If there is one thing I don’t look forward to it’s my mail.
Look out! Look out! Look out!
Look out! The postman comes!
His double knocking makes us start,
It rouses echoes in the heart,
It wakens expectation, and hope and agitation, etc., etc.
So we used to sing, in school.
Now, the postman is no knocker. He pitches the mail-bag into a box on a tree, and kicks his horse forward.
And when one has been away, and a heap of letters and printed stuff slithers out under one’s eyes, there is neither hope nor expectation in the heart, but only repulsion, as if it were something nauseous one had to eat.
Business letters — all rather dreary. Bank letters, with the nasty green used-up checks, and a dwindling small balance. Family letters: We are so disappointed you are not coming to England. We wanted you to see the baby, he is so bonny: the new house, it is awfully nice: the show of the daffodils and crocuses down the garden. Friends’ letters: The winter has been very trying. And then the unknown correspondents. They are the worst. ... If you saw my little blue-eyed darling, you could not refuse her anything — not even an autograph. . . . The high-school students somewhere in Massachusetts or in Maryland are in the habit of choosing by name some unknown man, whom they accept as a sort of guide. A group has chosen me — will I send them a letter of encouragement or of help in the battle of life? Well, I would willingly, but what on earth am I to say to them? My dear young people: I daren’t advise you to do as I do, for it’s no fun, writing unpopular books. And I won’t advise you, for your own sakes, to do as I say. For in details I’m sure I’m wrong. My dear young people, perhaps I need your encouragement more than you need mine. . . . Well, that’s no message!
Then there’s the letter signed “A Mother” — from Lenton, Nottingham: telling me she has been reading Sons~and Lovers, and is there not misery enough in Nottingham (my home town) without my indicating where vice can be found, and (to cut short) how it can be practised? She saw a young woman reading Sons and Lovers, but was successful in preventing her from finishing the book. And the book was so well written, it was a pity the author could not have kept it clean. “As it is, although so interesting, it cannot be mentioned in polite society.” Signed “A Mother.” (Let us hope the young woman who was saved from finishing Soils and Lovers may also be saved from becoming, in her turn, A Motherl)
Then the letter from some gentleman in New York beginning: I am afraid you may consider this letter an impertinence. If he was afraid, then what colossal impertinence to carry on to two sheets, and then post his impudence to me. The substance was: I should like to know, in the controversy between you and Norman Douglas (I didn’t know myself that there was a controversy), how it was the Magnus manuscript came into your hands, and you came to publish it, when clearly it was left to Douglas? In this case, why should you be making a lot of money out of another man’s work? — Of course, I know it is your Introduction which sells the book. Magnus’s manuscript is trash, and not worth reading. Still, for the satisfaction of myself and many of my readers, I wish you could make it clear how you come to be profiting by a work that is not your own.
Apparently this gentleman’s sense of his own impertinence only drove him deeper in. He has obviously read neither Magnus’s work nor my Introduction — else he would plainly have seen that this MS. was detained by Magnus’s creditors, at his death, and handed by them to me, in the poor hope of recovering some of the money lost with that little adventurer. Moreover, if I wrote the only part of the book that is worth reading (/ don’t say so) — the only part for which people buy the book (they’re not my words) — then it is my work they buyl This out of my genteel correspondent’s own mouth — because I do not consider Magnus’s work trash. Finally, if I get half proceeds for a book of which practically half was written by me and the other half sells on my account, who in heaven’s name is going to be impertinent to me? Nobody, without a kick in the pants. As for Douglas, if he could have paid the dead man’s debts, he might have “executed” the dead man’s literary works to his heart’s content. Why doesn’t he do something with the rest of the remains? Was this poor Foreign Legion MS. the only egg in the nest? Anyhow, let us hope that those particular debts for which this MS. was detained, will now be paid. And R.I.P. Anyhow, I shan’t be a rich man on the half profits.
But this is not all my precious mail. . . . From a London editor and a friend (soi-disant): Perhaps you would understand other people better if you did not think that you were always right. How one learns things about oneself! Or is it really about the other person? I always find that my critics pretending to criticize me, are analysing themselves. My own private opinion is that I have been, as fai as people go, almost every time wrong! Anyhow, my desire to “understand other people better” is turning to dread of finding out any more about them. This “friend” goes on to say, will I ask my literary agent to let him have some articles of mine at a considerably cheaper figure than the agent puts on them?
It is not done yet. There is Mr. Muir’s article about me in the Nation. Never did I feel so baffled, confronting myself in my worst moments, as I feel when I read this “elucidation” of myself. I hope it isn’t my fault that Mr. Muir plays such havoc between two stools. I think I read that he is a young man, and younger critic. It seems a pity he hasn’t “A Mother” to take the books from him before he can do himself any more harm. Truly, I don’t want him to read them. “There remain his gifts, splendid in their imperfection,” — this is Mr. Muir about me — ”thrown recklessly into a dozen books, fulfilling themselves in none. His chief title to greatness is that he has brought a new mode of seeing into literature, a new beauty which is also one of the oldest things in the world. It is the beauty of the ancient instinctive life which civilized man has almost forgotten. Mr. Lawrence has picked up a thread of life left behind by mankind; and at some time it will be woven in with the others, making human life more complete, as all art tends to. . . . Life has come to him fresh from the minting at a time when it seemed to everyone soiled and banal. He has many faults, and many of these are wilful. He has not fulfilled the promise shown in Sons and Lovers and The Rainbow. He has not submitted himself to any discipline. The will (in Mr. Lawrence’s characters) is not merely weak and inarticulate, it is in abeyance; it does not come into action. To this tremendous extent the tragedy in Mr. Lawrence’s novels fails in significance. We remember the scenes in his novels; we forget the names of his men and women. We should not know any of them if we met them in the street, as we should know Anna Karenina, or Crevel, or Soames Forsyte. . . .” (Who is Crevel?)
Now listen, you, Mr. Muir, and my dear readers. You read me for your own sakes, not for mine. You do me no favour by reading me. I am not indebted to you in the least if you spend two dollars on a book. You do it entirely for your own delectation. Spend the dollars on chewing-gum, it keeps the mouth busy and doesn’t fly to the brain. I shall live just as blithly, unbought and unsold. When you buy chewing-gum, do you feel you acquire divine rights over the mind and soul of Mr. Wrigley? If you do, it’s like your impudence. Therefore get it out of your heads that you are throned aloft 4ike the gods, called upon to utter divine judgment. Your lofty seats, after all, are more like tall baby-chairs than thrones of the gods of judgment. . . . But here goes, for an answer.
1. I have lunched with Mr. Banality, and I’m sure I should know him if I met him in the street. ... Is that my fault, or his? — Alas, that I should recognize people in the street, by their noses bonnets, or beauty. I don’t care about their noses, bonnets, or beauty. Does nothing exist beyond that which is recognizable in the street? — How does my cat recognize me in the dark? — Ugh, thank God there are more and other sorts of vision than the kodak sort which Mr. Muir esteems above all others.
2. “The will is not merely weak and inarticulate, it is in abeyance.” — Ah, my dear Mr. Muir, the will of the modern young gentleman may not be in your opinion weak and inarticulate, but certainly it is as mechanical as a Ford car engine. To this extent is the tragedy of modern young men insignificant. Oh, you little gods in the machine, stop the engine for a bit, do!
3. “He has not submitted himself to any discipline.” — Try, Mr. Muir et al., putting your little iron will into abeyance for one hour daily, and see if it doesn’t need a harder discipline than this doing of your “daily dozen” and all your other mechanical repetitions. Believe me, today, the little god in a Ford machine cannot get at the thing worth having, not even with the most praiseworthy little engine of a will.
4. “He has not fulfilled the promise of Sons and Lovers and The Rainbow.” — Just after The Rainbow was published, the most eminent figure in English letters told me to my nose that this work was a failure. Now, after ten years, Mr. Muir finds it “promising.” Go ahead, O Youth. But whatever promise you read into The Rainbow, remember it’s like the little boy who “promised” his mother to be good if she’d “promise” to take him to the pantomime. I promise nothing, inside or out of The Rainbow.
5. “Life has come to him fresh from the minting at a time when it seemed to everyone stale and banal.” — Come! Come! Mr. Muir! With all that “spirit” of yours, and all that “intellect,” and with all that “will,” and all that “discipline,” do you dare to confess that (I suppose you lump yourself in among everyone) life seemed to you stale and banal? — If so, something must be badly wrong with you and your psychic equipment, and Mr. Lawrence wouldn’t be in your shoes for all the money and the “cleverness” in the world.
6. “Mr. Lawrence has picked up a thread of life left behind by mankind.” — Darn your socks with it, Mr. Muir?
7. “It is the beauty of the ancient instinctive life which civilized man has almost forgotten.” — He may have forgotten it, but he can put a label on it and price it at a figure and let it go cheap, in one and a half minutes. Ah, my dear Mr. Muir, when do you consider ancient life ended, and “civilized” life began? And which is stale and banal? Wherein does staleness lie, Mr. Muir? As for “ancient life,” it may be ancient to you, but it is still alive and kicking in some people. And “ancient life” is far more deeply conscious than you can even imagine. And its discipline goes into regions where you have no existence.
8. “His chief title to greatness is that he has brought a new mode of seeing into literature, a new beauty,” etc., etc. — Easy, of course, as re-trimming an old hat. Michael Arlen does it betterl Looks more modish, the old hat. — But shouldn’t it be a new mode of “feeling” or “knowing” rather than of “seeing”? Since none of my characters would be recognizable in the street?
9. “There remain his gifts, splendid in their imperfection.” — Ugh, Mr. Muir, think how horrible for us all, if I were perfect! or even if I had “perfect” gifts! — Isn’t splendour enough for you, Mr. Muir? Or do you find the peacock more “perfect” when he is moulting and has lost his tail, and therefore isn’t so exaggerated, but is more “down to normal”? — For “perfection” is only one of the attributes of “the normal” and “the average” in modern thought.
Well, I don’t want to be just or to be kind. There is a further justice and a greater kindness than this niggling tolerance business, and suffering fools gladly. Fools bore me — but I don’t mean Mr. Muir. He is a phoenix, compared to most. I wonder what it is that the rainbow — I mean the natural phenomenon — stands for in my own consciousness! I don’t know all it means to me. — Is this lack ol intellectual capacity on my part? Or is it because the rainbow is somehow not quite “normal,” and therefore not quite fit for intellectual appreciation? Of course white light passing through prisms of falling raindrops makes a rainbow. Let us therefore sell it by the yard.
For me, give me a little splendour, and I’ll leave perfection to the small fry.
But oh, my other anonymous little critic, what shall I say to thee? Mr. Lawrence’s horses are all mares or stallions.
Honi soit qui mal y pense, my dear, though I’m sure the critic is a gentleman (I daren’t say a man) and not a lady.
Little critics’ horses (sic) are all geldings.
Another little critic: “Mr. Lawrence’s introspective intelligence is too feeble to balance this melodramatic fancy in activities which cater for a free play of mind.”
Retort simple: Mr. Lawrence’s intelligence would prevent his writing such a sentence down, and sending it to print. — What can those activities be which “cater for a free play of mind” (whatever that may mean) and at the same time have “introspective intelligence” (what quite is this?) balancing “melodramatic fancy” (what is this either?) within them?
Same critic, finishing the same sentence: “. . . and so, since criticism begins at home, his (Mr. Lawrence’s) latter-day garment of philosopher and preacher is shot through with the vulgarity of aggressive self-ignorance.”
Retort simple: If criticism begins at home, then the professional, and still more so the amateur critic (I suspect this gentleman to be the latter), is never by any chance at home. He is always out sponging on some author. As for a “latter-day garment of philosopher and preacher” (I never before knew a philosopher and a preacher transmogrified into a garment) being “shot through with the vulgarity of aggressive self-ignorance,” was it grapeshot, or duck-shot, or just shot-silk effect?
Alas, this young critic is “shot through” with ignorance even more extensive than that of self. Or perhaps it is only his garment of critic and smart little fellow which is so shot through, perce or miroite, according to fancy — ”melodramatic fancy” balanced by “introspective intelligence,” “in activities which cater for a free play of mind.”
“We cater to the Radical Trade,” says Jimmie Higgins’s advertisement Another friend and critic: “Lawrence is an artist, but his intellect is not up to his art.”
You might as well say: Mr. Lawrence rides a horse but he doesn’t wear his stirrups round his neck. And the accusation is just. Because he hopes to heaven he is riding a horse that is alive of itself, not a wooden hobbyhorse suitable for the nursery. — And he does his best to keep his feet in the stirrups, and to leave his intellect under his hat, when he is riding his naughty steed. No, my dearsl I guess, as an instrument, my intellect is as good as yours. But instead of sitting in my own wheelbarrow (the intellect is a sort of wheelbarrow about the place) and whipping it ecstatically over the head, I just wheel out what dump I’ve got, and forget the old barrow again, till next time.
And now, thank God, I can throw all my mail, letters, used checks, pamphlets, periodicals, clippings from the “press,” Ave Marias, paternosters, and bunk, into the fire. — When I get a particularly smelly bit of sentiment, I always burn it slowly, invoking the Lord thus: “Lord! Herrgott! nimm du diesen Opferrauch! Take Thou this smoke of sacrifice. — The sacrifice of blood is no longer acceptable, for blood has turned to water: all is vapourl Therefore, O Lord, this choice titbit of the spirit, this kidney-fat of sentiment, accept it, O Lord, from Thy servant. . . . This firstling of the sentimental herd, this young ram without spot or blemish, from the aesthetic flock, this adamantine young he-goat, from the troops of human “stunts” — see, Lord, I cut their throats and burn the cardboard fat of them. Lord of the Spirit, Lord of the Universal Mind, Lord of the cosmic will, snuff up the smoke of this burnt-paper offering, for it makes my eyes smart — ”
I wish they’d make His eyes smart as well! this Lord of senti- mentalism, aestheticism, and stunts. One day I’ll make a sacrifice of Him too: to my own Lord, who broods at the centre of all the worlds, over His own fathomless Desire.