Showing posts with label s. s. koteliansky. Show all posts
Showing posts with label s. s. koteliansky. Show all posts

13 Oct 2022

Spooks and Lovers: Halloween With D. H. Lawrence


 
Although - as far as I'm aware - D. H. Lawrence didn't celebrate Halloween, he did write a number of spooky tales with supernatural elements [1] and he had an abiding interest in the occult and things which go bump in the dark. 
 
And so, I thought it might be fun to look at what he writes in nine of his letters (and one postcard) dated the 31st of October ... 
 
 
[31 October 1903] [2]
 
On a postcard sent from Peterborough to his childhood friend Gertrude Cooper, Lawrence writes to say he is safe and sound and that he has been to visit the 12th-century cathedral, famous for its Early English Gothic façade featuring three large arches.
 
However, Lawrence will increasingly grow disillusioned with monumental religious architecture and reach the stage where he is weary of huge stone erections In other words, he will come to believe in the ruins [3] and will, like Deleuze and Guattari, seek to release desire from all that overcodes it, rejecting the myth of wholeness or completion [4]
 
And that is one of the reasons I so admire Lawrence as a writer: because he anticipates both punk and poststructuralism. 
 
 
[31 October 1913] [5]
 
In a letter to Henry Savage - a minor literary figure who had written a positive review of Lawrence's first novel The White Peacock (1911) - Lawrence sets forth his view that what women fundamentally want is sexual satisfaction:
 
"A man may bring her his laurel wreaths and songs and what not, but if that man doesn't satisfy her, in some undeniable physical fashion - then in one way or other she takes him in her mouth and shakes him like a cat a mouse, and throws him away. She is not to be caught by any of the catch-words, love, beauty, honour, duty, worth, work, salvation - none of them - not in the long run."
 
In other words - and in the long run - she simply desires a good fucking; a fairly conventional view which Lawrence holds too for the rest of his life. Less conventional, however, is the claim (and confession) that follows: "And an artist - a poet - is like a woman in that he too must have this satisfaction. [...] He must get his bodily and spiritual want satisfied [...]
 
Is it just me, or is there not an ambiguity to this sentence which invites a kinky interpretation ...? (Some readers might recall that I've written before on Lawrence's autogynephilia, his perverse tendency to be sexually aroused by the thought of himself as a woman being penetrated by a large cock: click here.)   
 
In this same long letter, written from Italy, Lawrence also admits that whilst he dislikes Charles Dickens for his mid-Victorian moralising, he's jealous of his characters. 
 
He closes, in typical Lawrence fashion, by requesting some books, giving an update on his health - he has a rotten bad cold - and by admitting that he wishes he had some money, so needn't work. 
 
 
31 October 1914 [6]

In a rather sweet note to his Russian friend S. S. Koteliansky, Lawrence asks the latter if he can do him a favour next time he's in Soho:
 
"I saw a necklace I wanted to buy for Frieda. It is in a shop almost at the south end of Wardour St near Leicester Square [...] a second hand jeweller's - a necklace of lapis lazuli set in little white enamel clasps - costs 30/- It hangs up at eye level near the doorway. I send you a cheque. If you find the necklace, please buy it me - round beads of lapis lazuli - you can't mistake it - marked 30/-"
 
Just to be on the safe side, Lawrence even enclosed  a sketch of the necklace. However, unsure of Kot's ability to locate the piece - despite his detailed description and drawing - he then adds a PS to the letter: "If you don't find it you can give me back the cheque."
 
I suppose that's fair enough - 30 bob might not sound like much, but it would be about £190 today and the averge coal miner in 1914 would only expect to earn about 9 shillings per daily shift. 
 
Lawrence, of course, had a thing for lapis lazuli - he had once given a piece to the poet Hilda Doolittle (or H.D. as she was known) and readers might also recall that Hermione smashes Birkin's skull with a beautiful crystal ball made of such [7].    
 
 
31 October 1916 [8]
 
Lawrence is in Cornwall and has just finished writing his latest novel, Women in Love. Along with a letter to his literary agent, J. B. Pinker, Lawrence encloses the final part of his manuscript - "all but the last chapter, which, being a sort of epilogue, I want to write later".   
 
He also encloses the short story called 'The Mortal Coil', which he is clearly proud of, although not optimistic about its commercial prospects:
 
"It is a first-class story, one of my purest creations, but not destined I fear, like the holy in the hymn, to land On the Golden Strand [...] I really grieve when I send you still another unmarketable wretch of fiction. But bear with me. I will write sweet simple tales yet."  
 
Poor Lawrence! Always hoping to strike it rich with his writing and find the philosopher's stone, if only so that he can escape to sunnier climes and find better health: "I am tired of being unwell in England." 
 
 
[31 October 1919] [9]
 
It would, however, be three years later before Lawrence was finally able to leave England and head south once more: in a letter to Martin Secker expressing his concern about the Women in Love manuscript which has been sent to the US, Lawrence also adds: "I shall be in [London] Monday, preparatory to going off for Italy". 
 
He left London on 14 November: to Turin via Paris on the train and then on to Florence (via Spezia). 
 
Unfortunately, poor health and money worries continue to dog him no matter where he travels, although at times Lawrence affirms his sickness - better than a bourgeois model of good health - and his poverty; for it is preferable, he says, to sit still on a large rock than ride in the car of a multi-millionaire.   


[31 October 1921] [10]

In a Halloween letter sent from Sicily to his literary agent Robert Mountsier, Lawrence says he's thinking of heading out West and trying his luck in the New World: "What's the good of Europe, anyhow?"
 
It was a particularly busy period for Lawrence as a writer:  
 
(i) Sea and Sardinia was about to be published, as well as the poetry collection Tortoises ...
 
(ii) he was rewriting some old short stories and finishing his novella 'The Captain's Doll' ...
 
(iii) Fantasia of the Unconscious had just been sent off to his American publisher ...
 
(iv) he was also busy working on Mr Noon, although he confessed that he didn't know whether he'd actually finish writing the novel: "I get so annoyed with everybody that I don't want to tackle any really serious work. To hell with them all. Miserable world of canaille."
 
Interestingly, this letter also gives us an insight into D. H. Lawrence the wine connoisseur:
 
"We have been trying the new Fontana Vecchia wine: though it shouldn't be tried till November 11th - I don't very much like it - it's going to be rough. I'm glad I had a barrel of last year's from the Vigna Sagnoula." [11]
 
 
31 October 1922 [12]   

The following year, on the same date, Lawrence again wrote to Robert Mountsier ... 
 
He was now in Taos, New Mexico, and thinking of moving into the ranch that Mabel Sterne was offering him and Frieda; somewhere they could they finally call home and make a real life together.  

Having already invited a friend of Mabel's - Bessie Freeman - to come and live with them, Lawrence now invited his literary agent to do the same:
 
"M.S. has got a ranch, 180 acres, on Rockies foothills, about 20 miles away, wild. We went there today. It is very lovely. There are two rather poor little houses [...] all rather abandoned. But we think of going there either this week or next, to try it. If we find it possible, move in there. The ranch is utterly abandoned now, so it will be a good thing for it to have somebody there. If we go, come there with us, and we'll make a life. [...] It's a wonderful place, with the world at your feet and the mountains at your back, and pine-trees. [...] You'd have one of the houses: they almost adjoin. We'd have to get a few repairs done."

Obviously, being neither impetuous nor insane, Mountsier wasn't tempted by this offer. 
 
And one might have imagined that after his experience in Cornwall with Mansfield and Murry, Lawrence would have abandoned plans for communal living, but apparently not; as he said in a letter to Koteliansky from this period, his idea had been sound, but the people invited to build Rananim were not up to the task [13] - which is the bitter conclusion that all utopian dreamers reach.  
 
 
[31 October 1925] [14]
 
And speaking of Jack Murry ... Lawrence wrote to him on Halloween in 1925, whilst staying at his mother-in-law's, on the edge of the Black Forest, which he loved, but always found somewhat spooky; like something from a dream (or nightmare). 
 
Although obviously a little bored and wishing he'd gone to Paris instead, he nevertheless offers the following observation on Germany at the time:
 
"Just the same here - very quiet and unemerged: my mother-in-law older, noticeably. I make my bows and play whist [...] Titles still in full swing here, but nothing else. No foreigners [...] and the peasants still peasants, with a bit of the eternal earth-to-earth quality that is so lost in England. Rather like a still sleep, with frail dreams."  
 
Murry by this stage regarded himself as a radical Christian - he would publish his Life of Jesus the following year - but Lawrence doesn't have much time for this:
 
"Don't you see, there still has to be a Creator? Jesus is not the Creator, even of himself. And we have to go on being created. By the Creator. More important to me than Jesus. But of course God-the Father, the Dieu-Père, is a bore. Jesus is as far as one can go with god, anthropomorphically. After that, no more anthropos." 
 
And that's the Lawrence which the pagan me still loves: anti-Christian (or, at the very least, post-Christian) and in search of queer, inhuman gods who inhabit the outer (and inner) darkness ...
 
  
31 October 1927 [15]

Not the best of days for poor Lawrence. He wrote to Koteliansky:
 
"Altogether the world is depressing - and I feel rather depressed. My bronchials are such a nuisance, and I don't feel myself at all. I'm not very happy here [Florence], and I don't know where else to go, and have not much money to go anywhere - I feel I don't want to work -  don't want to do a thing at all the life gone out of me. Yet how can I sit in this empty place and see nobody and do nothing! It's a limit! I'll have to make a change somehow or other - but don't know how."
 
And as he wrote to the German writer Max Mohr:
 
"I unfortunately can't yet promise to dance - my bronchials and my cough are still a nuisance. But I want so much to be able to dance again. And I think if we went somewhere really amusing, I should quickly be well. My cough, like your restlessness, is a good deal psychological in its origin, and a real change might cure us both. The sun shines here, but the mornings are foggy. And I no longer love Italy very much - it seems to me a stupid country."
 
Oh dear, when one falls out of love with Italy that's not a good sign ...


31 October 1928 [16]
 
Lawrence's final Halloween letter was again written to Koteliansky. 
 
In it, whilst still feeling poorly - this time with Italian flu given to him by Frieda - Lawrence sounds much perkier than a year ago; more full of fight and ready to take on the British press and customs officials who are united in their opposition to Lady Chatterley's Lover (which had been printed privately in Italy ealier that year).   

"What fools altogether!", writes Lawrence. "How bored one gets by endless mob-stupidity."

Lawrence is holed up on the tiny French island of Port-Cros; only four miles across and covered in pine trees; there's a hotel, a port, and a handful of houses. Nevertheless, Lawrence says that, were it not for his cold, he should like it: "I feel very indifferent to almost everything."
 
Interestingly, that's not something one expects to hear from Lawrence, who often contrasts indifference negatively with insouciance, arguing that whereas the latter is a refusal to be made anxious by idealists gripped by a moral compulsion to care, the former, indifference, is an inability to care resulting from a certain instinctive-intuitive numbness (often as a consequence of having cared too much about the wrong thing in the past) [17].
 
Of course, this is just another false dichotomy. At any rate, I'm quite happy to view indifference more positively (within a transpolitical context, for example).
 
 
Notes
 
[1] Perhaps the best known of these tales is 'The Rocking Horse Winner', which can be found in The Woman Who Rode Away and Other Stories, ed. Dieter Mehl and Christa Jansohn, (Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp. 230-244. My take on this story can be found here.
 
[2]  D. H. Lawrence, letter to Gertrude Cooper, [31 Oct 1903], in The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, Vol. I, ed. James T. Boulton, (Cambridge University Press, 1979), p. 23.
 
[3] See The Rainbow, ed. Mark Kinkead-Weekes, (Cambridge University Press, 1989), pp. 188-91, where Lawrence writes of Anna's experience of Lincoln Cathedral and see 'Sketches of Etruscan Places', in Sketches of Etruscan Places and Other Italian Essays, ed. Simonetta de Filippis, (Cambridge University Press, 1992), pp. 32-33, where he writes in favour of small wooden temples rather than enormous stone buildings. I have discussed this material in the post entitled 'Believe in the Ruins' (16 April 2019): click here.
 
[4] See Deleuze and Guattari; Anti-Oedipus, trans. Robert Hurley, Mark Seem, and Helen R. Lane, (University of Minnesota Press, 1983), p. 41, where they write in favour of partial objects, fragments, and heterogenous bits, rather than any kind of totality. 

[5] D. H. Lawrence, letter to Henry Savage, [31 Oct 1913], in The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, Vol. II, ed. George J. Zytaruk and James T. Boulton, (Cambridge University Press, 1981), pp. 94-96
 
[6] D. H. Lawrence, letter to S. S. Koteliansky, 31 Oct 1914, in The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, Vol. II, p. 228.    
 
[7] See Women in Love, ed. David Farmer, Lindeth Vasey and John Worthen, (Cambridge University Press, 1987), p. 105. Hermione uses the ball as a paperweight, when not using it as a weapon. 
 
[8] D. H. Lawrence, letter to J. B. Pinker, 31 Oct 1916, in The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, Vol. II, pp. 669-670.    
 
[9] D. H. Lawrence, letter to Martin Secker, [31 Oct 1919], in The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, Vol. III, ed. James T. Boulton and Andrew Robertson, (Cambridge University Press, 1984), p. 408. 
 
[10] D. H. Lawrence, letter to Robert Mountsier, [31 Oct 1921], The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, Vol. IV, ed. Warren Roberts, James T. Boulton and Elizabeth Mansfield, (Cambridge University Press, 1987), pp. 106-108. 
 
[11] To describe a wine as rough means that it has a coarse texture. It would usually refer to a young tannic red wine, before it has had time to soften or round out.  
 
[12] D. H. Lawrence, letter to Robert Mountsier, [31 Oct 1922], The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, Vol. IV, p. 334.
 
[13] In 1916, Lawrence invited Katherine Mansfield and John Middleton Murry to come and live in a cottage next door to him and his wife Frieda, in Zennor, near St. Ives; a tiny place, near the moors, full of black rocks, and overlooking the sea. 
      The idea was to establish an artists' colony or commune of some kind, that Lawrence wanted to name Rananim. Of course, it soon led to tension and conflict and ended in tears and tantrums.
 
[14] D. H. Lawrence, letter to John Middleton Murry, [31 Oct 1925], The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, Vol. V, ed. James T. Boulton and Lindeth Vasey, (Cambridge University Press, 1989), p. 328.
 
[15] D. H. Lawrence, letters to S. S. Koteliansky and Max Mohr, 31 Oct 1927, The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, Vol. VI, ed. James T. Boulton and Margaret H. Boulton with Gerald M. Lacy, (Cambridge University Press, 1991), pp. 203- 205. 
 
[16] D. H. Lawrence, letter to S. S. Koteliansky, 31 Oct 1928, The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, Vol. VI, p. 604. 
 
[17] Readers who are interested in this might like to see the post entitled 'Dandelion' (10 Dec 2015) which addresses the question of care in the thought of D. H. Lawrence: click here.  


29 Sept 2022

Life in Vein (With Reference to D. H. Lawrence's Undying Man)

Homunculus created by alchemy 
(from a 19th-century engraving for Goethe's Faust Pt. II)
 
 
I. 
 
Some readers may recall a post from May last year in which I reported on (what I believe to be) a vaccine induced blood clot in my lower right leg, but described on my medical record as superficial thromobophlebitis and said to be of unknown cause [1]
 
Sixteen months later, and my leg is still a mess and a consultant vascular surgeon has advised that due to long saphenous vein reflux and associated varicosities, I undergo either endovenous or open surgery to address the problem [2]
 
Funny enough, the first thing I thought of when told this was D. H. Lawrence's unfinished short story 'The Undying Man' [3] ...
 
 
II. 
 
Written in 1927, 'The Undying Man' is a reimagined version of a Jewish tale translated by his Russian friend S. S. Koteliansky [4]. In it, Lawrence toys with the idea of creating human life via a pre-scientific form of the technique we now term cloning
 
He opens his story thus:
 
"Long ago in Spain there were two very learned men, so clever and knowing so much that they were famous all over the world. One was called Rabbi Moses Maimonides, a Jew - blessed be his memory! - and the other was called Aristotle, a Christian who belonged to the Greeks.
      These two were great friends, because they had always studied together and found out many things together. At last after many years, they found out a thing they had been specially trying for. They discovered that if you took a tiny vein out of a man's body, and put it in a glass jar with certain leaves and plants, it would gradually begin to grow, and would grow and grow until it became a man [...] a fine man who would never die. He would be undying. Because he had never been born, he would never die, but live for ever and ever. Because the wisest men on earth had made him, and he didn't have to be born." [5]
 
Unfortunately, the donor of the tiny blood vessel will die as a result of the procedure. Nevertheless, Aristotle consents to the removal of a vein, having first made Maimonides promise that he will not obstruct or terminate the process once the vein has started to develop into a homunculus (i.e., a miniature but fully formed man) [6]:
 
"Aristotle asked Maimonides to take him by the hand and swear by their clasped hands that he would never interfere with the growth of the little vein, never at any time or in any way. Maimonides took him by the hand and swore. And then Aristotle had the little vein cut out of his body by Maimonides himself." [7]  
 
Maimonides places the little vein in the glass jar amongst the leaves and herbs. Having sealed the lid, he places the jar on a shelf in his room and waits:

"The days passed by, and he recited his prayers, pacing back and forth in his room among his books, and praying loudly as he paced, as the Jews do. Then he returned to his books and chemistry. But every day he looked at the jar, to see if the little vein had chaged." [8]
 
For a long time nothing happens. But then at last the vein begins to grow:
 
"Maimonides gazed at the jar transfixed, and forgot everything else in all the wide world; lost to all and everything he gazed into the jar. And at last he saw the tiniest, tiniest tremor in the little vein, and he knew it was a tremor of growth." [9] 
 
Soon, the little vein begins to glow red, "like the smallest ember of fire" [10]. Maimonides knew he was witnessing the spark of life itself, and he was afraid of what might be. For it seemed to him that this tiny red light glowed with an ungodly power - Fierce and strong! Fierce and strong! as he muttered to himself - rather than with divine goodness.   
 
Unable to sleep, Maimonides lies in bed "thinking of that little red light which alone of all light was not the light of God" [11] and fearful of what will happen when the undying man is fully grown ...
 
 
III. 
 
Unfortunately, Lawrence's manuscript ends here and so we don't find out what Maimonides decides to do; whether he keeps his word to Aristotle not to interfere with the development of the undying man, or whether he acts decisively to ensure the latter never leaves his jar.  
 
Fortunately, however, we do have the complete version of the story translated by Kot, and here we discover that, tormented by the thought that an immortal human being will be worshipped by the people as a living god, Maimonides allows his chickens to enter the room where the jar is stored, ensuring they knock it over by deliberately spooking the birds:
 
"Once the jar has crashed to the floor, however, the tiny creature points an accusatory finger at Maimonides for breaking his oath [...] and he spends the rest of his days praying for forgiveness." [12] 
 
That's a terrific ending, I think; one that is frightening, humorous, and realistic. Although Lawrence would doubtless have altered (and probably extended) it in his own unique manner, I'm confident he would have kept the accusatory finger (as I certainly would have).     
 
Finally, to return to where we began this post, I really rather hope that if I do have a vein removed from my leg it too is placed into a little glass container where it might grow into a new type of (transhuman) human being; one not born of a womb, and so soulless, sexless, and immortal ... For is this not the tragic destiny of mankind? [13]  
 
 
Notes
 
[1] This post can be read by clicking here.  

[2] Apparently, there is very little difference between the two types of surgery in terms of complications or risks. Whether a scalpel or laser is used, there's likely to be post-operative pain and discomfort as well as aesthetically displeasing lumps, bumps and bruises. And let's not mention the possibility of sensory nerve numbness in the leg and a 1-in-200 chance of a deep vein thrombosis. 
       So it's a big thank you to those who - whether with sincerity or cynicism - assured us all that the Covid-19 vaccines were extremely safe and effective, when, as we now know, they're neither. 
 
[3] D. H. Lawrence's 'The Undying Man' can be found as Appendix III to The Virgin and the Gipsy and Other Stories, ed. Michael Herbert, Bethan Jones and Lindeth Vasey, (Cambridge University Press, 2005), pp. 241-244.  
 
[4] Koteliansky published 'Maimonides and Aristotle' along with a second tale - 'The Salvation of a Soul' - in translation from the Yiddish as 'Two Jewish Stories' in London Mercury XXXVI (Feb 1937), pp. 362-70.
 
[5] D. H. Lawrence, 'The Undying Man', The Virgin and the Gipsy and Other Stories ... p. 241.
      This isn't as preposterous as it perhaps sounds; in 2013 it was announced that scientists in Japan had cloned a mouse from a single drop of blood collected from the tail of a donor subject. The cloned female mouse wasn't immortal, but she did live a normal lifespan and could sexually reproduce. And the donor mouse was also unharmed after the procedure (unlike poor Aristotle who dies).
 
[6] The Homunculus - a Latin term meaning 'little man' - was a popular idea in both 16th-century alchemy (Paracelsus is credited with the first use of the term) and 19th-century literature (see Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1818) and Part Two of Goethe's Faust (1832), for example). 
      As a concept, it has its roots in folklore and the pre-scientific theory of preformationism which taught that organisms develop from tiny versions of themselves. For Jung, the homunculus is a symbol of the inner man or, indeed, inner Christ (i.e., the divine aspect of human being).   
 
[7-10] D. H. Lawrence, 'The Undying Man, The Virgin and the Gipsy and Other Stories ... p. 242.
 
[11] Ibid., p. 243.
 
[12]  Editors' Introduction to The Virgin and the Gipsy and Other Stories ... p. xxxi.
 
[13] I'm referring here to Baudrillard's thinking in his essay 'The Final Solution, or The Revenge of the Immortals', which can be found in Impossible Exchange, trans. Chris Turner, (Verso, 2001), pp. 27-8. Long time readers (with good memories) may recall that I discuss Baudrillard's thoughts on cloning in a post published back in April 2013: click here.
       
 

1 May 2022

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

Edith A. Cubitt: Children Dancing Round a Maypole (c. 1900) 
Watercolour drawing (commissioned by Ernest Nister)
 
 
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.