Lawrence had taken the house at Taormina for a year, at the rent of twenty-five pounds, or two thousand lire (the exchange being then at eighty). 'Heaven knows which way we shall be moving next,' he wrote in May. 'Depends which way the wind blows us. But one's instinct is to go south, south - and away, away from Europe. Here we are almost on the last tip - and my face still looks south, as if one must step off into space somewhere.'
In April he had visited Syracuse with new friends he had made in Sicily (probably Mr and Mrs Brewster) and it was soon after his return that the fugitive and penniless Magnus descended upon him.
The pamphlet written by Norman Douglas as a counterblast to Lawrence's narrative of Magnus is well known and will always hold its place in the archives of literary dispute. It is brilliant and creditable -I mean that it does credit to the writer's heart and head. Some of Lawrence's best friends have agreed with its finding that a poor wretch who had been driven to take his own life should not have been subjected, anyhow within the covers of his own book, to so searching an examination. While I respect and understand, I do not share this view. Having lately reread both productions, it seems to me that Lawrence, who, after all, was far less the friend than the victim of Magnus, has given his subject full human dues while nailing for good to the barn-door a particular kind of predatory fowl, which to have done is to have rendered a service to honest men in this naughty world. The man whom Douglas defends - naturally and properly as they were on a footing of tolerant affection - does not command the outside reader's sympathy in anything like the same degree as does the man whom Lawrence condemns. In the first case our tribute goes to Douglas; in the second it is compelled for Magnus. At the same time, the sentimentality of this age having run somewhat to the excusing of charming bullies and semi-artistic good-for-nothings, it is a relief to find the inherent nastiness of dishonesty made plain. This, quite apart from other values to be found in the Lawrence narrative. It is true, as Douglas says, that Lawrence gives himself away as much as he gives away Magnus. And that also is good. It contains one of the most vivid of his self-portraits and was never seriously regretted by him. The Lawrence production will stand as a creative, and the Douglas one as a pious effort.
That May, when Lawrence was bailing Magnus out, his own funds were low enough, and I wanted very much to give him fifty pounds. After long and vain travelling from one publisher to another (one firm would have accepted it if I would have cut it down by two-thirds) my novel had won a 'First Novel' prize of two hundred and fifty pounds. So I had this, and I thought it only fair that Lawrence should have a slice. From the first, however, he would consent only to 'hold it' for me in case I could come out there that summer. He had at last signed an agreement for Women in Love and The Rainbow (one hundred pounds to be received on publication on account of royalties for the first, and later the same sum for The Rainbow with the cautious proviso that this should not be paid until three months after publication, and even so, that it should be subject to deduction by any charges of legal proceedings that might arise). He expected 'pretty soon' to have the money for Women in Love. But the typing of The Lost Girl in Rome cost a thousand lire, and immediate supplies were short.
Unlike the Athenaeum Lawrence found The Lost Girl 'quite amusing: and quite moral'. 'She's not morally lost, poor darling,' he added, ' . . . marries an Italian.' He wished to serialise this book, but did not succeed in doing so. It brought him a good new friend, however, and a Scottish one - the painter, Miss Millicent Beveridge. She had greatly admired this, the first of his books she had read, and soon afterwards was interested to meet the author. She has told me how that meeting took place at a party in Sicily where she found Lawrence in a rage because, not made aware beforehand that it was a party and that he was to be lionised, he had turned up barefoot with sandals and in his 'pottering about' clothes. In this respect Lawrence was no bohemian. He believed in suiting the occasion. Miss Beveridge, amused and astonished as much as she was charmed, became sincerely attached to him, and the friendship remained firm till his death. May was very hot in Sicily.
Do you know what it is to be in a dry southern country - dry, like Africa? I never knew before. But I like it. The sun is a bit overwhelming. Nearly all foreigners have left here already. Today we are going down to the sea to bathe. But it is a good half-hour down, and one hour up. Mary Cannan has a studio here - nice - for three more months. She is dying to go to Malta - the boat runs from Syracuse. But she can't go alone. So she wants us to go if she pays our ship fare - it's only an eight-hour crossing. It might be amusing, for four or five days. But Malta isn't wildly attractive, and I am doubtful if I want to spend the money.
But Mary Cannan had set her mind on it, and the Lawrences went with her. Norman Douglas has quoted an extract from a letter in which Magnus describes with malicious veracity the boredom of Lawrence in Malta. Back in Taormina on May 28th, he wrote to me:
... we were to stay only two days - then a steam boat strike, and we only got back tonight, after some eleven days. Oh, and it was so expensive, and I feel so displeased. Malta is a strange place - a dry bath brick island that glares and sets your teeth on edge and is so dry that one expects oneself to begin to crackle. Valetta Harbour is wonderful: beautiful. But I get set on edge by the British regime. It is very decent, I believe, but it sort of stops life, it prevents the human reactions from taking full swing, there is always a kind of half-measure, half-length, 'not quite' feeling about, which simply arrests my digestion.
Upon his return he had found my cheque waiting for him, and again he gave me to understand that he would not use it but would keep it for me in his bank. A day or so later, however, he suddenly decided otherwise. From America had come two thousand lire for stories. 'I have enough money. And why should I hold any of yours in fee. So I accept the gift all the same: and have burned your cheque.' Again, 'what you do want is money, so you must get it.' Once he started, he felt confident that he could make money. 'Then we'll share mine. It won't be long. You see if it is.'
I had by then been to Altrincham to see Mrs Holroyd, and I confess that on my way there the undertaking began to assume the nature of a penance. Lawrence had betrayed that he was eager, even nervous, as to the results. 'I have a dreadful feeling that it may be a fiasco,' he had written. So too had I.
The presentation, however, was creditable, if no more. It compared favourably with the performance given in London by the '300 Club' in December, 1926, which also I saw. To do justice to the Altrincham players and the Altrincham audience, no sniggering was elicited by the scene where the dead miner's body is washed by his women. All the same I felt that in a play so realistically written and produced a body-washing scene was theatrically unacceptable. Either it must be done 'off' with only the voices and the footsteps of the women to give it reality, or the stage must be darkened to a firelight glow and the whole production lifted into a plane beyond realism with movements that are classically simplified. To read the scene is simple and tragic. Outside the Irish People's Plays I reckon we can hardly match it in English with any other scene of dramatic dialogue having working folk as the protagonists. And the play holds its own against the Irish plays. Yet, as things are, it does not quite 'do', and I believe the reason lies in the fact that the theatre itself was antipathetic to Lawrence, so much so that even when writing for it he maintained his antipathy. 'Here is drama,' one imagines him to say - 'here is prose drama as authentic as any the English theatre can show. It is not "good theatre!" Then the English theatre must change itself to accommodate a living contemporary English play.' The first scenes of Mrs Holroyd, like the first scenes in Touch and Go, prove that Lawrence had the art of crisp and pregnant stage dialogue. The action, besides, the exits and the entrances, are finely devised, and the conflict is real. It is not surprising to find that in his youth Lawrence contemplated the production of a volume of plays, nor that he could not resist occasional returns to the dramatic form. But the theatre is a task-mistress who demands not only obedience but enslavement. And Lawrence would not bow the head to such a muse. We find, accordingly, that though his plays are far from being mere literary dramatisations, and are most genuinely plays, they are not truly adapted to the mechanics of our stage.
Of contemporary productions, opera, with its light-hearted formality and transparent artifice, was probably most to his taste. He was not interested in 'problems', effective situations, or any of the sophisticated trickery of the modern theatre. I question indeed if he ever found enjoyment in witnessing a play, unless it might be one of the older classics. Once, and only once, I was so ill advised as to book seats for him and myself to see - what he thought might be interesting - the translation of Tolstoy's Living Corpse at the St James's Theatre, with Henry Ainley and my friend Athene Seyler in the leading parts. And how he hated it and everything about it, so far as the theatre was concerned! The more the germ of the thing appealed to him, the more he was appalled by what he considered to be the falsity and ineptitude of its stage appeal. It made him so unhappy, that before the performance was half through he found himself unable to endure it longer, even with his face buried in his hands. 'Do you mind, Catherine? I just can't bear it any longer!' he whispered. There was nothing for it but to squeeze our way out from our upper circle seats (particularly narrow in that theatre) earning, as we did so, black looks from a long row of earnest Russophile playgoers. Immediately afterwards he was apologetic and charming. 'All that good money of yours!' he mourned. 'But no, it was too much to expect us to see it through!'
My only other theatrical experience in the Lawrence connection was when, on the day the War began, I took Frieda to hear Marie Lloyd. It was, I think, Frieda's first chance of listening to one of England's idols of the comic sort. From her childish wonderment, not unmixed with a delight that was a trifle timid of itself (as though Lawrence might suddenly appear and wag his head reprovingly) I suspect that this was her first visit to a London music-hall. Frieda would not have been Frieda had she been able to resist Marie Lloyd. But when we got home and recounted our enjoyment to Lawrence (who had been otherwise engaged) she was cautious and - in her half-defensive, half-belligerent way - noncommittal. 'Yes, yes. I do think she is a great artist! I did enjoy her, and I believe, Lorenzo, that you would have liked her real vulgarity.' But though Lawrence was glad we had enjoyed ourselves, he shook his head a little over Frieda, as some fond but austere Victorian parent might shake his head upon catching his child poring over the pages of Ally Sloper — without, however, reproving the child or removing the periodical. Though he loved abandon, and could be the gayest of the gay or the funniest of the funny, it was not in Lawrence either to be frivolous or to contemplate frivolity with pleasure. One felt that while he would make the fullest admission of Marie Lloyd's artistry, he would still feel that this was rather a silly way of spending the evening.
Lawrence was disappointed by the general indifference to Mrs Holroyd, and I doubt not, though he never mentioned it, disappointed in particular by The Times notice.
In my anxiety I had made a bad mistake. Instead of keeping myself within five hundred words, in which the praise would not have been amenable to scissors, I had run to nearly a thousand words. I was accordingly disgusted to find that in the printed version all my warmest commendations were omitted. What remained was not even good criticism. .... am afraid Mrs Holroyd was altogether a bit of a bore and that you were miserable. Am sorry,' Lawrence wrote. Today it is interesting to learn that after receiving accounts of the 1926 production, Lawrence said, 'I think, if it were being done again, I should alter the end, and make it more cheerful. Myself, I hate miserable endings now.'