At the time of giving his presentation, Robert had finished eleven of the fifteen chapters; his presentation covered chapters one to nine (starting with the Lawrences\u2019 holiday in Les Diablerets with Aldous and Julian Huxley and their families, soon after Lawrence had completed the final version of\u00a0Lady Chatterley\u2019s Lover<\/em>).<\/p>\n

Robert has promised to return to the London Lawrence Group to give another presentation on chapters ten to fifteen, once he has finished the book.<\/p>\n

Chapter 1 Florence \u2013 Les Diablerets: 20th January-6th March 1928<\/strong><\/p>\n

Robert presented 1928 as a pivotal year in Lawrence\u2019s life. He wrote to Kot that he felt in the abyss, but that something was bound to begin again anew. In fact, 1928 was the year in which he for the first time started to make a decent living (from journalistic articles, and then Lady Chatterley\u2019s Lover<\/em>). However, his health was deteriorating.<\/p>\n

He and Frieda went to stay in Les Diablerets with the Huxleys\u2019 extended family. Lawrence disagreed with the Huxley brothers about science (Lawrence hated the word, and said of its findings that \u2018they may be facts, but they\u2019re not truths\u2019). He also found Julian supercilious towards his younger brother Aldous, and said so to Julian\u2019s wife Juliette. She later described the situation in her 1986 memoir Leaves of the Tulip Tree<\/em>:<\/p>\n

\u2018I began to sense in Julian a restless impatience, an impervious need to assert himself \u2026 Our quiet days became charged with tension, Julian playing a part towards Aldous and me \u2013 a curious \u201cI\u2019m the king of the castle\u201d role, excluding others in discussions. Aldous was courteous as always but also a little uncomfortable. It was not long before Lawrence began to\u00a0resent Julian\u2019s attitude. \u2026 he began to speak about what I always felt was my secret world. Profoundly embarrassed, I barely listened because my mother was there \u2026 Lawrence was hard on Julian: he thought him \u201can expurgated version of a man; like so many others, much the greatest danger for men\u201d \u2026 I felt trapped, far too repressed to risk a discussion. What a chance I missed, sitting there frozen and numb \u2026 Dear Lawrence. He was full of the unpasteurised milk of human kindness, he blundered into vulnerable situations, knowing that he was right and that all would be well if only people listened to him. He believed in taking action whatever the moment or results\u2019<\/p>\n

For his part, on 17th April 1928 Lawrence wrote in a letter to Juliette: \u2018I was so relieved when you said it was better with you and Julian now, and that something had come free. I\u2019m so glad. After talking to you \u2026 that evening in such a burst, I said to Frieda: I wish to God I\u2019d kept my tongue still.\u2019<\/p>\n

Chapter 2 Villa Mirenda, Florence: 6th March-10th June 1928<\/strong><\/p>\n

$\"\"$
Villa Mirenda, Florence<\/p><\/div>\n
<\/p>\n
Back in Florence Lawrence resumed his relationship with Pino Orioli, whom he had known in Cornwall during the First World War. He brought him the typescript of Lady Chatterley\u2019s Lover<\/em>, which had been typed in part by Catherine Carswell and in part by Maria Huxley after his old friend Nellie Morrison refused to continue after the first five chapters. Orioli not only published the novel but helped him in other ways, including by bringing provisions to the Villa Mirenda. Lawrence drove a hard bargain with him on the novel, however, and Orioli had mixed feelings about him, perhaps also being influenced by the attitudes of his partner Norman Douglas.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
In his 1937 Adventures of a Bookseller<\/em>, Pino recalled:<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\u2018I was not officially the publisher, though I had all the publishing work to do, and a most trying job it was \u2026 Much as I like some of his work, I never had any deep feeling for him as a man. One always had to be on one\u2019s guard with Lawrence \u2013 his querulousness and chronic distrust of everybody made a real intimacy impossible. Sometimes his behaviour led me to wonder whether he was not suffering from persecution mania.<\/p>\n
\u2026 Lawrence was more troublesome than anyone I have ever dealt with, and as a friend so incalculable and often so disappointing, so disheartening, that now and then I wonder how many of those who knew him well were really sorry when he died.<\/p>\n
\u2026 Lawrence was a homosexual gone wrong; repressed in childhood by a puritan environment. That is the key to his life and writings.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n
However, in 1954 Richard Aldington in Pinorman <\/em>wrote that Orioli had spoken about Lawrence with great respect soon after he died:<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\u2018I can testify that around 1930-32 Pino spoke of Lawrence with the greatest respect for his memory. He even talked of trying to get permission \u2026 to put a small memorial tablet on the pine tree near Scandicci under which Lawrence wrote most of \u201cLady C\u201d\u2019.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
$\"\"$
Norman Douglas and Pino Orioli in the early 1930s<\/p><\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n
$\"\"$ <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Chapter 3 Florence \u2013 Grenoble \u2013 Saint-Nizier: 10th^{\u00a0<\/sup>-15th June 1928<\/strong><\/p>\n}
<\/p>\n
$\"\"$ <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The Lawrences then went with the Brewsters to Saint-Nizier, a remote mountain village west of Grenoble. Here an unpleasant incident took place: Lawrence coughed through the night in their hotel room, and the following morning they were requested to leave, because of a local bylaw to the effect that people with TB were not allowed to stay at the hotel.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The Brewsters, in their 1934 D. H. Lawrence \u2013 Reminiscences and Correspondence<\/em>, recalled:<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\u2018Early in the morning, after our first night there, the proprietor knocked at Earl\u2019s door \u2026 he was sorry not to be able to keep Lawrence, but there was no choice since the law on that plateau prohibited his having guests with affected lungs. Monsieur would have to go.<\/p>\n
Ill as Lawrence was, he had never admitted to us the seriousness of his malady. He had continued to refer to it as an \u201cannoying\u201d irritation of his bronchials. Never before had the doors of a hotel been closed to him because of it. Shocked and dismayed, we had to break this news to Frieda, whom it upset still more. It was decided not to tell Lawrence what had happened.\u2019\u00a0For his part, Lawrence recalled to Orioli on 21st June 1928:<\/p>\n
\u2018That St. Nizier place was very rough \u2013 and the insolent French people actually asked us to go away because I coughed. They said they didn\u2019t have anybody who coughed. I felt very mad.\u2019<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
$\"\"$ <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Chapter 4 –\u00a0 \u00a0Saint-Nizier \u2013 Chexbres-sur-Vevey: 15th June \u2013 6th July 1928<\/p>\n
During the period when Lawrence went to Chexbres-sur-Vevey on Lake Geneva, Frieda went to visit her mother, but was also seeing her lover Ravagli. Juliette Huxley (in Leaves of the Tulip Tree<\/em>) said that \u2018When (Frieda) vanished on one of her periodic prowls, (Lawrence) was left vulnerable like an orphan.\u2019 Robert described Lawrence as \u2018sad if understanding\u2019. For her part, Frieda wrote to her mother in April-May 1928:<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\u2018But you know very well, just as I want to travel, L. gets ill \u2026 I\u2019m well otherwise, but with every bit of inward strength I make myself slowly freer; I can\u2019t bear always just living this illness \u2013 and always just sacrificing myself \u2013 that\u2019s not what I understand by life.\u2019<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Frieda\u2019s daughter Barbara Weekly Barr, in her 1954 Memoir<\/em>, recalled:<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\u2018Aunt Else told me that whenever she heard her sing (\u2018The Lay of the Imprisoned Huntsman\u2019) she felt sad, because there was a sound in Frieda\u2019s voice of a being also imprisoned.<\/p>\n
In their life together, Frieda must sometimes have suffered, and felt lonely \u2026 Lawrence was inclined to be jealous \u2026 The strain on her remarkable good humour must have been colossal. She believed in him, though. He needed her belief and was most unhappy without her.<\/p>\n
At this time (April 1928) she wanted a holiday by herself. I was going back to Alassio. She came too, and then went off alone. Lawrence said to Maria Huxley, \u201cFrieda has changed since she went away with Barby.\u201d He did not reproach my mother. One evening at the Mirenda he said to her, \u201cEvery heart has a right to its own secrets.\u201d\u2019<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The Brewsters recalled:<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n
\u2018On the day for Frieda\u2019s return from Baden-Baden Lawrence consulted the timetable and decided she would arrive by ten in the morning. As no Frieda appeared he met the twelve o\u2019clock express, with the same result. He ate his lunch hurriedly and rushed back for the two-twenty local, but returned shortly looking disconsolate \u2026 We tried to cheer him up, but in vain. He always looked forward so eagerly to her return.\u2019<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
$\"\"$ \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n
$\"\"$ <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Chapter 5 Gstaad \u2013 Gsteig: 6 July-18th Sept 1928<\/strong><\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
$\"\"$ <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Lawrence chose a very high chalet above Gsteig for the sake of his lungs, and on 11th July 1928 invited his elder sister Emily and his niece to come and visit him there:<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\u2018It\u2019s a very pretty place \u2013 I wish you could see it. Would you venture to come for a fortnight if I sent you the money? We have a room upstairs you could have.\u2019<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
They came, but unfortunately for three of the twelve days of their visit, it rained continuously. Lawrence felt estranged from his relatives: \u2018I have to hide \u201cLady C.\u201d like a skeleton in my cupboard\u2019 (letter to Orioli of 30th August 1928); \u2018I am not really \u201cour Bert\u201d, Come to that, I never was. And the gulf between their outlook and mine is always yawning, horribly obvious to me.\u2019 (letter to Enid Hilton, 31st August 1928).<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
It was therefore a sad visit, during which he \u2018made [a] design for my tombstone in Gsteig churchyard, with suitable inscription: \u201cDeparted this life, etc. etc. \u2013 He was fed up!\u201d\u2019 (letter to the Huxleys 31st July 1928). It seems that the altitude did not restore him, and his cough still tormented him. He\u00a0admitted\u00a0to\u00a0being\u00a0incapable of\u00a0walking\u00a0even\u00a0short\u00a0distances \u2013\u00a0which\u00a0meant\u00a0that\u00a0visits\u00a0to\u00a0Gsteig\u00a0were\u00a0rarely\u00a0possible\u00a0because\u00a0of the mile-long\u00a0climb\u00a0back uphill afterwards.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
$\"\"$ <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
$\"\"$ <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Chapter 6 Gsteig \u2013 Baden-Baden: September 18th \u2013 October 1st 1928<\/strong><\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
During this visit to Frieda\u2019s mother in Baden-Baden, Lawrence was kind and attentive. In a letter to Ada the year before (October 9th 1927), he had described his mother-in-law as \u2018wonderful \u2013 seems to get younger. She was out with us to tea at the Kurhaus \u2026 very pretty and elegant. She is really very nice \u2013 and whatever she can do for me, she does it \u2013 thinks of everything possible.\u2019 Frieda recalled in Not I, But the Wind<\/em> in 1935: \u2018Lawrence and my mother were fond of one another \u2026 Especially after the war, she and (he) became great friends \u2026 She was very happy in his life and mine, it meant so much to her \u2026 Lawrence and my mother in her wisdom and ripeness understood each other so well. She said to me: \u201cIt\u2019s strange that an old woman can still be as fond of a man as I am of that Lorenzo\u201d.\u2019<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
$\"\"$ <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
But when he stayed with her again in August 1929 at a hotel in the hills above Baden-Baden – which he wanted to leave because of the bad weather but where she insisted on staying – he was less kind. On 2nd August 1929 he wrote to Ada: \u2018Frieda\u2019s mother really rather awful now. She\u2019s 78 and \u2026 thinking her time to die may be coming on. So she fights in the ugliest fashion, greedy and horrible, to get everything that will keep her alive \u2026 nothing exists but just for the uprpose of giving her a horrible strength to hang on a few more years \u2026 that old woman would see me die by inches and yards rather than relinquish her \u201cmountain air\u201d \u2026 It\u2019s the most ghastly state of almost insane selfishness I ever saw \u2013 and all comes of her hideous terror of having to die \u2026 May god preserve me from ever sinking so low. I never felt so cruelly humiliated.\u2019<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Chapter 7: Baden-Baden \u2013 Strasbourg \u2013 Le Lavandou: October 1st \u2013 14th 1928<\/strong><\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
On arrival in Strasbourg the Lawrences and the Brewsters went to see the cathedral. As the Brewsters recall in their 1934 D. H. Lawrence: Reminiscences and Correspondence<\/em>: \u2018Though it was cold \u2026 when we arrived at Strasbourg, we set forth to explore the cathedral. Lawrence thought it had the beauty of both the French and German Gothic; he liked its exterior best of all Gothic cathedrals.\u2019<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
$\"\"$ <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Afterwards, in order stay warm, they went to see Ben Hur <\/em>at the cinema; the Brewsters recall: \u2018There was no human touch, nothing resembling a reality of any case of life we knew or could imagine. Lawrence gasped out that he was going; if we did not take him out immediately, he would be violently sick; such falsity nauseated him; he could not bear to see other people there open-mouthed, swallowing it, believing it to be true.\u2019<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Robert added that Lawrence would doubtless have been horrified to know that 150 horses had been reported killed during the making of the film\u2019s chariot race.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
During their time with the Brewsters in the summer of 1928, Lawrence criticised Earl Brewster\u2019s painting and writing, which Brewster took very well; theirs was an easy relationship during the last few years of Lawrence\u2019s life.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Chapter 8 <\/strong>Le Lavandou \u2013 Port-Cros \u2013 Toulon: October 15th-November 17th 1928<\/strong><\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
$\"\"$ <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
This visit was undertaken with Richard Aldington, his current lover Arabella Yorke, and his former lover Brigit Patmore \u2013 and was not a happy time for any of them. A tension arose between Lawrence and Aldington over the latter tending back towards Brigit, which fact greatly upset Arabella (who threatened and tried to commit suicide). Aldington, in his 1941 memoir Life for Life\u2019s Sake<\/em>, described Lawrence\u2019s talk as \u2018too personal and satirical, sharp with the reckless hatred of those about to die\u2019. And in his 1951 Portrait of a Genius, But\u2026 <\/em>he wrote \u2018Poor Lawrence! \u2026 It was a bitter heart-break \u2026 to find that he had to spend his sdays in bed or in a deck-chair \u2026 how frail and ill he was, how bitterly he suffered, what frightening envy and hatred of ordinary healthy humanity sometimes possessed him, how his old wit had become bitter malice, how lonely he was, how utterly he depended on Frieda, how insanely jealous of her he had become.\u2019 Regarding this last point Brigit Patmore, in her 1968 My Friends When Young<\/em>, wrote that Frieda \u2018had always to bear the worst. We occasionally received a cool flick, but she got it straight from the electric current.\u2019 Aldington wrote to Hilda Doolittle at the time: \u2018Up in that lonely Vigie, a mile from the nearest house, it was like a series of demented scenes from Wuthering Heights<\/em>\u2019.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
$\"\"$ <\/p>\n
Lawrence\u2019s Pansy <\/em>\u2018The Noble Englishman\u2019 may well have been based on Aldington (as may \u2018How Beastly the Bourgeois Is\u2019):<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
I know a noble englishman<\/p>\n
who is sure he\u2019s a gentleman,<\/p>\n
that sort \u2013<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
This moderately young gentleman<\/p>\n
is very normal, as becomes an englishman,<\/p>\n
rather proud of being a bit of a Don Juan<\/p>\n
you know \u2013<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
But one of his beloveds, looking a little peaked<\/p>\n
towards the end of her particular affair with him<\/p>\n
said: Ronald, you know, is like most englishmen,<\/p>\n
by instinct he\u2019s a sodomist<\/p>\n
but he\u2019s frightened to know it<\/p>\n
so he takes it out on women.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Oh come! said I. That Don Juan of a Ronald! \u2013<\/p>\n
Exactly! she said. Don Juan was another of them, in love with himself<\/p>\n
and taking it out on women. \u2013<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Even that isn\u2019t sodomitical, said I.<\/p>\n
But if a man is in love with himself, isn\u2019t that the meanest form of homosexuality? she said.<\/p>\n
You\u2019ve no idea, when men are in love with themselves, how they wreak<\/p>\n
all their spite on women<\/p>\n
pretending to love them.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Ronald, she resumed, doesn\u2019t like women, just acutely dislikes them.<\/p>\n
He might possibly like men, if he weren\u2019t too frightened and egoistic.<\/p>\n
So he very cleverly tortures women, with his sort of love.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
He\u2019s instinctively frightfully clever.<\/p>\n
He can be so gentle, so gentle<\/p>\n
so delicate in his love-making.<\/p>\n
Even now, the thought of it bewilders me: such gentleness!<\/p>\n
Yet I know he does it deliberately, as cautiously and deliberately as when he shaves himself.<\/p>\n
Then more than that, he makes a woman feel he is serving<\/em> her<\/p>\n
really living in her service, and serving her<\/p>\n
as no man ever served before.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
And then, suddenly, when she\u2019s feeling all lovely about it<\/p>\n
suddenly the ground goes from under her feet, and she clutches in mid-air,<\/p>\n
but horrible, as if your heart would wrench out; \u2013<\/p>\n
while he stands aside watching with a superior little grin<\/p>\n
like some malicious indecent little boy.<\/p>\n
– No, don\u2019t talk to me about the love of englishmen!<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Eventually the party was driven off the island by storms physical and mental.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Chapter 9 Toulon \u2013 Bandol: 17th November 1928 \u2013 11th March 1929<\/strong><\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
At Bandol the Lawrences were visited by Rhys Davies, who recorded ugly rows between Lawrence and Frieda, including over Rasputin, to whose description in a book about Rasputin Frieda expressed attraction. In his 1940 article D. H. Lawrence in Bandol <\/em>Davies noted that at the Grand Hotel Beau-Rivage \u2018was a young negro waiter. Lawrence took \u2026 a deep dislike to the youth. The dislike was so intense and its object so innocently unaware of it that I was vastly amused. To see Lawrence\u2019s eyes gleam with watchful revulsion \u2026 seemed utterly grotesque to me: why be so stirred over the young man?\u2019 Lawrence also disapproved of the waiter\u2019s engagement to a young white governess staying at the hotel.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
$\"\"$ <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
$\"\"$ <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Overall, however, it was a good stay. Lawrence wrote to Maria Huxley on 21st November 1929:<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\u2018It is incredibly lovely weather, the place very lovely, swimming with milky gold light at sunset, and white boats half melted on the white twilight sea, and palm trees frizzing their tops in the rosy west, and their thick dark columns down in the dark where we are, with shadowy boys running and calling, and tiny orange lamps under the foliage, in the under dusk. Then we come in and have tea in my room looking south where the moon is, and get sticky with the jammy cake.\u2019<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
$\"\"$ <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
THE DISCUSSION<\/strong><\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Robert acknowledged that he has mixed feelings about Lawrence during his last couple of years, but that Lawrence\u2019s suffering under his illness excused a lot, and that he remained brave and extremely productive. Jane Costin observed that Lawrence\u2019s rages were nothing new, and had been witnessed by both Jessie Chambers and Louie Burrows. She also asked how Lawrence had come to meet with Orioli in Cornwall during the War; David Ellis thought that since Orioli kept a bookshop in London with a friend, Lawrence may have got to know him there. Jim Phelps felt that Lawrence\u2019s art was more important than his biography, but Robert responded that his book pays considerable attention to his works. After the event, Philip Chester wrote to me [Catherine Brown] as follows:<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\u2018I was wondering how Robert would account for the bitter, vitriolic, mean spirited acrimony that existed between two supposed\u00a0life-long \u201cfriends\u201d in\u00a0Lawrence and Aldington because, to me, it seems way, way over the top. Yes, Lawrence was a very sick man \u201cdying in his clothes\u201d and Aldington \u201cshell shocked\u201d, \u2013 both very serious physical, emotional, spiritual and psychological conditions \u2013 but… I believe that that Port Cros episode among intimate friends \u2013 Frieda, Lawrence, Aldington, Arabella and Brigit Patmore \u2013 has the makings of a Chekhovian or Ibsen-like play (or Hollywood screenplay). I wonder if anyone has undertaken such a project…? \u2026 In my view, that month on that French island in 1928 was a critical turning point in all their lives just as Lawrence’s visit to Padworth in 1926 had been, both occasions of literary significance, of course, but my sympathy lies with Arabella, and I believe her story needs to be told.\u2019<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Report of the Twenty-Ninth meeting of the London D. H. Lawrence Group \u00a0 Robert Bullock \u00a0 The Road to Vence 1928-1929 Thursday 25th May 2023 By Zoom 18.30-20.00 UK time ATTENDERS 32 people attended, including, from outside of England, David Pratt in Regina Saskatchewan, Philip Chester in Deep River […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4583,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[292,11,235,234,1],"tags":[48,307],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/catherinebrown.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4580"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/catherinebrown.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/catherinebrown.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/catherinebrown.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/catherinebrown.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4580"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/catherinebrown.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4580\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4610,"href":"https:\/\/catherinebrown.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4580\/revisions\/4610"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/catherinebrown.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4583"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/catherinebrown.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4580"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/catherinebrown.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4580"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/catherinebrown.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4580"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}