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.

The Man and the Dreaming Woman: Notes on D. H. Lawrence's The Witch à la Mode

Cover of the Blackthorn Press 

Kindle edition (2014)

I. Opening Remarks

'The Witch à la Mode' was one of Lawrence's earliest short stories, though it remained unpublished in his lifetime.*

First written in 1911, under the title 'Intimacy', it anticipates his second novel, The Trespasser (1912), and the character of Winifred Varley was, like the character Helena, based on the Croydon schoolteacher Helen Corke, whom Lawrence had met in the winter of 1908/09 and eventually developed feelings for; feelings stronger than friendship and other than the deep affection that she claimed to have for him.

Indeed, even in 1911, whilst engaged to Louie Burrows, Lawrence continued to make sexual demands upon Helen. Unfortunately, she continually knocked him back, frustrating his desire and stultifying his passion, leaving him ironic and bitter towards her.

'The Witch à la Mode' is born out of this sexual frustration and sardonic anger; when Lawrence finally came to the realisation that she would never be physically responsive to him and never want more than a kiss goodnight.

In a letter written in January 1910, Lawrence complained of Jessie Chambers (the prototype of Miriam in Sons and Lovers and to whom he had been unofficially engaged for several years): "She refuses to see that a man is male, that kisses are the merest preludes and anticipations, that love is largely a physical sympathy ..."

This could just as easily have been said of Helen Corke and the female characters in his fiction based upon her. As Elizabeth Mansfield notes: "He [Lawrence] came to think of Helen Corke as one of the 'Dreaming Women' whose 'passion exhausts itself at the mouth'". Ultimately, Helen offered Lawrence what Winifred Varley offers Bernard Coutts; an intense spiritual relationship rather than a physically fulfilling one.

Some critics have rather lazily suggested that Winifred was frigid. Others, like Howard Booth, have suggested we might think of her as a romantic asexual; the kind of woman, as Oliver Mellors would say, who loves everything about love, except the fucking, and who only agrees to sex, if at all, as a kind of favour.     

However, it's equally possible that, like Helen Corke, Winifred was a repressed lesbian or a bisexual who attempted to walk on neutral ground but was ultimately more drawn to her own sex than to men - even whilst many men were fatally attracted to her.** 


II. The Tale

"When Bernard Coutts alighted at East Croydon", writes Lawrence, "he knew he was tempting Providence." And so it proves ...

But Coutts is a man of desire whose spirit exulted in living dangerously and loving fate in all good conscience; a man who is roused by the electric blue sparks of a tram car and who excitedly greets the stars overhead.

He arrives at Laura Braithwaite's house. Laura is a young widow and a friend of his. Coutts has just returned from the Continent. Laura enquires about his fiancée, Constance, waiting for his return up in Yorkshire. She also asks him about Winifred, with whom, clearly, he has had a thing. Laura informs Coutts that Winifred is due to visit, having been invited to do so. Sure enough, at about half-past seven, she arrives - awks!

"When she entered, and saw him, he knew it was a shock to her, though she hid it as well as she could. He suffered too. After hesitating for a second in the doorway, she came forward, shook hands without speaking, only looking at him with rather frightened blue eyes. She was of medium height, sturdy in build. Her face was white, and impassive, without the least trace of a smile. She was a blonde of twenty eight, dressed in a white gown just short enough not to touch the ground. Her throat was solid and strong, her arms heavy and white and beautiful, her blue eyes heavy with unacknowledged passion." 

Both parties blush upon seeing one another. However, any momentary discomfort caused by the situation is soon forgotten as Coutts, an agalmatophile, has his attention seized by a pair of alabaster statues, two feet high, standing before an immense mirror hanging over the marble mantelpiece in the drawing room:

"Both were nude figures. They glistened under the side lamps, rose clean and distinct from their pedestals. The Venus leaned slightly forward, as if anticipating someone's coming. Her attitude of suspense made the young man stiffen. He could see the clean suavity of her shoulders and waist reflected white on the deep mirror. She shone, catching, as she leaned forward, the glow of the lamp on her lustrous marble loins."  

This, I think, is an astonishing passage, and I'm surprised it receives no comment in the explanatory notes provided by the Cambridge editor, or, indeed, by Howard Booth who is always looking to queer the circle, so to speak, and explore a range of non-normative sexualities. His suggestion that Winifred is asexual deserves consideration, but seems to be based on pretty flimsy evidence as far as I can see, whereas this passage provides compelling evidence of Coutts's statue fetishism.

Indeed, one might suggest that the main reason Bernard is so fascinated by Winifred is because of the solid whiteness of her figure and impassivity. In other words, she is statue-like and her unnaturalness is a consequence of this, rather than her sexual orientation (or absence of such). This is why, for example, when Winifred entertains the other guests by playing her violin, Coutts can't help looking from her to the Venus figure, until intoxicated by his own pervy pygmalionism.  

Anyway, let us return to the tale ...

Having left the party at Laura's house, Bernard and Winifred stroll together, hand-in-hand, but having immediately fallen back into the same dynamic of love and hate: "He hated her, truly. She hated him. Yet they held hands fast as they walked." They arrive at her house and she asks him in.

Whilst washing his hands in the bathroom, he thinks of Constance and, although he loved her, he realises that she bores and inhibits some vital part of him. Winifred, on the other hand, herself being intense and unnatural, allows him to become who he is: i.e., just as queer as she.

Indeed, Winifred insists on his exceptional nature and is "cruel to that other, common, every-day part of him" - the part that can contemplate married life, for example; "she could not understand how he could marry: it seemed almost monstrous to her: she fought against his marriage".    

Ultimately, Winifred rather frightens Coutts. He sees the witch in her and realises that were they to attempt a life together the result would not be good: "'You know, Winifred, we should only drive each other into insanity, you and I: become abnormal.'"

His main concern is that Winifred only wants to use him as a kind of human orbuculum in which to see visions and reflections of life, but doesn't care a fig for him as a man of flesh and blood (which is a bit rich coming from him if, in fact, I'm right about his agalmatophilia).

Inevitably, they embrace and kiss in a typically Lawrentian manner (i.e. one marked with a shocking degree of violence). But that one kiss is enough for Winifred: her passion ebbs unnaturally. And Coutts is left feeling profoundly frustrated in a state of epididymal hypertension: "His whole body ached like a swollen vein, with heavy intensity, while his heart grew dead with misery and despair."

He had wanted, like Pygmalion, to bring her to life with a kiss; to set her pulse beating and blood flowing. But Winifred had remained defiantly statuesque. Unable to ignite her sex, Coutts (accidently) kicks over a lamp and sets the room ablaze instead.

Howard Booth says this final incident sees Bernard "burnt not by [his] passion but by the very lack of desire [in Winifred]". I'm not sure I quite agree with that, but I do agree that Lawrence seems to be coming down firmly on the side of conventional married life.

For having saved Winifred from the flames, Coutts abandons her in order to achieve the (hetero)sexual maturity that he had earlier confessed he (instinctively) wants; i.e., to become a good husband and father, growing fat and amiable in domestic bliss.
 

Notes

* Lawrence first wrote the story - then called 'Intimacy' - in 1911. He revised it in 1913, changing the title to 'The White Woman', and subsequently, following slight further revision, to 'The Witch à la Mode'. It was first published in Lovat Dickson's Magazine in June 1934 and was included in the posthumous collection A Modern Lover, published by Martin Secker in October of that year. It can be read online as an ebook thanks to The University of Adelaide: click here.   

** Neutral Ground was the title of Helen Corke's novel, published in 1933, that attempted to delineate a point on the sexual spectrum somewhere between hetero and homosexuality where she felt most comfortable locating herself. Elizabeth Mansfield tells us that in a letter written to Lawrence's biographer Harry T. Moore, Helen "defined Neutral Ground as 'an honest attempt to deal with the problem of a Lesbian temperament'". 

D. H. Lawrence, 'The Witch à la Mode', Love Among the Haystacks and Other Stories, ed. John Worthen, (Cambridge University Press, 1987), pp. 54-70. All lines quoted are from this edition of the text.

D. H. Lawrence, 'Intimacy', The Vicar's Garden and Other Stories, ed. N. H. Reeve, (Cambridge University Press, 2009), pp. 123-38.

D. H. Lawrence, letter to Blanche Jennings (28 Jan. 1910), in The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, Vol. 1 (1901-13), ed. James T. Boulton, (Cambridge University Press, 1979), pp. 153-54.

Elizabeth Mansfield, Introduction to D. H. Lawrence's The Trespasser, ed. Elizabeth Mansfield, (Cambridge University Press, 1981), p. 18.

Howard J. Booth, 'Same-Sex Desire, Cross-Gender Identification and Asexuality in D. H. Lawrence’s Early Short Fiction', Études Lawrenciennes 42  (2011), pp. 37-57.  Click here to read online.