Most people like an ice cream and book on the beach, unlike D.H Lawrence…
Lawrence rants about holiday reading to the literary critic Stuart Sherman complaining, ‘They take even Dostoevsky to the seaside now, and eat a horn of ice-cream while they read him’. He sends his sister Emily King ‘a little money, for if you go away to the seaside’. Let’s just hope she doesn’t take any Russian literature with her…
Lawrence is ‘not very keen on seeing people’ and prefers ‘to be alone on the ranch’ riding about on his horse Aaron. He’s not keen on porcupines either and fantasises about killing one after he finds their quills in his horse’s nose.
Dorothy Brett turns out to be a master fisherwoman, reeling in seventeen trout in the River Hondo, but not one to over compliment, Lawrence notes ‘most of them were small’. He’s also dismissive of his Aunt Ada when he discovers she’s sprained her ankle, suggesting ‘it’s to draw attention to herself’.
Then it’s back to milking the cows and chopping wood and thoughts of ‘coming to Europe in the autumn: first to England, then Paris, then Baden Baden, then Italy.’
These video essays are based on the letters of D.H. Lawrence one hundred years ago and are published monthly as part of the D.H. Lawrence Memory Theatre project.
To see previous Locating Lawrence videos from 1922, click here, from 1923, click here, from 1924, click here, from 1925, click here.
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