My Own

Katherine Mansfield to John Middleton Murray

(Sunday, December 26, 1915)

My own!

Just a little note so as not to let the day pass. It is a lovely day, and even yesterday became fair after all. If you could but see my roses! I heard today from Kay whose card I send you (!), and from Father and Mother. Their letters I have jsut answered, Bogey. They made me very sad. Indeed I understand that as 'the silence' descends on them, their loss becomes ever greater. Now, for instance, that letters about him are infrequent and few--and the English mail arrives, as Father says, and seems each week to make the dreadful gap more real. Dearest, in my letter I wrote a great deal about you and Chummie.* I wanted to make them feel that you had been real to each other and played together. I wish you would write a note to them. Please do if you can, but send it to me to post, for I have not told them that you have gone back to England. I thought it wiser not to; it was so difficult to explain from this distance, and not necessary.

I heard from Lawrence today. Shall I send you his letter? It left me cold. He wants us to join him, but you know we are not made to do that kind of thing, ever. We are two, rich and happy apart. If you do not want me back yet, Bogey (you understand) I would like to stay here a little longer.

I send you all my love.

Tig

*'Chummie': Katherine's brother who was killed at the front in 1915.

-from Katherine Mansfield's Letters to John Middleton Murray 1913-1922 edited by John Middleton Murray (London: Constable & Co., 1951, 1958) p.73.

This New Life

D. H. Lawrence to Katherine Mansfield

1, Byron Villas,
Vale of Health,
Hampstead.
Monday, 20 Dec., 1915.

My Dear Katherine,


Your letter came this morning. I am so sorry you are so ill. Yesterday Murray was here when the letter came--Kot brought it--and he was much upset.

Do not be sad. It is one life which is passing away from us, one "I" is dying; but there is another coming into being, which is the happy, creative you. I knew you would have to die with your brother; you also, go down into death and be extinguished. But for us there is a rising from the grave, there is a resurrection, and a clean life to begin from the start, new, and happy. Don't be afraid, don't doubt it, it is so.

You have gone further into your death than Murray has. He runs away. But one day he too will submit, he will dare to go down, and be killed, to die in this self which he is. Then he will become a man; not till. He is not a man yet.

When you get better, you must come back and we will begin afresh, it will be the first struggling days of spring, after winter. Our lives have been all autumnal and wintry. Now it is mid-winter. But we are strong enough to give way, to pass away, and to be born again.

I want so much that we should create a life in common, a new spirit, a spirit of unanimity between a few of us who are desirous in spirit, that we should add our lives together, to make one tree, each of us free and producing in his separate fashion, but all of us together forming one spring, a unanimous blossoming. It needs that we be one in spirit, that is all. What we are personally is of second importance.

And it is in its inception, this new life. From the old life, all is gone. There remain only you and Murray in our lives. We look at the others as across the grave. A death, and a grave lies between us and them. They are the other side of the grave, the old, far side, these---------s and ----------s. We must not look back. There must be no looking back. There must be no more retrospection, which is introspection, no more remembering and interpreting. We must look forward into the unknown that is to be, like flowers that come in the spring. Because we really are born again.

We have met one or two young people, just one or two, who have the germ of the new life in them. It doesn't matter what they are personally. Murray dismisses them with a sneer, for all that which is the past in them, but I hold on by that which is the future, which is gladdening.

We give up this flat to-morrow. For Christmas we go to my sister's in Derbyshire: c/o Mrs. Clarke, Grosvenor Rd., Ripley, Derbyshire. We stay there till the 29th December. Then we go to the Beresfords' cottage in Cornwall, to live there till March. One or two others will come too. I want it now that we live together. When you come back, I want you and Murray to live with us, or near us, in unanimity; not these separations. Let us all live together and create a new world. If it is too difficult in England, because here all is destruction and dying and corruption, let us go away to Florida: soon. But let us go together, and keep together, several of us, as being of one spirit. Let it be a union in the unconsciousness, not in the consciousness. Get better soon, and come back, and let us all try to be happy together, in unanimity, not in hostility, creating not destroying.

Love from me.
D. H. Lawrence

-from The Letters of D. H. Lawrence edited by Aldous Huxley (London: William Heinemann, 1956.) p. 296-97.

Letter in the Wind

[D. H. Lawrence to Katherine Mansfield]

c/o Mrs Clarke, Grosvenor Rd.,
Ripley, Nr Derby.

Friday, 27 Dec., 1918.

My Dear Katherine,

e got your parcel on Christmas morning. We had started off, and were on the brow of the hill, when the postman loomed round the corner, over the snow. It was all white and snowy and sunny, with a wind like an axe. I floated out my hanky for a flag over the snow, and Frieda dropped the tangerines in her anxiety to get the wheatsheaf unwrapped, and it was terribly cold and windy just on that edge. . . But my hanky fluttered very nice and lively. I wish you could have been there on the hill summit--the valley all white and hairy with trees below us, and grey with rocks--and just around us on our side the grey stone fences drawn in a network over the snow, all very clear in the sun. We ate the sweets, and slithered downhill, very steep and tottering. The children had the tangerines and the fan.

We read your letter in the wind, dropping down to Cromford. It made me feel weary, that we couldn't be all there, with rucksacks--I'd got mine on--setting off for somewhere good, over the snow. It is disappointing. And unless one decorates one's house for oneself alone, best leave it bare, for other people are all wan-eyed. I do so want to GET OUT--out of England--really, out of Europe. And I will get out. We must do it.

There was hardly any snow in the valley--all green, with the yew-berries still sprinkling the causeway. At Ambergate my sister had sent a motor-car for us--so we were at Ripley in time for turkey and Christmas pudding. My God, what masses of food here, turkey, large tongues, long wall of roast loin of pork, pork-pies, sausages, mince-pies, dark cakes covered with almonds, cheese-cakes, lemon-tarts, jellies, endless masses of food, with whiskey, gin, port wine, burgundy, muscatel. It seems incredible. We played charades--the old people of 67 playing away harder than the young ones--and lit the Christmas tree, and drank healths, and sang, and roared--Lord above. If only one hadn't all the while a sense that next week would be the same dreariness as before. What a good party we might have had, had we felt really free of the world.

We had a second turn-to-yesterday--and at half past eleven went roaring off in the dark wind to Dr Feroze's --he is a Parsee--and drank two more bottles of muscatel, and danced in his big empty room till we were staggered, and quite dazed. Tonight we are going back to Middleton--and I feel infuriated to think of the months ahead, when one waits paralysed for some sort of release. I feel caged, somehow--and I cannot find out how to earn enough to keep us--and it maddens me.

Still, it might be very much worse. One might be tied tight to a job, or to a sickness. I do wish you were better. But you sound stronger. I long to make plans--new plans. But not Europe: oh, God!

I pledge you 'the days to come.'

D. H. L.

--from The Letters of D. H. Lawrence edited by Aldous Huxley (London: William Heinemann, 1956.)

The Castle Watches

[D. H. Lawrence to Lady Cynthia Asquith]

Lerici, per Fiascherino,

Golfo della Spezia, Italy.

The Shortest Day.

21st December, 1913.

Dear Mrs. Asquith,

ou never answered my highly diverting and beautiful letter, only shed a tear over Frieda--which I call skimpy. So I refuse to write you a letter. I'd send you a visiting card if I'd got one, with "All Seasonable Greetings" written on it.

How is the winter treating you? If badly, you'd better come here and set up in a beautiful little tower over the Pine Wood and the Sea--for 140 francs a month.

We went to a castle the last week-end--ancient Italian Fortress, walls three yards thick. There it sits keeping an eye on the two rivers that come crawling insidiously out of the foggy Apennines, as if expecting them to pounce. But they don't--they only swallow each other and go with trailing skirts haughtily through the mountain doors to the sea. But the castle watches, whether or not. And it gives one the fidgets. And the artist gentleman painted in the manner of various definite gentleman artists--their ghosts haunted his canvases like the ghosts of old dead soldiers his castle hall. And the servants crouched in a corner of the great dark kitchen, making polenta cakes.

A merry Christmas--though you don't deserve it, for sending Frieda only a little bottle of tears and me not even a sugared almond. Also a merry Christmas to Don John, and to Mr. Asquith.

Yours,

D. H. Lawrence

-from The Letters of D. H. Lawrence edited by Aldous Huxley (London: William Heinemann, 1956.) p. 171-72.

olla putrida finnegans wake

[D. H. Lawrence to M. and A. Huxley]

Kesselmatte, Gsteig b. Gstaad,

(Bern).

15 Aug., 1928.

Dear Maria and Aldous,

. . . I had a copy of Transition, that Paris magazine--the Amer. number. My God, what a clumsy olla putrida James Joyce is! Nothing but old fags and cabbage-stumps of quotations from the Bible and the rest, stewed in the juice of deliberate, journalistic dirty-mindedness--what old and hard-worked staleness, masquerading as the all-new! Gertrude Stein is more amusing--and some of the Americans quite good. . . .

D. H. L.

-from The Letters of D. H. Lawrence edited by Aldous Huxley (London: William Heniemann, 1956.) p. 742.

Lawrence's Bournemouth Dreams

Compton House,
St. Peter's Rd.,
Bournemouth
29 Jan., 1912.

To Edward Garnett.

Dear Garnett,--

My time here is running out. They want me badly to stay till to-day week--the 5th--but I think I'd rather come on the Saturday. I shall leave here by the 2.0 p.m. train, which arrives in London--Waterloo--at 4.0. It is a non-stop. Would you mind to send me a train from Victoria or anywhere down to Edenbridge? You choose the time, an I will abide by it. Do not bother with a trap--I can walk quite well. I can do six miles by now.

The Trespasser goes quite fast. In the dirty weather of the last week I have got on with it. I am past the 300th page now. It really isn't bad, is it?--but too florid, too "charge." But it can't be anything else--it is itself. I must let it stand. At any rate, not many folk could have done it, however they may find fault. I shall finish by the time I come to Edenbridge--or at any rate before I leave you. So, when you can find time to go over the thing, we can decide about the publishing. If it is to come, I should like April or May for the month, as you suggested.

We have had three beautiful days--mostly lovely. I am very sensitive to the exquisite atmospheres of down here--I have delightful passages. In health, too, I am sure I make good strides. But at the bottom I am rather miserable. I can never decide whether my dreams are the result of my thoughts, or my thoughts the results of my dreams. It is very queer. But my dreams make conclusions for me. They decide things finally. I dream a decision. Sleep seems to hammer out for me the logical conclusions of my vague days, and offer me them as dreams. It is a horrid feeling, not to be able to escape from one's own--what?--self-daemon--fate, or something. I hate to have my own judgments clinched inside me involuntarily. But it is so. What tosh to write. I don't know what ails me.

Just tell me about the train. I will bring the rest of the Trespasser.

Yours,

D. H. Lawrence.

-from The Letters of D. H. Lawrence edited by Aldous Huxley (London: William Heinemann, 1956.) p. 22-23.

D. H. Lawrence at the Starting Gate

1910
To H. C.

. . . Heinemann was very nice; doesn't want me to alter anything; will publish in Sept. or Oct., the best season; we have signed agreements concerning royalties, and I have agreed to give him the next novel. Will he want it? This transacting of literary business makes me sick. I have no faith in myself at the end, and I simply loathe writing. You do not know how repugnant to me was the sight of that Nethermere MSS.* By the way, I have got to find a new title. I wish, from the bottom of my heart, the fates had not stigmatised me "writer." It is a sickening business. Will you tell me whether the Saga is good? I am rapidly losing faith in it. . . .

I assure you I am not weeping into my register. It is only that the literary world seems a particularly hateful yet powerful one. The literary element, like a disagreeable substratum under a fair country, spreads under every inch of life, sticking to the roots of growing things. Ugh, that is hateful. I wish I might be delivered. . . .

*Nethermere was the early title of The White Peacock; the Saga was issued as The Trespasser.

-fromThe Letters of D. H. Lawrence edited by Aldous Huxley (London: William Heniemann, 1956.) p. 2

H. C. : Helen Corke, a Croydon teacher and friend of D. H. Lawrence. Her experiences were used by Lawrence for his novel The Trespasser.