PORTRAIT OF D. H. LAWRENCE

New Zealand Listener, Volume 36, Issue 912, 1 February 1957, Page 14

PORTRAIT OF D. H. LAWRENCE

SON AND LOVER, a new BBC programme about D. H. Lawrence, sets out to portray him through the memories of his friends. It does not make any judgments about him nor try to evaluate his place in English literature. It’s the simple record of impressions people had of him from the time of his early boyhood to his death. An old school friend, Richard Pogmore, tells among other things of Lawrence’s love of tature study, and other impressions of ‘his youth in Nottinghamshire come from his sister, Mrs. Emily King; from the widow of Willie Hopkin, who had known Lawrence all his life and had shared many of his confidences; from Dr. David Chambers, brother of Jessie Chambers who as an early love became Miriam in Sons and Lovers. Lawrence trained as a teacher. The report of his supervisor on his teaching practice stated: "Well-read, scholarly

and refined,. Mr. Lawrence will make an excellent teacher if he gets into the right place... He would be quite unsuitable for a large class of boys in a rough district; he would not have sufficient persistence and enthusiasm but would become disgusted ... He is emphatically a teacher of upper classes." In 1908 he took up a position at Croydon. A close friend at the time was Helen Corke, to whom some of his poems are dedicated. The dominating influence of his mother comes through, and the effect of her death on his character. Later he was to have a bad attack of pneumonia which caused him to give up teaching. A new life began when he met Ftieda, wife of Professor Ernest Weekley, and Frieda.tells of that first meeting, when Lawrence was 26 and she was 31, and of their de-

cision to go away together. They wandered through Europe and eventually returned to England. The war had a profound effect on him-"it was like a spear through the side of all joys and hopes" and in one respect only did it seem to have any good. "It had caused a slump in trifling, and it was trifling "he loathed above all." But the ‘war, although giving life a terrible significance, filled him with despair. Contributors to the programme from this period of Lawrence’s life are Lady Cynthia Asquith, Richard Aldington, John Middleton Murry, and the daughter of Lady Ottoline Morrell. The failure of the attempt to live with Middleton Murry and Katherine Mansfield in Cornwall is. well known, as are the succeeding incidents when he and Frieda were suspected of spying and had ° to put up with numerous indignities from the authorities. Expelled from Cornwall, he .suffered much. From the years of

travel which followed come recollections by Mollie Skinner, the Australian author (with whom Lawrence collaborated in a book The Boy in the Bush), tales of their life together by Frieda, and references to his awakening interest in primitive religions. Lawrence: now had tuberculosis, but his life lost ‘none of its intensity. By the early part of 1930, however, he had become weaker and was often confined to bed. In March of that year he died at Vence in the south of France, where a peasant he had known marked his grave with a phoenix in coloured pebbles. A radio feature could not hope to contain the whole man, but aspects of Lawrence do emerge which help to build up that complete picture we may one day have. Contradictions abound. Throughout his life he was profoundly shocked by promiscuity, tried to clarify a view of sexual relationships and was persecuted for it, and in the end he failed in his ‘own self-appointed quest. He had a quick temper, was dogmatic, arrogant, yet combined this with intuitive sympathy. When Helen Corke lost a dear friend Lawrence made it his special work to bring her back to life. He was stimulating and yet could plunge his friends into the deepest despair. One friend described him as "a man of quick and radiant vitality, who took one, as though by a touch of the wand, into a world of affection and intimacy and gaiety .. ." His love of life is one of his greatest legacies, which he transmits so splendidly in the best of his books. Today novels such as Sons and Lovers and The Rainbow are well on the way to taking their place among the great ones of English literature. ‘ Son and Lover, which was compiled and introduced by Hardiman Scott, with Norman Claridge as narrator, will be heard from 2YC at 7.30 p.m. on Saturday, February 9, from 4YC at 7.45 p.m. on Sunday, February 10, and from other YC stations in the second half of March.