Poetry or prose?

Friday, December 1st., Cadogan Square, London.

I had a long talk yesterday afternoon with the mother of a girl graduate at Cambridge and of a boy high up in a public school. In such conversations one does get at a few facts. Both girl and boy have somewhat unusual intelligence, but they are young people with the usual instincts of youth, in no way abnormal, precious or priggish.

It appears that in these circles, male youth prefers the reading of plays to the reading of novels. I have heard the same news from publishers. I cannot imagine why the intelligently curious should prefer plays to novels, seeing that novels on the average are immensely superior in quality to plays. Still there you are. Facts are facts. And male youth does read fiction too. And in fiction it puts D.H. Lawrence first and the rest nowhere. It does not seem to read a lot of verse. In fact it seems to me that not much verse is read. Why has it declined so in popularity?

I well know that I do not read enough verse, especially classical English verse. I wish I read more but I seldom seem to be able to find the time. This is only an excuse, I admit. In fact I don't read much verse because at heart I prefer to read prose. When I do read classical poetry I do so for an ulterior purpose - because I find that if I am writing a novel or a story, the finest English verse has the capacity to lift me up out of the rut of composition, and set me, and my work, on a higher plane. In other words it inspires. This may not be the very best compliment to our poets, but it is a pretty good compliment all the same.

Revisiting Bestwood

June 21st.

I have just finished re-reading "Sons and Lovers" which I came back to with some trepidation anticipating, from memory, a bleak experience. It is an intense, unyielding read. There is no humour in it whatsoever which is, to my mind, a significant failing. Perhaps Lawrence didn't have a sense of humour? Certainly none of the charactrers in this novel have, and maybe that is true of the rest though I have to admit that this is the only one of his novels that I have read in its entirety.

He can write though! Some of the scenes are exceptionally well imagined. I am thinking for example of the death of Mrs. Morel, and Paul's early contacts with Clara. I particularly like the dialogues when he deploys the local dialect with its archaic expressions. But it is all so intense that it gives me a headache and I find myself skipping paragraphs because I can't bear to read of yet another episode of soul-searching.

Overall I think that the father, Walter Morel, comes across as the most 'real', human figure in the book, and I felt sorry for him throughout the novel. Of course he is very flawed, not much of a husband or father, but he feels to me to be authentic, a man of his time and place. He is excluded from his family it seems to me for no other reason than being himself. Whilst psychological suffering is at the core of all Lawrence's characters, Morel suffers more than most because he has no insight into why he is being made to suffer.

As for Paul, I imagine that his portrayal is largely autobiographical with a certain amount of wish-fulfillment for good measure. He is not a likeable character and, to my way of thinking, not really credible in the context within which he is placed. Some of this aversion may be due to the relationship described with his mother which makes me uncomfortable, and I recall now that I found myself backing away from it on my first reading many years ago. Maybe I am just being oversensitive, or failing to grasp the context properly? I don't think that Lawrence's female characters are at all convincing - he seems to have a rather idealised view of women and makes that the basis for his characters, or at least the main ones; the minor female characters are much better.

Overall it is obvious why this has become a literary classic. It is a feat of sustained, powerful writing, and an important social-historic document. But for myself, I think this will be my last visit to Bestwood.

Additionally see "A cry for help" at
http://earnoldbennett.blogspot.co.uk/2014/02/a-cry-for-help.html

In praise of Lawrence

Thursday, April 10th., Cadogan Square, London.

I recently received a posthumous collection of D. H. Lawrence's journalistic works, and decided before I opened it that I would not like it. Which just shows how wrong one can be. For I like it very much. 

Lawrence was a novelist, a dramatist, a poet, a critic, a descriptive writer, and often first-rate in every branch. And he was a first class journalist too. He chose his subjects well. He handled them well - clearly, succinctly, picturesquely, beautifully. He didn't flourish his pen before beginning, and when he had finished he knew he had finished, and stopped. Not a word wasted. The subjects chosen were important, elemental, fundamental, and he struck at once deep down into the core of them. 

His remarks on sex are in the nature of an apologia. He is supposed to have been obsessed by sex. The fact is that at his best he was no more obsessed by sex than any normal human being. But he wrote more frankly and more cleanly about it than most. He tried to fish up sex from the mud into which it has been sunk for several hypocritical and timid English generations past. He had a philosophy of sex which is more or less illustrated in all his novels. But he also had a philosophy of friendship, quite as profound and revealing as his philosophy of sex. 

I am a tremendous admirer of Lawrence. In my opinion Lawrence lacked one quality - the power to discipline and control his faculties. Especially in his earlier books he let those superlative faculties - for instance his descriptive faculty - get the bit between their teeth and gallop around with a thunder of hoofs and a lightning of glances very exciting to hear and see; but extravagant. Lawrence seemed to me sometimes to suffer from a delusion similar to the delusion of a sick man who thinks that if a given quantity of medicine will do him good, twice the quantity will do him twice as good. 

Still I would say that no finer work has been done in our time than Lawrence's finest. He is not yet understood, even by the majority of his admirers. But he will be; and meanwhile his works must accept injustice. In the future no first editions of present day writers will be more passionately and expensively sought for than Lawrence's, except perhaps Joyce's. I regard this as certain.

A few years ago I was forwarded a letter from Lawrence by Pinker who was his agent as well as mine. It read as follows:

My dear Pinker,
I am sorry to tell you that I am coming to the last end of all my resources, as far as money goes. Do you think that Arnold Bennett or somebody like that, who is quite rich out of literature, would give me something to get along with? It is no use my trying to delude myself that I can make money in this world that is. But there is coming a big smash-up, after which my day will begin. And as the smash-up is not far off, so I am not very far from a walk-in ...
Do try and tempt a little money out of some rich, good-natured author for me will you - or I don't know what I shall do. And really, you know, one can't begin taking one's hat off to money, at this late hour of the day. I'd rather play a tin whistle in the street. What a lively world! ...
D. H. Lawrence

I offered to let him have £3 a week if Wells and Galsworthy did the same. Pinker informed Lawrence, and returned with the report that he regarded the offer as an insult. So, I confined my assistance to the preaching of Lawrence's dazzling merits.

Additionally for April 10th., see 'Living with a martyr'

What would she say if I put on a martyr act as she does? A change is absolutely essential because my life is being poisoned and all her charm and all her talent will not be enough to prevent a catastrophe. She scolds, she criticises, she whines, and I don't know if she realises what she is doing, but she will have to confront her behaviour this time!
If, as always, she finds that she is completely in the right and I am completely in the wrong, she will force me to leave her.
I am not just a machine for making money, and she would be well advised to treat me with a little consideration as I am becoming dangerous.

A cry for help.

Thursday, February 7th., Comarques, Thorpe-le-Soken.

I seemed to do nothing this morning except call on Marguerite and write letters, and just reflect for a few minutes on the first article of my second series for the Cosmopolitan. Lunch at the Reform with Ross and Chalmers Mitchell. Mitchell, aged 53, with his grey hairs, stuck to it that he had found a sound definition of poetry. I forget what it was. I told him he ought to know better at his age than to imagine that poetry could be defined. 

Sir Peter Chalmers Mitchell CBE FRS DSc LLD (1864 – 1945), zoologist, was Secretary of the Zoological Society of London from 1903 to 1935. During this time he directed the policy of the London Zoo, and created the world's first open zoological park known as Whipsnade Wild Animal Park.

Hedley Le Bas told me that my amateur article outlining a policy for the Liberal Party had made a deep impression on Gulland, the Chief Whip, who said it was the best article on the subject he had seen for years and he 'should show it to Asquith'. Majestic and impressive phrase, 'Show it to Asquith'.

I think that the war is now drawing to a close & I should be rather surprised if it didn't end this year. When you see the newspapers more occupied with social & political news of the war than with military news of the war, you may bet a great change has come over the scene. The food situation here is grave. In Germany & Austria it is appalling. The United States now have 400,000 men in France & the number is increasing all the time. Up to the present however, the U.S.A. have not displayed much talent for turning men into a coherent fighting machine. They are not conceited and they admit this.

Interesting letter from Pinker about Lawrence. He is Lawrence's agent. 
He sent me a letter he had just received from Lawrence, to whit:

My dear Pinker,
I am sorry to tell you that I am coming to the last end of all my resources, as far as money goes. Do you think that Arnold Bennett or somebody like that, who is quite rich out of literature, would give me something to get along with? It is no use my trying to delude myself that I can make money in this world that is. But there is coming a big smash-up, after which my day will begin. And as the smash-up is not far off, so I am not very far from a walk-in ...
Do try and tempt a little money out of some rich, good-natured author for me will you - or I don't know what I shall do. And really, you know, one can't begin taking one's hat off to money, at this late hour of the day. I'd rather play a tin whistle in the street. What a lively world! ...
D. H. Lawrence

What a characteristic letter and how unpromising for the future. I admire Lawrence as an artist and have tried to promote his work. In 1915 May Sinclair and I were the only two writers who publicly protested against the banning of "The Rainbow". And even this year Galsworthy and I considered supporting a private edition of "Women in Love", which had not found a publisher. I am not prepared to keep Lawrence, nor to give him a lump sum, as I doubt if the latter would help him very much. I would willingly subscribe something towards a regular fund for Lawrence, say £1 a week for at least a year, if Pinker thought this would help, and if he could get other subscribers.

David Herbert Lawrence (1885 – 1930) was an English novelist, poet, playwright, essayist, literary critic and painter who published as D. H. Lawrence. His collected works represent an extended reflection upon the dehumanising effects of modernity and industrialisation. In them, Lawrence confronts issues relating to emotional health and vitality, spontaneity, and instinct. Lawrence's opinions earned him many enemies and he endured official persecution, censorship, and misrepresentation of his creative work throughout the second half of his life, much of which he spent in a voluntary exile which he called his "savage pilgrimage." At the time of his death, his public reputation was that of a pornographer who had wasted his considerable talents. E. M. Forster, in an obituary notice, challenged this widely held view, describing him as, "The greatest imaginative novelist of our generation." Lawrence is now valued by many as a visionary thinker and significant representative of modernism in English literature.

Additionally for February 7th., see 'Marauding Germans' -

On Saturday night great excitement about two men who, challenged by sentry of the ammunition park near the station at 7.15 p.m., had run away.

A little licentiousness

Thursday, February 10th., Cadogan Square, London.

I have now read positively as much as I shall read of Fleuret's "Histoire de la Bienheureuse Fille Raton".

Fernand Fleuret (1883-1945) grew up in Normandy, with his grandfather. He studied at various schools. Undisciplined student, he was sent to the Jesuits. Based in Paris, where he earned his living as a journalist, and begian his career as a writer by producing a stylish and fanciful poetry that appealed to the literary and artistic circles of the time. Tiring of his socialite life style, he settled in southern France and married the feminist Gabrielle Réval, 15 years his senior. Later, eager to resume his bohemian life, he returned to the capital, but nevertheless kept a deep affection for Gabrielle Reval who supported him until the end. Pascal Pia said of him: "No trade has been more enjoyable or more productive than the company of Fleuret and his work . I should have said it earlier and I should have shown how, by an extraordinary encounter, erudition, humour and poetry made of Fleuret a character not so common to find, and as, perhaps, there had been none since Nerval."

It contains a good idea - that of professional fornication for the love of god - and some excellent scenes. But it is not quite good enough, and much of its attraction depends on its extreme licentiousness. Indeed, you can see the author passing on from scene to scene, each exceeding the previous one in licentiousness, exactly in the manner of a mere bawdy book. I did not read by any means all the middle part of it. Still it is a book to examine.




I saw by chance in the Nation a wonderful description of a thunder and hailstorm at a popular resort on a mountain top, by D. H. Lawrence. He can do it sometimes. In fact he can damned well do it sometimes!