An Uncommon Reader by Helen Smith

Author:Helen Smith
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

16

‘My friend and protector in love and literature’

As Edward read Paul Morel he must have had a sense of déjà vu; many of the faults of The Trespasser were evident in the new manuscript. Once again Edward criticised Lawrence’s recondite tendencies: ‘“one of Circe’s erect swine” no’, ‘too literary’. He was also unconvinced by some of the dialogue: ‘affected conversation rewrite’; ‘all this talk doesn’t ring true,’ he notes.1 Paul Morel (and Sons and Lovers, the novel it eventually became) is highly autobiographical; the Morel family and the events that take place are closely modelled on Lawrence’s own experiences, and Edward accused him of failing to treat his material with the detachment of the deliberate artist. ‘You are insensibly making Paul too much of a hero,’ he complains, and ‘This seems cheap: you identify your sympathies too much with Paul’s wrath.’2 The manuscript was back in Germany with Edward’s notes less than three weeks after Lawrence had sent it. Lawrence responded enthusiastically and promised to ‘slave like a Turk at the novel … I begin in earnest tomorrow.’3

At the end of July David Garnett, by now studying botany at the Imperial College of Science, was in Munich attending some lectures. At Edward’s suggestion he contacted Lawrence and went to stay with him and Frieda in Icking. ‘He’s awfully like you … his walk, his touch of mischief and wickedness … But he hasn’t got your appetite for tragedy with the bleeding brow,’4 Lawrence reported, before adding that he and Frieda had decided to walk away from their troubles over the Alps into Switzerland. At the end of the letter he casually mentions that he has decided to rewrite Paul Morel and that it will take him three months. As usual, money was a pressing problem and once again Lawrence looked to Edward for assistance in placing sketches and poetry: ‘I must hear from you or of you,’ he frets.5

Edward and Nellie had been on holiday in Wales, which explained his recent silence; he was also preoccupied with finding another London flat. Constance, who did most of the hunting, eventually recommended one very close to Grove Place: 4 Downshire Hill was a ‘nice little old house’.6 It had the advantage of being very quiet and very cheap (£42 10/- a year) and the disadvantage of being ‘a bit grubby and dilapidated’ and having a very small bathroom and kitchen. Constance was won over by the charm of the place and they took possession of it in September.

While Edward was on the move in London, Lawrence and Frieda were finally settling for a while near the shores of Lake Garda. Lawrence was immensely relieved when £50 arrived from Duckworth to ease his financial anxieties: ‘It seems queer, that while I am straying about here, you are working like a fiend, and hampered with my stuff as well,’ Lawrence remarks, before trying to persuade Edward to come out and stay for a while: ‘I should love to talk to you – for hours and hours.

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