Detail from the poster for Touch of Evil (Universal Pictures, 1958),
starring Charlton Heston as Hadrian, Janet Leigh as Matilda,
and Orson Welles as Ted Rockley
starring Charlton Heston as Hadrian, Janet Leigh as Matilda,
and Orson Welles as Ted Rockley
I.
Almost forty years before the classic American film noir written and directed by Orson Welles, D. H. Lawrence gave us his own touch of evil in a Fox-like short story that the editor of the Cambridge text insists on calling 'Hadrian', even though everyone knows it as 'You Touched Me'.
Almost forty years before the classic American film noir written and directed by Orson Welles, D. H. Lawrence gave us his own touch of evil in a Fox-like short story that the editor of the Cambridge text insists on calling 'Hadrian', even though everyone knows it as 'You Touched Me'.
Whether the tale has the same cultural and aesthetic value as the movie, is debatable. But it certainly warrants its inclusion in England, My England (1922) as representative of Lawrence's fiction during the period 1913-21 and it even has something of the same schlock quality about it as a Hollywood thriller ...
II.
'You Touched Me' is the story of a young boy, Hadrian, who is adopted by Ted Rockley, the father of four daughters concerned by the fact that he has no male heir. Unfortunately, the boy never quite fits in to the household and rejects the education and lifestyle on offer, eventually heading off to Canada to make his own way.
When the War breaks out, however, he signs up to fight and returns to Europe. Then, after the armistice was signed, Hadrian uses a prolonged period of leave to return to England, now a young man in his own right and no longer just the poor little boy from the orphanage.
The two unmarried daughters, Matilda and Emmie, who have remained at the house to care for their gravely ill father, are suspicious of him and believe he has only returned in order to seek out an inheritance. But, as we shall see, money isn't the only thing that excites Hadrian's interest and, ultimately, he wants far more than that ...
When the War breaks out, however, he signs up to fight and returns to Europe. Then, after the armistice was signed, Hadrian uses a prolonged period of leave to return to England, now a young man in his own right and no longer just the poor little boy from the orphanage.
The two unmarried daughters, Matilda and Emmie, who have remained at the house to care for their gravely ill father, are suspicious of him and believe he has only returned in order to seek out an inheritance. But, as we shall see, money isn't the only thing that excites Hadrian's interest and, ultimately, he wants far more than that ...
III.
Having given a brief summary of the plot, let us now look a bit more closely at this rather disturbing tale of a spiteful old man, two rather snobbish old maids, and a young, carefree psychopath ...
Having given a brief summary of the plot, let us now look a bit more closely at this rather disturbing tale of a spiteful old man, two rather snobbish old maids, and a young, carefree psychopath ...
"Matilda was a tall, thin, graceful fair girl, with a rather large nose," [93] writes Lawrence with the same lack of tact as displayed by Kramer when introduced to George's new girlfriend Audrey [i]. She - Matilda - "loved painting and music, and read a good many novels", whilst her sister Emmie, who was shorter, fatter, and less accomplished, took care of the house.
Both had hoped to marry bank clerks, or nonconformist clergymen - even teachers - but none had presented themselves; it isn't easy for girls who have higher expectations living in an ugly industrial town full of miners and mere workmen. Still, in their "quiet, melancholy way, the two girls were happy" [93], living at the Pottery House looking after their widowed (alcoholic) father.
Matilda had been sixteen and Emmie two years younger, when their father returned home one day with a six-year-old boy adopted from an institution, called Hadrian:
"Hadrian was just an ordinary boy [...] with ordinary brownish hair and ordinary bluish eyes and of ordinary rather cockney speech. The Rockley girls [...] had resented his being sprung on them. He, with his watchful, charity-insitution instinct, knew this at once." [93]
It is perhaps from his first encounter with his new sisters (or cousins, as they insist he call them) that Hadrian determines to one day have his revenge; he looked at them with a "subtle, jeering look on his face" and when he addressed them "there seemed a mockery in his tone" [93].
He's not quite Damien, but it's fairly clear that boy ain't right and the character of Hadrian reinforces the prejudice concerning orphans (that they are, for example, more likely to have criminal tendencies and be more prone to mental health issues) [ii]. Even Cousin Matilda and Cousin Emmie - both basically kind-hearted - mistake his quiet nature and emotional reticence for slyness.
Hadrian hates the school he is sent to at thirteen: not only does he often bunk off, but he sells his books and uniform to his fellow pupils and went "raking off heaven knows where with the money" [94]. At fifteen, he announces that he intends to leave England and move to Canada:
"He said good-bye to the Rockleys without a word of thanks, and parted, it seemed without a pang. Matilda and Emmie wept often to think of how he left them: even on their father's face a queer look came." [94]
Of course, truancy and ingratitude do not a psychopath make, but they're not great signs either. Let's just say he is on the spectrum for antisocial personality disorder. And it's telling that when he writes after the War informing of them of his plan to visit, Matilda and Emmie are both terribly fluttered: "To tell the truth, they were a little afraid of Hadrian." [94]
When he arrives, he does so a day earlier than expected, in order to catch them off guard. He is now a self-possessed young man of twenty-one; small in stature, but "vigorous enough in his smallness" [95]. Matilda blushes deep with mortification when he finds her doing the washing-up, with her sleeves rolled back and her hair tied up (oddly and coquettishly) in an old pink-and-white checked duster.
Cousin Emmie is far more resentful of the fact that he has arrived prematurely and caught them at a disadvantage. Both girls are convinced he's come to get what he can out of their father - hoping for a legacy of some sort: "And they were not at all sure he would not get it" [96]; either because they know how clever and manipulative Hadrian can be, or because they realise what a misogynistic shit their father really is.
Hadrian makes himself at home. Matilda, unconsciously, begins to find herself attracted to him: her dark-blue eyes take on a strange, full look (pupil dilation being a classic sign of sexual arousal or desire) and she starts to pay careful attention to her appearance: "Now she looked elegant, like a heroine in a magazine illustration, and almost as unreal." [97]
She also begins to sit up in her room late at night: "Her heart was anxious and breaking, her mind seemed entranced" [99] and, although she convinces herself this is due to filial concern for her dying father, readers of Lawrence - and Freud - are expected to know better and to know also all about symptomatic actions and misperformances [Fehlleistungen]; i.e., those things we say or do accidently, but at the same time driven by unconscious desires.
Thus, for example, we might mistakenly stray into the wrong bedroom and begin caressing the face of the person sleeping there in the belief they are someone else: at any rate, that's what happens to Matilda. As, clearly, this is the crucial scene upon which the story turns, I shall reproduce it at some length:
"She thought of her father, only her father. At last she felt she must go to him.
It was near midnight. She went along the passage and to his room. There was a faint light from the moon outside. She listened at his door. Then she softly opened and entered. The room was faintly dark. She heard a movement on the bed.
'Are you asleep?' she said softly, advancing to the side of the bed.
'Are you asleep?' she repeated gently, as she stood at the side of the bed. And she reached her hand in the darkness to touch his forehead. Delicately, her fingers met the nose and the eyebrows, she laid her fine, delicate hand on his brow. It seemed fresh and smooth - very fresh and smooth. A sort of surprise stirred her, in her entranced state. But it could not waken her. Gently, she leaned over the bed and stirred her fingers over the low-growing hair on his brow.
'Can’t you sleep tonight?' she said.
There was a quick stirring in the bed. 'Yes, I can,' a voice answered. It was Hadrian's voice. She started away. Instantly, she was wakened from her late-at-night trance. She remembered that her father was downstairs, that Hadrian had his room. She stood in the darkness as if stung.
'It is you, Hadrian?' she said. 'I thought it was my father.' She was so startled, so shocked, that she could not move. The young man gave an uncomfortable laugh, and turned in his bed.
At last she got out of the room. When she was back in her own room, in the light, and her door was closed, she stood holding up her hand that had touched him, as if it were hurt. She was almost too shocked, she could not endure.
'Well,' said her calm and weary mind, 'it was only a mistake, why take any notice of it.'
But she could not reason her feelings so easily. She suffered, feeling herself in a false position. Her right hand, which she had laid so gently on his face, on his fresh skin, ached now, as if it were really injured. She could not forgive Hadrian for the mistake: it made her dislike him deeply.
Hadrian too slept badly. He had been awakened by the opening of the door, and had not realised what the question meant. But the soft, straying tenderness of her hand on his face startled something out of his soul. He was a charity boy, aloof and more or less at bay. The fragile exquisiteness of her caress startled him most, revealed unknown things to him.
In the morning she could feel the consciousness in his eyes, when she came downstairs. She tried to bear herself as if nothing at all had happened, and she succeeded. She had the calm self-control, self-indifference, of one who has suffered and borne her suffering. She looked at him from her darkish, almost drugged blue eyes, she met the spark of consciousness in his eyes, and quenched it. And with her long, fine hand she put the sugar in his coffee.
But she could not control him as she thought she could. He had a keen memory stinging his mind, a new set of sensations working in his consciousness. Something new was alert in him. At the back of his reticent, guarded mind he kept his secret alive and vivid. She was at his mercy, for he was unscrupulous, his standard was not her standard.
He looked at her curiously. She was not beautiful, her nose was too large, her chin was too small, her neck was too thin. But her skin was clear and fine, she had a high-bred sensitiveness. This queer, brave, high-bred quality she shared with her father. The charity boy could see it in her tapering fingers, which were white and ringed. The same glamour that he knew in the elderly man he now saw in the woman. And he wanted to possess himself of it, he wanted to make himself master of it. As he went about through the old pottery-yard, his secretive mind schemed and worked. To be master of that strange soft delicacy such as he had felt in her hand upon his face - this was what he set himself towards. He was secretly plotting." [99-100]
Basically, they have both been awoken by and to the mystery of desire via an act of tenderness; they are now doomed to wed. It's not so surprising then when Hadrian tells the old man he calls Uncle that he'd like to marry Matilda; despite the age difference, despite her large hooter, and despite the quasi-incestuous aspect of a sexual relationship between them.
And so Rockley, who secretly loves the boy very much, orders his daughter to marry Hadrian. And, if she refuses, he threatens to disinherit her and her sister Emmie, leaving everything to the sly young man with the underground quality of a rat. It is, of course, a monstrous situation Matilda has been placed in. She hadn't much cared for Hadrian before this, but neither had she thought of him as a thing of evil: "He now became hideous to her mind" [103] - like a strange little monster.
To be fair, Hadrian isn't simply after the money:
"He did want the money - badly. [...] But he knew, in his subtle, calculating way, that it was not for money he wanted Matilda. He wanted both the money and Matilda. But he told himself the two desires were separate, not one. He could not do with Matilda, without the money. But he did not want her for the money." [104]
More shocking is the attitude and role of Ted Rockley in this affair, which borders on malevolent: "He seemed to have a strange desire, quite unreasonable, for revenge upon the women who had surrounded him for so long, and served him so carefully." [104]
He also appears to draw perverse - almost pornographic - pleasure from the thought of Hadrian, his adopted son and proxy, fucking his daughter: at the very end of the tale, after Matilda has reluctantly married Hadrian at the local registry office, they return to see him on his death-bed and he commands her to first kiss him - something she has not done since childhood - and then kiss her new husband in front of him: "'That's right! That's right!' murmured the dying man." [107]
This has to be one of the most indecent endings to any of Lawrence's short stories; though perfect for the cinema of his time which specialised in close-up kisses and in making the audience moan with voyeuristic pleasure like Ted Rockley ...
Both had hoped to marry bank clerks, or nonconformist clergymen - even teachers - but none had presented themselves; it isn't easy for girls who have higher expectations living in an ugly industrial town full of miners and mere workmen. Still, in their "quiet, melancholy way, the two girls were happy" [93], living at the Pottery House looking after their widowed (alcoholic) father.
Matilda had been sixteen and Emmie two years younger, when their father returned home one day with a six-year-old boy adopted from an institution, called Hadrian:
"Hadrian was just an ordinary boy [...] with ordinary brownish hair and ordinary bluish eyes and of ordinary rather cockney speech. The Rockley girls [...] had resented his being sprung on them. He, with his watchful, charity-insitution instinct, knew this at once." [93]
It is perhaps from his first encounter with his new sisters (or cousins, as they insist he call them) that Hadrian determines to one day have his revenge; he looked at them with a "subtle, jeering look on his face" and when he addressed them "there seemed a mockery in his tone" [93].
He's not quite Damien, but it's fairly clear that boy ain't right and the character of Hadrian reinforces the prejudice concerning orphans (that they are, for example, more likely to have criminal tendencies and be more prone to mental health issues) [ii]. Even Cousin Matilda and Cousin Emmie - both basically kind-hearted - mistake his quiet nature and emotional reticence for slyness.
Hadrian hates the school he is sent to at thirteen: not only does he often bunk off, but he sells his books and uniform to his fellow pupils and went "raking off heaven knows where with the money" [94]. At fifteen, he announces that he intends to leave England and move to Canada:
"He said good-bye to the Rockleys without a word of thanks, and parted, it seemed without a pang. Matilda and Emmie wept often to think of how he left them: even on their father's face a queer look came." [94]
Of course, truancy and ingratitude do not a psychopath make, but they're not great signs either. Let's just say he is on the spectrum for antisocial personality disorder. And it's telling that when he writes after the War informing of them of his plan to visit, Matilda and Emmie are both terribly fluttered: "To tell the truth, they were a little afraid of Hadrian." [94]
When he arrives, he does so a day earlier than expected, in order to catch them off guard. He is now a self-possessed young man of twenty-one; small in stature, but "vigorous enough in his smallness" [95]. Matilda blushes deep with mortification when he finds her doing the washing-up, with her sleeves rolled back and her hair tied up (oddly and coquettishly) in an old pink-and-white checked duster.
Cousin Emmie is far more resentful of the fact that he has arrived prematurely and caught them at a disadvantage. Both girls are convinced he's come to get what he can out of their father - hoping for a legacy of some sort: "And they were not at all sure he would not get it" [96]; either because they know how clever and manipulative Hadrian can be, or because they realise what a misogynistic shit their father really is.
Hadrian makes himself at home. Matilda, unconsciously, begins to find herself attracted to him: her dark-blue eyes take on a strange, full look (pupil dilation being a classic sign of sexual arousal or desire) and she starts to pay careful attention to her appearance: "Now she looked elegant, like a heroine in a magazine illustration, and almost as unreal." [97]
She also begins to sit up in her room late at night: "Her heart was anxious and breaking, her mind seemed entranced" [99] and, although she convinces herself this is due to filial concern for her dying father, readers of Lawrence - and Freud - are expected to know better and to know also all about symptomatic actions and misperformances [Fehlleistungen]; i.e., those things we say or do accidently, but at the same time driven by unconscious desires.
Thus, for example, we might mistakenly stray into the wrong bedroom and begin caressing the face of the person sleeping there in the belief they are someone else: at any rate, that's what happens to Matilda. As, clearly, this is the crucial scene upon which the story turns, I shall reproduce it at some length:
"She thought of her father, only her father. At last she felt she must go to him.
It was near midnight. She went along the passage and to his room. There was a faint light from the moon outside. She listened at his door. Then she softly opened and entered. The room was faintly dark. She heard a movement on the bed.
'Are you asleep?' she said softly, advancing to the side of the bed.
'Are you asleep?' she repeated gently, as she stood at the side of the bed. And she reached her hand in the darkness to touch his forehead. Delicately, her fingers met the nose and the eyebrows, she laid her fine, delicate hand on his brow. It seemed fresh and smooth - very fresh and smooth. A sort of surprise stirred her, in her entranced state. But it could not waken her. Gently, she leaned over the bed and stirred her fingers over the low-growing hair on his brow.
'Can’t you sleep tonight?' she said.
There was a quick stirring in the bed. 'Yes, I can,' a voice answered. It was Hadrian's voice. She started away. Instantly, she was wakened from her late-at-night trance. She remembered that her father was downstairs, that Hadrian had his room. She stood in the darkness as if stung.
'It is you, Hadrian?' she said. 'I thought it was my father.' She was so startled, so shocked, that she could not move. The young man gave an uncomfortable laugh, and turned in his bed.
At last she got out of the room. When she was back in her own room, in the light, and her door was closed, she stood holding up her hand that had touched him, as if it were hurt. She was almost too shocked, she could not endure.
'Well,' said her calm and weary mind, 'it was only a mistake, why take any notice of it.'
But she could not reason her feelings so easily. She suffered, feeling herself in a false position. Her right hand, which she had laid so gently on his face, on his fresh skin, ached now, as if it were really injured. She could not forgive Hadrian for the mistake: it made her dislike him deeply.
Hadrian too slept badly. He had been awakened by the opening of the door, and had not realised what the question meant. But the soft, straying tenderness of her hand on his face startled something out of his soul. He was a charity boy, aloof and more or less at bay. The fragile exquisiteness of her caress startled him most, revealed unknown things to him.
In the morning she could feel the consciousness in his eyes, when she came downstairs. She tried to bear herself as if nothing at all had happened, and she succeeded. She had the calm self-control, self-indifference, of one who has suffered and borne her suffering. She looked at him from her darkish, almost drugged blue eyes, she met the spark of consciousness in his eyes, and quenched it. And with her long, fine hand she put the sugar in his coffee.
But she could not control him as she thought she could. He had a keen memory stinging his mind, a new set of sensations working in his consciousness. Something new was alert in him. At the back of his reticent, guarded mind he kept his secret alive and vivid. She was at his mercy, for he was unscrupulous, his standard was not her standard.
He looked at her curiously. She was not beautiful, her nose was too large, her chin was too small, her neck was too thin. But her skin was clear and fine, she had a high-bred sensitiveness. This queer, brave, high-bred quality she shared with her father. The charity boy could see it in her tapering fingers, which were white and ringed. The same glamour that he knew in the elderly man he now saw in the woman. And he wanted to possess himself of it, he wanted to make himself master of it. As he went about through the old pottery-yard, his secretive mind schemed and worked. To be master of that strange soft delicacy such as he had felt in her hand upon his face - this was what he set himself towards. He was secretly plotting." [99-100]
Basically, they have both been awoken by and to the mystery of desire via an act of tenderness; they are now doomed to wed. It's not so surprising then when Hadrian tells the old man he calls Uncle that he'd like to marry Matilda; despite the age difference, despite her large hooter, and despite the quasi-incestuous aspect of a sexual relationship between them.
And so Rockley, who secretly loves the boy very much, orders his daughter to marry Hadrian. And, if she refuses, he threatens to disinherit her and her sister Emmie, leaving everything to the sly young man with the underground quality of a rat. It is, of course, a monstrous situation Matilda has been placed in. She hadn't much cared for Hadrian before this, but neither had she thought of him as a thing of evil: "He now became hideous to her mind" [103] - like a strange little monster.
To be fair, Hadrian isn't simply after the money:
"He did want the money - badly. [...] But he knew, in his subtle, calculating way, that it was not for money he wanted Matilda. He wanted both the money and Matilda. But he told himself the two desires were separate, not one. He could not do with Matilda, without the money. But he did not want her for the money." [104]
More shocking is the attitude and role of Ted Rockley in this affair, which borders on malevolent: "He seemed to have a strange desire, quite unreasonable, for revenge upon the women who had surrounded him for so long, and served him so carefully." [104]
He also appears to draw perverse - almost pornographic - pleasure from the thought of Hadrian, his adopted son and proxy, fucking his daughter: at the very end of the tale, after Matilda has reluctantly married Hadrian at the local registry office, they return to see him on his death-bed and he commands her to first kiss him - something she has not done since childhood - and then kiss her new husband in front of him: "'That's right! That's right!' murmured the dying man." [107]
This has to be one of the most indecent endings to any of Lawrence's short stories; though perfect for the cinema of his time which specialised in close-up kisses and in making the audience moan with voyeuristic pleasure like Ted Rockley ...
Notes
D. H. Lawrence, 'Hadrian' ['You Touched Me'], England, My England and Other Stories, ed. Bruce Steele, (Cambridge University Press, 1990), pp. 92-107. All page references in the post are to this edition. To read the story online (courtesy of Project Gutenberg), click here.
[i] Seinfeld, 'The Nose Job', [S3/E9], with Susan Diol as Audrey: click here to view clip on YouTube.
[ii] Unfortunately, I'm not familiar with the research in this area, but imagine it to be extensive. I do know, however, that the evil orphan trope is fairly common within literature (Heathcliffe being an obvious example) and that it's often viewed as a development of a theme popular within folk and fairy tales, namely, that of the changeling child.
[i] Seinfeld, 'The Nose Job', [S3/E9], with Susan Diol as Audrey: click here to view clip on YouTube.
[ii] Unfortunately, I'm not familiar with the research in this area, but imagine it to be extensive. I do know, however, that the evil orphan trope is fairly common within literature (Heathcliffe being an obvious example) and that it's often viewed as a development of a theme popular within folk and fairy tales, namely, that of the changeling child.
