D. H. Lawrence and his nose: described rather unkindly by
Mabel Dodge Luhan as 'podgy, almost vulgar' [1]
I.
In a recent post [2], I mentioned how the sense of smell was very important for D. H. Lawrence.
Indeed, without saying as much, one gets the impression that, like Nietzsche, he located his own peculiar genius in his hypersensitive nose, the nostrils of which formed "the great gate from the wide atmosphere of heaven to the lungs" [3] - and you thought them merely two small holes!
For Lawrence, our sense of smell is rooted in the lower centres of the body - the solar plexus and the lumbar ganglion - and the shape of the nose depends on "the direct control of the deepest centres of consciousness" [4]. It is not simply determined by an interplay of anatomical structure, genetics, and evolutionary adaptation to climate.
Lawrence - in case you hadn't noticed - doesn't have much time for conventional scientific descriptions of the body and its organs. And he would have hated and despised the modern quest for a perfect nose involving the cosmetic surgical procedure known as rhinoplasty.
For better or for worse, Lawrence would have advised people to keep the hooter they've been blessed with - be it short and snub, long and beaky, high and arched, or thick and squat. For the nose reveals one's true character; that is to say, "it almost inevitably indicates the mode of predominant dynamic consciousness in the individual" [5] and the primary centre from which they live.
If Lawrence had his way, not only would there be human excrement piled up in the streets (either don't ask, or see the post linked to in note 1 below), but kissing would be replaced by nose rubbing, as the latter involves "a more sensitive and a deeper sensual salute" [6] than the mere pressing of lips.
II.
Interestingly, one of the things that Lawrence used his heightened sense of smell for was to sniff out the racial otherness of the passenger sitting next to him on public transport.
In one of his more contentious and controversial passages, Lawrence writes that if "an Arab or a negro or even a Jew" [7] sits down next to him on the train, then that individual is not known to him in a way that a middle-class white Englishman is known:
"As he sits next to me, there is a faint uneasy movement in my blood. A strange vibration comes from him, which causes a slight disturbance in my own vibration. There is a slight odour in my nostrils. And above all, even if I shut my eyes, there is a strange presence in contact with me." [8]
Lawrence being Lawrence, however, he rather likes this - arguing that it allows for a real thought-adventure beyond mere knowing and understanding. And so, rather than simply insulate himself from contact with racial otherness, he affirms the disturbance of his blood and admits that something vital passes from the stranger; "because, after all, there is some peculiar alien sympathy between us." [9]
III.
Lawrence's view of race is, then, by no means simple and straightforward. It is, as sympathetic critics like to say, nuanced (by which they mean full of contradictions and inconsistencies).
Despite a misconception that still lingers in some quarters, Lawrence certainly wasn't a conventional racist, even if he subscribed to an essentialised form of racial mysticism that celebrated primitivism on the one hand and what used to be called exotic otherness on the other. As he once told Jessie Chambers, for him, white skin is unnatural and ultimately only black is beautiful (even if not personally desirable to him) [10].
Having said that, Lawrence often expresses "shock, disgust and disappointment" [11] when he actually encounters people belonging to different cultures or ethnicities - especially "when a people or culture proved insufficiently primitive or different" [12] for the purposes of his philosophy.
It's one thing discovering that Apaches have "an unbearable sulphur-human smell [...] that takes the breath from the nostrils" [13], but it was even more upsetting for Lawrence - the savage pilgrim - to discover "sameness where otherness was to be expected" [14].
Thus, when he reads fiction written by African Americans or visits Harlem in NYC - "that dismal region of hard stone streets" [15] - it is disconcerting to find that the black man is just another modern, urban American very little different from the white man apart from the colour of his skin.
"One likes to cherish illusions about the race soul, the eternal negroid soul, black and glistening and touched with awfulness and with mystery" [16], writes Lawrence, but that becomes impossible when one actually comes into contact with people of colour (or when one's nose is blocked).
Notes
[1] Mabel Dodge Luhan, Lorenzo in Taos (Alfred A. Knopf, 1932), p. 49.
[2] The post I'm referring to is titled 'On D. H. Lawrence and the Human Stink' (23 Aug 2026).
[3] D. H. Lawrence, Fantasia of the Unconscious, ed. Bruce Steele (Cambridge University Press, 2004), p. 100.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Ibid., p. 101.
[6] Ibid. To be fair, Lawrence may have a point here; the traditional Eskimo greeting - often mischaracterised as mere nose-rubbing - is an intimate gesture where family members and/or loved ones press faces in order to inhale and familiarise themselves with each other's scent.
[7] D. H. Lawrence, 'On Being a Man', in Reflections on the Death of a Porcupine and Other Essays, ed. Michael Herbert (Cambridge University Press, 1988), p. 214.
[8] Ibid., p. 215.
[9] Ibid.
[10] This conversation between Lawrence and Jessie Chambers is recalled in her memoir - D. H. Lawrence: A Personal Record (Cambridge University Press, 1980), p. 111.
[11] Laura E. Ryan: 'You are white - yet a part of me': D. H. Lawrence and the Harlem Renaissance (PhD thesis submitted to The University of Manchester, 2019), p. 40.
Dr Ryan's fascinating work in this area has significantly helped shape my thinking in this post - particularly section III - and I look forward to reading her newly published book D. H. Lawrence and Black Modernism: Transatlantic Influence and Confluence (Bloomsbury, 2026). I am also delighted to be contributing an essay on Lawrence's proto-punk sensibilities to a forthcoming collection she is co-editing (with Dr Jo Jones) for Edinburgh University Press.
[12] Ibid.
[13] D. H. Lawrence, 'Indians and an Englishman', in Mornings in Mexico and Other Essays, ed. Virginia Crosswhite Hyde (Cambridge University Press, 2009), p. 116.
[14] Laura E. Ryan: 'You are white - yet a part of me': D. H. Lawrence and the Harlem Renaissance (2019), p. 43.
[15] D. H. Lawrence, 'Review of Nigger Heaven, by Carl Van Vechten, Flight, by Walter White, Manhattan Transfer, by John Dos Passos, and In Our Time, by Ernest Hemmingway', in Introductions and Reviews, ed. N. H. Reeve and John Worthen (Cambridge University Press, 2005), p. 308. For a lively discussion of Lawrence's visit to Harlem, see the Introduction to Laura E. Ryan's, 'You are white - yet a part of me' (pp. 27-28).
[16] Ibid.
