If I could help it, I would never intrude upon Lawrence when Murry was there - and Murry frequently was there - because I could not bear the underlying sense of strain and dissatisfaction. Frieda was torn between her recent friendliness with Murry and Lawrence's belief that England held nothing for him any more in spite of all the Adelphis that were or ever could be. Lawrence, waiting in vain week after week for some reply to the letters and cables which he was sending to his New York publisher, had begun to be anxious about money. Where was the use of his books going well in the States if he received nothing for them? 'It was a painful time,' says Murry. So it was.
Of the 'painftil things that happened in it' I was certainly witness to one. But on that occasion the special painfulness was created by Murry. Possibly from a conscious desire that Lawrence should be spared, he has not told the story in his Reminiscences. It has since been given, however, from hearsay and with the most circumstantial inaccuracy by Mrs Luhan. As the incident concerned neither Lawrence nor Murry alone, but inclusively nine of us, it seems imperative that it should be given here correctly to the best of my remembrance.
During this visit of Lawrence to London he was determined to make at least one attempt at friendly gaiety - a sort of 'Well, well, now that we are here don't let's be too gloomy even if we have made a mistake' gesture on his part. He went with Koteliansky to the Café Royal, engaged a private room there and ordered a supper. (For which, to Lawrence's annoyance, the manager insisted upon having a deposit, and refused to take a cheque.) When Frieda first told me that they were giving a party in a restaurant, I took it merely as an announcement, not as an invitation. I knew that Lawrence had a considerable acquaintance in London, and it struck me as natural that we, living in the same house and seeing each other constantly, were not to be among the guests. But when I said I hoped they would have a good evening, Frieda shouted in amazement: 'But you and Don are coming! You are invited\ It is a dinner for Lawrence's friends!'
Only then did I recognise my half-unconscious withdrawal on the first reception of the news, as a too willing abnegation. From the first I had felt a slight sinking of the heart at the notion of this supper, so far as I might have any part in it. And it was this that made me utter a feeble and ill-mannered protest even thus late. 'Are you quite sure that you want us?' I asked. 'There are so many people you must want to see and we can eat together any night.' 'No, no,' sang Frieda, quite shocked and hurt, I could see. This is for Lawrence's real friends. Are you not his real friends?' So it was settled. It was just the presence of some of those other 'real friends' that was saddening to me in the prospect. But we had to enter into the spirit of the thing, and attend with goodwill this, the one and only formal gathering I have ever known Lawrence to initiate.
Soon enough we knew who the others were to be - Koteliansky, Murry and Mark Gerder for the men; Mary Cannan and Dorothy Brett for the women. The round table was attractively laid and the room intimate. Lawrence made a charming host - easy, simple and warm. There was something at once piquant and touching in seeing him receiving us, his friends, thus in surroundings so unlike those in which we had been accustomed to forgather with him these ten years past. It emphasised the lack of sophistication in him which, combined with his subtlety, was so moving a charm. 'Schoolboyish' is perhaps the last adjective that could justly be applied to this mature and refined, this disciplined and impassioned artist, that was D. H. Lawrence at the age of thirty-nine. But at any moment, surroundings like the Café Royal, or the rooms of some fine old house not in the cottage style, would bring out in Lawrence a boyishness that was as comic as it was lovable. 'You'll see I'm quite up to this,' he seemed to be saying. 'Mind you play up to me, so that nobody will have the slightest idea that we don't dine in marble halls all the year round.' It is never a thing to underline, but it is a thing to be remembered, that Lawrence was the son of a miner and spent his youth in a miners' row - no matter with how superior a mother or how sensitive a group of brothers and sisters. For him, for instance, to visit at a house like Garsington Manor, was a genuine experience. He coped with it admirably and he knew just what estimation to put upon it, both as an experience and as a phenomenon. He could add up the life behind it and 'see through' the persons belonging to it, without being in any way dazzled or shaken. Even the utmost of kindly patronage could not keep him from the eventual expression of his summing up. More even than Robert Burns in his adventures with the rich and the famous, Lawrence was the 'chiel amang them takin' notes'. Yet he never became sophisticated enough not to be superficially over-impressed at the first impact with personages like the Meynell family or Bertrand Russell or Lady Ottoline Morrell. With them this most un-schoolboyish man betrayed a kind of quiet schoolboy knowingness that is not unrelated to nervousness. And the reaction from his impressibility (as in the case of Robert Burns) was apt to be violent. People gave themselves away to Lawrence in an extraordinary degree. And as often as not, their 'giving away' was a subtle form of patronage, a fact that was by no means lost on the observer and writer of fiction who lurked with cool eyes behind the poet in Lawrence. It was naturally a shock when, out of what had seemed a pleasant friendship, there should spring such prodigies, at once fantastic and recognisable, as figure in certain of his novels and tales. True, he did this with any or all of us. But one cannot escape from the touch of malice in certain instances, nor from the belief that it is there as a make-weight for the special sensibility of a man whose genius has lifted him out of his class.
To return to the Café Royal. Frieda, as our hostess, purred loudly and pleasantly. Cafés Royal or Tudor houses were not even child's play to her! She wore, greatly to Lawrence's approval, something that was both gleaming and flower-like - anyhow petal-like, as she delightedly pointed out. I forget how Dorothy Brett was dressed, except that what she wore seemed tame beside Frieda's gaiety. Mary in décolletée black, with a large picture hat, à la Mrs Siddons, looked like the heroine from a forgotten novel by John Oliver Hobbes. I, too, was in black - velvet to Mary's silk. The men wore their everyday clothes. Kot, in his dark clothes as ever, looked both the most conventional and the strangest.
The food was excellent, but somehow the feast did not go well. Gerder was silent and looked watchful, even contemptuous. Kot conceived a murderous dislike for Donald, next to whom he was placed.
Mary had nothing to say. I too was stricken with dumbness. Lawrence did his best to enliven us all with wine, bidding us to drink our fill and rejoice in a festive occasion. He set us a good example and drank level. There was no champagne. We drank claret. And never before, nor since, have I swallowed so many glasses and remained so heavily sober. With the coming of the dessert a mistake was made. What was the wine to be? asked Lawrence. Murry and Donald both said port. They had forgotten, or had not known, that port was a drink Lawrence could not well tolerate. He immediately hinted very gently that port was not his drink, but his remark was either missed or good-naturedly overruled. 'Port is a man's drink,' I remember either Murry or Donald announcing in solemn tones. So port it was. And Lawrence drank it with the rest of us.
It had the effect of loosening at least some of the mute tongues about the table, though none of us women was perceptibly elevated. Lawrence began to talk in Spanish (which he had learned in Mexico). Donald, who prided himself on knowing a bit of Spanish (enough to read Don Quixote and to reply to simple questions), endeavoured to engage in Spanish conversation with Lawrence. This, for some reason, infuriated Kot to such a degree that he looked like taking the unwary Donald's life had not Murry tactfully placed somebody between them. Kot's idea seemed to be that the Spanish language was Lawrence's special perquisite. Gertler drank, or refrained from drinking, in silence, looking on, always looking on from a cold afar. Both he and Mary Cannan left early.
But not before this strange incident. It began with a speech by Kot in praise and love of Lawrence, the speech being punctuated by his deliberate smashing of a wineglass at the close of each period. As - 'Lawrence is a great man.' (Bang! down came Kot's strong fist enclosing the stem of a glass, so that its bottom came in shivering contact with the table.) 'Nobody here realises how great he is.' (Crash! another good wineglass gone.) 'Especially no woman here or anywhere can possibly realise the greatness of Lawrence.' (Smash and tinkle!) 'Frieda does not count. Frieda is different. I understand and don't include her. But no other woman here or anywhere can understand anything about Lawrence or what kind of being he is.'
We women were silent. We felt, I think, very sympathetic to Kot. Anyhow I did. Sympathetic to his jealous, dark and overpowering affection - even inclined to agree with what he said.
Lawrence looked pale and frightfully ill, but his eyes were starry to an extraordinary degree. It occurred to me then - and I have since had no reason to change my reading, which was revealed as by the appearance of clear writing on the wall - that the deep hold of the Last Supper on the imagination of the world is not unconnected with the mystery of Bacchus. Given a man of genius; more especially given a man whose genius runs to expression by means of symbol, his essential utterance may well be achieved only when his genius is acted upon at a crisis by the magic of the fermented grape.
Anyhow, Lawrence who, like the others present, was habitually temperate, revealed that night at the Café Royal his deepest desire to all of us simply and unforgettably. And in doing so he brought about some other revelations, as will be seen.
Without making anything approaching a speech, he caught our attention by the quiet urgency of his request. What he said, in effect, was that we were his friends here, each and all of us people he had been very fond of. He could not stay in England. He must go back to New Mexico. Would we, would any of us, go with him? He asked each of us in turn. Would we go with him? Implicit in this question was the other. Did the search, the adventure, the pilgrimage for which he stood, mean enough to us for us to give up our own way of life and our own separate struggle with the world? Though his way of life must involve also a struggle with the world, this was not - as we well knew - its main objective. Rather was it a withdrawal of one's essential being from that struggle, and a turning of what strength one had into a new channel.
Essentially the appeal was not a personal one. Though it was to his friends, it was not for his sake or the sake of friendship that he made it. It was because of something in himself which we all acknowledged. But it had never before become so near being a personal appeal. It certainly had a personal element that told of his overwhelming loneliness. It was far less 'follow me' than 'come with me'. It was even - to my thinking at least - 'come for a time, and support me by your presence, as the undertaking is too much for me alone, yet I must not stay here with you'. I give my own reading, but I think something very like it was in the minds of all the others.
Remember we had just supped, and our glasses had been replenished with port, and, as I have said, we were all normally very abstemious people.
Mary Carman was the only one to return a flat negative to Lawrence's question. It was as plump and plain as she herself was slender and pretty. 'No,' said she hardily. 'I like you, Lawrence, but not so much as all that, and I think you are asking what no human being has a right to ask of another.'
Lawrence accepted this without cavil or offence. It was a clear, hard, honest answer.
What Gerder said, I can't remember. I rather think it was a humouring but dry affirmative, which we all understood to mean nothing. Kot and Donald both said they would go, less drily, but so that any listener guessed they were speaking from goodwill rather than from deep intention. Dorothy Brett said quickly that she would go, and I, knowing that she would, envied her. Murry promised emotionally that he would, and one felt that he wouldn't. I said yes, I would go. And I meant it, though I didn't see how on earth it could be, anyhow for a long time. Unlike Mary and Dorothy Brett I had neither money of my own nor freedom from responsibility. Dorothy Brett, who loved to serve, was always coming to a loose end. I, who did not particularly like serving, was always having fresh responsibilities put upon me by life. Mary, disappointed with her 'freedom', had yet got used to its little self-indulgences and could not give them up. All the same I felt that Lawrence had somehow the right to ask me to go. And I feel today equally the impossibility of my going and the wish that I had gone.
As for the supper, what I next remember is Murry going up to Lawrence and kissing him with a kind of effusiveness which afflicted me. He must have been sensible to my feeling, because he turned to me.
'Women can't understand this,' he said. 'This is an affair between men. Women can have no part or place in it.'
'Maybe,' said I. 'But anyhow it wasn't a woman who betrayed Jesus with a kiss.'
At this Murry again embraced Lawrence, who sat perfectly still and unresponsive, with a dead-white face in which the eyes alone were alive.
'I have betrayed you, old chap, I confess it,' continued Murry. 'In the past I have betrayed you. But never again. I call you all to witness, never again.'
Throughout all this Frieda remained aloof and scornful - excluded. Her innings would be later. She reminded me of King David's wife looking down in derision from an upper window. One could not but admire her.
It must have been almost immediately after the strange episode with Murry, that Lawrence, without uttering a sound, fell forward with his head on the table, was deadly sick, and became at once unconscious. The combination of the port (which, when he had said he could not abide, he said truly) and the cruel loneliness which was brought home to him by the responses he had elicited from us, his friends, was too much for him.
In his sickness Lawrence was more like a child than a man. There was nothing disgusting about him. Frieda, however, remained stonily detached, while Dorothy Brett and I ministered to him as best we could - she especially, who did not want me to help.
It must have been now that Mary and Gerder left us. What with the glasses broken by Kot, and Lawrence's sickness, I was sorry for the waiters who would have to clear up. But they behaved as if they had noticed nothing out of the way. Donald, as the soberest man, was handed money to pay for the wine and the damage. The bill, he tells me, struck him as wonderfully moderate.
We left in two taxi-cabs, Lawrence being still unconscious so that it was difficult getting him down in the lift. But Kot, even in liquor, was powerful. I recall that his legs seemed to fill the cab in which I was. I had been given all the hats of the party to hold, and I lost my own - a little real Russian cap of black astrakhan, which I liked better than any head covering I ever had, though I gave only three shillings for it in an antique shop, and it had a bullet-hole through it.
Arrived at Hampstead the problem was how to get Lawrence up to the first floor. Kot and Murry had to carry him. But in their enthusiasm they went on with their burden, up and up, till my brother, asleep on the top storey, was awakened by the trampling, stumbling sound, and ran out in alarm to the little landing. He told me afterwards that when he saw clearly before him St John and St Peter (or maybe St Thomas) bearing between them the limp figure of their Master, he could hardly believe he was not dreaming. However, he conducted the party downstairs again.
Next morning soon after breakfast - certainly not later than 9.30 a.m. - I was passing the open door of the Lawrences' sitting-room, when Lawrence hailed me and bade me enter. He was fresh and serene. 'Well, Catherine,' he said, 'I made a fool of myself last night. We must all of us fall at times. It does no harm so long as we first admit and then forget it.'
At such times he was an overwhelmingly attractive human being. That fight and easy, yet not flippant manner of his for dealing with such an incident, bespoke an underlying steadiness that begot trust in the onlooker and was - it seems to me - incompatible with any neurotic condition. Although the fullness of his admissions, and the sensitiveness of his abandon to the impulses of life might give to the superficial observer the impression that he was a sufferer from a neurosis, Lawrence was emphatically no neurotic. Of this I am convinced. If I add that he hated neurotics, even while he had the misfortune to find in them more immediately than in others a kind of response which sprang from superficial understanding, I suppose I shall call forth the gibe of the analyst - 'Thou sayest it!' 'The real neurotic is half a devil,' said Lawrence, 'the cured one' with his 'perfect automatic control', is 'a perfect devil'. And again, 'Spit on every neurotic and wipe your feet on his face if he tries to drag you down.' Yet I know that what I say is true. Lawrence hated, he feared, he fought and he was obliged to consort with neurotics. But he was himself untainted.
When I told him that I had lost my astrakhan cap he insisted on giving me two pounds to buy myself a hat. Unfortunately he did not like the one I bought, though he was too kind to say so. He liked a hat to be a hat, and to have a proper brim. This small black felt was brimless. He gave it a single glance and looked away. 'Quite saucy!' he said. I felt crushed.