Tenderness, page 67
While Tenderness is a ‘dialogue’ across time with Lady Chatterley, it is not a substitute for it. I hope some readers of my novel might return to D. H. Lawrence’s novel, or go on to discover it for the first time.
Although a work of fiction, Tenderness grew out of extensive research – archival, travel-based and textual. Above all, it is a celebration of Lawrence’s daring and vision, and the courage of the publishers, lawyers and witnesses who put their heads above the parapet to defend one novel. It’s a testament to the power of readers and the human imagination. It’s a story about life itself – life lived against the odds, amid the flux of its failures and everyday beauty.
Alison MacLeod
10 May 2021
Acknowledgements
This novel has long been in the making, and there are many people who have been vital in helping it come into being as it is now, in your hands or on your screen.
I would like to thank my agent, David Godwin. After almost twenty years at DGA, I continue to find his passion for good writing inspirational. I’m grateful, too, to Philippa Sitters and Heather Godwin, for their thoughtful efforts on behalf of my work.
I am grateful, above all, to Alexandra Pringle, Executive Publisher of Bloomsbury Publishing. Her innate understanding of this novel, from its earliest promise to publication, has been a gift of trust, patience and insight. At each stage, I have benefitted from her legendary editorial talent and verve, as well as her intelligence and kindness.
I am privileged to have the support and expertise of Anton Mueller, Executive Editor of Bloomsbury USA, an unfailingly generous champion of Tenderness. His passion for it helped to sustain me through the long ‘lockdown’ of writing. I continue to be touched by and grateful for his commitment to my work.
At Bloomsbury, I would like also to offer my sincere thanks to the following people who have helped to publish my books so brilliantly: Paul Baggaley, Ros Ellis, Sarah Ruddick, Greg Heinimann, Patti Ratchford, Kathleen Farrar, Marie Coolman, Allegra Le Fanu, Morgan Jones, Rachel Wilkie, Philippa Cotton, Laura Meyer, Angelique Tran Van Sang, Katie Aitken-Quack, Tara Kennedy, Ellen Whitaker, Nicole Jarvis, Amber Mears-Brown, Grace McNamee, Francesca Sturiale, Natasha Qureshi, Georgina Slater, Amy Wong, Jude Crozier, Carrie Hsieh, Suzanne Keller, Callie Garnett, Madeleine Feeny, Rachel Mannheimer, Jo Forshaw and Tom Skipp. I’m indebted to Sarah-Jane Forder for her excellent eye and her generous company at the copy-edit stage; also to Ellis Levine for his care and guidance on questions related to copyright.
I am grateful to Nigel Newton, Founder and Publisher of Bloomsbury, for providing an impeccable publishing home for writers. As the story of Tenderness hopefully illustrates, the efforts of great literary publishers can be far-reaching and profound.
At Penguin Canada, I am fortunate to have another extraordinary publisher, Nicole Winstanley, who has created a place for my work in my native country for more than fifteen years, and who has been a source of intelligent, warm and generous support. I must also thank Stephen Myers, Manager of Marketing & Publicity at Penguin CA, for his kindness and calm professionalism.
I am indebted to my family for their good spirits throughout: my mother, Freda, and Kate, Ellen, Ian and Liz; also to Theresa Burgess, a steadfast friend and supporter of my writing.
Karen Stevens and Hugh Dunkerley have been generous writer-friends, and I am, again, thankful. I would like to convey, too, my gratitude to Glynis Ross, David Craig, Vicki Feaver and Linda Anderson for the inspiration of their words over time.
My thanks must also go to:
Penguin Books UK for the trove of the Penguin Archive in the University of Bristol’s Special Collections; in particular to Joanna Prior, Managing Director of Penguin Books, for kindly granting me access;
Hannah Lowery, Archivist and Special Collections Manager, and her 2016 team – Jamie Carstairs, Ian Coates, Pawel Radek, David Trigg, Mike Hunkin – for their time, generosity and helpful facilitation of my (often dogged) research in the Penguin and Rubinstein Archives; Hannah, wondrously, never begrudged my request for yet another box, or still more photocopying back-up; to Michael Richardson, Special Collections Librarian, for his assistance; to Philip Kent, former Director of Library Services, for his kind interest; to Ed Fay, Director of Library Services, for the library’s ongoing support and goodwill;
the children of Instructing Solicitor Michael Rubinstein – Imogen, Polly, Adam and Zac – for their kind permission for me to quote from their father’s notes and letters; the material was a privilege to explore;
Helen Atkinson, literary executor and great-niece of Rebecca West, for permission, generously granted, for my use of West’s letters and words;
Charlotte Du Cann for her kind permission to use, for the endpapers of the UK hardback edition of Tenderness, the notes of her father Richard Du Cann, QC from the 1960 courtroom notebooks of the Old Bailey trial of Penguin Books.
the Provost and Scholars of King’s College, Cambridge and The Society of Authors as the E. M. Forster Estate: for their kind permission to quote the words of E. M. Forster;
the British Library’s 2016 Eccles Centre Team – Professor Philip Davies, Dr Cara Rodway and Bibliographical Editor, Jean Petrovic – for their friendship and their expert support of this novel, as well as their kind hospitality in a range of events;
John Eccles, 2nd Viscount Eccles, Diana Catherine Eccles, Viscountess Eccles and Catherine Eccles for their family’s magnanimous support of the Eccles Centre & Hay Festival Writer’s Award, which I was fortunate to receive in 2016 in support of Tenderness;
Professor Philip Davies, also, for putting me in touch with Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones, Emeritus Professor, History, University of Edinburgh, and to Professor Jeffreys-Jones for his recommendations regarding FBI resources;
the Authors’ Foundation, Arts Council England, and the Society of Authors for awards over the years in support of my writing. In the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, their efforts on behalf of writers and books are more precious than ever;
Rebecca and Mark Ford for their enthusiasm and support, and for leading me to D. H. Lawrence’s 1915 home;
Oliver Hawkins, great-grandson of Wilfrid and Alice Meynell, who, in the spirit of his great-grandparents’ openness and generous support of the arts, enabled my research for the Sussex sections of Tenderness;
Laura Mulvey, great-granddaughter of Wilfrid and Alice Meynell, and granddaughter of Perceval and Madeline Lucas, for her kind interest in this novel;
Miriam Moss, for making it possible – with her great goodwill – to find the balcony on which Rosalind Baynes and Lawrence shared their Marsala in September 1920. Also, our taxi driver, Tommaso Crocetti, of Radio Taxi Firenze Società Cooperativa, who did not give up;
Richard Alford, former British Council Director (Italy) and Secretary of the Charles Wallace India Trust, for his friendship and very kind support of my writing, and particularly for his gift of a source which arrived by surprise in the early stages of my research into Lawrence’s time in Italy;
Thomas Grant, QC for his thoughtful sharing of certain Hutchinson–Eliot documents, and for his observations relating to Court Number One;
Virginia Nicholson, for her early enthusiasm regarding my exploration of the personal story of her step-grandmother, Rosalind Thornycroft Baynes Popham;
The Pari Center, Tuscany its Co-founder, Maureen Doolan, and joint Co-founder, late F. David Peat, for their ongoing support of writers, artists and scientists;
the people of the village of Pari for their welcome and hospitality while I wrote, read and meandered;
Anne Lloyd Davey, a champion of literature, for leading me towards the Arc Collection at Cambridge;
and to all readers, ‘subversive’, dedicated, entertained or passionate – and quietly present on the other side of these traversable boundary-lines of print.
Alison MacLeod
Sources
Each link provided will take you to the beginning of that print page. You may need to scroll forward from that location to find the corresponding reference on your e-reader.
Where multiple quotations from one source appear on one page, a single citation for that page applies to each.
Title Abbreviations:
BBF
Birds, Beasts and Flowers
LCL
Lady Chatterley’s Lover
‘EME’
‘England, My England’ (version 1)
EME
England, My England and Other Stories (version 2)
TSP
The Savage Pilgrimage: A Narrative of D. H. Lawrence
N&A
Nation and the Athenaeum
LI
The Liberal Imagination: Essays on Literature and Society
Preliminary Matter
endpapers (hardback only UK edition) Richard Du Cann, QC, notes, Court Notebook, trial of ‘Regina v. Penguin Books’; ‘Lady Chatterley Trial Papers’, Rubinstein Archive, DM 1679/10, Special Collections, University of Bristol Library; with the kind permission of Charlotte Du Cann
D. H. Lawrence, ‘Grapes’, Birds, Beasts and Flowers (Secker, 1923)
Gwyn Thomas, extract from letter to M. Rubinstein (1960), ‘Lady Chatterley Trial Papers’, Rubinstein Archive, DM 1679, Special Collections, University of Bristol Library
Part One: These Hidden Things
Frieda Lawrence, Not I, But the Wind…(Heinemann, 1935)
D. H. Lawrence to W. E. Hopkins (1915); D. H. Lawrence to O. Morrell (1915); composited extracts from two letters; The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, Aldous Huxley, ed. (Heinemann, 1935)
D. H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley’s Lover (Knopf, 1932)
ibid.
D. H. Lawrence to M. Secker, extract from letter (1928), The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, Aldous Huxley, ed. (Heinemann, 1935)
Lawrence, LCL
D. H. Lawrence to C. Asquith, extract from letter (1928), The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, Aldous Huxley, ed. (Heinemann, 1935)
Lawrence, LCL
ibid.
D. H. Lawrence, review, ‘Eric Gill’s “Art Nonsense” ’, The Book-collector’s Quarterly, Vol. 3 (Cassell and Company Limited, 1933)
George Eliot, The Mill on the Floss (William Blackwood, 1860)
Anon., traditional song, variously titled; sung by D. H. Lawrence, 1915; usage of assorted extracts throughout text
Lawrence, LCL
Lawrence, ‘Grapes’, BBF
E. M. Forster, letter, Nation and the Athenaeum (1930); with the kind permission of The Provost and Scholars of King’s College, Cambridge and The Society of Authors as the E. M. Forster Estate
D. H. Lawrence, ‘Man and Bat’, Birds, Beasts and Flowers (Secker, 1923)
D. H. Lawrence, ‘Peach’, Birds, Beasts and Flowers (Secker, 1923)
D. H. Lawrence, ‘Tortoise Shout’, Birds, Beasts and Flowers (Secker, 1923)
D. H. Lawrence, ‘Tortoise Gallantry’, Birds, Beasts and Flowers (Secker, 1923)
Lawrence, ‘Grapes’, BBF
D. H. Lawrence, ‘Lui et Elle’, Birds, Beasts and Flowers (Secker, 1923)
Lawrence, LCL
D. H. Lawrence to B. Jennings, extract from letter (1910), Letters, I, Moore, ed.
principal sources of biographical data: Time Which Spaces Us Apart, Rosalind Thornycroft; completed by Chloë Baynes (Batcombe, Somerset, 1991); privately published memoir; British Library: General Reference Collection YD.2005.b.1622; Jung’s Apprentice: A Biography of Helton Godwin Baynes, Diana Baynes Jansen (Daimon Verlag, 2003); Lady Chatterley’s Villa: D. H. Lawrence on the Italian Riviera, Richard Owen (The Armchair Traveller, 2014); narration/commentary and dialogue by Alison MacLeod
Lawrence, ‘Grapes’, BBF
Lawrence, LCL
ibid.
ibid.
ibid.
composited extracts (with added headings) from transcript of 14 May, 1959 hearing of United States Post Office Dept. and Grove Press; ‘Lady Chatterley Trial Papers’, Rubinstein Archive, DM 1679/10, Special Collections, University of Bristol Library
Lionel Trilling, The Liberal Imagination: Essays on Literature and Society (Viking Press, 1950)
Dwight D. Eisenhower, Remarks at the Ground-Breaking Ceremonies for the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, New York City; 14 May, 1959
Frieda Lawrence, extract from letter to B. Rosset (1954), ‘Lady Chatterley Trial Papers’, Rubinstein Archive, DM 1679, Special Collections, University of Bristol Library
FBI telegram (1959), released in response to Freedom of Information Request by Robert Delaware, reported in ‘The FBI’s decades-long war on D. H. Lawrence’, MuckRock, 31 October, 2012
Rebecca West, letter to J. E. Hoover (1959), ‘Rebecca West’ FBI file, Freedom of Information release to Carl Rollyson (1997); Rebecca West and the God that Failed: Essays, Carl Rollyson (iUniverse, 2005); with the kind permission of Helen Atkinson, Executor, the Rebecca West Estate
D. H. Lawrence, Studies in Classic American Literature (Thomas Seltzer, 1923)
D. H. Lawrence, ‘The Evening Land’, Birds, Beasts and Flowers (Martin Secker, 1923)
D. H. Lawrence, extract from letter to B. Russell (1915); The Collected Letters of D. H. Lawrence, Vol. 1, Harry T. Moore, ed. (Heinemann, 1962)
D. H. Lawrence, ‘Things’, Bookman (1928)
Lawrence, LCL
ibid.
ibid.
WWI government recruitment poster
D. H. Lawrence, ‘England, my England’, England, My England and Other Stories (Seltzer, 1922)
ibid.
ibid.
D. H. Lawrence, composited extracts from letters to S. Koteliansky (1915); The Quest for Rananim, D. H. Lawrence’s Letters to S. S. Koteliansky 1914–1930; George J. Zyraruk, ed. (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1970)
Lawrence, EME
D. H. Lawrence, extract from letter to C. Carswell (1916); The Savage Pilgrimage: A Narrative of D. H. Lawrence, Catherine Carswell (Martin Secker, 1932)
D. H. Lawrence, ‘England, my England’, The English Review (1915)
Lawrence, EME
dialogue and narration inspired by paraphrase of D. H. Lawrence remarks; Francis Meynell, My Lives (Bodley Head, 1971)
Lawrence, EME
Anon., traditional blessing
Lawrence to C. Carswell, extract, TSP
Lawrence, EME
Lawrence, LCL
ibid.
Lawrence to C. Carswell, extract, TSP
John Middleton Murry report of K. Mansfield remark; D. H. Lawrence: A Composite Biography, Vol. I, Edward Nehls, ed. (University of Wisconsin Press, 1957)
Ottoline Morrell remark, Ottoline: the Early Memoirs of Lady Ottoline Morrell, Robert Gathorne-Hardy, ed. (Faber, 1963)
Lawrence to S. Koteliansky (1915); one extract from letter and one extract with minor modification; Letters, I, Moore, ed.
E. M. Forster, extract from letter to F. Barger (1915), Selected Letters of E. M. Forster: 1879–1920, Mary Lago and P. N. Furbank, eds. (Arrow Books, 1983), with the kind permission of The Provost and Scholars of King’s College, Cambridge and The Society of Authors as the E. M. Forster Estate
account of Lawrence remarks to Forster derived from extracts, Lawrence to B. Russell, letter (1915); Letters, I, Moore, ed.
Frieda Lawrence, extract from letter to O. Morrell (1915); ‘I Will Send Address: Unpublished Letters of D. H. Lawrence’, Mark Schorer, London Magazine, iii., Feb. 1956
D. H. Lawrence, Aaron’s Rod (Thomas Seltzer, 1922)
D. H. Lawrence, ‘Jack Murry is a bad boy’ (with modification); D. H. Lawrence: A Composite Biography, Vol. I, Edward Nehls, ed. (University of Wisconsin Press, 1957)
Lawrence, EME
Lawrence, LCL
Lawrence, EME
Lawrence, EME; Lawrence, ‘EME’; Lawrence, EME
Anon., traditional Sussex folk song, ‘The Cuckoo’
Lawrence, EME; Lawrence, ‘EME’
Lawrence to B. Russell extract (1915); Letters, I, Moore, ed.
Lawrence, LCL
Katherine Mansfield, letter (with minor modifications) to J. Middleton Murry (1915); Katherine Mansfield’s Letters to John Middleton Murry, John Middleton Murry, ed. (Constable, 1951)
Lawrence to S. Koteliansky extract (1915); Quest, Zyraruk, ed.
Lawrence, EME
Lawrence, ‘EME’
derived from remarks, Lawrence to S. Koteliansky letter (1915); Quest, Zyraruk, ed., and Lawrence to Ottoline Morrell letter (1915); Letters, Huxley, ed.
S. Koteliansky and F. Lawrence dialogue recounted by S. Koteliansky to L. Woolf; obituary, ‘Kot.’, Leonard Woolf, New Statesman, 5 Feb. 1955
John Drinkwater, ‘On Greatham’, Georgian Poetry: 1913–1915, Sir Edward Howard Marsh, ed. (The Poetry Bookshop, London, 1915)
fictional composition inspired by Mary Saleeby Fisher, ‘Rackham Cottage’ (1915); D. H. Lawrence: A Composite Biography, Vol. I, Edward Nehls, ed. (University of Wisconsin Press, 1957)
Lawrence, EME
fictional composition inspired by Mary Saleeby Fisher, untitled account (1915), Biography, I, Nehls, ed.
Lawrence, EME
Lawrence, EME; Lawrence, ‘EME’
Lawrence, LCL
John Middleton Murry, review ‘Matthew Arnold Today’, Times Literary Supplement, March 1939
