D. H Lawrence's passport photograph
(Florence, 19 Sept. 1921)
One of the sentences that I've always admired in Lawrence was written in a letter to Mary Cannan, composed whilst on board a ship taking him around the South Sea Islands: Travel seems to me a splendid lesson in disillusion - chiefly that.
This perfectly displays Lawrence's fierce and uncompromising intellectual integrity, rather than cynicism, world-weariness, or a Socratic borrowing as some critics mistakenly assume. For despite desperately wanting to believe in the hope and promise of new lands and new people, Lawrence wasn't prepared to lie to himself or to others; he would always give a brutally honest account of what he found on the other side of the fence, or, for that matter, the other side of the world ...
Lawrence left Europe in February 1922. He was thirty-six and keen to make a symbolic break with the past - to come unstuck from his old life, as he put it - despite the pain of such a process (he admitted to weeping inside himself as the ship sailed through the Strait of Messina). He was, as one sympathetic commentator points out, probably only too aware of the futility of any attempt to make a clean getaway and conscious also that he would doubtless suffer disappointments and set backs on his travels.
And, sure enough, arriving in Ceylon, Lawrence quickly discovered it wasn't for him. Lovely to look at, certainly, but hot - very hot - and full of noisy birds and creatures and the nauseating sweet smell of the tropics (coconut oil mixed with hot blood and thin sweat). Being so far from England suddenly made him feel very English - in the teeth of all the world. After only six weeks, he'd had enough.
His next stop, Australia, Lawrence found rather more congenial. And he spent a little over three months there before deciding - having begun his savage pilgrimage - to move on once more; determined to experience as many new things and places as possible, if only so as to discover how hateful they were.
On August 11th, Lawrence set sail for San Francisco, via Rarotonga and Tahiti. As indicated, the supposedly glamorous islands left him less than impressed, particularly the latter. In the letter to Mary Cannan quoted earlier, he concluded: "These are supposed to be the earthly paradises ... You can have 'em."
This perfectly displays Lawrence's fierce and uncompromising intellectual integrity, rather than cynicism, world-weariness, or a Socratic borrowing as some critics mistakenly assume. For despite desperately wanting to believe in the hope and promise of new lands and new people, Lawrence wasn't prepared to lie to himself or to others; he would always give a brutally honest account of what he found on the other side of the fence, or, for that matter, the other side of the world ...
Lawrence left Europe in February 1922. He was thirty-six and keen to make a symbolic break with the past - to come unstuck from his old life, as he put it - despite the pain of such a process (he admitted to weeping inside himself as the ship sailed through the Strait of Messina). He was, as one sympathetic commentator points out, probably only too aware of the futility of any attempt to make a clean getaway and conscious also that he would doubtless suffer disappointments and set backs on his travels.
And, sure enough, arriving in Ceylon, Lawrence quickly discovered it wasn't for him. Lovely to look at, certainly, but hot - very hot - and full of noisy birds and creatures and the nauseating sweet smell of the tropics (coconut oil mixed with hot blood and thin sweat). Being so far from England suddenly made him feel very English - in the teeth of all the world. After only six weeks, he'd had enough.
His next stop, Australia, Lawrence found rather more congenial. And he spent a little over three months there before deciding - having begun his savage pilgrimage - to move on once more; determined to experience as many new things and places as possible, if only so as to discover how hateful they were.
On August 11th, Lawrence set sail for San Francisco, via Rarotonga and Tahiti. As indicated, the supposedly glamorous islands left him less than impressed, particularly the latter. In the letter to Mary Cannan quoted earlier, he concluded: "These are supposed to be the earthly paradises ... You can have 'em."
However, several years later, in a review of H. M. Tomlinson's Gifts of Fortune (1926), Lawrence sought to subtly - but significantly - qualify his position. Thus, whilst confirming his conviction that disillusion and disappointment were inevitable, he nevertheless stressed that the search for some unknown land, or some strange people who could transform one's own inner life, remained valid and of vital importance:
"We travel, perhaps, with a secret and absurd hope of setting foot on the Hesperides, of running our boat up a little creek and landing in the Garden of Eden. This hope is always defeated. There is no Garden of Eden, and the Hesperides never were. Yet, in our very search for them, we touch the coasts of illusion, and come into contact with other worlds."
"We travel, perhaps, with a secret and absurd hope of setting foot on the Hesperides, of running our boat up a little creek and landing in the Garden of Eden. This hope is always defeated. There is no Garden of Eden, and the Hesperides never were. Yet, in our very search for them, we touch the coasts of illusion, and come into contact with other worlds."
See:
D. H. Lawrence, Letter to Mary Cannan (31 Aug 1922), in The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, Volume IV, June 1921 - March 1924, ed. Warren Roberts, James T. Boulton and Elizabeth Mansfield, (Cambridge University Press, 1987).
D. H. Lawrence, 'Review of Gifts of Fortune, by H. M. Tomlinson', Introductions and Reviews, ed. N. H. Reeve, (Cambridge University Press, 2005).
D. H. Lawrence, Letter to Mary Cannan (31 Aug 1922), in The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, Volume IV, June 1921 - March 1924, ed. Warren Roberts, James T. Boulton and Elizabeth Mansfield, (Cambridge University Press, 1987).
D. H. Lawrence, 'Review of Gifts of Fortune, by H. M. Tomlinson', Introductions and Reviews, ed. N. H. Reeve, (Cambridge University Press, 2005).
For further details of Lawrence's time in Ceylon, Australia, and the South Seas, see one or more of the following works:
David Ellis, D. H. Lawrence: Dying Game 1922-1930, Volume III of the Cambridge Biography, (Cambridge University Press, 1998).
Andrew Harrison, The Life of D. H. Lawrence, (Wiley / Blackwell, 2016).
John Worthen, D. H. Lawrence: The Life of an Outsider, (Allen Lane / Penguin Books, 2005).
David Ellis, D. H. Lawrence: Dying Game 1922-1930, Volume III of the Cambridge Biography, (Cambridge University Press, 1998).
Andrew Harrison, The Life of D. H. Lawrence, (Wiley / Blackwell, 2016).
John Worthen, D. H. Lawrence: The Life of an Outsider, (Allen Lane / Penguin Books, 2005).
