"IF ONE COULD ONLY SWEEP CLEAR THIS ENGLAND, OF ALL ITS HOUSES AND PAVEMENTS SO THAT WE COULD ALL BEGIN AGAIN!"
LAWRENCE, D.H. Autograph letter signed. Littlehampton, July 31, 1915. One sheet, measuring 5 by 8 inches, writing in pencil on verso and recto; with original envelope. $5000.
Autograph letter signed by D.H. Lawrence to one of his early supporters, Viola Meynell, thanking her for use of her cottage on her family's estate.
The letter reads in full: "12 Bayford Rd—Littlehampton. 31 July 1915. My dear Prue, It is a grey day with many shadowy sailing ships in the Channel, and greenish-luminous water, and many noisy little waves. It is very healing, I think, to have all the land behind one, all this England with its weight of myriad amorphous houses, put back, and only the variegated pebbles, and the little waves, and the great far-off dividing line of sea and sky, with grey sailing ships like ghosts hovering motionless, suspended with thought. If one could only sweep clear this England, of all its houses and pavements, so that we could all begin again! We have had lunch on the beach, everybody gone away but just a youth in a cap, and a baby, and a young woman. I think they are very poor. The young father plays with the child, and mother sits very still, and they are nice and all child-like. They always keep their faces to the sea. And I think of what they represent, inland, and how nice they are, clean and isolated, on the edge of the water, a tiny separate group. England, the English people, make me so sad, I could leave them forever. They are all like prisoners born in prison, with a strange abstractness, submissiveness, and an isolation. It is as if all their lives were passed in a prison-yard, and they knew their condemnation.
"This is really a letter to thank you for the cottage once more. I am very glad you lent it to us. It has a special atmosphere, and I feel as if I had been born afresh there, got a new, pure, separate soul: as a monk in a monastery, or St. John in the Wilderness. Now we must go back into the world to fight. I don't want to, they are so many and they have so many roots. But we must set about cleaning the face of the earth a bit, or everything will perish. I hope we shall see you on Tuesday. You remember our flat in 1 Byron Villas, Vale of Health, Hampstead. We shall be there on Wednesday evening. Mind you come when you are up. If you are going to town on Wednesday evening, I shall be having Charman to catch the 5:21 at Pullborough. So you might come then. Will you let me know? Love from Frieda & me. D.H. Lawrence."
This grey mood of this letter—with its grey day, grey ships, hovering ghosts, isolation, submission and prisons—was written at a particularly trying point in Lawrence' life. He felt oppressed by the war in Europe and out of sorts with his literary friends, and his novel
The Rainbow, published in September, was about to be savagely attacked by critics and quickly suppressed by the police. "The damage done to Lawrence was incalculable. He now owed his publishers the advance on the book; he was publicly branded as 'obscene,' which meant that nobody would touch any of his work for years to come… But more damaging than any of these things was the psychological shock of being castigated… like a common pornographer" (Callow,
Son and Lover: the Young D.H. Lawrence).
The recipient of this letter, Viola Meynell, was an accomplished and successful writer, and early advocate of Lawrence's work, and and a member of a "large and literary Catholic family" with an estate in Sussex they dubbed "the Colony" that functioned as a sort of artists' refuge. "They Meynell colony was, all in all, a self-conscious and beautifully appointed private world built around a family and a religion… The main house, where the patriarch reigned, was… a beautiful old English farmhouse with steep red-tiled roof, timbered walls, and oak beams… A stone's throw from the main house, by the front gate, was the cottage allotted to Viola. The Lawrences were delighted when they walked into the long low building, with its monastic white walls, black beams, and brick fireplace… Viola would not hear of them paying rent; she even paid for the cleaning woman herself" (Maddox, D.H. Lawence: The Story of a Marriage, 198). The entire family felt betrayed when, later in 1915, Lawrence published the short story "England, My England," a thinly veiled and critical depiction of the family that included extensive private details from their lives, rearranged so as to present them in the worst light possible.
Letter in excellent condition, very readable, with one faint foldline. A wonderful item with exceptional literary content.