D. H. Lawrence and a Tale of Two Parliamentarians

D. H. Lawrence - Sir W. Joynson-Hicks - Lee Anderson

 

 

I have to confess, I was surprised to hear Lee Anderson mention the name of D. H. Lawrence in his speech to the Reform UK National Conference at the NEC in Birmingham yesterday ...

 

I know the MP for Ashfield is from the same neck of the woods and has a similar working-class coal mining background as Lawrence, but, even so, I was not expecting to hear England's most controversial author of the early twentieth-century namechecked by someone once described by the Daily Mirror as the worst man in Britain. 

 

Celebrating English culture, Anderson arguably revealed his Romantic nature by referring not only to Lawrence, but also to Wordsworth, Keats, and Byron [1]. Just how familiar he is with these writers I don't know; although in his maiden speech to parliament in January 2020 Anderson did claim to have read Lady Chatterley's Lover several times [2]. 

 

It might also be noted that, the following year, Anderson stood up in the Commons to thank the Government for the extra funding they had given to the D. H. Lawrence Centre in Eastwood and to ask whether the Secretary of State would support his bid to get a Lawrence statue erected in Eastwood in order to celebrate the author's life and works [3].     

 

Times have certainly changed: a 100 years ago Tory members of parliament such as Sir William Joynson-Hicks were openly calling for the censorship and destruction of Lawrence's work ...

 

 

II. 

 

Best known as a long-serving and controversial Home Secretary in Stanley Baldwin's Second Government (1924-29), Joynson-Hicks (or Jix, as he was called) gained a reputation for moral authoritarianism. Not only did he clamp down on nightlife, but he vigorously opposed what he regarded as indecent literature. This included, for example, Radclyffe Hall's The Well of Loneliness and Lady Chatterley's Lover. 

 

Postal workers - acting under instruction from Scotland Yard and the Home Office - intercepted copies of the latter being sent into Britain from Florence (where the book had been privately printed). Even more outrageously, the Postmaster General also opened another parcel which Lawrence had sent (by registered post) to the London office of his literary agent, containing two typescripts of a collection of poems entitled Pansies. 

 

The typescripts, confiscated (and eventually destroyed) on the grounds of indecency, gave Joynson-Hicks another chance to attack Lawrence in parliament as part of a relentless secret war waged by the authorities against Lawrence since 1915 and publication of arguably his greatest novel The Rainbow [4]. 

 

Lawrence was understandably enraged by this. However, despite being mortally ill in late 1929, he summoned the strength to go on the attack: "the Pansies seizure inspired him to keep up his campaign against hypocrisy and censorship" [5], memorably describing Jix as a censor-moron and a "miserable mongrel" [6].

 

One can't help wondering what he'd think of Lee Anderson and whether or not he too deserves to be thrown down a well of loneliness ...

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Anderson's list of a dozen British literary greats seemed somewhat random and lacked chronological consistency. It ran in full: D. H. Lawrence, Wordsworth, Keats, Byron, Shakespeare, Dickens, Tolkien, Orwell, Jane Austen, Ian Fleming, C. S. Lewis, and George Eliot. 

[2] For those who are interested, the text of Anderson's maiden speech in the House of Commons (27 Jan 2020) can be read by clicking here. 

      Anderson is mistaken to say that Lawrence wrote Lady Chatterley's Lover in his home region - he wrote it in Italy - although it is based in and around the village of Teversal. Lawrence had made his final visit to what he called the country of [his] heart shortly before he began work on the first version of his novel in the autumn of 1926, so he was certainly in the process of assembling ideas.  

[3] Anderson's contribution to parliamentary debate on 16 September 2021 can be found in Hansard: click here. According to Nigel Huddleston - the then Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, who responded to Anderson's request - there were "many D. H. Lawrence fans" in the House - which, if true, is another great surprise to me.  

 

[4] Readers who think this sounds overly-dramatic might like to see Alan Travis, 'The hounding of DH Lawrence', in The Guardian (10 April 1999): click here. 

      The key point is Joynson-Hicks misled his fellow MPs when he informed the House of Commons that the package containing Lawrence's typescripts had been sent via the 'open book post' and had been subject to a random search to ensure the contents had been charged at the correct rate, when, in fact, it had been registered and Lawrence's mail was routinely checked as part of a long-running police surveillance operation. 

 

[5] John Worthen, D. H. Lawrence: The Life of an Outsider (Allen Lane, 2005), p. 389.

    

[6] D. H. Lawrence, letter to Juliette Huxley [12 January 1929], The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, Vol. VII, ed. Keith Sagar and James T. Boulton (Cambridge University Press, 1993), p. 132. 

 

 

On the Ball with D. H. Lawrence

D. H. Lawrence: Spring (c. January 1929)

watercolour (30 x 22.5 cm)

 

 

I. 

 

John Worthen's short piece in the latest Journal of D. H. Lawrence Studies [1] concerning Lawrence's time as a pupil-teacher in Eastwood, is interesting for the revelation that the latter liked nothing better than to arrange an informal kickabout in the school playground during the lunch break, using bricks - and perhaps even jumpers - for goal posts. 

 

Although it seems Lawrence did not himself participate as a player, he was happy to act as a referee and so clearly understood the rules of the beautiful game - just like any other working-class lad at the time - even if there is no evidence (so far) to suggest he supported a local team [2].

 

Knowing this allows us to look at the above painting - Spring (1929) - with fresh eyes; perhaps Lawrence was not merely painting some local youths in the lovely French seaside resort of Bandol celebrating the scoring of a goal during a soccer match, but also fondly recalling the passion with which his own pupils at the Albert Street School would play the game ...

 

 

II.  

 

Funny enough, this picture by Lawrence is one that Keith Sagar seems to particularly loathe:

 

"Spring is supposed to be a painting of some boys in Bandol playing football, but by removing the blue shirts they wore in the first version of the painting, leaving them wearing nothing but boots, and by having all but one of them engage in activities which, whether homoerotic or not, have certainly nothing to do with the ball, he produces a ludicrous painting." [3]

 

The problem, however, is that whilst Sagar was a great Lawrence scholar, he was not, alas, a very good art critic and he misses the opportunity to recognise Lawrence's importance as a painter [4]. There is, I would suggest, a very special violence - and, indeed, a very special beauty - that emerges from his canvases as part of an art of sensation.

 

Lawrence does not wish to reduce his figures to the level of optical cliché; he is not trying to capture a likeness! Nor is he simply revealing and celebrating the flesh, he is rather pushing it in the direction of deformation and disfiguration (anatomical fidelity is no more an issue for Lawrence than it was for Cézanne).  

And so, returning to Spring ... 

 

Expecting and wanting to see an actual game of football, Sagar is irritated by the fact that Lawrence provides sensation rather than spectacle and that he is as uninterested in the score-line, the colour of the kits, or the intricacies of the offside rule, as the boys who play for the joy felt by healthy young bodies exerting themselves, the love of team mates, the ecstasy of celebration, etc. 

 

Spring demonstrates Lawrence's appreciation of the fact that football - and, indeed, sport in general - expresses and liberates certain vital forces and flows.   

 

 

Notes

 

[1] See John Worthen, 'D. H. Lawrence as Games Organiser and Football Referee', Journal of D. H. Lawrence Studies, Volume 6, Number 3, ed. Susan Reid  (D. H. Lawrence Society, 2023), pp. 11-16.    

[2] Lawrence might have supported Notts County; the oldest professional football club in the world, formed in 1862; or Nottingham Forest, formed three years later; or Derby County, formed in 1884, and one of the twelve founding members of the Football League in 1888.

 

[3] Keith Sagar, Introduction to D. H. Lawrence's Paintings, (Chaucer Press, 2003), p. 68.

[4] What I mean by this is that Sagar thinks it sufficient to carefully establish the connections between Lawrence's life, writing, and painting, thereby framing the pictures in a bio-literary context. But in simply substituting snippets of biographical detail, personal anecdote, and literary criticism for a genuine analysis of Lawrence's paintings - i.e., one that is written in the terms appropriate to a discussion of a practice primarily concerned with colour and line - Sagar produces a somewhat pointless commentary which not only betrays his own ignorance of the plastic arts, but also his ultimate lack of confidence in Lawrence’s ability to draw.

On the Flintiness of Language in D. H. Lawrence's The Daughter-in-Law

Ellie Nunn as Minnie Gascoyne in D. H. Lawrence's 

The Daughter-in-Law (Arcola Theatre, 2018)  

 Photo by Idil Sukan

 

 

Read almost any review or commentary on D. H. Lawrence's The Daughter-in-Law (1913) and you'll be struck by the repetition of the following claims: 

 

(i) the play is a much neglected and underrated tour de force of English theatre ... 

 

(ii) Lawrence is superior to Chekhov as a dramatist and storyteller ... 

 

(iii) the language used has not only great lyrical beauty, but also an elemental potency best described as flinty ...

 

The first of these points can be swiftly dealt with. For whilst it's true that Lawrence never saw this work performed in his own lifetime and that the text of The Daughter-in-Law wasn't even published until 1965, ever since Peter Gill's celebrated production at the Royal Court Theatre two years later, it has been staged - and positively received - on numerous occasions. 

 

Most recently, for example, a 2018 production at the Arcola Theatre in London, directed by Jack Gamble, was described by Michael Billington writing in The Guardian as "arguably the best account of working-class life in British drama" [1]. 

 

It has also been adapted for radio and filmed for television and its reputation has, as Lawrence biographer John Worthen correctly says, gone from strength to strength. So it’s really something of a myth or popular misconception that The Daughter-in-Law remains neglected and underrated: we've all seen it and we all agree; it's a masterpiece of twentieth-century English drama. But it's certainly not unsung. 

 

As for the subsequent claim that Lawrence is a superior playwright to Chekov and that The Daughter-in-Law pulls feathers from The Seagull (1895) and flattens The Cherry Orchard (1903), well, that's a matter of opinion. Lawrence himself was rather fond of the Russian author and found in his work something new and important. Personally, however, I think Chekov even more boring than Ibsen and find almost anything preferable to his sub-textual theatre of mood. 

 

As for the third point; the flintiness of Lawrence's dialogue, we might ask what it even means to describe language in this manner ...

 

Flint is a hard, sedimentary, cryptocrystalline form of the mineral quartz and is categorized as a variety of chert. It is chiefly found in rock such as chalk and limestone and is usually dark grey or black in colour, often having a smooth, rather waxy surface. 

 

But when critics like Charles Spencer, writing in The Telegraph, refer to the "marvellously flinty vernacular" used in The Daughter-in-Law [2], they don't mean that Luther and Minnie sound as if they belonged like Fred and Wilma to the Stone Age (although, the Midland’s mining community they inhabited is, to us, over a hundred years on, almost as alien and far-off as that of Bedrock). 

 

Rather, they mean that their speech has a down-to-earth solidity and directness. 

 

Further, I think they also wish to imply that the words have an elemental potency and/or some kind of primordial authenticity. This is particularly true of the almost incomprehensible words and phrases spoken in dialect which, if Lawrence is to be believed, directly articulate the body and its strange forces and flows; not so much as signifying units of meaning, but as units of sound. 

 

Thus it is that, in The Daughter-in-Law - as in the novel Son and Lovers (1913) to which it is closely related - Lawrence skilfully combines elements of naturalism, kitchen sink realism, and his own often transgressive philosophy. Like Nietzsche, he attempts to write in blood and doesn't want to be simply read, so much as passionately experienced. 

 

For whilst Lawrence often regarded the emotions as counterfeit, he always believed in and attempted to solicit the genuine feelings of those who bothered to engage with his work. And, like Heidegger, Lawrence seemed to think it was his duty to safeguard the power of the most elementary words. For, just like our favourite Nazi, Lawrence was prone to a form of linguistic mysticism in which certain words and phonemes have greater essential value than others. 

 

Such a belief is deeply rooted in the Judeo-Christian tradition, which posits that the earliest form of language was that spoken by Adam in the Garden of Eden. Whether this language was also used by God to address Adam and is therefore divine in origin, or whether it was invented by Adam in order to name all things, including Eve, is open to debate. Either way, this notion of a forgotten, sacred language has fascinated many occultists, poets, and philosophers, including Lawrence and Heidegger, both of whom seemed to suffer from a kind of nostalgia for a time when we didn't speak words, but, on the contrary, they spoke us. 

 

Rightly or wrongly, Lawrence seemed to imagine that via a use of dialect, regional slang, and archaic terms he might somehow tap into this language of Paradise, thereby expressing mankind's deepest feelings and highest hopes. It's not without reason that the Cambridge edition of his plays contains a fifteen page glossary of such terms. 

 

Amusingly - and controversially - by the time he came to write his final novel, Lady Chatterley’s Lover, (1926), Lawrence had added several expletives to his elementary vocabulary in order to startle us out of what he calls our mob-selves. 

 

Now, if I'm honest, there was a time when, like many Lawrentians, I happily bought into this idea of a flinty, obscene ur-language of the feelings inscribed in our hearts via which we might speak the truth and not merely pass the word along. Keith Sagar, for example, never abandoned his faith in words such as sluthering and slikey to be sufficiently powerful to not only charge Lawrence's dialogue with magical force, but also re-vitalise audience members. 

 

Now, however, I have certain doubts and reservations about this - although, fortunately, these doubts and reservations needn't get in the way of one's enjoyment of The Daughter-in-Law as a rip-roaring piece of theatre [3].

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Michael Billington, 'The Daughter-in-Law review - is this the best British working-class drama?', The Guardian (29 May 2018): click here to read online. 

 

[2] Charles Spencer, writing in a piece for The Telegraph in September 2006, after watching a performance of The Daughter-in-Law (dir. Kirstie Davis) at the Watford Palace Theatre. Spencer went on to argue that Lawrence was, in fact, a far finer playwright than novelist (or, at any rate, that his plays have lasted rather better than his novels). 

 

[3] This post is an edited version of a review of the opening night performance of The Daughter-in-Law, directed by Kirstie Davis, at the GBS Theatre, Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, London, on 5 Feb, 2014, and featuring five final year students: Eliza Butterworth as Mrs. Gascoigne; Tom Varey as Joe; Anna Krippa as Mrs. Purdy; Lianne Harvey as Minnie; and Joe Blakemore as Luther - all of whom were excellent.

      Indeed, for such young actors, they seemed more than capable of rising to the challenge of the often complex and intense nature of the play's sexual politics and class concerns and even managed to make what are not particularly likeable characters seem sympathetic. That's the magic, I suppose, of having youth, beauty, and talent on your side.

      Finally, mention should also be made of Isobel Power Smith for her set and costume design; Peter Small (lighting design); Harry Butcher (sound); and dialect coach Helen Ashton - although I couldn't really tell (and didn't really care) how authentic the East Midland's accents were on the night.       

We Old Ones, We Are Still Here!

Meine Mutter celebrating her 96th birthday  

 

The old ones say to themselves: We are not going to make way, we are not going to die,

we are going to stay on and on and on and on and make the young look after us 

till they are old. - DHL [1]

 

 

I. 

 

This Sunday, my mother will reach 96 years of age. 

 

Some people say this is a real achievement, though I'm not sure about that; surely the achievement is dying an authentic death - something that requires courage and skill - not simply celebrating birthday after birthday and endlessly adding candles to a cake ...? 

Having said that, surviving to a very old age and becoming a monster of stamina in the process does seem to suggest a powerful expression of will. 

 

For even today, when - thanks to improved living standards and advancements in health care - life expectancy has significantly increased since the year my mother was born (1926), not many women in the UK will make it past 95 [2].

 

II.

 

Back in July 1926, D. H. Lawrence travelled north from Italy to Germany with his wife Frieda, in order to celebrate his mother-in-law's 75th birthday. In a letter to Edward McDonald, an American professor who was preparing a bibilography of his writings, Lawrence is scathing about the old who cling on to life and refuse to die: 

 

"'Wir alten, wir sind noch hier!' she says. And here they mean to stay, having, through long and uninterrupted experience, become adepts at hanging on to their own lives, and letting anybody else who is fool enough cast bread upon the waters. Baden-Baden is a sort of Holbein Totentanz: old people tottering their cautious dance of triumph: 'wir sind noch hier: hupf! hupf! hupf!" [3] 

 

 

III. 

 

Three years later, in July 1929, and Lawrence is again in Baden-Baden for the Baroness's birthday, despite his previous determination not to go. As John Worthen notes, this was a bad move [4]. For whereas his previous visits had mostly been happy ones, and he had always been rather fond of his Schweigermutter, now he found her unbearable. 

In a letter to his sister Ada, Lawrence writes:

 

"[...] Frieda's mother really rather awful now. She's 78, and suddenly is in an awful state, 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 [...] nothing exists but just for the purpose of giving her a horrible strength to hang on a few more years." [5]

 

Later, in the same letter, he complains how his mother-in-law will not be left alone, even for a short period: 

 

"No, she must have Frieda or me there. It's the most ghastly state of almost insane selfishness I ever saw - and all comes of her hideous terror of having to die. At the age of seventy-eight! May god preserve me from ever sinking so low." [6]

 

 

IV.

 

Now, to be fair to my mother, she doesn't gulp down the air in greedy gulps like the Baroness - doesn't actively fight to stay alive. She just sits quietly in her chair all day, like a black hole at the centre of the universe [7]. 

 

But I understand - and share - Lawrence's sense of horror and humiliation.    

 

 

Notes

 

[1] D. H. Lawrence, 'The grudge of the old', in The Poems, Vol. I, ed. Christopher Pollnitz, (Cambridge University Press, 2013), p. 436.

 

[2] Readers interested in the national statistics estimating the number of people (mostly women) in the UK population aged 90 and over, between the years 2002 and 2020, can click here. 

[3] D. H. Lawrence, letter to Edward McDonald (16 July 1926), in The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, Vol. V, ed. James T. Boulton and Lindeth Vasey, (Cambridge University Press, 1989), pp. 495-496. Lines quoted are on p. 496.   

 

[4] John Worthen, D. H. Lawrence: The Life of an Outsider, (Allen Lane / Penguin Books, 2005), p. 400.

 

[5] D. H. Lawrence, letter to Ada Clarke (2 August 1929), in The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, Vol. VII, ed. Keith Sagar and James T. Boulton, (Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp. 397-398. 

[6] Ibid., p. 398. 

[7] See my poem 'Black Holes' in The Circle of Fragments and Other Verses, (Blind Cupid Press, 2010) - or click here to read it on Torpedo the Ark. 

May Day with D. H. Lawrence (1911 - 1917)

Edith A. Cubitt: Children Dancing Round a Maypole (c. 1900) 

Watercolour drawing (commissioned by Ernest Nister)

vam.ac.uk

 

 

1 May 1911

 

After his advances to Agnes Holt in the autumn of 1909 had come to nothing - not even a handjob - Lawrence convinced Jessie Chambers to become his lover. 

 

In the two years that followed, finally free from the bonds of chastity, Lawrence actively pursued several women - or bed bunnies as he referred to them - in the hope of further sexual experience; "years of enforced virginity had given way to a kind of compulsive arousal" [1].

 

One of these women was the lovely Louie Burrows, to whom he wrote on May Day 1911:

"I would sell birthrights and deathrights for an embrace of thee, Louisa: toss 'em out of the window, poetic powers, perceptivity, intellect - pouf: for a few kisses and a tight clasp." [2]

 

 

1 May 1912 

 

Lawrence has now met and fallen in love with a woman whom he believes to be the most wonderful in all England. 

 

Unfortunately, Frieda Weekley is married with children. Still, that doesn't deter either of them from beginning an illicit affair and on May Day 1912 he writes a letter in which he expresses his anxiety and guilt - but also his commitment to the relationship - having arranged to effectively elope with her to Germany:

"I feel so horrid and helpless. [...] And what was decent yesterday will perhaps be frightfully indecent today. [...] 

      What time are you going to Germany, what day, what hour, which railway, which class? Do tell  me as soon as you can [...] I will come any time you tell me - but let me know.

      You must be in an insane whirl in your mind. I feel helpless and rudderless, a stupid scattered fool. [...] I would do anything on earth for you [...] but I don't like my feeling [of] presentiment. I am afraid of something low, like an eel which bites out of the mud, and hangs on with its teeth. I feel as if I can't breathe while we're in England." [3]

 

 

1 May 1913

 

Although he and Frieda are now an established item, Lawence is still thinking back to his (mostly sexless) relationship with Jessie - and doing so with increased bitterness. In a letter to Edward Garnett, he writes:

 

"It's all very well for Miss Chambers to be spiritual - perhaps she can bring it off - I can't. She bottled me up till I was going to burst. But as long as the cork sat tight (herself the cork) there was spiritual calm. When the cork was blown out, and Mr Lawrence foamed, Miriam said 'This yeastiness I disown: it was not so in my day.'" [4]  

 

It's always surprising how explicit Lawrence was with his sexual metaphors. Reading this, however, makes one wonder whether Jessie (or her fictional alias of Miriam) had a fear of semen and/or the act of ejaculation? In other words, was her intense disgust-response to male sexual activity rooted in a genuine phobia, or was it merely a consequence of her moral beliefs and idealism? 

 

Either way, this would explain (in part at least) why she was so bitterly ashamed of having allowed Lawrence to fuck her; it was as if he had "dragged her spiritual plumage in the mud" [5]. 

 

 

1 May 1915

 

American readers will probably know that William McKinley was the 25th president of the United States, serving from 1897 until his assassination by the anarchist Leon Czolgosz in 1901 at the Pan-American Exposition held in Buffalo, New York.

 

English readers will probably ask: So what? 

 

Well, it turns out that Lawrence was fascinated by this event and much amused by a song (of anonymous origin) that was written about the shooting and Czolgosz's execution in the electric chair. On May 1st 1915, he enclosed the lyrics to the song in a letter to the English author Eleanor Farjeon (presumably at her request) [6]. 

 

 

1 May 1916 

 

In a letter to his Freudian friend Barbara Low - a founding member of the British Psychoanalytical Society - written from his cottage in Cornwall, Lawrence expresses his complete dismay with the world at war:

 

"I would write to you oftener, but this life of today so disgusts one, it leaves nothing to say. The war, the approaching conscription, the sense of complete paltriness and chaotic nastiness in life, really robs one of speech." [7]  

 

Of course, having said that, Lawrence then goes on (at some length) to speak of the local flora, his work on what he still at this time calls the second half of The Rainbow, and the current state of his health: "I was very well, but have been seedy again these few days ..." [8] 

 

But mostly he complains of the utter nausea he feels for humanity; "people smelling like bugs, endless masses of them, and no relief: it is so difficult to bear. [...] I feel I cannot touch humanity, even in thought, it is abhorrent to me." [9]. 

 

Still, it is from such nausea and violent anti-humanism that great art is born and the greater health discovered. For as Lawrence says: One sheds one's sickness in books.

 

 

1 May 1917

 

Today, of course, when we are all supposed to stand with Ukraine and wear a little blue and yellow ribbon or badge in solidarity, to say anything positive about Russia is almost taboo. But in May 1917 Russia was, for many people, the country that held out the greatest promise. 

 

And so it is that Lawrence writes to his Russian-born friend S. S. Koteliansky:

 

"I feel that our chiefest hope for the future is Russia. When I think of the young new country there, I love it inordinately. It is the place of hope. We must go, sooner or a little later. [...] Send me a Berlitz grammar book, I will begin to learn the language - religiously." [10]

 

Notes

 

[1] John Worthen, D. H. Lawrence: The Early Years 1885-1912, (Cambridge University Press, 1991), p. 252.  

[2] D. H. Lawrence, The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, Vol. I, ed. James T. Boulton, (Cambridge University Press, 1979), p. 264. 

[3] Letters, I. 388-89. 

      It should be noted that this letter was actually written on April 30th, 1912, and not May 1st, but I'm using a little artistic and historical license for the sake of the post.

 

[4-5] Letters, I. 545. 

      This letter has been dated by the editor as 2 May 1913. It is mostly famous for the following boast made by Lawrence: "I know I can write bigger stuff than any man in England." [546]. 

[6] See The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, Vol. II, ed. George J. Zytaruk and James T. Boulton, (Cambridge University Press, 1981), p. 332.

[7-9] Letters, II. 602. 

[10] D. H. Lawrence, The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, Vol. III, ed. James T. Boulton and Andrew Robertson, (Cambridge University Press, 1984), p. 121. 

 

 

The second part of this post - May Day with D. H. Lawrence (1921 - 1929) - can be read by clicking here.

Reflections on Frances Wilson's 'Burning Man'

(Bloomsbury, 2021)

 

 

Anyone setting out to write a new biography of D. H. Lawrence has two initial problems:

 

Firstly, they have to find something to say that wasn't said in the three-volumed Cambridge Biography (1991-1998), written by professors Worthen, Kinkead-Weekes, and Ellis. These three wise men managed to stretch Lawrence's short life out over two thousand pages, which doesn't leave much room, one would have thought, to manoeuvre.

 

Secondly - and perhaps even more problematically - Lawrence himself provided an account of his own life in his essays, articles, travel writings, poems, and - not least of all - in his thousands of letters. What's more, he also gives us an autofictional version of events in his novels, plays, and short stories. 

 

In an attempt to try and get round these inconvenient facts, Frances Wilson does two things:

 

Firstly, she follows Lawrence's footsteps through the pages of his lesser known work and gives greater roles to those who usually are considered of minor import in his life. Thus, we get to hear a lot about Maurice Magnus, for example, and an in-depth analysis of Lawrence's Memoir of the latter. As someone who likes shadowy figures and random events and is obsessed with marginalia, footnotes, early drafts, unpublished or obscure texts, this is fine by me.

 

Secondly, Wilson reads Lawrence's astonishingly productive mid-period in relation to (or in terms of) Dante's Divine Comedy, dividing her study into three main sections: Inferno (England, 1915-1919); Purgatory (Italy, 1919-1922); and Paradise (America, 1922-1925), with each section divided into three parts. 

 

Wilson's book thus has a nice neat structure, provided by a novel literary device - or, what might better be described as a cloaking device; i.e., one designed to disguise the fact that, actually, there's really very little new to say about the life of D. H. Lawrence: those who know the facts, faces, places, dates, and key events know these things already and those who don't probably aren't all that interested. 

 

The real problem I have, however, is that, ultimately, it's the work - not the life - that matters (although Wilson claims she is unable to distinguish between life and art). And we still await the readers that Lawrence deserves; i.e., readers who will do for him what a number of great French thinkers (such as Foucault and Deleuze) did for Nietzsche; violating his texts from behind and below, in order to produce monstrous new ideas and unleash strange new forces and flows.

 

Wilson, sadly, is not such a reader. Like Geoff Dyer, she seems to think Lawrence needs rehabilitating rather than sodomising and, in order to achieve this, she is prepared to concede all his faults and failings and dismiss some of his major works as mad and bad, including The Lost Girl, Aaron's Rod, and even Women in Love, which, in my view, is the greatest novel of the 20th-century (but then I have the mentality of a teenager: click here). 

 

Having said that, her book is well written and (for the most part) fun to read; she clearly still cares for Lawrence a great deal, even if a little embarrassed about her youthful devotion and too readily apologetic when confronted with those issues, such as racism, that drive modern readers into a moral frenzy.

 

Again, for me, it's preferable that Lawence remain a countercultural hate-figure regarded with hostility and contempt, than become a ludicrous figure of fun or remade to suit the prejudices of a contemporary readership. As Malcolm McLaren repeatedly said: It is better to be hated than loved - and better to be a malevolent failure than any kind of benign success. 

 

The greatness of Lawrence resides in the fact that, like Nietzsche, he would rather be a satyr than a saint and that his writing expresses an acute form of evil, with the latter understood as a sovereign value that demands a kind of Übermorality (i.e., beyond conventional understandings of good and evil). 

 

Wilson doesn't seem remotely interested in any of this; she's far more concerned with the minutiae of Lawrence's everyday life than metaphysics; with telling tales and passing the word along, rather than critically evaluating ideas. 

 

Of course, to be fair, she doesn't claim to be writing an intellectual biography and I rather suspect that, like Ottoline Morell, Wilson regards Lawrence's philosophical writings as deplorable tosh - the ravings of whom she calls Self Two; i.e., the Hulk-like Lawrence she finds tiresome and whose reactionary hysteria often "smashed the genius of Self One to smithereens". 

 

The thing is - if we must indulge the untenable fantasy of a dual nature - it's the green-skinned alter-ego rampaging around the world out of sheer rage that often produces the most astonishing work, rather than the pale-faced Priest of Love indulging in Romantic soul-twaddle. As even Wilson acknowledges towards the end of her book: "Good haters are better company than [...] lovers [...]". 

 

 

See: Frances Wilson, Burning Man: The Ascent of D. H. Lawrence, (Bloomsbury, 2021). Lines quoted are on pp. 302 and 386. 

 

For further reflections on the above book, please click here. 

 

 

On Eric Gill's Illustrations for Lady Chatterley's Lover

Eric Gill: Lady C. (1931) 

Early version of a wood engraving intended for 

D. H. Lawrence's novel, Lady Chatterley's Lover

 

  

I. 

 

A recent post on the D. H. Lawrence Society blog features an amusing exchange between Kate Foster and John Worthen on the merits (or otherwise) of a pair of drawings by Eric Gill originally intended as illustrations for Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928): click here.

 

Having previously written on the Lawrence-Gill connection - click here and here, for example - and being a fully paid-up member of the DHL Society, I figured neither of the above would object if I added my tuppence ha'penny worth to the discussion ...     

 

II. 

 

The piece opens by declaring that Gill's sexual inclinations - which included incest, paedophilia, and bestiality - shouldn't affect our appreciation of his work. He may have been a monster of perversity, but hey, his drawings were rather lovely and, we are assured, they are "not in the least pornographic".

This last claim made me smile: such is the continued horror of smut amongst followers of Lawrence, that they can't bear the thought that works that they happen to find beautiful might be anything other than the innocent laughter of genius, free from any "intention to titilate". 

    

I also smiled when, having gone to the trouble to separate the work from the man, the post backtracks and decides that maybe we cannot exclude the figure of the artist from the drawings after all, as they belong to a single history and the latter are, in a sense, portraits of Gill. 

 

To be fair, I understand this ambivalence and it certainly doesn't trouble me in the same way as the earlier refusal to consider the possibility that art and pornography are not always mutually exclusive. However, push comes to shove and for the record, I think it perfectly reasonable to judge a work without any reference to (or interest in) the biography of the artist.        

 

Moving on, we arrive at the $64,000 question: Would Lawrence have liked the drawings? First to answer is John Worthen and he seems in little doubt that the pictures are un-Lawrentian:

 

"I suspect he would have found them pornographic, in the way he spelled out in his essay 'Pornography and Obscenity', where he noted that 'In sexual intercourse, there is give and take.' In the drawings, it is all take (on the man's side), give on the woman's."

 

I have to confess, I have problems with this. For one thing, I cannot see how Worthen can possibly tell who is giving or taking what to or from whom in Gill's pictures. 

 

And, although Lawrence does indeed talk about give and take in the essay mentioned [1], he's not referring to some kind of conscious or consensual exchange between lovers. The reciprocity is, rather, inherent to the act of coition itself, be it between a man and a woman, two men, or one man and his dog; it's a flash of interchange between two blood streams and the question of who is active or passive, giving or receiving, is irrelevant (as well as a little tedious). 

 

We might also note that this is why Worthen's liberal concern that one party in an act of coition may serve in a purely functional and objectified manner as a machine à plaisir is also not really the issue here. For according to the logic of Lawrence's own position, any act of sexual intercourse is radically different from an act of masturbation (his real bête noire); even an act of violent rape results in a new stimulus entering as the old surcharge departs and only masturbation causes deadening. 

 

Just to be clear on this: Lawrence does object (vehemently) to pornography - and he may well have found Gill's drawings pornographic - but not on the grounds Worthen suggests above. 

 

Perhaps realising he needs an additional (more tenable) argument, Worthen now shifts ground slightly and implies that the pictures are the product of an obsessive (and presumably oppressive) male gaze and illustrate what is meant by the Lawrentian phrase sex in the head:        

 

"The drawings are, perhaps, examples of almost exactly what Lawrence was trying not to do in his novel: make the sex something to be looked at. He wanted it to be something felt. Gill is deeply, deeply fascinated by looking, I would say, and his gaze is obsessed; and that (oddly enough) is his limitation as an artist." 

 

This may or may not be true, but it's worth pointing out that Lawrence himself says the purpose of Lady C. was not to stimulate sexual feeling or incite illicit sexual activity, but, rather, help men and women think sex: "fully, completely, honestly, and cleanly" [2]. Surely this conscious realisation requires us to keep our eyes open ...? 

 

Other criticisms of the drawings made by Worthen just seem a little strange. For example, the fact that the female bottom is made the focus of the pictures. As Kate Foster asks, "isn't Gill just trying to capture what Mellors wouldn't shut up about: 'Tha's got the nicest arse of anybody. It's the nicest, nicest woman's arse as is!'"    

 

I agree with Foster that one of the interesting things about the drawings is that the woman is positioned on top of the man and that "she appears strong and healthy, it's the male figure who looks thin and rather weak" and in need of support. Her body is not simply put on passive display for an appreciative male spectator and, again as Foster points out, there's a real tenderness about these images; the couple do appear to be cradling one another, despite Worthen's denials of this. 

 

Ultimately, there's a delicious irony here in a man explaining to a woman why the pictures are sexist and phallocentric (and trying to do so from a Lawrentian perspective).   

 

 

Notes

 

[1] D. H. Lawrence, 'Pornography and Obscenity', in Late Essays and Articles, ed. James T. Boulton, (Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 233-253. The section relevant to our discussion here is on p. 245, lines 26-36. 

[2] D. H. Lawrence, 'A Propos of "Lady Chatterley's Lover"', in Lady Chatterley's Lover, ed. Michael Squires, (Cambridge University Press, 1993), p. 308. 

Ghost Variations: Notes on the Madness of Robert Schumann

Robert Schumann (1810-1856) 

German Romantic composer, critic, and madman

In the season two episode of Seinfeld entitled 'The Jacket' [1], George has a catchy tune from Les Misérables stuck in his head which he can't stop singing: Master of the house, doling out the charm / Ready with a handshake and an open palm ...

Jerry warns him that the ninteenth century composer Robert Schumann went mad after just a single note earwormed its way into his mind and he involuntarily heard it playing over and over again. Obviously, George doesn't find this story very reassuring - Oh that I really needed to hear! - but is it true?

The short answer is yes: Schumann did go insane and have to be institutionalised; and he did hear a persistent A-note at the end of his life as well as other increasingly disturbing auditory hallucinations.

Thus it was, for example, that on one cold winter's night in February 1854, the composer leapt from his bed and began feverishly attempting to set down a melody that he believed at first was being dictated by the very angels of heaven. By morning, however, he was convinced that what he actually heard were the hideous cries of demonic beasts.

Whatever the true source of his inspiration [2], the melody became the basis of the six piano variations - known today as the Geistervariationen - that were the last thing he wrote before his final crack-up. They thus occupy a unique (and somewhat disturbing) place in his body of work - as, indeed, in the history of classical music. 

On 27 February, Schumann attempted suicide by throwing himself from a bridge into the Rhine. Rescued by a passing boat and taken home, he requested that he be admitted to an asylum for the insane. Here he remained until his death, aged 46, in the summer of 1856. During his confinement, although his friend Brahms had permission to visit, Schumann wasn't allowed to see his wife, Clara, until two days before his death.

The cause of his death - just like the cause of his madness [3] - is something that has been endlessly discussed ever since; was he schizophrenic or syphilitic? Did he have a bipolar disorder or were his neurological problems the result of a brain tumour of some kind? Was it pneumonia or mercury poisoning - mercury being a common treatment for syphilis at the time - which finally did him in?   

I suppose we'll never really know. But what we might do - and should do - is resist the urge of some commentators to regurgitate the romantic vomit and tired narratives regarding the genius and madness of artists ...

The view that creativity is rooted in or fatefully tied to madness is such bullshit. Artists may well think differently from most other people - that is to say, they may be neurologically divergent and able to experience the world from a wide array of queer perspectives (to delight in paradox, inconsistency, and even chaos), - but it's banal (and mistaken) to reduce this (or their heightened sensitivity) to mental illness.       

Ultimately, I return to Michel Foucault's conclusion in Madness and Civilization: the onset of madness marks the point at which creative work ends; a moment of abolition that dissolves the truth of the work of art [4].  

Notes

[1] Seinfeld, 'The Jacket' [S2/E3], dir. Tom Cherones, written by Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld, (first broadcast 6 February 1991). Click here to watch a clip from the episode on YouTube.

[2] Sadly, Schumann's mind had deteriorated to such a degree by this point, that he was unable to recognise that - far from being the work of angels, ghosts, or demons - the melody was in fact one of his own, written several months earlier.

[3] I'm taking Schumann's mental health issues - evident from a young age - as a given here, but, interestingly, there are critics such as John Worthen who vigorously challenge this idea. For Worthen the composer's tragic deterioration was rooted in a physical condition (syphilis) and was not a form of madness per se. See: Schumann: Life and Death of a Musician (Yale University Press, 2007).

[4] Michel Foucault, Madness and Civilization trans. Richard Howard, (Vintage Books, 1988), p. 287.

Repress Nothing! In Memory of Otto Gross

Otto Gross (1877 - 1920)

Otto Gross - the maverick psychoanalyst and utopian anarchist whom radicals and exponents of free love continue to revere - died 100 years ago today: from pneumonia; aged 42; in a Berlin hospital, having been found lying in the street, starving, penniless, and half-frozen to death.

A sad and premature (arguably all-too-predictable) end to the life of a charismatic drug-addict who spent much of his adult life in and out of psychiatric institutions and who rejected all caution and restraint; a man who was even evicted from the community of bohemians at Ascona for trying to instigate orgies at which participants could openly explore their bisexual desires. [1]    

Inspired by his readings of Max Stirner, Nietzsche and Kropotkin, it's said that Gross influenced in turn many artists and writers with his neo-pagan (and proto-feminist) attempt to revalue all values, including D. H. Lawrence - which, of course, is where my interest in him comes from, rather than his relationship to Freud and Jung, who basically thought him a hopeless madman about whom the less said the better.

Lawrence, of course, never met Gross and doesn't directly refer to him in his writings. [2] But his wife, Frieda, had had an affair with the latter in 1908 (at the same time that Gross was also involved with Frieda's sister, Else) and so a lot of his revolutionary ideas to do with politics, culture, the unconscious and human sexuality, were transmitted via her. It's almost certain that Lawrence also read Gross's letters to Frieda (which she treasured throughout her life):

"They affirmed the idea of the saving sexual relationship outside the bonds of society: they stressed how a sexually liberated woman could escape the trammels of the ordinary and be an inspiration for intellectual and striving men; they showed a passionately thinking man struggling to come to terms with the new and to escape the past. In many ways, they offered Lawrence the themes for his next eight years of writing; and (above all) they offered a way of thinking about Frieda [whom Gross regarded as the woman of the future]." [3]

Having said that, it's important to stress that Lawrence would have mistrusted (and disliked) Gross in person and to note that he soon saw through his idealism - including his sexual and political idealism.

And for us, living here in 2020, does Gross's thinking still trouble, still challenge? Or does it only bore and depress? Unfortunately, that's a question that some also ask of Lawrence ...

Notes

[1] Perhaps more interesting from a thanatological perspective, is the fact that Gross affirmed the sovereign freedom of the individual not merely in sexual terms, but also as the right to be ill and to die in a manner (and at a time) of their own choosing. He regarded neurosis and suicide as legitimate expressions of protest against a repressive social order.    

[2] Lawrence gives us a fictionalised representation of Otto Gross in his unfinished novel Mr Noon (written 1921-22); the character of Eberhard appears in Part II of the work. 

[3] John Worthen, D. H. Lawrence: The Early Years 1885-1912 (Cambridge University Press, 1991), pp. 443-44.

See also: John Turner, Cornelia Rumpf-Worthen and Ruth Jenkins, 'The Otto Gross - Frieda Weekley Correspondence: Transcribed, Translated, and Annotated', in The D. H. Lawrence Review, Vol. 22, No. 2, (Summer, 1990), pp. 137-227. Click here to read online. 

Irezumi: Notes on D. H. Lawrence's Fascination with Japanese Male Bodies

入れ墨 
Getting ink done Japanese style

Children born with congenital abnormalities are relatively few in number and the mortality rate amongst such infants is very high. It's for this reason that most sideshow freaks are in fact individuals who have gone to great lengths to place themselves outside of the norm and make themselves exceptional.

This includes those who have enhanced their appearance with extensive tattooing, such as John Rutherford, for example, who became the first professional tattooed Englishman after returning home in 1828 from New Zealand, where he'd had his body covered with Maori designs. Rutherford would regale his audience with tall tales of having been shipwrecked and then abducted by native peoples, who only accepted him once his flesh was decorated like their own.        

Or like the Albanian Greek known as Captain George Constentenus, a 19th-century circus performer and famous travelling attraction, who claimed to have been kidnapped by Chinese Tartars and tattooed from top to toe - including hands, neck and face - against his will. His almost 400 tattoos included many animal designs and Constentenus became the most popular (and wealthiest) of all the tattooed exhibit-performers.     

Or, finally, like the anonymous Japanese character in D. H. Lawrence's little-read novel The Lost Girl (1920), whom Alvina Houghton takes something of a shine to, along with other circus types:

"Alvina was more fascinated by the odd fish: like the lady who did marvellous things with six ferrets, or the Jap who was tattooed all over, and had the most amazing strong wrists [...] Queer cuts these! - but just a little bit beyond her. She watched them rather from a distance.
      She wished she could jump across the distance. Particularly with the Jap, who was almost quite naked, but clothed with the most exquisite tattooing. Never would she forget the eagle that flew with terrible spread wings between his shoulders, or the strange mazy pattern that netted the roundness of his buttocks. He was not very large, but nicely shaped, and with no hair on his smooth, tattooed body. He was almost blue in colour - that is, his tattooing was blue, with pickings of brilliant vermillion: as for instance round the nipples, and in a strange red serpent's jaws over the navel. A serpent went round his loins and haunches. - He told her how many times he had had blood-poisoning, during the process of his tattooing. He was a queer, black-eyed creature, with a look of silence and toad-like lewdness. He frightened her." 

There are two things I'd like to comment on in relation to this astonishing passage - neither of which, surprisingly, are picked up on in the explanatory notes provided by the editor of the Cambridge edition of the text, John Worthen. 

Firstly, it's interesting that Lawrence seems to have some knowledge of (and fascination with) irezumi, i.e., the traditional Japanese art of tattooing with a distinct style evolved over many centuries.

Indeed, tattooing for spiritual as well as aesthetic purposes in Japan can be traced back to the Paleolithic era, though it only assumed the advanced decorative form we know today during the Edo period (1603-1868), thanks in part to a popular Chinese novel illustrated with colourful woodblock prints showing heroic figures decorated with flowers, tigers, and mythical creatures. 

Amusingly, scholars are divided over who first wore these elaborate tattoos; some argue that it was the lower classes who defiantly flaunted such designs; others claim that the fashion for irezumi originated with wealthy members of the merchant class, who, prohibited by law from displaying their weath, secretly wore their expensive tattoos beneath their clothing.  

Either way, the fact remains that irezumi is a slow, painful and expensive method of tattooing, that uses metal needles attached with silk thread to wooden handles and a special ink, called Nara ink, that famously turns blue-green under the skin. Irezumi is performed by a small number of specialists (known as Hori-shi) who are revered figures within the skin-inking community.

Usually, a person skilled in the art of Japanese tattooing will have trained for many years under a master; observing, practicing (on their own skin), making the tools, mixing the inks, etc. Only when they have mastered all the skills required and learnt to copy their master's technique in every detail, will they be allowed to tattoo clients.

Finally, it's worth noting that during the Meiji period (1868-1912) the Japanese government outlawed tattooing and irezumi was forced underground, becoming associated with criminality; yakuzi gangsters have always had a penchant for traditional all-over body designs - just like Alvina Houghton.  

Indeed - and this is my second point - Lawrence, who, as a writer, often indulges in racial fetishism, also seems to have a thing for the flesh of Japanese men, whether tattooed or untattooed, as we learn from the famous wrestling scene in Women in Love (1920) ...  

Gerald suggests to Birkin that they might indulge in a round or two of boxing. The latter, however, isn't so keen on the idea of being punched in the face by his physically bigger and much stronger friend and suggests, alternatively, that they might do some Japanese wrestling (by which he seems to mean jiu-jitsu).

He explains to Gerald that he once shared a house with a Jap in Heidelberg who taught him a few martial art moves. Gerald is excited by the idea and immediately agrees to it, suggesting - with a queer smile on his face - that they strip naked in order to be able to properly get to grip with one another, man-to-man.    

Of course, Birkin doesn't take much convincing of the need for this; quickly conceding that you can't wrestle in a starched shirt. Besides, he sometimes fought with his Japanese opponent naked, so it was no big deal.

This piece of information piques Gerald's bi-curiosity and he asks Birkin for details. The latter explains that the man was "'very quick and slippery and full of electric fire'", before adding: "'It is a remarkable thing, what a curious sort of fluid force they seem to have in them, those people - not like a human grip - like a polyp.'"

Gerald nods, as if he understands perfectly what Birkin means: "'I should imagine so,' he said, 'to look at them. They repel me, rather.'"

To which, Birkin replies: "'Repel and attract both. They are very repulsive when they are cold, and they look grey. But when they are hot and roused, there is a definite attraction - a curious kind of full electric fluid - like eels.'"

Again, to me, this is an astonishing exchange in which there is so much to unpack in terms of racial and sexual politics, that it's quite laughable that the editors of the Cambridge edition only think to inform us in an explanatory note that electric eels, whilst certainly capable of giving a shock, do not, in fact, contain 'fluid'.

I mean, I'm as interested in the biology of the Gymnotus as the next man, but, as a reader of Lawrence, I'm rather more interested to know whether Birkin's vital being interpenetrated his Japanese opponent in the same way it interpenetrated Gerald's; "as if his fine, sublimated energy entered into the flesh of the [other] man, like some potency".

Did Birkin entwine his body with the body of his Japanese opponent with a "strange, octopus-like knotting and flashing of limbs" until the two bodies were clinched into oneness?

Did Alvina ever jump across the pathos of distance that lay between her and the tattooed Oriental  who looked so shabby dressed in cheap, ill-fitting European clothes, but so beautiful naked: "Who could have imagined the terrible eagle of his shoulders, the serpent of his loins, his supple, magic skin?"

I think we should be told ...

Notes

D. H. Lawrence, The Lost Girl, ed. John Worthen, (Cambridge University Press, 1981), pp. 119, 120.

D. H. Lawrence, Women in Love, ed. David Farmer, John Worthen and Lindeth Vasey, (Cambridge University Press, 1987), pp. 268-69, 270.

Corpus Delicti (With Reference to the Case of D. H. Lawrence)

Death is always an inconvenience. Not so much for the deceased; for trust me, corpses don't care. But for those who are left with the problem of disposal; be these grieving relatives, or fastidious killers hoping to cover up all traces of their victim and their crime.  

Fortunately, there are several long-accepted methods of disposal; including the top two, burial and burning. But even these ancient methods present problems. In the case of cremation, for example, there's the question of what to do with the ashes; stick 'em in a ghastly urn and put granny on the mantelpiece, or scatter them to the four winds and risk the unpleasant humiliation of having them blow back in one's face. 

The English novelist D. H. Lawrence was famously first buried in Vence, where he died in 1930, and then, five years later, exhumed and cremated on Frieda's orders by her Italian lover and third husband to be, Angelo Ravagli. 

As to what happened to Lawrence's ashes, this has become subject to confusion and controversy. Ravagli was supposed to transport them to the ranch in New Mexico, where a suitable shrine had been built. Frieda had even provided a lovely little vase. But it seems likely that Ravagli simply threw them away (possibly into the harbour at Marseilles) and then filled the urn with a handful of dust upon his return to America. 

Frieda never knew. As far as she was concerned, she'd brought Lawrence back to the place they'd been happiest and sealed his fate by mixing his ashes into a concrete block in order to prevent anyone from stealing them and, symbolically, to prevent him from wandering in death without her. 

Lawrence's biographer, John Worthen, suggests that Ravagli did Lawrence a favour by rescuing him from his wife's posthumous plans: 

"Lawrence may finally have managed to evade her ... and to finish his career solitary, free, unhoused, with no lid sealing him down or block containing him: scattered, perhaps into the estranging sea he had so often contemplated."

John Worthen, D. H. Lawrence: The Life of an Outsider, (Allen Lane / Penguin Books, 2005), p. 418. 

On Gender-Based Violence (With Reference to the Case of Lawrence, Bibbles and Frieda)

viopet.org

According to Dr Núria Querol, International Coordinator of animal protection society VioPet, domestic animals are as likely to be subjected to gender violence as women and if you want to understand more about the physical and psychological abuse of the latter, then you would do well to examine the mistreatment of the former at the hands of sexually aggressive men.

Indeed, refusing to make any distinction between human and non-human animals, Dr Querol argues that women and pets are equally victims of precisely the same kind of brutality; both, if you like, are subordinated as bitches and expected to tremble at the sound of their master's voice or raised hand. More often than not, if a man beats his dog - or worse - then he'll also be prone to hitting his wife or girlfriend. 

This is illustrated by the disturbing case of the writer D. H. Lawrence and his little black snub-nosed dog, Bibbles. 

In 1922-23, Lawrence and his wife, Frieda, were living on a ranch in New Mexico and had recently acquired a puppy of whom he was extremely fond. However, as one commentator notes, fond or not, Lawrence insisted on being the dog's absolute master and this occasionally resulted in violence. One incident, witnessed by two young Danish artists staying as guests of the Lawrences, is particularly disturbing ...

After going off with a handsome Airedale for a short romantic liaison (she was on heat), Bibbles discovered just how furious with rage and jealousy her master could become. Regarding her indiscriminate loving as an act of personal disloyalty - if not, indeed, rather weirdly, infidelity - Lawrence chased Bibbles out of the house and savagely "kicked her through the snowdrift into which she had blundered".

Then, catching hold of her by the scruff of the neck, he picked the poor creature up and threw her as far as he could. Only an intervention by one of the Danes prevented him from continuing the assault. John Worthen is not alone amongst Lawrence scholars in wondering how someone "so sane, sensible, caring and loving ... and who hated bullying", could mistreat a dog so viciously.   

Whilst recognising the fact that Bibbles was female surely mattered, Worthen says nothing more on why this should be so significant. Instead - controversially I think - he suggests it was because Lawrence "loved the dog too much" that he temporarily "lost himself in need and rage".

Presumably, it was because Lawrence loved Frieda too much that he often hit her as well. Not that Worthen believes we should be overly concerned about this, because, as he points out, the domestic violence between them "was something they had managed to incorporate into their marriage" and Frieda "was never frightened of him for more than a few seconds at a time".

We are encouraged thus to turn a blind eye to Lawrence's violence (as we are to other unpleasant and problematic aspects of his character and writing); to convince ourselves that animal cruelty and wife beating is somehow acceptable if carried out by a man of genius and great sensitivity in the name of love or phallic tenderness.   

Or if, as in this case, the incident inspires a memorable poem; art serving to justify the violence and redeem the suffering caused. 

       
See: John Worthen, D. H. Lawrence: The Life of an Outsider, (Penguin / Allen Lane, 2005), pp. 282-85.

And see also 'Bibbles', in Birds, Beasts and Flowers (1923), which can be found in the Cambridge edition of the poems, ed. Christopher Pollnitz, (CUP, 2013) - or read by clicking here (in a censored form - the word bitch being repeatedly - and ridiculously - replaced with a row of asterisks).