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New Zealand Listener, Volume 36, Issue 914, 15 February 1957, Page 5

Sir-I was staying at Vence-a lovely little old town above Nice on the French Riviera. It was there that D. H. Lawrence was living in one of the three big sanatoriums at the foot of the mountains. He used to go to the old town a great deal, and made great friends with an ordinary workman there. He asked the workman to get a piece of granite for his tombstone. When it had been selected they both worked at it, cut it to shape, and polished it. Then . Lawrence drew a Phoenix in the centre of it, and got the workman to insert coloured pebbles. I was most fortunate to have seen it. Later I was in Vence again, and was anxious to see Lawrence’s grave. I asked a woman who kept a pottery shop where the cemetery was and said I would like to see the grave of D. H. Lawrence. She told me I was five years too late. He wished to be buried in Mexico, and his wife came and had him exhumed and cremated, and took the ashes to Mexico. She added that she had his tombstone if I would like to see it. Then she took me up a stairway that was hung at both sides with lovely French and Italian pottery, and at the top was the tombstone. I asked how she came to have it, and she told me that Lawrence’s wife did not want it and gave it to her. I said that she must have been an extraordinary woman to give away a lovely thing like that, especially her husband’s own work. I thought it should be in the Kensington Museum in London, since he was an Englishman, and a great writer. I have often wondered what happened to that most beautiful piece of work.

EILEEN

DRISCOLL

(Wellington).