Complete Works of D.H. Lawrence (Illustrated), page 1141
Ada wrote to say that she was hurt because she felt that Lawrence was 'hiding some part of himself ' from her. He replied frankly and firmly:
You say you think I've hidden some part of myself from you. Not at all. I am always the same. But there is something you just refuse to see and refuse to accept in me. You insisted on a certain idealisation and there it was ...
Incidentally it was Frieda's supreme virtue that she did not refuse to see or accept, even if her acceptance was by way of open combat. Neither did she insist on 'a certain idealisation', so from her Lawrence never needed to withdraw himself, except in those moments of ultimate loneliness which are for every man and were for him in particular.
In March, though all thoughts of summering at the ranch had to be put aside, he felt well enough to think of prospecting for a real home.
He had not liked the French Riviera enough to wish to make his home there:
Somehow here there isn't enough to it to make one want to live - the country is a bit no-how, and the French mess up their seaside coast worse than anybody - fearful hotch-potch of villas almost as bad as a slum.
But he agreed he might have to do so, as it was 'good for him', which Italy was 'not just now'. There was much to be said for Bandol. Before committing himself to a villa there, however, he might have a look at Spain. He had wanted to make 'a little tour in Spain' as early as December, but had deferred it.
6
What was immediately urgent was that he should use his strength to go to Paris and make arrangements there in person for the private issue of The Escaped Cock, which he had completed that winter after eighteen months' interval, besides painting four more pictures for the postponed exhibition in London. So from early March - accompanied on the journey by Rhys Davies - Lawrence was in Paris on business for about a month. He stayed with the Huxleys, who were then living at Suresnes, and Maria Huxley, distracted by his looks, arranged for his examination by a specialist. Frieda tells me that Lawrence did not go to be examined. Whatever happened, or did not happen, a rumour reached England that he had only a few days, possibly only a few hours, to live. Several of his friends, including ourselves, were called up on the telephone by unknown editors - one could almost hear the rejoicing obituarist sharpening his quill. We could only hope that it was a scare and say so. I wrote at once to Frieda asking how Lawrence was.
Murry, too, had heard the rumour and had written, not to Frieda, but to Lawrence. It was his third letter since the estrangement. A second had followed Lawrence's 'sad and tired' response to the request about The Rainbow. Because, in that response, Lawrence had said that he might write again later but had not done so; and 'after a month or two' Murry had written making overtures of friendship and enclosing photographs of his children. But to this Lawrence had not replied. It was an omission so unusual as to be significant to any who knew him as well as Murry did.
The rumour that Lawrence was dying, however, gave Murry another chance, and he wrote his third unsolicited letter, which amounted to an appeal for a deathbed reconciliation. He offered to go out for this pious purpose.
This time Lawrence replied. His business being finished in Paris, he had gladly fled, and since the middle of April he and Frieda had been staying at the Hotel Royal, Palma de Mallorca.
I have often fancied that rage, coupled with a sort of bitter amusement, may have acted upon Lawrence like a strong tonic when he read Murry's missive. Deathbed reconciliations were not his line. He had 'no idea of passing out' just yet, but if he had, it would not willingly be with Murry's hand in his. Once and for all he wished never to see Murry again, in this world or the next. 'Even when we are immortal spirits' - he wrote - 'we shall dwell in different Hades.'
One might have thought that upon a heart capable of loving, no heavier sentence was ever passed by one who was once regarded as a dear friend. Not so Murry, however. He finds it 'not so poor an end to a friendship as it may appear to be'
My letter to Frieda brought an immediate reply from the Hotel Principe Alfonso, Palma de Mallorca, where they now were. 'No,' she wrote, 'I am thankful to say Lorenzo is better; in Paris he got worse again after a good winter on the Riviera. No, we are really enjoying this . . . This is just a line to let you know that we aren't on the downward slope!'
She begged me to go and see the picture-show when it should open, told me of the Mandrake Press book of the pictures which might be expected shortly, and said that before long she and Lawrence were going to find a house for themselves in one place or another. Ten days or so later Lawrence was writing to Ada in the same tone, dispelling the 'silly rumour that he was ill' and giving her his news. Pansies was about to appear, minus about a dozen censored items, but he hoped to issue a small unexpurgated edition as well. And the Mandrake people were expending two thousand pounds in the production of the picture book, including ten copies in vellum at fifty guineas, which last had already been ordered six times over. 'Seems to me a bit absurd, but there's this collecting craze nowadays,' was Lawrence's comment. When the proofs arrived he was not greatly pleased with them, finding them 'very dim, vague and disappointing', but, as he philosophically put it to Ada, 'Of course other people don't know them as I do.' As usual he had begun to set aside copies for his family, and for friends who might like to have them but could not afford to buy. The original pictures he was not anxious to sell. He therefore put high prices upon them, and most of them are still Frieda's property.
At midsummer the show opened. It had a mixed reception from the critics and from the public who flocked to see it. Towards the end of the run Frieda came to London, and we went to the party given for her at the Gallery. She wore a gay shawl, red shoes and a sheaf of lilies - the last to symbolise Lawrence's purity! Ada came from the Midlands, and other old friends of the Lawrence family travelled up to see 'Bert's pictures'. These were no more shocked than had been the peasants at the Mirenda, the postman at Kesselmatte or the proprietress of the hotel at Bandol. Ada, who had been shocked by Lady Chatterley, genuinely liked them. I too liked them. But undoubtedly, as Lawrence knew, 'people who called themselves his dear friends were not only shocked but mortally offended by them'. Millicent Beveridge was one friend who was shocked, though I think not mortally offended.
Unhappily for Frieda, there was something much worse than hostile critics or offended friends to be withstood.
Lawrence, who had returned to Italy, and had been in June at Forte again with the Huxleys, had gone on to Florence in July. There, staying with Orioli, he had fallen so alarmingly ill that Frieda was sent for by telegram.
When Frieda arrived, Lawrence, thanks to Orioli's devoted nursing and his own recuperative power, had pulled through the attack. To the astonishment of those who were with him he managed to greet her as if he had scarcely been ill. Huxley has told me how, at a later period, if Frieda was away, the mere expectation of her return would enable Lawrence to get up and dress himself, though before he knew she was coming he could not so much as lift his head. On this occasion he was joking and easy and interested in her eager news, and then he sent her off to an hotel, as there was not room for her in Orioli's flat. Probably she concluded (as he intended she should) that the telegram had been a matter of mere precaution or expediency. Really he was extremely feeble, and Orioli had feared the worst.
The police raid on the Warren Gallery, with the confiscation of all the pictures and the books of reproductions, came very soon after Frieda's return. It was a blow - especially a blow to a man in great physical weakness. But Lawrence did not noticeably blench. What he felt was chiefly disgust. Perhaps it had also a tonic effect. Anyhow, he wrote Nettles, and as soon as he could travel - early in August - got away from the intense heat of Italy to Baden-Baden.
'Yes,' he wrote to Ada, 'one feels very sick about the pictures. I suppose they won't let them burn them. Well, it's an unpleasant world - but I shan't let it worry me more than it need - and don't you either. The dirty swine would like to think they made you weep.'
After a few days at Baden itself, where it was still too hot for them, they moved with Frieda's mother to an hotel in the hills some 2,000 to 3,000 feet up. Here it first thundered and then rained so hard that they were obliged to hug themselves inside their greatcoats for warmth. After little over a week of this they fled back to Baden. Re-examined by the same German doctor who had seen him two years before, Lawrence was told that he was 'in several ways better', and that his lung was 'much healed up'.
But his condition was admittedly 'still bad', and he was plagued with asthma. Accordingly, even the altitude of 3,000 feet, prescribed earlier, was now said to be bad for him. He must go to the sea. Once more the Mediterranean was indicated. For the winter they must choose between the sea-coasts of Italy, Spain and the French Riviera.
In spite of his determination not to let the affair of the pictures disturb him unduly, the constant receipt of letters and telegrams and newspaper extracts with reference to the 'trial' at Marlborough Street Police Court, which was then proceeding, was undoubtedly prejudicial to health. He was bound to feel it and he did.
Disgusting how one is insulted! [he wrote to Ada], I shall not forgive it easily, to my white-livered lot! Thank God I needn't live among them, even to hear their beastly mingy British voices . . . However, the best will be to forget it as soon as possible.
And to me from Baden on August 12th:
- The police case business bores and disgusts me, and makes me feel I never want to send another inch of work to England, either paint or pen. Why are those morons and canaille allowed to insult one ad lib., while one is defenceless? England is a lily-livered country when it comes to purity.
And in the same letter:
These people are nastier than you imagine, and it only needs a little more to start them putting pressure on the French or Italian Govts to prosecute me for producing and issuing obscenity. I do not want to find myself in gaol, as a final insult - with a little vague sympathy in the far distance.
His post was again being tampered with, and I had suggested that it might be good if the police were tempted to seize as obscene some extracts from Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass in his handwriting, just as they had at first seized some of Blake's drawings at the Warren Gallery. But he would have none of it.
No, for God's sake leave my unfortunate name alone just now . . . No, the trouble is, once the police attack you, you are entirely at their mercy - so there it is.
Still - and though he was longing to be south again and to be in 'some sort of a place of our own' - it was 'really very nice here - an old inn with garden quiet and shady, where one can sit all day if one likes'.
7
Till nearly the end of September the Lawrences stayed in Germany - or rather moved in a quiet way between Bavaria and Austria. Rottach with its lake - 'so sunny and still' - where they had friends: Villach yet once more, with its full, swift river by which one could sit and watch the people and the swallows and feel like an old veteran - and from which now and again one could visit Munich if one felt like it. Till with October in sight it seemed the easiest and wisest thing to slip back to Bandol.
After collecting themselves at the Hotel Beau Rivage, they found a little villa right on the sea, with a balcony looking seaward for Lawrence. Just at first he was in bed there, then up again, and always up and down.
As usual in his letters home, each period in bed was no more than 'a little bout', only to be expected in the process of getting straight again. He insisted on having the bedroom to himself, and strictly forbade Frieda to come in until after five o'clock each morning, when he should have got over his first and worst fit of coughing. She might come in then, with the big yellow cat pushing through the door before her to jump on to Lawrence's bed.
He passed day after day of a serene autumn on the balcony watching the sea and the dreamlike islands and the Mediterranean fishing boats going about their ages-old business. And in that sight his heart was at home - at home as it had never been in New Mexico. Men out there of his own order of consciousness were in touch with the unknown life of the cosmos, and they partook of that life the more profoundly because they measured themselves as men in conflict against it, therein becoming something more than men. Hope could not die out of the world so long as there was this. The wasted end of our epoch, even if it were faint as a filament wavering in air, would endure and would be joined to the beginning of a new epoch - when the time was ripe. When that time arrives Lawrence will come into his own, but much death and destruction may lie between. For the present, if even half the eyes that feast daily on the sight of the Mediterranean could look at the fishing fleet with the eyes of Lawrence, the new era might begin at once. Yet, to find it as Lawrence found it, all his savage pilgrimage was necessary, and was not too much. For days at a stretch he was sunk far into himself in a state of passivity such as he had never known before, not writing even letters, not reading nor even painting. For the first time I ceased to hear from him.
But out of this state of passivity came poems which may well prove to be his finest. And he cannot have been passive for so very long on end, as Apocalypse belongs to that winter, and he turned out also various articles of a popular nature, such as 'The Risen Lord', which to his surprise was published in Everyman without cuts. He was glad to hear in December that the Obscenity pamphlet had sold over 6,000. It was almost as if the tide was turning in his favour. As he had always believed it would turn. Though he was not pleased with his health he still did not think he was worse. It was chiefly that he could not walk. First Paris and then Germany had been bad for him. He must be patient and his strength would come back. He grew to like the place so much that it was often discussed whether they should take on the Beau Soleil as a permanency or find another villa in the neighbourhood. They had a good cook, and Lawrence had great belief in the virtue of lying low. In the middle of January he felt so much better that once more he could see himself and Frieda going for summer to New Mexico and making their home at Bandol each winter. Frieda's younger daughter came out to stay and acted as a sort of secretary to Lawrence. Though he would not be treated as an invalid he could do with a little practical help along lines which were not Frieda's. Or perhaps it was chiefly that the girl might feel happier if she felt useful, to which end he insisted on giving her a small salary.
His friends were far more anxious than he, and before the end of January he was persuaded to see a doctor from England in whom both Koteliansky and Gerder had great confidence - Gerder with good reason, as he had himself suffered from pulmonary trouble, had been attended by this doctor and was now in good health. Lawrence therefore had himself examined.
The diagnosis was acute bronchitis aggravated by the condition of the lungs; the treatment recommended was two months of sanatorium treatment. Lawrence submitted.
Writing to tell Ada about it, he was as simple and as reticent as a schoolboy, and as hopefully comforting. She had wanted to come out again to see him, but he said she was not to come till he was better and walking about, as he would be soon. It would be too annoying to have to cope with sanatorium rules about visitors twice weekly, and the rest of it. He did not truly want to see Ada just then.
On February 3 rd he went into the Sanatorium Ad Astra at Vence, and Frieda to the Villa Robermond a little higher up the hill. Then of course Lawrence had visitors. Mr H. G. Wells calling from his villa not far away, was among them. Also the Aga Khan with his bride. His Highness had been so charmed with Lawrence's pictures when he saw them in London that he had the idea of showing them in a private gallery in Paris. As a result of his call at Vence, which was found very enjoyable, Lawrence telegraphed to the Warren Gallery to hold the pictures (now restored by the police) instead of sending them to him at Vence as had been arranged.
On the day after his arrival he wrote to assure Ada that it was 'quite nice and not alarming', that he thought he would 'be all right', and that he had a balcony from which he could see the coast line and Cannes five miles off. Next week, 'all being well', he would be going down to lunch.
He endured the sanatorium life for three weeks. Then he decided that he would endure it no longer. It was not the regimen that was too much for him. Of that he could be entirely patient. But the necessarily mechanical ordering of an institution was what his spirit could not bear and retain its courage. He had become definitely worse. If he was to live he might not stay longer, equally if he was to die it must not be there.
Unaided, to the surprise of those who were with him, he packed his things and without help walked up the rough and stony hill path to the Robermond villa. And that night, as every night at the sanatorium, he refused to let anybody help him with his toilet.
What remains is not for me to tell. I know only that Lawrence - physically the ghost of what he had been, a mere handful of a man - fought death to the last, and at the last accepted what had to be with the simplicity of the brave. He gave orders that his funeral, if he died, was to be of the cheapest description. Yet he went on hoping that he would not die. At home we did not, could not, believe that he would. He bore with fortitude the severe pain - for now it seems that his malady was developing into tubercular meningitis. His mind stayed clear and composed. He would not permit injections for deadening the pain, though he would swallow an opiate.
