We met at Charing Cross and crossed the grey Channel sitting on some ropes, full of hope and agony. There was nothing but the grey sea, and the dark sky, and the throbbing of the ship, and ourselves.
We arrived at Metz where my father was having his fifty-years-of-service jubilee. Pre-war Germany: the house was full of grandchildren and relatives, and I stayed in a hotel where Lawrence also stayed. It was a hectic time. Bands were playing in honour of my father, telegrams came flying from England. Lawrence was pulling me on one side, my children on the other. My mother wanted me to stay with her. My father, who loved me, said to me in great distress: 'My child, what are you doing? I always thought you had so much sense. I know the world.' I answered: 'Yes, that may be, but you never knew the best.' I meant to know the best.
There was a fair going on at Metz at the moment. I was walking with my sister Johanna through the booths of Turkish Delight, the serpentmen, the ladies in tights, all the pots and pans.
Johanna, or 'Nusch,' as we called her, was at the height of her beauty and elegance, and was the last word in 'chic.' Suddenly Lawrence appeared round a corner, looking odd, in a cap and raincoat. What will she think of him? I thought.
He spoke just a few words to us and went away. To my surprise, Johanna said: 'You can go with him. You can trust him.'
At first nobody knew of Lawrence's presence except my sisters. One afternoon Lawrence and I were walking in the fortifications of Metz when a sentinel touched Lawrence on the shoulder suspecting him of being an English officer. I had to get my father's help to pull us out of the difficulty. Lo, the cat was out of the bag, and I took Lawrence home to tea.
He met my father only once, at our house. They looked at each other fiercely - my father, the pure aristocrat, Lawrence, the miner's son. My father, hostile, offered a cigarette to Lawrence. That night I dreamt that they had a fight, and that Lawrence defeated my father.
The strain of Metz proved too great for Lawrence and he left for the Rhineland. I stayed behind in Metz.
Here are some of Lawrence's letters, which show his side of our story up to that time.
Eastwood - Tuesday I feel so horrid and helpless. I know it all sickens you, and you are almost at the end of the tether. And what was decent yesterday will perhaps be frightfully indecent today. But it's like being ill: there's nothing to do but shut one's teeth and look at the wall and wait.
You say you're going to G... tomorrow. But even that is uncertain. And I must know about the trains. What time are you going to Germany, what day, what hour, which railway, which class? Do tell me as soon as you can, or else what I can do? I will come any time you tell me - but let me know.
You must be in an insane whirl in your mind. I feel helpless and rudderless, a stupid scattered fool. For goodness' sake tell me something and something definite. I would do anything on earth for you, and I can do nothing. Yesterday I knew would be decent, but I don't like my feeling today - presentiment. I am afraid of something low, like an eel which bites out of the mud, and hangs on with its teeth. I feel as if I can't breathe while we're in England. I wish I could come and see you, or else you me.
D. H. Lawrence
Queens Square, Eastwood, Notts 2 May 1912
I shall get in King's Cross tomorrow at 1.25. Will that do? You see I couldn't come today because I was waiting for the laundry and for some stuff from the tailor's. I had prepared for Friday, but Thursday was impossible. I am sorry if it makes things tiresome.
Will you meet me, or let somebody meet me, at King's Cross? Or else wire me very early, what to do. It is harassing to be as we are.
I have worried endlessly over you. Is that an insult? But I shan't get an easy breath till I see you. This time tomorrow, exactly, I shall be in London.
I hope you've got some money for yourself. I can muster only eleven pounds. A chap owes me twenty-five quid, but is in such a fix himself, I daren't bother him. At any rate, eleven pounds will take us to Metz, then I must rack my poor brains.
Oh Lord, I must say 'making history, ' as Garnett puts it, isn't the most comfortable thing on earth. If I know how things stood with you, I wouldn't care a damn. As it is, I eat my blessed heart out.
Till tomorrow, till tomorrow, till tomorrow (I nearly put à demain).
D. H. Lawrence P.S. I haven't told anything to anybody. Lord, but I wonder how you are.
DHL.
Metz Damn the rain! I suppose you won't go out while it continues heavily. I'll venture forth in a minute - 9.15 already. I don't know where you live exactly -so if I can't find you I shall put this in number 4. That's the nearest I can get; is it right?
If I don't meet you, I suppose I shan't see you today, since this is the festive day. I don't mind. At least, I do, but I understand it can't be helped.
I shall go into the country if it'll keep a bit fine - shall be home here about 2.30, I suppose. I can work as soon as I like.
Let us go away from Metz. Tell Else I'm not cross. How should I be? You are the soul of good intention - how can one be cross with you? But I wish I had the management of our affairs.
Don't love me for things I'm not - but also don't tell me I'm mean. I wondered what had become of you this morning. Were you being wise and good and saving my health? You needn't. I'm not keen on coming to your place to lunch tomorrow - but I am in your hands - 'into thine hand, 0 Lord, I commend, ' etc. I want you to do as you like, over little things such as my coming to your father's house. In oddments, your will is my will.
I love you - but I always have to bite my tongue before I can say it. It's only my Englishness.
Commend me to your sister. I lodge an appeal with her. I shall say to her - it's no good saying it to you - 'Ayez pitié de moi. '
No, I'm only teasing. It doesn't matter at all what happens - or what doesn't happen, that's more to the point - these few days. But if you put up your fingers, and count your days in Germany, and compare them with the days to follow in Nottingham, then you will see, you - (I don't mean it) - are selling sovereigns at a penny each. No, you are not doing it - but it's being done.
Don't be hurt, or I shall - let me see - go into a monastery - this hotel is precious much like one already.
This is the last day I let you off - so make the most of it and be jolly.
Tuesday -
Now I can't stand it any longer, I can 't. For two hours I haven't moved a muscle -just sat and thought. I have written a letter to E... You needn't, of course, send it. But you must say to him all I have said. No more dishonour, no more lies. Let them do their - silliest - but no more subterfuge, lying, dirt, fear. I feel as if it would strangle me. What is it all but procrastination? No, I can't bear it, because it's bad. I love you. Let us face anything, do anything, put up with anything. But this crawling under the mud I cannot bear.
I'm afraid I've got a jit of heroics. I've tried so hard to work - but I can't. This situation is round my chest like a cord. It mustn't continue. I will go right away, if you like. I will stop in Metz till you get E...'s answer to the truth. But no, I won't utter or act or willingly let you utter or act, another single lie in the business.
I'm not going to joke, I'm not going to laugh, I'm not going to make light of things for you. The situation tortures me too much. It's the situation, the situation I can't stand - no, and I won't. I love you too much.
Don't show this letter to either of your sisters - no. Let us be good. You are clean, but you dirty your feet. I'll sign myself as you call me - Mr Lawrence.
Don't be miserable - if I didn't love you I wouldn't mind when you lied.
But I love you, and Lord, I pay for it.
Hotel Rheinischer Hof, Trier 8 May 1912
I am here -I have dined - it seems rather nice. The hotel is little - the man is proprietor, waiter, bureau, and everything else, apparently - speaks English and French and German quite sweetly - has evidently been in swell restaurants abroad - has an instinct for doing things decently, with just a touch of swank - is cheap - his wife (they're a youngish couple) draws the beer-it's awfully nice. The bedroom is two marks fifty per day, including breakfast - per person. That's no more than my room at the Deutscher Hof, and this is much nicer. It's on the second floor-two beds - rather decent. Now, you ought to be here, you ought to be here. Remember, you are to be my wife - see that they don't send you any letters, or only tinder cover to me. But you aren't here yet. I shall love Trier - it isn't a ghastly medley like Metz - new town, old town, barracks, barracks, cathedral, Montigny. This is nice, old, with trees down the town. I wish you were here. The valley all along coming is full of apple trees in blossom, pink puffs like the smoke of an explosion, and then bristling vine sticks, so that the hills are angry hedgehogs.
I love you so much. No doubt there'll be another dish of tragedy in the morning, and we've only enough money to run us a fortnight, and we don't know where the next will come from, but still I'm happy, I am happy. But I wish you were here. But you'll come, and it isn't Metz.Curse Metz.
They are all men in this hotel - business men. They are the connoisseurs of comfort and moderate price. Be sure men will get the best for the money. I think it'll be nice for you. You don't mind a masculine atmosphere, I know.
I begin to feel quite a man of the world. I ought, I suppose, with this wickedness of waiting for another man's wife in my heart. Never mind, in heaven there is no marriage nor giving in marriage.
I must hurry to post - it's getting late. Come early on Saturday morning. Ask the Black Hussy at Deutscher Hof if there are any letters for me. I love you - and Else - I do more than thank her. Love.
D. H. Lawrence
Hotel Rheinischer Hof Trier - Thursday Another day nearly gone - it is just sunset. Trier is a nice town. This is a nice hotel. The man is a cocky little fellow, but good. He's lived in every country and swanks about his languages. He really speaks English nicely. He's about thirty-five, I should think. When I came in just now - it is sunset - he said, 'You are a bit tired?' It goes without saying I laughed. 'A little bit, ' he added quite gently. That amuses me. He would do what my men friends always want to do, look after me a bit in the trifling, physical matters.
I have written a newspaper article that nobody on earth will print, because it's too plain and straight. However, I don't care. And I've been a ripping walk -up a great steep hill nearly like a cliff, beyond the river. I will take you on Saturday - so nice: apple blossom everywhere, and the cuckoo, and brilliant beech trees. Beech leaves seem to rush out in spring, with éclat. You can have coffee at a nice place, and look at the town, like a handful of cinders and rubbish thrown beside the river down below. Then there are the birds always. And I went past a Madonna stuck with flowers, beyond the hilltop, among all the folds and jumble of hills: pretty as heaven. And I smoked a pensive cigarette, and philosophized about love and life and battle, and you and me. And I thought of a theme for my next novel. And I forgot the German for matches, so I had to beg a light from a young priest, in French, and he held me the red end of his cigar. There are not so many soldiers here. I should never hate Trier. There are more priests than soldiers. Of the sort I've seen - not a bit Jesuitical - I prefer them. The cathedral is crazy: a grotto, not a cathedral, inside - baroque, baroque. The town is always pleasant, and the people.
One more day, and you'll be here. Suddenly I see your chin. I love your chin. At this moment, I seem to love you, because you've got such a nice chin. Doesn't it seem ridiculous?
I must go down to supper. I am tired. It was a long walk. And then the strain of these days. I dreamed E... was frantically furiously wild with me-I won't tell you the details - and then he calmed down, and I had to comfort him. I am a devil at dreaming. It's because I get up so late. One always dreams after seven a.m.
The day is gone. I'll talk a bit to my waiter fellow, and post this. You will come on Saturday? By Jove, if you don't! We shall always have to battle with life, so we'll never fight with each other, always help.
Bis Samstag - ich liebe dich schwer.
D. H. Lawrence
Postcard with picture of Trier, Porta Nigra Here is your Porta Nigra, that you have missed three times. I think I am quite clever. It is a weird and circuitous journey to Waldbrol - seven hours. Now I am at Niederlahnstein - Rechtrheinisch - having just come over from Coblentz! I go on to Troisdorf - ever heard of such places! - then to Hennef - and at last Waldbrol - four changes - umsteigen - seven hours' journey. But isn't the Mosel valley pretty? The Rhein is most awfully German. It makes me laugh. It looks fearfully fit for the theatre. Address me care of Frau Karl Krenkow, Waldbrol Rheinprovinz. Anything new and nasty happened? This is my sentimental journey.
Love D. H. Lawrence
Postcard with picture of Trier, Basilica Now, I am in Hennef - my last changing place. It is 8.30 - and still an hour to wait. So I am sitting like a sad swain beside a nice, twittering little river, waiting for the twilight to drop, and my last train to come. I shan 't get to Waldbrol till after 11.00- nine hours on the way - and that is the quickest it can be done. But it's a nice place, Hennef, nearly like England. It's getting dark. Now for the first time during today, my detachment leaves me, and I know I only love you. The rest is nothing at all. And the promise of life with you is all richness. Now I know.
D. H. Lawrence
Adr. Frau Karl Krenkow Waldbrol - Rheinprovinz It's really very nice here - Hannah is very bright and so decent with me. Her husband is 'a very good man ' - uninteresting. She never loved him - married him because she was thirty and time going by. Already she's quite fond of me - but do not mind, she is perfectly honourable - the last word of respectability. Then there is 'Opar O'pa'- how do you spell it? - Stiilchen. He is seventy-three - a lovely old man - really a sweet disposition, and no fool. Now he is really lovable. It was Kermesse at one of the villages yesterday - Sunday - and we went to look. It was jolly. Onkel Stùlchen bought us a Herz - a great heart of cake, covered with sugar, and sugar grapes, and sugar roses, and a bird, a dove - and three pieces of poetry. It's rather quaint. Strange, how deep symbolism is in your soil. Herr Stulchen brought up Hannah, since she was five years old. Her father was killed - or died a while after the Franco-Prussian War. Now I am fond of him.
Here, I am so respectable, and so good - it is quite a rest. We are not dull. Hannah is really intelligent. We amuse ourselves a good deal with my German. In three months here I should know quite a lot.
It's a quiet, dead little village - miles from everywhere - rather pretty in a tame sort of way - a bit Englishy. Once they let me begin, I shall knock off quite a lot of work. There is that novel on my conscience.
I write in the morning, when one is wonderfully sane. Waldbrol is good for my health - it is cooler, more invigorating. Trier was like a perpetual Turkish bath. I like this air.
If you must go to England - must you? - go before I leave Waldbrol. Don't leave me stranded in some unearthly German town. How are you? I am not going to sound worried over you, because I am so a bit. You might write to me and tell me a few significant details. The tragedy will begin to slacken off from now, I think.
I wrote to you yesterday, but it wasn 't a nice letter, so I didn't send it. Things are better, surely, and growing better - oh yes!
Waldbrol - Mittwoch I have had all your three letters quite safely. We are coming on quickly now. Do tell me if you can what is E...'s final decision. He will get the divorce, I think, because of his thinking you ought to marry me. That is the result of my letter to him. I will crow my little crow, in opposition to you. And then after six months, we will be married - will you? Soon we will go to Munich. But give us a little time. Let us get solid before we set up together. Waldbrol restores me to my decent sanity. Is Metz still bad for you - no? It will be better for me to stay here - shall I say till the end of next week? We must decide what we are going to do, very definitely. If I am to come to Munich next week, what are we going to live on? Can we scramble enough together to last us till my payments come in? I am not going to tell my people anything till you have the divorce. If we can go decently over the first three or four months - financially - I think I shall be able to keep us going for the rest. Never mind about the infant. If it should come, we will be glad, and stir ourselves to provide for it - and if it should not come, ever - I shall be sorry. I do not believe, when people love each other, in interfering there. It is wicked, according to my feeling. I want you to have children tome - I don't care how soon. I never thought I should have that definite desire. But you see, we must have a more or less stable foundation if we are going to run the risk of the responsibility of children - not the risk of children, but the risk of the responsibility.
I think after a little while, I shall write to E... again. Perhaps he would correspond better with me.
Can't you feel how certainly I love you and how certainly we shall be married? Only let us wait just a short time, to get strong again. Two shaken, rather sick people together would be a bad start. A little waiting, let us have, because I love you. Or does the waiting make you worse? - no, not when it is only a time ofpreparation. Do you know, like the old knightf, I seem to want a certain time to prepare myself - a sort of vigil with myself Because it is a great thing for me to marry you, not a quick, passionate coming together. I know in my heart 'here's my marriage.' It feels rather terrible - because it is a great thing in my life - it is my life - I am a bit awe-inspired - I want to get used to it. If you think it is fear and indecision, you wrong me. It is you who would hurry, who are undecided. It's the very strength and inevitability of the oncoming thing that makes me wait, to get in harmony with it. Dear God, I am marrying you, now, don't you see. It's a far greater thing than ever I knew. Give me till next week-end, at least. If you love me, you will understand.
If I seem merely frightened and reluctant to you -you must forgive me.
I try, I always try, when I write to you, to write the truth as near the mark as I can get it. It frets me, for fear you are disappointed in me, and for fear you are too much hurt. But you are strong when necessary.
You have got all myself - I don't even flirt - it would bore me very much - unless I got tipsy. It's a funny thing, to feel one's passion - sex desire - no longer a sort of wandering thing, but steady, and calm. I think, when one loves, one's very sex passion becomes calm, a steady sort offorce, instead of a storm. Passion, that nearly drives one mad, is far away from real love. I am realizing things that I never thought to realize. Look at that poem I sent you - I would never write that to you. I shall love you all my life. That also is a new idea to me. But I believe it.
Auf Wiedersehen
D. H. Lawrence
Alr. Herrn Karl Krenkow Waldbrôl - Rheinprovinz 14 May 1912
Yes, I got your letter later in the day - and your letter and E..,'s and yours to Gamett, this morning. In E...'s, as in mine to E..., see the men combining in their freemasonry against you. It is very strange.
I will send your letter to Garnett. I enclose one of his to me. It will make you laugh.
With correcting proofs, and reading E..,'s letter, I feel rather detached. Things are coming straight. When you got in London, and had to face that judge, it would make you ill. We are not callous enough to stand against the public, the whole mass of the world's disapprobation, in a sort of criminal dock. It destroys us, though we deny it. We are all off the balance. We are like spring scales that have been knocked about. We had better be still awhile, let ourselves come to rest.
Things are working out to their final state now. I did not do wrong in writing to E... Do not write to my sister yet. When all is a fait accompli' then we will tell her, because then it will be useless for her to do other than to accept.
I am very well, but, like you, I feel shaky. Shall we not leave our meeting till we are better? Here, in a little while, I shall be solid again. And if you must go to England, will you go to Munich first - so far? No, I don't want to be left alone in Munich. Let us have firm ground where we next go. Quakiness and uncertainty are the death of us. See, tell me exactly what you are going to do. Is the divorce coming off? Are you going to England at all? Are we going finally to pitch our camp in Munich? Are we going to have enough money to get along with? Have you settled anything definite with '...?- One must be detached, impersonal, cold, and logical, when one is arranging affairs. We do not want another fleet of horrors attacking us when we are on a rather flimsy raft - lodging in a borrowed flat on borrowed money.
Look, my dear, now that the suspense is going over, we can wait even a bit religiously for one another. My next coming to you is solemn, intrinsically - I am solemn over it - not sad, oh no - but it is my marriage, after all, and a great thing - not a thing to be snatched and clumsily handled. I will not come to you unless it is safely, and firmly. When I have come, things shall not put us apart again. So we must wait and watch for the hour. Henceforth, dignity in our movements and our arrangements - no shufflings and underhandedness. And we must settle the money business. I will write to the publishers, if necessary, for a sub. I have got about £30 due in August - £24 due - and £25 more I am owed. Can we wait, or not, for that?
Now I shall do as I like, because you are not certain. Even if I stay in Waldbrol a month, I won't come till our affair is welded firm. I " can wait a month - a year almost - for a sure thing. But an unsure thing is a horror to me.
I love you - and I am in earnest about it - and we are going to make a great - or, at least, a good life together. I'm not going to risk fret and harassment, which would spoil our intimacy, because of hasty forcing of affairs.
Don't think I love you less, in being like this. You will think so, but it isn't true. The best man in me loves you. And I dread anything dragging our love down.
Be definite, my dear, be detailed, be business-like. In our marriage, let us be business-like. The love is there - then let the common-sense match it.
Auf Wiedersehen D. H. Lawrence
This poetry will come in next month's English. I'm afraid you won't like it.
DHL.
And I love you, and I am sorry it is so hard. But it is only a little while - then we will have a dead cert.
Waldbrol - Thursday
I have worked quite hard at my novel today. This morning we went to see the Ascension Day procession, and it rained like hell on the poor devils. Yesterday, when we were driving home, luckily in a closed carriage, the hail came on in immense stones, as big as walnuts, the largest. The place seemed covered with lumps of sugar.
You are far more ill than I am, now. Can 'tyou begin to get well? It makes me miserable to think of you so badly off the hooks. No, I am well here. I am always well. But last week made me feel queer - in my soul mostly - and I want to get that well before I start the new enterprise of living with you. Does it seem strange to you? Give me till tomorrow or Saturday week, will you? I think it is better for us both. Till the twenty-fourth or twenty-fifth, give me. Does it seem unloving and unnatural to you? No? See, when the airman fell, I was only a weak spot in your soul. Round the thought of me-all your fear. Don't let it be so. Believe in me enough.
Perhaps it is a bit of the monk in me. No, it is not. It is simply a desire to start with you, having a strong, healthy soul. The letters seem a long time getting from me to you. Tell me you understand, and you think it is-at least perhaps, best. A good deal depends on the start. You never got over your bad beginning with E...
If you want H..., or anybody, have him. But I don't want anybody, till I see you. But all natures aren't alike. But I don't believe even you are your best, when you are using H... as a dose of morphia - he's not much else to you. But sometimes one needs a dose of morphia, I've had many a one. So you know best. Only, my dear, because I love you, don't be sick, do will to be well and sane.
This is also a long wait. I also am a carcass without you. But having a rather sick soul, I'll let it get up and be stronger before I ask it to run and live with you again.
Because, I'm not coming to you now for rest, but to start living. It's a marriage, not a meeting. What an inevitable thing it seems.
Only inevitable things - things that feel inevitable - are right. I am still a trifle afraid, but I know we are right. One is afraid to be born, I'm sure.
I have written and written and written. I shall be glad to know you understand. I wonder if you'll be ill. Don't, if you can help it. But if you need me - Frieda!
Vale!
D.H. LAWRENCE
Waldbrol - Friday That was the letter I expected - and I hated it. Never mind. I suppose I deserve it all. I shall register it up, the number of times I leave you in the lurch: that is a historical phrase also. This is the first time. 'Rats' is a bit hard, as a collective name for all your men - and you 're the ship. Poor H..., poor devil! Vous le croquez bien entre les dents. I don't wonder E... hates your letters - they would drive any man on earth mad. I have not the faintest intention of dying: I hope you haven't any longer. I am not a tyrant. If I am, you will always have your own way. So my domain of tyranny isn't wide. - I am trying to think of some other mildly sarcastic things to say. Oh - the voice of Hannah, my dear, is the voice of a woman who laughs at her newly married husband when he's a bit tipsy and a big fool. You fling H... in my teeth. I shall say Hannah is getting fonder andfonder of me. She gives me the best in the house. So there!
I think I've exhausted my shell and shrapnel. You are getting better, thank the Lord. I am quite better. We have both, I think, marvellous recuperative powers.
You really seriously and honestly think I could come to Munich next Saturday, and stay two months, till August? You think we could manage it all right, as far as the business side goes? I begin to feel like rising once more on the wing. Ich komm - je viens - I come - advenio.
We are going to be married, respectable people, later on. If you were my property, I should have to look after you, which God forbid.
I like the way you stick to your guns. It's rather splendid. We won't fight, because you'd win, from sheer lack of sense of danger.
I think you're rather horrid to H... You make him more babified-baby-fied. Or shall you leave him more manly?
You make me think of Maupassant's story. An Italian workman, a young man, was crossing in the train to France, and had no money, and had eaten nothing for a long time. There came a woman with breasts full of milk - she was going into France as a wet nurse. Her breasts full of milk hurt her - the young man was in a bad way with hunger. They relieved each other and went their several ways. Only where is H...to get his next feed? - Am I horrid?
Write to me quick from Munich, and I will tell them here. I can return here in August.
' Be well, and happy, I charge you (tyranny)
I found these letters by accident in my mother's writing desk after Lawrence's death. At the time he wrote them, I was in such a bewildered state of mind, the depth of their feeling did not touch me, all I wanted was to be with him and have peace. I have not found my letters to him.