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D.H. Lawrence |
David Herbert Richards Lawrence was born on September 11 1885, in a small house in Victoria Street, Eastwood, near Nottingham. The fourth child of a coal miner, Arthur Lawrence and Lydia (nee Beardsall). Within days of his birth Lawrence suffered from bronchitis, a condition that would plague him all of his life.
He was a good scholar, and won a scholarship to Nottingham High School. It caused the family considerable hardship to allow the boy to take up this scholarship but in September 1898, three days after his thirteenth birthday Lawrence went to the High School. He worked hard and made the best of this opportunity, but it was a strain on his health, and the family finances.
At fifteen, with High School and the 19th Century over, Lawrence began work at Haywoods, a surgical appliance manufacturer in Nottingham. He seems to have had difficulties in making friends here; finding the factory girls uncouth.Lawrence's health was not good and work at the factory did not help, so he joined the local British School as a pupil-teacher. He also began to write. This writing was done in secret, under the guise of 'lessons', at home.
In December 1904 Lawrence sat the examination for the King's Scholarship, which would guarantee him a day place at Nottingham University College, where he could obtain his Teacher's Certificate. He passed but was unable to take up the position until September 1906 due to financial hardship.
In his free time, from teaching, Lawrence wrote. In January 1911 his first novel, The White Peacock was published, but the elation he may have felt from this success was obliterated by the overshadowing death of his mother, from cancer, in the previous month.
In November of 1911 the poor health that had plagued Lawrence all year culminated in pneumonia, this stopped him from returning to teaching. With no career and no ties he was determined to try to live by his pen. He had by February 1912 had one novel published (The White Peacock), had another in progress, (The Trespasser), had published several pieces of poetry and some essays and short stories. The enormity, however, of the decision to support himself by writing cannot be over-estimated. Most writers of the day had at least some private income, Lawrence, son of a coal-miner had nothing.
In May 1913, Sons and Lovers was published in Great Britain. It did not sell spectacularly well, and Lawrence faced the possibility that he may have to return to teaching. He managed, however, to keep up a constant stream of short stories, articles, essays and poetry which enabled the him to live the very simple life with which he was satisfied.
In 1914 Lawrence married his long standing German lover (Frieda) after her divorce was granted . Their intention was to live in Italy but the outbreak of war prevented their departure. They were bitter years for both Lawrence and Frieda ; his latest book, The Rainbow, was banned and he had great difficulty in earning enough to live on - he was to never fully recover his spirits or gaiety again. He died 2 March 1930 and buried in the old Venice cemetery. His remains were exhumed in March 1935 and incinerated at Marseille on March 13 before transportation by the lover of Lawrence's widow. His mission was to take the ashes to Taos (New Mexico) in "a beautiful vase" specially ordered by Frieda for this purpose. The ashes brought to Taos by him were cast into the concrete slab of a "shrine" which he built at the KIOWA ranch at San Cristobal near Taos, New Mexico.
Lawrence's novels deal with female emancipation, the class struggle and sexual liberation in a raw plain speaking manner. At one time his books were considered shocking. His book, Lady Chatterley's Lover, marked a water-shed in the 1960s when it was used as a test case to decide where the line is to be drawn between what is literature and was is just an obscene publication. This marked the start of the permissive society, one I am sure Lawrence would have been comfortable in.
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