NOT I, BUT THE WIND... by Frieda Lawrence

Frieda Freiin von Richthofen (1879-1956) is best known for her marriage to D. H. Lawrence, although she was a distant relative of the famous Red Baron.  In 1899, she married Ernest Weekley, a British philologist and professor of modern languages, with whom she had three children. They settled in Nottingham, where Ernest worked at the university and she worked on translating pieces of German literature into English.

In 1912 Frieda met Lawrence, who had previously been her husband’s student. They soon fell in love and eloped to Germany, leaving Frieda’s children behind. During their stay, Lawrence was arrested for spying and, after the intervention of Frieda's father, the couple travelled south into Italy. Following her divorce from Weekley, Frieda married Lawrence in 1914. They intended to return to the continent, but the outbreak of war kept them in England, where they endured official harassment and censorship, as well as Lawrence's already frail health.

Leaving post-war England at the earliest opportunity, they travelled widely, eventually settling at the Kiowa Ranch, near Taos, New Mexico and, in Lawrence's last years, at the Villa Mirenda, near Scandicci in Tuscany. After Lawrence’s death in Vence in 1930, Frieda returned to Taos to live with her third husband, Angelo Ravagli.

In 1935 Frieda published this biography of her life and travels with the famous author.