Complete Works of D.H. Lawrence (Illustrated), page 1107
The sun by day is hot, night is chilly. At the foot of the sacred Taos Mountain, three miles off, the Indians have their pueblo, like a pile of earth-coloured cube-boxes in a heap; two piles rather, one on one side of the stream, one on the other. The stream waters the little valley, and they grow corn and maize, by irrigation. This pueblo owns four square miles of land. They are nearer the Aztec type of Indian - not like Apaches whom I motored last week to see - far over these high, sage-brush deserts and through canyons.
These Indians are soft-spoken, pleasant enough - the young ones come to dance to the drum - very funny and strange. They are Catholics but still keep the old religion, making the weather and shaping the year: all very secret and important to them. They are Rurally secretive, and have their backs set against our form of civilization. Yet it rises against them. In the pueblo they have mowing machines and threshing machines, and American schools, and the young men no longer care so much for the sacred dances.
And after all, if we have to go ahead, we must ourselves go ahead. We can go back and pick up some threads - but these Indians are up against a dead wall, even more than we are: but a different wall.
Mabel Sterne is very nice to us - though I hate living on somebody else's property and accepting their kindnesses. She very much wants me to write about here. I don't know if I ever shall. Because though it is so open, so big, free, empty, and even aboriginal - still it has a sort of shutting-out quality, obstinate.
Everything in America goes by will. A great negative will seems to be turned against all spontaneous life - there seems to be no feeling at all - no genuine bowels of compassion and sympathy: all this gripped, iron, benevolent will, which in the end is diabolic. How can one write about it, save analytically?
Frieda, like you, always secretly hankered after America and its freedom: It's very freedom not to feel. But now she is just beginning-to taste the iron ugliness of what it means, to live by will against the spontaneous inner life, superimposing the individual, egoistic will oper the real genuine sacred life. Of course I know you will jeer when I say there is any such thing as sacred spontaneous life, with its pride and its sacred power. I know you too believe in the screwed-up human will dominating life. But I don't. And that's why I think America is neither free nor brave, but a land of tight, iron-clanking little wills, everybody trying to put it over everybody else, and a land of men absolutely devoid of the real courage of trust, trust in life's sacred spontaneity. They can't trust life until they can control it. So much for them - cowards! You can have the Land of the Free - as much as I know of it. In the spring I want to come back to Europe.
I send you ten pounds to spend for the children - since you suffer from the exchange. I hope in this little trifle you can profit by it. F- sends her love.
P. S. If you want winter clothing, or underclothing, for the children 0r yourself or Alfred, write to my sister, Mrs L. A. Clarke, Grosvenor Rd., Ripley near Derby - tell her just what you want, and she will send it. I shall pay her - I have told her you will write - so ion't hesitate.
Del Monte Ranch Questa, New Mexico 5 December 1922
My dear Mother-in-Law:
You see, we have flown again, but not far - only twenty-jive kilometres, and here we are in an old log-house with five rooms, very primitive, on this big ranch. Behind, the Rocky Mountains, pines and snow-peaks; around us the hills - pine trees, cedars, greasewood, and a small grey bush of the desert. Below, the desert, great andflat like a shadowy lake, very wide. And in the distance more mountains, with small patches of snow - and the sunsets! Now you see the picture.
The Hawk family live five minutes from here, then no houses for four kilometres. Behind, no house for three hundred kilometres or more. Few people, an empty, very beautiful country.
We have hewn down a great balsam pine and cut it to pieces - like a quarry - the gold wood.
We have for companions two young Danes, painters: they will go into a little three-room cabin nearby. Our nearest neighbour, Hawk, is a young man, thirty years old, has a hundred and fifty half-wild animals, a young wife, is nice, not rich.
You have asked about Mabel Dodge: American, rich, only child, from Buffalo on Lake Erie, bankers, forty-two years old, has had three husbands - one Evans (dead), one Dodge (divorced), and one Maurice Sterne (a few, Russian, painter, young, also divorced). Now she has an Indian, Tony, a stout chap. She has lived much in Europe - Paris, Nice, Florence - is a little famous in New York and little loved, very intelligent as a woman, another 'culture-carrier, likes to play the patroness, hates the white world and loves the Indian out of hate, is very 'generous,' wants to be 'good' and is very wicked, has a terrible will-to-power, you know - she wants to be a witch and at the same time a Mary of Bethany at fesus's feet - a big, whit crow, a cooing raven of ill-omen, a little buffalo.
The people in America all want power, but a small, personal base power: bullying. They are all bullies.
Listen, Germany, America is the greatest bully the world has ever seen. Power is proud. But bullying is democratic and base.
Bas ta, we are still 'friends' with Mabel. But do not take this snake to our bosom. You know, these people have only money, nothing else but money, and because all the world wants money, all the money, America has become strong, proud and over-powerful.
If one would only say: America, your money is sh...' go and sh... more'- then America would be a nothing.
(Translated from the German)
Hotel Monte Carlo Uruguay, Mexico 27 April 1923
My dear Mother-in-Law:
We are still here, still making excursions. We can't make up our minds to go away. Tomorrow I go to Guadalajara and the Chapala Lake. There you have the Pacific breeze again, straight from the Pacific. One doesn't want to come back to Europe. All is stupid, evilly stupid and no end to it. You must be terribly tired of this German tragedy - all without meaning, without direction, idea, or spirit. Only money-greed and impudence. One can't do anything, nothing at all, except get bored and wicked. Here in Mexico there's also Bolshevism and Fascism and revolutions and all the rest of it. But I don't care. I don't listen. And the Indians remain outside. Revolutions come and revolutions go but they remain the same. They haven't the machinery of our consciousness, they are like black water, over which go our dirty motorboats, with stink and noise - the water gets a little dirty but does not really change.
I send you ten pounds and five for Else. I hope it arrives soon. A Hamburg-America boat goes every month from Vera Cruz to Hamburg. It must be lovely spring in Germany. If only men were not so stupid and evil, I would so love to be in Ebersteinburg when the chestnuts are in bloom. Have you seen 'The Captain's Doll'? It ought to amuse you.
A thousand greetings.
D. H. L.
(Translated from the German)
Zaragoza 4 Chapala, Jalisco Mexico 31 May, Corpus Christi Day
My dear Mother-in-Law:
You will think we are never coming back to Europe. But it isn't so.
But I always had the idea of writing a novel here in America. In the US I could do nothing. But I think here it will go well. I have already written ten chapters and if the Lord helps me I shall have finished the first full sketch by the end ofJune. And then we will come home at once.
I must go by way of New York because of business and because it is shorter and cheaper. But in July New York is very hot and the nastiest heat, they say. Still, we won't stay more than a fortnight, from there to England and from England to Germany - very likely in September: my birthday month that I like so much.
Today is Corpus Christi and they have a procession. But there are no lovely birches as in Ebersteinburg two years ago. They only carry little palms into the churches, and palms aren't beautiful like our trees, and this eternal sun is not as joyous as our sun. It is always shining and is a little mechanical.
But Mexico is very interesting: a foreign people. They are mostly pure Indians, dark like the people in Ceylon but much stronger. The men have the strongest backbones in the world, I believe. They are half civilized, half wild. If they only had a new faith they might be a new, young, beautiful people. But as Christians they don't get any further, are melancholy inside, live without hope, are suddenly wicked, and don't like to work. But they are also good, can be gentle and honest, are very quiet, and are not at all greedy for money, and to me that is marvellous, they care so little for possessions, here in America where the whites care for nothing else. But not the peon. He has not this fever to possess that is a real ' Weltschmerz ' with us.
And now you know where we are and how it is with us. I'll send you a beautiful serape - blanket -for your birthday.
Auf Wiedersehen.
D. H. Lawrence (Translated from the German,
Care of Seltzer 5 West 50th Street New York City 7 August 1923
My dear Mother-in-Law:
We are still here in America - Ifind my soul doesn't want to come to Europe, it is like Balaam's ass and can't come any further. I am not coming, but Frieda is. Very likely she will come by the S.S. 'Orbita,' on the eighteenth, from New York, for Southampton, England. She will be in London on the twenty-fifth, stays there a fortnight, then to Baden. I remain on this side: go to California, Los Angeles, where we have friends, and if it is nice there, Frieda can come there in October. I don't know why I can't go to England. Such a deadness comes over me, if I only think of it, that I think it is better if I stay here, till my feeling has changed.
I don't like New York - a big, stupid town, without background, without a voice. But here in the country it is green and still. But I like Mexico better. With my heart I'd like to come - also with my feet and eyes. But my soul can't. Farewell. Later on, the ass will be able to come.
D. H. L.
(Translated from the German)
110 Heath Street Hampstead, London, N.W.3 14 December 1923
My dear Mother-in-Law:
Here I am back again. Frieda is nice but England is ugly. I am like a wild beast in a cage - it is so dark and closed-in here and you can't breathe freely. But the people are friendly. Frieda has a nice apartment but I go about like an imprisoned coyote - can't rest. I think we'll go to Paris at the end of the month and then Baden. Do you hear me howl?
D. H. L. (Translated from the German)
Paris Hôtel de Versailles 60 Boulevard Montparnasse Saturday Dearest Mutchen:
We are sitting in bed, have had our coffee, the clock says 8:30, and we see the people and the carriages pass on the boulevard outside in the morning sun. The old men and women shake their carpets on their balconies in the tall house opposite, cleaning hard. Paris is still Paris.
We went to Versailles yesterday. It is stupid, so very big and flat, much too big for the landscape. No, such hugeness is merely blown up frog, that wants to make himself larger than nature and naturally he goes pop! Le Roi Soleil was like that - a very artificial light. Frieda was terribly disappointed in Le Petit Trianon of Marie Antoinette - a doll's palace and a doll's Swiss village from the stage. Poor Marie Antoinette, she wanted to be so simple and become a peasant, with her toy Swiss village and her nice, a little ordinary, Austrian, blond face. Finally she became too simple, without a head.
On the great canal a few people skated, a very few people, little and cold and without fun, between those well-combed trees that stand there like hair with an elegant parting. And these are the great. Man is stupid. Naturally the frog goes pop!
Frieda has bought two hats and is proud of them.
Tomorrow we go to Chartres to see the cathedral. And that is our last outing. Tuesday we go to London.
Now, mother-in-law, you know all we are doing and can travel along with us. Such is life. We can go together in spite of separation and you can travel, travel in spite of old age.
Salutations, Madame, D. H. L.
(Translated from the German)
Del Monte Ranch Questa, New Mexico 28 June 1924
Dearest Mother-in-Law:
It's so long since I wrote you, but we had much to do here and my desire for writing is weak. I don't know why, but words and speech bore me a little. We know so well without saying anything. I know you, you know me, so I need no longer speak on paper.
You know, Frieda is quite proud of her ranch and her horse Azul, that's the one with two wives-my Poppy, who is very shy but beautiful, sorrel and quick, and then old Bessy, Brett's horse. Bessy is also red, or sorrel.
Every evening we go down to Del Monte, only three and a half kilometres, through woods and over the Lobo brook. You know, this place is called Lobo, which means 'wolf in Spanish.
Frieda is always talking to her Azul. 'Yes, Azul, you 're a good boy! Yes, my Azul, go on, go on, then! Yes! Are you afraid, silly horse! It's only a stone, a great white stone, why are you afraid then?' That's how she is always talking to him, because she is a little afraid herself There is always something to do here. I've written two stories. Right now we're building a roof over the little veranda before the kitchen door, with eight small pillars of pinewood and boards on top-very nice. It's nearly finished. You know, we've also got an Indian oven made of adobe. It stands outside, not far from the kitchen door, built like a beehive.
Last week came Francisco, the Indian servant at Del Monte. We baked bread and roasted chickens in the oven - very good. We can bake twenty loaves of bread in half an hour in it.
Five minutes' walk from here are the tents and beds of the Indians, still standing. Frieda and I slept there once, under the big stars that hang low on the mountains here. Morning comes and a beautiful grey squirrel runs up the balsam pine and scolds us. No one else in the ivorld, only the great desert below, to the west. We don't go much to Taos and Mabel does not come often. We have our own life. The Brett is a little simple but harmless, and likes to help. Else writes Friedel is coming to America. He will likely come here. I think Else may also come, she has a desire for America. All right, but life in America is empty and stupid, more empty and stupid than with us. I mean the city and village life. But here, where one is alone with trees and mountains and chipmunks and desert, one gets something out of the air, something wild and untamed, cruel and proud, beautiful and sometimes evil - that is really America. But not the America of the whites.
Here comes your birthday again, you old Valkyrie, so you leap on the horse of your spirit from one year's peak to the next, and look always further into the future. I send you a cheque. How gladly would I be with you, to drink your health in good Moselle. Here there is no wine and the 'prosit' cannot sound through the pines. But next year we will drink together to your birthday.
Auf Wiedersehen.
D. H. L.
P.S. I forgot, we have two small Bibble's-sons, two little dogs from our Pips. They are six weeks old, named Roland and Oliver, and are gay, small, and fat, and lift their paws like Chinese lions.
(Translated from the German)
Santa Fe 14 August 1924
[To Else]
We are motoring with Mabel Luhan to the Hopi country - hotter down here.
Curtis Brown wrote they were arranging with you for 'Boy in the Bush'-hope everything is satisfactory, and what a pity Baltimore is so far.
Del Monte Ranch Questa, New Mexico 26 October 1924
Dear Mother-in-Law:
We are home again, thank God. When one has been for three days with people one has had enough, quite enough. But next week we are going away, to stay a few days in Taos, then on to Mexico. Write to me care of British Consulate, 1 Avenida Madero, Mexico, DF, until I give you a new address.
The Brett will go with us: we do not know what else she could do, and she cannot remain here alone.
I am glad to go to Mexico. I don't know why, but I always want to travel south. It if already cold here, especially at night. The sun doesn't come over the hills till seven-thirty, then it turns warm and the horses stand stone-still, numbed by the cold, in the middle of the alfalfa field soaking themselves in the sun's heat. For the most the sun is hot like July but today there are clouds.
I hope you will get your parcel, with blanket and picture. You will like them, I'm sure. I send you ten pounds for wood, you must keep nice and warm.
Here we shut everything up. The better things - silverware, rugs, beds, pictures, we take down on the wagon to good William and Rachel. Del Monte belongs to Mr Hawk, William's father. The parents have a biggish house but go to California a lot. The young ones, William and Rachel, are in the log-cabin where we stayed two years ago. They make butter there and look after the cows and chickens.
Every evening we ride down to get the milk and the post from William. He always brings the letters up from the post box. Rachel and William will take good care of our things. Monday, Mr Murray, a workman, comes to put up the shutters. We shall leave the horses here till December when the bis snow comes. Then William will take them to Del Monte, only two and a half kilometres away, and feed them every day with alfalfa till spring when we come back again.
I don't know how long we want to stay in Mexico City. I want to go southward to Oaxaca where the Mayas and Zapotec Indians live. It is always warm there, even hot. There I would like to finish my novel, 'The Plumed Serpent. '
Here the hills are golden with aspen and cottonwoods and red with scrub-oak, wonderful. The pines and firs are nearly black. A lovely moment, a beautiful moment, but it will not last.
Auf Wiedersehen, mother-in-law. Winter comes again for old ladies, too bad.
D. H. L.
(Translated from the German)
[A letter to Lawrence from his mother-in-law] BADEN
Sunday 9 November 1924
My dear Fritzl:
Else has vanished in beautiful winter sunshine and I sit alone in my lonely wintry room. So far I got yesterday when the charwoman came and today, 0 jubilee, 0 triumph, came the cheque and the parcel. Like a demon I rushed to the station, number 2 brought the parcel, too heavy for me, and what came forth! Moved, admiring and happy, I sit and look. How you have painted! No, how adorable is the ranch! Here the stones speak! I understand that you love being there. I see it all - 0 dear son-in-law, how happy you have made me! I would like to pack up and come. If I were only younger! No, those horses and the lovely tree! But I think the winter is too cold - and I can smell those flowers, almost, so charming and gay and colourful. I called all the ladies in my tempestuous joy and all admired with me. What treasures - the blanket is just what I needed. The little original cover I put on my cane chair - My room looks quite Mexican! At once I will have the two pictures framed and hang them where I can see them - Now I know how you live, oh, the wonderful tree!
