Complete Works of D.H. Lawrence (Illustrated), page 1131
The Lawrences sailed for Australia at the end of April. In Australia - to be exact, at Thirroul, South Coast, New South Wales - Lawrence found a different kind of indifference from any he had met with before. It was neither Oriental nor Mediterranean, but of the whitest kind, all English in its origins. This fascinated, even while it repelled him. 'A raw hole', but wonderful for its freshness, its rough carelessness and its unfamiliar skies. It held him for three months, fruitful months too, that saw the inception and the writing of Kangaroo and the rewriting (planned at least) of The Boy in the Bush from the unlikely manuscript brought forth for his inspection by his hostess, Miss M. L. Skinner, when he went upon an expedition inland.
If you want to know what it is to feel the 'correct' social world fizzle to nothing, you should go to Australia... In the established sense it is socially nil. Happy-go-lucky, don't-you-bother we're-in-Austraylia. But also there seems to be no inside life of any sort: just a long lapse and drift. A rather fascinating indifference, a physical indifference to what we call soul or spirit. It's really a weird show. The country has an extraordinary hoary, weird attraction. As you get used to it, it seems so old, as if it had missed all this Semite-Egyptian-Indo-European vast era of history, and was coal age, the age of great ferns and mosses. It hasn't got a consciousness - just none - too far back. A strange effect it has on one. Often I hate it like poison, then again it fascinates me, and the spell of its indifference gets me. I can't quite explain it: as if one resolved back almost to the plant kingdom, before souls, spirits and minds were grown at all: only quite a live, energetic body with a weird face.
They were very happy, Frieda especially so, in the 'awfully nice' bungalow, forty miles south of Sydney, they had hired at the rent of thirty shillings a week, with living 'about as much as England'. It was a typical Australian bungalow, I imagine, with 'one big room and three small bedrooms, then kitchen and washhouse - and a plot of grass'; but the sovereign attraction was what lay directly beyond the plot of grass, 'a low bushy cliff, hardly more than a bank - and the sand and the sea'. It was the Pacific that Lawrence found lovely and stimulating -
A lovely ocean, but my, how boomingly crashingly noisy as a rule. Today for the first time it only splashes and rushes, instead of exploding and roaring. We bathe by ourselves - and run in and stand under the shower-bath to wash the very seaey water off.
It must have seemed as if the constant roar and wash of that sea could empty a man of his consciousness as it emptied the shells that tumbled about its beaches.
His novel half done by June 22nd ('funny sort of novel where nothing happens and such a lot of things should happen: scene Australia'), Lawrence was already planning to sail upon August 10th to San Francisco, via Wellington and Tahiti, en route for Taos. All he waited for now was money for their fares, which he hoped to have from Mountsier. But he would be looking back at Australia over his shoulder as he did not look back on the East - 'Australia would be a lovely country to lose the world in altogether. I'll go round it once more - the world - and if ever I get back here I will stay.'
On the same day that Lawrence posted me a copy of Aaron's Rod in the American edition he received a copy of my second novel, The Camomile. He thought it 'amusing, well-written and better made' than my first novel, and approved of its 'drift' as well as liking the letter diary form.
One simply must stand out against the social world, even if one misses life. Much life they have to offer! Those Indian civil servants are the limit: you should have seen them even in Ceylon: conceit and imbecility. No, she [the chief character of my story] was well rid of her empty hero and all he stands for: tin cans.
He hoped it would 'flourish without being trodden on'.
When they came to sail from Australia (Frieda told me this long afterwards), though enough had come for the fares, there was so little money over that it became a nice question whether they might economise by laying in half a dozen pairs of socks for Lawrence. Socks would be far dearer in America - meat and wool were the only cheap Australian commodities - and Lawrence already stood in fair need of socks, and would soon stand in urgent need. But having considered carefully, he decided that socks must take their chance. The economy was not worth the risk of running out of cash before they reached America. He was right. For a dollar in hand was worth much, and in America, though unknown to him, the sales of Women in Love were even then running into 15,000 copies.
August 15th saw them in New Zealand for the day and going on to Raratonga and Tahiti. Tahiti he found beautiful, but Papeete 'a poor, dull, modernish place'. In any case, there was little time for looking round. On September 4th, with exactly 20 dollars in their pockets, and not very much more in the bank, they reached San Francisco - 'quite pleasant but very noisy and iron clanking and expensive'. And after four days there they went on to Santa Fé. He would write to us from Taos, where he was to find his mail.
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That summer of 1922 we stayed at the Tinners' Arms at Zennor - the same inn at which Lawrence and Frieda had stayed in 1916 when they were getting their cottage in order. I had written to Lawrence from there, addressing him at Taos. He replied the day after my letter reached him: 'I always think Cornwall has a lot to give one. But Zennor sounds too much changed.'
Nevertheless: 'In the spring I think I want to come to England. But I feel England has insulted me, and I stomach that feeling badly. Pero, son sempre inglese.'
So much for Cornwall and England. What of Taos and America?
Taos, in its way, is rather thrilling. We have got a very pretty adobe house, with furniture made in the village, and Mexican and Navajo rugs, and some lovely pots. It stands just on the edge of the Indian reservation: a brook behind, with trees: in front, the so-called desert, rather like a moor but covered with whitish-grey sage brush, flowering yellow now: some 5 miles away the mountains rise. On the North - we face East - Taos mountain, the sacred Mt of the Indians, sits massive on the plain - some 8 miles away. The pueblo is towards the foot of the Mt, 3 miles off: a big, adobe pueblo on each side the brook, like two great heaps of earthen boxes, cubes. There the Indians all live together. They are pueblos - these houses were here before the conquest - very old: and they grow grain and have cattle, on the lands bordering the brook, which they can irrigate . . . We drive across these 'deserts' - white sage scrub and dark green pinon scrub on the slopes. On Monday we went up a canon into the Rockies to a deserted gold mine. The aspens are yellow and lovely. We have a pretty busy time, too. I have already learnt to ride one of these Indian ponies, with a Mexican saddle. Like it so much. We gallop off to the pueblo or up to one of the canons. Frieda is learning too. Last night the young Indians came down to dance in the studio, with two drums: and we all joined in. It is fun: and queer. The Indians are much more remote than negroes. This weekend is the great dance at the pueblo, and the Apaches and Navajos come in wagons and on horseback, and the Mexicans troop to Taos village. Taos village is a Mexican sort of plaza - piazza - with trees and shops and horses tied up. It lies one mile to the south of us: so four miles from the pueblo. We see little of Taos itself. . . The days are hot sunshine: noon very hot, especially riding home across the open. Night is cold. In winter it snows, because we are 7,000 feet above sea-level. But as yet one thinks of midsummer. We are about 30 miles from the tiny railway station: but we motored 100 miles from the main line.
Interspersed with this was a brief description of the people to gratify my curiosity, and the letter ended:
Well, I am afraid it will all sound very fascinating if you are just feeling cooped up in London. I don't want you to feel envious. Perhaps it is necessary for me to try these places, perhaps it is my destiny to know the world. It only excites the outside of me. The inside it leaves more isolated and stoic than ever. That's how it is. It is all a form of running away from oneself and the great problems: all this wild west and the strange Australia. But I try to keep quite clear. One forms not the faintest inward attachment, especially here in America. America lives by a sort of egoistic will, shove and be shoved. Well, one can stand up to that too: but one is quite, quite cold inside. No illusion. I will not shove, and I will not be shoved. Sono io! . . . Remember if you were here you'd only be hardening your heart and stiffening your neck - it is either that or be walked over, in America.
With this for the postscript:
In my opinion a 'gentle' life with John Patrick and Don, and a gentle faith in life itself, is far better than these women in breeches and riding-boots and sombreros, and money and motor cars and wild west. It is all inwardly a hard stone and nothingness. Only the desert has a fascination - to ride alone - in the sun in the for ever unpossessed country - away from man. That is a great temptation, because one rather hates mankind nowadays. But pazienza, sempre pazienzal This was the only letter I had till one that came too late for December 25th following a Christmas present of England, My England and it was not from Taos, but from the Del Monte ranch, '17 miles away' and '1,600 feet higher up' the Rockies. In September Frieda and he, busying themselves with the homely task of making wild plum jam, had in some measure settled down in the house hospitably put ready for them. It was near enough to Mrs Luhan's own carefully artistic dwelling (upon first seeing the interior Lawrence had been rude enough to find it 'like those nasty little temples' in Ceylon!) for the Lawrences to be expected every night for supper. But this could not last long. Lawrence had quickly recognised what perhaps did not surprise him, that Mrs Luhan wanted of him what he had made Gudrun want of Gerald in Women in Lave - to use him as an instrument for the furthering of her own ideas and purposes - spiritual, political, artistic. One of the things she had set herself to do was salvage work for the Indians. This was not for Lawrence and he knew it. Her endeavour to make it so signified to him a kind of outrage. The man that yielded to such usage must die. Gerald had been made to die as surely by Gudrun's doing as if she had stuffed his mouth with snow to choke him. Lawrence would far sooner the woman died! Again, from its highly artistic-social nature, the existence was conducive neither to work nor enjoyment. So, by the middle of December, finding Taos 'too much' for them socially - 'Mabel Luhan and suppers and motor drives and people dropping in' - they had gone to the Del Monte ranch.
It extended 'over 1,500 acres', 'mostly wild', and held 'about 125 head of cattle'. The farming work was managed by a couple, with whom lived the man's sister. They were more or less responsible for the place - educated, young, hard-working people called Hawk, to whom Lawrence took at once. Three minutes from the Hawks' house, all near together, were several log cabins. Of these one was sufficiently roomy, and this - again by the kindness of Mrs Luhan - the Lawrences occupied. Another, smaller and more ancient, was inhabited by two young Danish artists who - need it be said? - had left Taos in the Lawrences' company. It was 'materially very fine'. Even it was 'very beautiful' - 'the snow mountains behind - a vast landscape below, vast, desert, and then more mountains west, far off in Arizona, a skyline ... trees all behind - and snow'. In the daytime Lawrence and the young Danish artists went chopping down trees for their own burning, or 'riding off together'. So that it was 'altogether . . . ideal, according to one's ideas', although to be sure in December the altitude (8,600 feet) took 'a bit of getting used to'.
But Lawrence was sober enough about it, and recorded even thus early that linnerlich, there is nothing'.
It seems to me, in America, for the inside life, there is just blank nothing. All this outside life - and marvellous country - and it all means so little to one. I don't quite know what it is one wants because the ordinary society and 'talk' in Europe are weary enough. But there is no inside life throb here - none - all empty - people inside dead, outside bustling (sometimes). Anyhow dead and always on the move. Truly I prefer Europe. Liberty - space - deadness.
At the same time there was liberty and space, and there lacked at least the same kind of deadness that Lawrence had suffered from in Europe - the slow putrescence that vaunted itself as life. It was what, if we look back, he had expected, though realisation has always its difference. At least he got out of it the conviction that he himself belonged to Europe - 'though not to England' - and that to Europe he must return sooner or later whether he wished it or not. The upshot was that he didn't want to 'live anywhere very long'. He would stay for perhaps another three months where he was, 'then come east - come to Europe - perhaps via Greenland'. He might even like to go to Russia in the summer. After America it made an appeal. But there was the difficulty of a moneyless Russia. He asked me to write to Ivy Litvinoff asking her how it would be for Frieda and him to spend a few months, even a year, there. At the moment, he said, he was not writing. But Kangaroo was due for February, and Women in Love had now sold 15,000 copies - there was even talk of it being filmed! 'Why do they read me?' he asks. 'But anyhow, they do read me - which is more than England does.'
The Del Monte was too severe for the earliest months of the year, so the Lawrences did some wandering in Mexico proper. After the forgetful, physical life of the ranch, combined with the searching clashes of temperament and wills (English versus American) at Taos, of which there had been repercussions at the ranch, Lawrence was in the state to begin another book.
On April 11th he sent me a postcard photograph of himself with Frieda and an American poet, Witter Bynner, taken on the top of the old Pyramid of the Sun at Teotihuacan. The picture shows him bareheaded, looking alert and well. On the written side, under an address of Mexico City, he acknowledged a letter of mine (by return) and told me that they had been in Mexico for nearly three weeks and liked it. The next day they were going to Puebla and Tehuacan, and Orizaba, to see if they felt like staying the summer. Two things only were immediately clear. He was glad to escape the human complications at Taos, and he was fascinated by Mexico. The rest was uncertain. 'Every time I am near to coming to England, I find I don't want to come - just yet. But I am never sure what I shall do in a month's time.'
Russia, for the moment, seemed 'very far away and not very desirable'. The money question could not yet be taken for granted. As he put it himself - 'my prosperity is only relative - especially with so many relatives in Germany'. He knew he must go on writing, and where he was he felt the vivid interest that was the prelude to writing. This Pyramid of the Sun, for example, he found 'very impressive ... far more than Pompeii or the Forum', and the Indians there were attractive to him. Though Mexico City was 'rather ramshackle and Americanised', there was 'a good natural feeling - a great carelessness'. To me this meant that Lawrence was either writing a book or about to do so.
Possibly the ramshackle and Americanised Mexico City, made suddenly more hideous by the spectacle of the bullfight which Lawrence has described in the opening pages of The Plumed Serpent, was responsible for the extreme but temporary disgust which led him a fortnight later to feel he had had 'enough of the New World'. Another and much shorter postcard made this announcement, and said that he expected to sail for New York from Vera Cruz the following week, arriving in England about June. He 'felt like coming back now'. At once I wrote suggesting that he might like to take a floor of the old Hampstead house in which we now had rooms.
But meanwhile, in part perhaps out of that very disgust and that horrid bullfight, the theme of The Plumed Serpent had announced itself. It was by far the most ambitious theme that had as yet called for treatment - the theme of men in a modern world who become gods while yet remaining men. A difficult undertaking, as Lawrence well understood. But he accepted it with his usual obedience to what chimed with his deepest desire. His next letter, dated June 7th, was from Lake Chapala, the scene of the novel. He had just heard from me, and liked the idea of the rooms above ours.
But see, we are still here. I felt I had a novel simmering in me, so came here, to this big Lake, to see if I could write it. It goes fairly well. I shall be glad if I can finish the first draft by the end of this month. Then we shall pack up at once, go to Mexico City and sail from Vera Cruz for New York. Hope to be in England by early August. Where will you be then? I shall be glad to be back. But wanted to get this novel off my chest.
Auf Wiedersehen.
The novel, of course, took longer than Lawrence had calculated and, what was more important, the charm of Mexico grew upon him. He wanted to stay longer, to try it to the full. And though he accompanied Frieda - who was longing for Europe - to New York by boat from New Orleans (the latter 'a dead, steaming sort of place, a bit like Martin Chuzzlewit', and the Mississippi 'a vast and weary river that looks as if it had never wanted to start flowing') with the idea that he might accompany her, he felt such a longing to be back in Mexico that he saw her off by the Orbita and returned alone. He would follow her - perhaps. He asked me to 'look after Frieda a bit' during the 'month or so' she was to be in London - probably in Mary Cannan's flat in Queen's Gardens, Hyde Park - from August 26th, after which she would go to Germany, after which she would rejoin Lawrence wherever he might be - perhaps in Mexico, perhaps in England by the autumn. This, as it should happen. But, 'at present' he could not come to England.
To avoid confusion, it must be remembered that Lawrence felt very differently about Mexico and the United States. Murry has lumped them both together as America, and has conveniently said that Lawrence hated it. This is misleading. Mexico - horror and all - held something for Lawrence as a man and a writer that he needed. This he never disavowed. The United States, on the other hand, provided merely for his unhampered existence as a writer in the impersonal sense, and had to be visited on that account, much as he shrank from it. Even Mexico could never usurp Europe in the heart of the European Lawrence. But America was the medicine for England and there was no wantonness in his going. In Mexico he found something more than medicine - a sprig of the magic mountain herb for which he had gone on pilgrimage, a vestige of 'the last dark strand' from the pre-white, pre-Christian era.
