminded of the man who couldn’t wait to get away from the place they are all stuck in during lockdown.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s great that we are celebrating our literary heritage and the Midlands should definitely aim for an equivalent of Bronte country or Hardy’s Wessex. But I just don’t think another statue will do it– the idea banded about by each new incoming Broxtowe MP. I explained why in a recent talk via Zoom to the London branch of the D.H. Lawrence Society.

Literary heritage requires imagination. D.H. Lawrence was a writer who was, according to Geoff Dyer, ‘nomadic to the point of frenzy’. He never settled in one place for more than two years and never owned any property. Despite this, heritage determines we render him static in perpetuity. If we are to celebrate Lawrence’s life, we need the form to reflect the content. We need something mobile, not static. This is the rationale behind the D.H. Lawrence Memory Theatre. It is a moveseum if you will; a travelling art exhibition modelled on Lawrence’s personal travel trunk, that curates Lawrence’s life through artefacts. It will retrace Lawrence’s steps across Europe and beyond, if and when we ever send Covid packing…

This project is not imposed from above but from within. It is a conversation. We want to create a space for many voices to think through the life of this contradictory and complex character. One artefact I want to include in the memory theatre is rage and so the talk helped generate reasons for Lawrence’s rage as well as ways that we can represent this as an artefact. You can read more about the talk in Catherine Brown’s review here.

Further Reading

• James Walker’s Memory Theatre talk to London Group of the D.H. Lawrence Society at catherinebrown.org
• ‘Insulting to her’: Mary Wollstonecraft sculpture sparks backlash at theguardian.com
• The 10 Most Hated Public Sculptures at artnet.com
• The role of community in the creation of value: the contribution of Stakeholder Theory at theaxiologicalperspective.wordpress.com
• The D.H. Lawrence Memory Theatre at memorytheatre.co.uk
• D.H. Lawrence is all the rage at torpedotheark.blogspot.com

English PEN launch a crowdfunding campaign to keep an annotated copy of Lady Chatterley’s Lover

Photograph: Sotheby’s.

It’s fair to say that British culture is defined by indecision. Presently, this is most evident with Brexit. On June 23, 2016 17.4 million voters (51.9 percent of the votes cast), backed leaving the EU while 16.1 million voters (48.1 percent of votes cast), favoured staying. The referendum proved one thing: the country was completely split. Nobody was entirely sure what they wanted. And so that split continues now, with talk of a second referendum and the countless permutations of possible exits. This has led the Tory party to implode as they squabble over who should be the next non-elected PM. We shouldn’t be surprised, though. This indecision was prevalent during the Civil War. In 1649 we executed Charles I for treason; had a very puritanical republic for eleven years under Oliver Cromwell; then restored Charles II to the throne in 1660.

As a nation, we oscillate with ease between seemingly binary opposites. We switch positions like musical chairs, and when the chairs have gone, we sit on the floor. I mention this because English PEN have launched a crowdfunding campaign to keep an annotated copy of Lady Chatterley’s Lover in the UK. The copy was annotated by Lady Dorothy Byrne, wife of the Hon. Sir Laurence Byrne, the presiding judge of the 1960 obscenity trial against Penguin books.

The Arts minister, Michael Ellis, has determined that the book should stay in the UK and not be exported abroad. It is now deemed a national treasure, part of our literary heritage. The irony is not wasted on Lawrence scholars, given that the British government did everything it could to keep the novel out of print for so long. Lawrence was of regular interest to the censor. Other novels, poetry collections and a set of thirteen painting were all deemed unfit for public purpose, with copies of The Rainbow burned and the paintings locked up in a prison cell. It is little wonder that Lawrence dedicated so much energy towards getting out of England as quickly as he could and as far away as he could – travelling across Europe, Australia, and the Americas.

Philippe Sands QC, President of English PEN, said:

“D.H. Lawrence was an active member of English PEN and unique in the annals of English literary history. Lady Chatterley’s Lover was at the heart of the struggle for freedom of expression, in the courts and beyond. This rare copy of the book, used and marked up by the judge, must remain in the UK, accessible to the British public to help understand what is lost without freedom of expression. This unique text belongs here, a symbol of the continuing struggle to protect the rights of writers and readers at home and abroad.”

The copy was recently sold at auction to an overseas bidder for £56,250. English PEN have created a ‘Go Fund Me’ page to match the bid and keep it in Blightly. It is with this in mind that we have produced another short film for you that addresses parochialism and Lawrence’s views of the British. Written in 1924, Lawrence was infuriated that “an island no bigger than a back garden” should have such an inflated sense of grandeur. How true that sentiment remains today.

In the DH Lawrence Memory Theatre we want to address various aspects of Lawrence’s life through artefacts to try to understand this complex writer. How do we represent the Lady Chatterley Trial? How do we determine what is obscene and what should be censored?  In 2019 we begin building our Memory Theatre and retracing Lawrence’s savage pilgrimage both physically and digitally. If you have an idea for an artefact get involved and submit ideas here

Lawrence and Sillitoe celebrated as rebel writers by Forza Garibaldi at the City Ground.

D.H. Lawrence made an unlikely appearance at the City Ground on 26 February as Forest hosted arch rivals Derby County. Lawrence was one of five local ‘rebels’ celebrated in large banners alongside suffragette Helen Watts, fictitious leader of the luddites Ned Ludd, author Alan Sillitoe, Eric Irons – the first Black magistrate, and ode Big Head, Brian Clough. The banners were organised by Forest supporters’ group Forza Garibaldi. In the previous outing with Derby, Forza organised a large flag depicting Guiseppe Garibaldi as well as opening the previous season with a ‘Rise of the Garibaldi’ banner. The spectacles have caused great excitement for fans as well as evoking a sense of civic pride, and it’s had an impact on the players with some of them coughing up to fund the banners.

After years of mouthing off at the rest of the world, Nottingham has slowly started to stand up for itself and think about its own identity. There’s been a bit of a rebranding exercise of late, with the idea of the ‘Rebel City’ starting to take shape, creating more pride than the £120,000 spent on the ‘Slanty N’ in 2005. Part of the ‘Rebel City’ idea is coming from the £29.4 million investment into the Castle which is using the Hood legend to link out to wider examples of rebellion within the city. Rebellion (or to use the more UNESCO friendly alternative – ‘contrarian’) was a feature of the Nottingham UNESCO City of Literature bid. Rebel writers were also featured in our previous project Dawn of the Unread, as well as a large banner on Station Street organised by Rob Howie Smith and others.

Writing on their blog, Forza explained: “The city’s rebel heritage runs deep; it has passed through the centuries and across various forms. While certainly not an exclusive trait of Nottingham it has developed a reputation for being a place where the locals will stand up for what they believe and support each other. It is that underdog spirit that has been a bedrock of Nottingham and one that has seeped into the consciousness of many of its residents.”

I think the Forza campaign is superb as it’s got fans discussing things they would perhaps not have discussed otherwise. Hearing people say, ‘Who’s she?’ and ‘I’ve heard of him, didn’t he write that dotteh book?’ is a great way of capturing the imagination of the city and creating a sense of identity and place. Forest are in the top 20 of best attended clubs in the UK so these messages are reaching a large audience.

Image from http://www.forzagaribaldi.com

However, if Lawrence or Sillitoe had ever attended a football match it would most likely be at Meadow Lane. Arthur Seaton wears a Notts County scarf in Saturday Night and Sunday Morning and the pit strikers in Lawrence’s short story ‘Strike Pay’ have just returned from a match between County and Villa.

As far as I am aware, neither author was a fan of football. I wrote to Sillitoe many years ago asking him what he thought would have happened to Arthur Seaton if his father had been Brian Clough (at the time I had been asked to write a book about Clough, spent three years researching it, then decided not to go ahead with it because there were so many being churned out I felt like I was capitalising on his death). Sillitoe wrote back and said he didn’t have much interest in football.

Sillitoe’s only story to feature football is ‘The Match’ which appears in the short story collection The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner. It opens with a game between County and Bristol City on a cold winter’s day, a game which County lose. The match is watched by forty year-old Lennox, a mechanic who knew County would lose ‘because he himself, a spectator, hadn’t been feeling in top form’ and Fred, recently married and much younger, who wears his ‘best sports coat’ rather than the tribal colours of his team. After seeing his team defeated, Lennox returns home and takes it out on his wife, she eventually leaves him. Fred, who lives next door, overhears the argument. His 19 year-old wife is “plump like a pear, not round like a pudding, already pregnant though they’d only been married a month”. They are young and full of hope, but a couple of decades down the line…

Image from http://www.forzagaribaldi.com

Lawrence wrote three strike-inspired stories, ‘Strike Pay’, ‘The Miner at Home’ and ‘Her Turn’ during March 1912. This was a reaction to the first National coal strike which aimed to secure a minimum wage. It started at the end of February in Alfreton, Derbyshire and spread nationally. It ended on 6 April after 37 days and resulted in over one million striking miners. Strike Pay (I and II) was published in the Westminster Gazette on 6 and 13 September 1913.

Like Sillitoe’s ‘The Match’, Lawrence’s reference to football acts as a backdrop to wider social issues. At eleven o’clock, a gang of striking miners set off on a nine mile walk to Nottingham.

“The road was crowded with colliers travelling on foot to see the match between Notts and Aston Villa… It was a good match between Notts and Villa — no goals at half-time, two-none for Notts at the finish. The colliers were hugely delighted, especially as Flint, the forward for Notts, who was an Underwood man well known to the four comrades, did some handsome work, putting the two goals through.”

1910s cigarette card. Exact date and author unknown.

Interestingly, Lawrence does reference a real footballer and a real match. Notts County played Aston Villa on Wednesday March 13, 1912. According to the Gottfried Fuchs blogging site Billy Flint, who went on to represent County 408 times (1908-26), is credited as scoring both goals but this is factually incorrect. He scored one, the other was by Billy Matthews.

Lawrence’s short story was turned into an ITV Play of the Week and was aired on 6 June 1967 staring Angela Morant, John Ronane and Bill Kenwright. The director was Richard Everitt.

Forza Garibaldi have done a fantastic job in creating a real sense of civic pride through football. On their website they explain that Lawrence’s inclusion on their banners isn’t for all of the usual reasons we might associate with Lawrence but because he spoke out on behalf of black writers and that he was ’… a rebel and unrelenting enemy of oppression and repression in whatever form he encountered them.’’ Their source was a 1990 article by Leo Hamalian in the Journal of Modern Literature. I’d never heard about this before myself, and now, thanks to a banner at a football match, have tracked down the article and am about to learn more. Molto buona, Forza. Grazie.

In the DH Lawrence Memory Theatre we want to address various aspects of Lawrence’s life through artefacts to try to understand this complex writer. How do we get across Lawrence’s short stories about the miners strike of 1912? Is there space for one of the banners by Forza Garibaldi? In 2019 we begin building our Memory Theatre and retracing Lawrence’s savage pilgrimage both physically and digitally. If you have an idea for an artefact get involved and submit ideas here

‘Track Nottingham’ Paper Boats on Private Road

Photo Shaun Belcher.

Shaun Belcher started a multimedia project in 2010 exploring local history in two locations, one of which was Nottingham. He began uncovering some incredible stories, such as Albert Einstein giving a guest lecture at Nottingham University College (as it was known then) on 6 June 1930. A section of blackboard he used to show his calculations is preserved in the university’s archives. The university also holds many artefacts relating to D.H. Lawrence, but we’ll come back to his connection with the College later on.

As Shaun began to amass more of these hidden histories he began to share his findings through art, talks and more recently, poetry. For the 2018 Nottingham Poetry Festival the poems were written ‘large’ and illustrated for display in Jermy & Westerman’s secondhand bookshop on Mansfield Road.

The project has the working title of Track Nottingham which Shaun explains “takes individual ‘derives’ as the starting point for poems that literally ‘track’ individuals’ movement through urban and rural space and their interactions with the current technology to analyse how art and technology interact.”

Photograph Shaun Belcher.

So far he has written three poems about Picasso, Chaplin and DH. Lawrence which neatly bookend three concurrent aspects of modernity in Painting – Film – Literature. Shaun said “I am interested in the relation between technology and how these individuals were enabled to move and in turn have their works ‘distributed’ by the new channels of literary and film distribution and their link to networks of travel especially the railway.” Through poetry, Shaun hopes to map these hinterlands of change. He is keen to stress that “no person is an island and no artist is independent of the tentacles of mass distribution and technological change”. The poems are also stories about relationships played out against 19th, 20th and 21st century backdrops. One of these relationships is that of DH Lawrence and Frieda Weekley.

After coming first in the King’s Scholarship Examination in 1904, Lawrence received a grant to attend Nottingham University College (now part of the Arkwright building owned by NTU) but had to work for a year as an uncertified teacher at the British School in Eastwood in order to save £20 for the advance fees. He enrolled in September 1906 at the age of 21 and graduated in 1908. Although he found the experience disappointing he was interested in the botany and French course taught by Prof Ernest Weekley, the then husband of Lawrence’s future wife Frieda. Frieda and Ernest Weekley lived on Private Road, Sherwood and an enthusiastic Lawrence came to have a chat with his Professor one afternoon and immediately fell in love with Frieda. There are varying accounts on how quickly the two became lovers but which ever version of history you believe, the relationship was built on pain and against the backdrop of World War I. This had particular resonance as Frieda was not only a married woman, but a distant relation of Manfred von Richthofen, the “Red Baron”. All of which inspired Shaun to write the following poem.

PAPER BOATS ON PRIVATE ROAD

A lone slim figure in Sunday best gets off the tram on Woodborough Road,
Hesitates then proceeds down Private Road until it dog-legs east at his destination
As he turns along the high brick wall he hears children’s laughter, a maid calling
He stands at the gate hidden by trees and calls, the maid comes to the gate

Later she recalls his patent leather shoes and his smart appearance that day
Frieda stands at the French Windows, behind the red curtains, eyes sparkling like a hawk
He is ushered into the sitting room, red velvet curtains caught in the breeze billowing
Initial stiffness is washed away in a heated conversation about Oedipus and women

D.H. Lawrence is being bewitched by this most ‘un-English’ and strong-willed of women,
Her exotic and erotic vibrancy entrances him, already struggling to escape this England
Her husband delayed by work she leads him past then in to her bedroom,
An English sparrow in the talons of a German hawk he is taken in hand, finds himself

Then they are both entwined in secrecy, taking tram and train to secret assignations
One day with her daughters they play on a local stream with paper boats
He flicks matches at them saying look it is the Spanish Armada come to sink England
Two paper boats catching fire in a Nottinghamshire backwater, then phoenix-like rising

From the crazed machinery of Edwardian England, the conservatism of suburbia
Sometimes of an evening Frieda would dash up Mapperley Plains just seeking freedom
In a cottage near Moor Green they continued their first loving act on Private Road
Under Pear-blossom, ‘a fountain of foam’, Frieda crawls naked over him, he writes a poem

To her and to freedom, to his sexual and intellectual fulfilment with a gushing woman
By May 3rd they were sat together on a night-boat to Ostend, that old England fading
A peaceful Anglo-German union as the two empires ramped up production of munitions and cruisers
The Suffragette movement beginning… the war to end all wars looming.

Paper boats burning…

In the DH Lawrence Memory Theatre we want to address various aspects of Lawrence’s life through artefacts.  How do we get across Lawrence’s relationship with Frieda? If Ernest Weekley hadn’t excelled in his teaching, Lawrence would never have visited his house. Can we convey this chance encounter somehow? In 2019 we will be building our Memory Theatre and retracing Lawrence’s savage pilgrimage both physically and digitally. If you have an idea for an artefact, get involved and submit ideas here.

RELATED READING

• Shaun Belcher’s website (shaunbelcher.com)
• Download Shaun’s Burning Books mini-pamphlet (shaunbelcher.com)
• Ernest Weekley A Dilemma in Biography (academia.edu)
• Remembering Einstein (blogs.nottingham.ac.uk)
• University acquires personal archive of DH Lawrence (nottingham.ac.uk)
• Frieda Lawrence (encyclopedia.com)

Tongue and Talk: Dialect poetry featuring D.H. Lawrence

Source: Dawn of the Unread.

DH Lawrence was a master of dialect. His plays, novels and poetry captured the rawness of mining communities with such precision, it frightened the life out of middle class Edwardian critics. As part of a BBC Radio 4 series Tongue and Talk: Dialect Poets, I’ll be visiting Lawrence’s childhood home Breach House, and exploring ‘pit talk’ and the Nottingham accent with various poets and musicians.    

Like DH Lawrence, I grew up in a mining village. Whereas he was born north east of Nottingham in Eastwood, I was raised in Cotgrave, five miles south east of the city centre. Cotgrave derives from an Old English personal name, Cotta, + grāf, (grove or copse). So over time we went from ‘Cotta’s grove’ to the more sinister Cotgrave. Our respective divides across the city also influence the way we speak and use dialect, even though we might be referring to the same word. This is best illustrated by the commonly used word ‘mardy’. I pronounce this ‘mardeh’ using what Al Needham calls the south Notts ‘eh’ or ‘ah’. Living on the Derbyshire border, Lawrence would have experienced the trimming off of syllables, shortening it to mard as in ‘Eh, tha’rt a mard-arsed kid’ a famous line from his poem The Collier’s Wife.

Mardy is a brilliant word. It means sulky, as in a badly behaved child, and is used throughout the East Midlands as well as parts of Sheffield and Yorkshire. However, it can also mean non cooperative, bad tempered or terse in communication, attributes we can definitely associate with DH Lawrence. In 2017 Toby Campion selected it as his word for Leicester as part of the Free the Word campaign.

The modern headstocks of Cotgrave Colliery (L) source East Midlands Mining Heritage. Brinsley Colliery headstocks (R) where Lawrence’s father worked. Photo James Walker.

Lawrence came from a family of coal miners. His father, Arthur, worked as a butty. The butty was popular during the early part of the nineteenth century when the coal miners were not directly employed by the owners. The butty acted as a contractor, putting together a team to mine coal at an agreed price per ton. I had a slightly different experience growing up. My mother was a typist and my stepfather was a manager of a company in Mansfield. But in the eyes of the locals, anyone who didn’t work down the pit was a ‘posho’. Therefore we were fair game for the occasional kicking. These were rough times, particularly during the Strike of 84. Like Lawrence, I couldn’t wait to escape.

Lawrence would vividly capture life growing up in a mining community in novels such as Sons and Lovers, his Eastwood trilogy of plays, and dialect poetry such as The Collier’s Wife. I’ve done this through a BBC Radio 4 series called Tongue and Talk: The Dialect Poets. In episode 2, broadcast on Sunday 20 May at 4.30pm, I’ll be exploring the Notts dialect and the ‘pit talk’ of mining communities.

One of the guests on the programme is David Amos, an eight generation miner and fellow member of the DH Lawrence Society. David has been working as a research assistant with Natalie Braber at Nottingham Trent University on mining heritage projects. He invited me to attend a rehearsal for Songs and Rhymes from the Mines as part of the Nottingham Poetry Festival. Bill Kerry III told me he had discovered that his grandfather had worked down Ormonde Colliery at the same time as Owen Watson, author of Strong I’th’ Arm – The Rhymes of a Marlpool Miner (1975) and so he’s turning his poems into folk songs to make them accessible to new generations. Meanwhile Al Rate (who also uses the pseudonym Misk Hills) has penned some new songs inspired by pit talk, introducing new generations to words such as ‘powder monkey’. This was the poor bogger who had to set off the explosives down the mine. Such songs are a reminder of how dangerous life was down the pit, something beautifully captured in Lawrence’s poem The Collier’s Wife. In this, a miner has had yet another accident down the pit:

It’s a shame as ‘e should be knocked about

Like this, I’m sure it is!

‘E’s ‘ad twenty accidents, if ‘e’s ‘ad one;

Owt bad, an’ it’s his!

A visual narrative celebrating D. H. Lawrence’s dialect poem by Russell Hopkins at Cargo Collective. © Russell Hopkins 2018. See his website for more examples of experiments in typography.

The wife in the poem has seen and heard it all before and is more bothered about the compensation as food still needs to be put on the plate. You can hear David Amos read the entire poem is one go during our show. I only managed the first verse.

When Lawrence used dialect in his early plays about life in a mining community they were dismissed as a ‘sordid picture of lower class life’ with middle class Edwardian critics unimpressed with ‘its lack of verbal beauty’. Lawrence was a master of dialect, using multiple variations of speech patterns that drew influences from the Erewash Valley, Derbyshire and Notts. By using dialect, Lawrence enabled the reader to understand a collier’s particular social class, their education, and their intelligence. The way his characters spoke represented the history of the community, even down to what street they lived on.

Lawrence’s family moved many times across Eastwood, upscaling each time. So during the programme we visit ‘Breach House’ where the family of seven lived between 1887 until 1891. To enter Breach House is to step back in time to Edwardian Britain. Moleskin trousers hang up above the fireplace, the snap tin is on the table, and the Bible and piano take pride of place in the ‘best’ room. Of course it would have been nice to record the show in Durban House, where a young Lawrence and other miner’s sons would go and collect their father’s wages, but this was sold off by Broxtowe Council and has now been converted into a spa – which I guess is more preferable than a Spar.

David Amos holding up a pair of Moleskin trousers. Plaque outside Breach House. Photos by James Walker.

Breach House was the inspiration for The Bottoms in Sons and Lovers, my favourite Lawrence novel. It opens with this wonderful description:

‘To accommodate the regiments of miners, Carston, Waite and Co. built the Squares, great quadrangles of dwellings on the hillside of Bestwood, and then, in the brook valley, on the site of Hell Row, they erected the Bottoms. The Bottoms consisted of six blocks of miners’ dwellings, two rows of three, like the dots on a blank-six domino, and twelve houses in a block.”

The novel also helped solve another mysterious word from my childhood: blue. But if you want to know what this means then either read Sons and Lovers or tune into Talk and Tongue on the iPlayer. Let us know what you think on Twitter using the hashtag #TalkandTongue. The programme was a Made in Manchester production.

In the DH Lawrence Memory Theatre we want to address various aspects of Lawrence’s life through artefacts. How do we represent his childhood growing up in Eastwood? What role does coal have to play in his writing? How can we incorporate dialect into our memory theatre? In 2019 we will be building our Memory Theatre and retracing Lawrence’s savage pilgrimage both physically and digitally. If you have an idea for an artefact, get involved. Submit ideas here.

RELATED READING

• Tongue and Talk: Dialect Poets (bbc.co.uk)
• Made in Manchester (madeinmanchester.tv)
• Nottingham Dialect and Mining Culture Documentary to be Broadcast on BBC Radio 4 – LeftLion.co.uk
• Tongue and Talk: DH Lawrence and dialect – thedigitailgrimage.wordpress.com
• Pit poetry and Notts dialect dawnoftheunread.wordpress.com
• Tongue and Talk guest blog writingeastmidlands.co.uk
• Talking Notts on wireless nottinghamcityofliterature.com
• Language, mining and poetry ntu.ac.uk
• Visual narrative of A Collier’s Wife (cargocollective.com)
• Aah ter Talk Notts (leftlion.co.uk)
• Dialect Poems by DH Lawrence (petergill7.co.uk)
• David Amos’ Mining heritage (miningheritage.co.uk)
• A History of Coalming in Ten Objects (miningheritage.co.uk)

Literary heritage: Victor Hugo and Vianden

The view from Victor Hugo’s room with Vianden castle in the distance. Photo James Walker.

It’s been a challenging year for the DH Lawrence Society with the recent closure of Durban House. But there’s reasons to be optimistic. Visit Britain recently announced a funding initiative ‘Destination Britain North America’ hoping to attract tourists from across the pond to the region. Possible locations on their itinerary could include Lawrence’s Birthplace Museum or Breach House in Eastwood. It was with this in mind that I recently headed over to Vianden, Luxembourg to visit Victor Hugo’s former home (37 Rue de la Gare) to see how they preserve their literary heritage.  

Lawrence wasn’t a fan of Victor Hugo’s poetry. In a letter to Henry Savage (11 July 1913) he dismissed it as ‘strutting stuff’ accusing him of being a ‘loud trumpeter’. Lawrence also made short shrift of Hugo’s Les Miserables (1862) complaining ‘the tragic fate of the humble poor was the stunt of that day. Les Miserables stands out as the great monument to this stunt’. It’s the kind of observation that could easily lead to Lawrence being interpreted as a fascist but, as James Moran points out, ‘in Lawrence’s plays the working-class characters refuse pity and certainly avoid humility, instead appearing with complex motives and desires, as the opposite of the tendency that he identified in Hugo’.

Victor Hugo was a political exile who fled France in protest at Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte, the Emperor of the French from 1852 to 1870. His 19 years of exile took him across Europe, with Vianden becoming a regular stop off point between 1862 and 1871. Although he didn’t write any novels while here he wrote around 50 poems. But his diaries and letters are what intrigued me the most as they offer important insights into his personality. For example, on 14 July 1871, a fire broke out, setting ablaze the thatched roofs of ten downtown houses. With the Mayor away on business, Hugo took control, organising a line of buckets to pass water through the night.

Bust of Victor Hugo on the bridge. The Fantastic Castle painting. Photo by James Walker.

Hugo was a keen artist and 60 of his 3,500 wash drawings reference Luxembourg. One of these, The Fantastic Castle (1847), is of a medieval castle and includes a body hanging from a pole. Hugo was highly critical of capital punishment, largely because he had seen so many French Communards executed during the civil war for their beliefs, and so this tiny dangling body juxtaposed against the towering walls of the castle captures the powerlessness of ordinary citizens in the face of brute force.

The Victor Hugo House is on a bridge and runs over two floors. Hugo lived here for two and a half months in 1871, his longest stay in Vianden. He rented one room on the first floor, with three windows overlooking the Our river and the imposing 10^th century castle Ville et Château, which is now a UNESCO World Heritage Centre. In 2002 a wall was removed to enlarge the room and it now replicates the original room, with a sculpture of Hugo (by Herbert Labusga) sat down writing at a desk. Framing this are various letters as well as a 15 minute audiovisual show (in French) in which professional actors and musicians recreate aspects of his life.

The museum was first conceived of on 30 June 1935 when a Victor Hugo committee was formed. The inaugural speeches didn’t touch on Hugo’s political views given the rise of extremist movements at the time. But this changed a fortnight later when 2000 young people, gathered by the students’ association ASSOSS, demonstrated against the pervasive forces of Nazism and Fascism. Extracts from Hugo’s Chatiments/Punishments (1853) were read out, warning against the dangers of totalitarian socio-political regimes. This struck a chord with the gathered masses, earning Hugo the title of ‘keeper of the Grail of human rights’. The main speaker, Frantz Clement, would later be assassinated at the concentration camp of Dachau.

During the war the house remained open, operating as a library with nationalist books. The bust of Hugo which had been placed on the bridge in 1935 was removed to be kept safe from looters. It was found in a hearse after the war. When the Nazi’s left Vianden on 12 September 1944 they blew up the bridge. The house was so badly damaged it had to be flattened. It was reconstructed to the exact dimensions and opened on 1 August 1948.

The attic in the Victor Hugo museum and me next to one of the many places named after the French author. Photograph Billy Walker.

I knew barely anything about Victor Hugo before I visited the museum, and so is yet another reminder of the importance of preserving literary heritage. Audio guides are available which will keep you occupied for a good two to three hours. In the attic are banners with quotations hanging from wood beams, a library containing various editions of his work, and interactive terminals with access to over 500 documents, biographies and a series of literary games to help younger audiences better understand his legacy. One of these is a puzzle game whereby you piece together jumbled up elements of some of his paintings. It’s a clever touch, educating through play.

Vianden is also home to the Caricature and Cartoon Museum (48 Grand-Rue) but is only open between June and August. The Ancien Cinema Cafe-Club (23 Grand-Rue) is also worth a visit. In addition to an eclectic mix of furniture and a range of drinks and sandwiches, it shows silent films in the day, making it a great spot to do some writing. A return to Vianden (50mins on train, 15 mins on bus) is 6 Euros.

Musée littéraire Victor Hugo, 37, rue de la Gare, L-9420 Vianden. Tel: (+352) 26 87 40 88 www.victor-hugo.lu  

Stakeholder engagement in ‘Creating England’s Literary Greats’

When Paul Fillingham and me put together a large scale digital literary heritage project we spend a good couple of years building up a portfolio of interested stakeholders. There are two main reasons we do this. Firstly, if we want to secure funding from the Arts Council then it’s vital that we secure at least 10% of our budgetary costs from private investors. This can either take the form of direct investment or support-in-kind. This reassures the Arts Council that we’re serious and that other organisations believe in what we’re doing. The second motivation concerns broadening audiences and marketing. By building partnerships with a wide variety of organisations we have lots of people promoting our project through their networks. This means a more diverse range of people visit our website and these statistics can then be used to validate funding.

Stakeholder engagement is one of nine processes that underpin UX methodology. UX methodology acts as a framework that enables us to think through each stage in the production and curation of a digital project. The ultimate purpose of UX methodology is to reduce risk, work more efficiently, achieve more value and deliver a better audience experience. If we’re getting funded by an external organisation we have a responsibility to ensure our project is value for money and that it does what it sets out to do.

Stakeholder engagement is stage two in our UX methodology. It appears pretty early on in our plans as there’s no point producing something if there’s no appetite for it. One of the key theorists for explaining this process is  R. Edward Freeman of the Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia. In the video at the top of the page he makes some very interesting points that are worth bearing in mind when putting together a project.

Firstly, he argues: “You can’t look at any one stakeholder in isolation. Their interest has to go together and the job of a manager is to figure out how the interests of customers, suppliers, communities, employees and financiers go in the same direction.” Freeman goes on to argue that business and ethics need to work in harmony. Whereas old school industrial capitalism had a faceless approach to business due to the emphasis on the pursuit of profit, Freeman believes stakeholder theory gives a ‘face’ and ‘name’ to individuals. It humanises working relationships. He even goes as far as to suggest:  “what makes capitalism work is our desire to create value for each other. Not our desire to compete. Capitalism is the greatest system of social collaboration ever invented. It’s about how we cooperate together to create value for each other.”

PPT presentation slide by Nottingham UNESCO City of Literature.

With this in mind I invited Sandy Mahal, the director of UNESCO Nottingham City of Literature, to a module I am teaching at NTU that equips students with the skills to create their own digital literary projects. City of Literature are a vital stakeholder in our project not only because of the prestige and validation their association brings, but also because of the contacts they can offer, the relationships they are able to build, and the knowledge and experience they can share. We also share a common ‘value’ – we believe in Nottingham’s literary heritage. In the short spell that Sandy has been in post she has overseen some very exciting projects, including Story Smash, a collaboration with libraries and the National Video Game Arcade, and, more recently, with Visit Britain. It was this latter project that I was particularly interested in.

Source: Nottingham UNESCO City of Literature.

The Discover England Fund, administered by Visit England, has made £40 million available to projects that can enhance England’s tourism to overseas visitors through the project ‘Creating England’s Literary Greats‘. Focusing on the US travel trade, the project aims to explore the demand for increased literary themed visits to England, introducing new ideas for itineraries and presenting them to US tour operators to sell in their programmes.

Brendan Moffett, chief executive of Visit Nottinghamshire said:

“This is fantastic news for Nottinghamshire and we’re thrilled to have been awarded this opportunity to test the market to see if there’s an appetite for US tourists to explore our literary legends and their attractions, including DH Lawrence Birthplace Museum and Newstead Abbey.

The concept behind the project is based on research from VisitBritain, which has found that more than a third of overseas visitors want to see places from film and literature, and that almost half visited museums, art galleries, castles or historic houses – demonstrating the significance of the UK’s heritage and culture.

As part of this project, additional research will be commissioned to test if there is a real market for more literary themed visits, and we plan on making the most of this opportunity for Nottinghamshire to learn from experts in this field such as the Shakespeare’s Birthplace Museum and Jane Austen’s House Museum.”

Being aware of the principles and narratives that underpin the City of Literature team help us to think about how our project may support or enhance these aims. Source: PPT slide from Nottingham UNESCO City of Literature talk.

Given that we intend to launch our travelling Memory Theatre in 2019 to mark the hundred year anniversary since Lawrence left England and embarked on his savage pilgrimage, this is a funding opportunity that directly relates to our project on numerous levels. Therefore, inviting Sandy in gave us an opportunity to understand her aims and how our project might support or enhance them.

Historically, Nottingham has been pretty rubbish at promoting and celebrating its literary heritage. We’ve been a lot happier shouting at others rather than shouting up for ourselves. But this is changing thanks to a lot of inspirational people in Nottingham – Henry Normal, Jared Wilson, Norma Gregory, Panya Banjoko, Rob Howie Smith, Leanne Moden, Pippa Hennessy, ‘Lord’ Beestonia and Ross Bradshaw are just a few names that spring to mind. Paul and me have done our bit as well through the Sillitoe Trail, which celebrated the enduring legacy of Alan Sillitoe’s Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, as well as Dawn of the Unread, a graphic novel celebrating Nottingham’s literary history, which City of Literature have supported by commissioning and publishing it as a learning resource to help improve literacy levels.

Source: Nottingham City of Literature.

So far we’ve not been very good at celebrating DH Lawrence’s heritage. The recent closure of Durban House – and the flippant distribution of subsequent artefacts, as well as the building of a school that obscures a view of ‘the country of my heart’ suggest we’re stripping away our heritage rather than valuing it. This recent allocation of funding might help to address the balance.

Bearing in mind the principles of stakeholder theory and Freeman’s argument that ‘capitalism is the greatest system of social collaboration ever invented’ I think we can embrace these principles and attract tourism by constructing a very simple narrative that draws in a variety of relevant organisations. For example, after visiting the usual haunts in Eastwood, tourists could then be brought over to the Manuscripts and Special Collections department at the University of Nottingham and feast their eyes on the various Lawrence artefacts they’ve acquired over the years as well as Diana Thomson’s life-size bronze statue of Lawrence in the heart of the campus. They might take in a play at Lakeside while they are there as well. Or they could pop on the tram and head back into the city centre to visit the National Justice Museum for (pre-planned) talks on the Lady Chatterley Trial and its subsequent impact on freedom of expression. From here there’s the potential of a literary walk using local storytellers. We already have Chris Richardson (Chartism) and Ade Andrews (Robin Hood) offering bespoke walking tours, but Paul and me would be interested in putting together a Lawrence inspired walk in collaboration with the DH Lawrence Society. If there is a desire for this we could include details of walks in our memory theatre, or create an App…

There’s plenty of Lawrence sites in Nottingham. A good starting point is the Arkwright Building at NTU, formerly University College Nottingham. It was here – shortly after his 21st birthday in 1906 – that Lawrence trained to be a teacher, enrolling on a full-time degree course. Lawrence became disillusioned with the standard of teaching and left in 1908, deciding not to bother with a degree. His disillusionment is captured in the poem ‘Nottingham’s New University’ in Pansies (1929). He would be even more disillusioned at the level of education today on discovering the plaque commemorating his time at the college is wrong!

From here the tour could continue up the hill to Nottingham High School, situated upon a steep sandstone ridge. Founded in 1513, it’s the former school of Lawrence, Geoffrey Trease – author of 113 books, and more recently the playwright Michael Eaton. Around the High School are various locations that would inspire Lawrence’s debut novel The White Peacock. For those feeling energetic, a 30 minute walk down Mansfield Rd into Carrington will eventually lead to Private Road, where Lawrence met Frieda Weekley and convinced her to leave her husband and children and elope with him. The walk could finish at the Nottingham Writers’ Studio – a potential home for our memory theatre – where local writers could discuss issues from Lawrence’s life, such as the censorship they may feel as a result of their gender, ethnicity or world outlook.

Photograph of NTU students (L) and Sandy Mahal (R). Photo: James Walker.

All of these things are possible with proper planning and consultation. Together, Nottingham can bring real ‘value’ if people and organisations are brought into the conversation. But you can only be part of a conversation if you don’t know it’s happening, which is why I invited Sandy to come and talk to students today and why I will be inviting many other people as well. And if I haven’t invited you, dear reader, please get in touch.

In the DH Lawrence Memory Theatre we want to address aspects of Lawrence’s life through artefacts. We want to bring ‘value’ to his heritage and to do this we need as many collaborators as possible. If you have an idea you can submit ideas here.

D.H. Lawrence Festival 2017

Don’t be a mard arse and miss out on the fun. Get down to one of these events over the next couple of weeks. Full listings available at Experience Nottinghamshire

READING GROUP: “Fanny and Annie’
Monday 4th September, 7.00pm (Free)
Horse and Groom Pub, Moorgreen, NG16 2FE
You would presume that this short story revolves around the lives of the two characters in the title. But with Lawrence things are never that simple. Written in 1921, the year that women got the vote, we observe Harry’s relationship with Fannie and the ways in which men are able to get away with just about anything. The reading discussion is hosted by Dr. Andrew Harrison, author of the latest Lawrence biog.

TOUR OF BRITAIN
Wednesday 6 September (see website for updated times)
Eastwood Square and throughout the Town
120 of the world’s top cyclists will be racing through Eastwood and Brinsley as part of OVO Energy Tour of Britain – the UK’s premier road cycling race. To celebrate the Tour of Britain various activities will be taking place in Eastwood Square and throughout the town centre. To welcome the cyclists’ costumed guides from the D.H. Lawrence Birthplace Museum will be out touring Eastwood and meeting residents and giving out free masks of the bearded one.

CONTROVERSIES IN COAL
Thursday 7 September, 7.30pm (small charge on the door)
Kimberley School (Community Room) Newdigate Street, Kimberley, Nottingham NG16 2NJ
Illustrated talk by David Amos to the Chinemarelian (Kimberley) Historical Society. Internment, Impoundment and Intrigue at Harworth Colliery (1913-1924). The talk is about the near German colliery which was being developed at Harworth just prior to World War One and its subsequent demise on the outbreak of war. There is a strong local presence in the talk through the Barber Walker Company who took over the development of the colliery from 1917.

READINGS AND DRAMATISATIONS BY WAYNE FOSKETT
Friday 8 September, 6.00pm (£5 including a drink)
The Breach House Garden. The Breach House, 28 Garden Road, Eastwood, Nottinghamshire NG16 3FW
“Bottoms Up!” Readings and dramatisations of some comic and dialect elements from D.H. Lawrence’s works, with actor Wayne Foskett, as well as an opportunity to join in (after an interval and a drink or two) an ‘unrehearsed reading’ from “Sons and Lovers’. Entrance by pre booked ticket – numbers limited.
Info: mjgray220@gmail.com

THE D.H. LAWRENCE BIRTHPLACE MUSEUM OPEN DAY
Saturday 9 September, 11.00am – 4.00pm (Free)
8a Victoria Street, Eastwood, Nottingham NG16 3AW
We are opening our doors for FREE to celebrate D.H. Lawrence’s 132nd Birthday! Enjoy a taster tour of the ground floor of the museum, for absolutely no admission fee! Interactive demonstrations will be held in our Victorian Wash-house and we will be having an ‘open garden’ with Victorian games and crafts for all to enjoy. There is no need to book for this event, just come along and join the fun!

BREACH HOUSE OPEN DAY
9 Saturday and 10 Sunday September, 11.00am – 3.00pm (Free)
The Breach House, 28 Garden Road, Eastwood, Nottingham NG16 3FW
Members of the D.H. Lawrence Society will be on hand to guide visitors around this historic property. D.H. Lawrence and his family moved to ‘The Breach House’ from Victoria Street in 1887 and lived here until 1891. It became the inspiration for ‘The Bottoms’ in Lawrence’s novel, ‘Sons and Lovers’.

ORGAN RECITAL BY ALAN WILSON
Sunday 10 September, 3.00pm (£5 includes a drink)
Greasley Church, 10 Church Road, Greasley, Nottingham NG16 2AB
A programme chosen by a ‘one time local lad’ to reflect his memories and links to Lawrence and the local landscape. Alan hopes to present a programme which reflects Lawrence’s own enjoyment of music. He recalls that Lawrence knew the composer Peter Warlock (Heseltine) whom he met in November 1915. Warlock called Lawrence ‘the greatest literary genius of his generation’. Alan may also include music associated with Byron and Newstead. Acknowledgement is also to be made of the composer Eric Coates. “Music compositions and improvisations will entwine with local inspired poetry and prose, celebrating a heritage of rich culture within this neighbourhood presented on a fine historic organ in an atmospheric country church”

GUIDED WALK: STEPPING OUT WITH YOUNG BERT LAWRENCE
Monday 11 September, 11.00am Starting point: The White Lion (now called The Lion at Brinsley), Hall Lane, Brinsley, Notts, NG16 5AH [SK459488]. Use the pub carpark or on-street parking.
“Wednesday we shall walk to Codnor Castle – we shall be out all day…” (D.H. Lawrence to Blanche Jennings, 30th July 1908)
According to Jessie Chambers – whose influence on Lawrence’s writing career cannot be overestimated – the young Bert Lawrence loved to organise walking parties: ‘explorations of the countryside’ of which ‘Lawrence was always the originator and the leader’, as she put it in her memoir ‘D.H. Lawrence: A Personal Record [1935]’. Join us, on Lawrence’s birthday, for a walk to one of Lawrence’s favourite destinations: the ruined, 13th-century Codnor Castle, once the administrative heart of much of the local area and home, for nearly 300 years, of generations of the de Grey family, who were local dignitaries and trusted lieutenants of successive kings of England. This is a moderate, 6-mile circular walk, with a number of stiles. Bring a packed lunch, though tea, coffee and cakes will be served at Codnor Castle Farm on arrival.

The D.H.LAWRENCE BIRTHDAY LECTURE
Monday 11 September, 7.30pm (Free)
The Hall Park Academy, Mansfield Road, Nottingham NG16 3EA
“The Art of Living; D.H. Lawrence and Health”
Speaker: Dr. Jeff Wallace of Cardiff Metropolitan University

For more information about other events going on during the festival please download the programme from Experience Nottinghamshire website

To join the DH Lawrence Society please see their official website