D.H. Lawrence
I am also working on D.H. Lawrence. I have been teaching Lawrence’s work for most of my academic career. I am currently writing a book about Lady Chatterley’s Lover.
‘If you could only tell them that living and spending isn’t the same thing! But it’s no good. If only they were educated to live instead of earn and spend’
(Lady Chatterley’s Lover)
© National Portrait Gallery, London. D.H. Lawrence
possibly by Lady Ottoline Morrell, vintage snapshot print, 1928
3 1/8 in. x 2 1/8 in. (78 mm x 54 mm) image size
Photographs Collection NPG x140424
The upper world came almost with a flash, because of the glimmer of snow. Hurrying along the bank, giving up his lamp at the office, he smiled to feel the open about him again, all glimmering round him with snow. The hills on either hand were pale blue in the dusk, and the hedges looked savage and dark. The snow was trampled between the railway lines. But far ahead, beyond the black figures of miners moving home, it became smooth again, spreading right up to the dark wall of the coppice.
To the west there was a pinkness, and a big star hovered half revealed. Below, the lights of the pit came out crisp and yellow among the darkness of the buildings, and the lights of Old Aldecross twinkled in rows down the bluish twilight.
Durant walked glad with life among the miners, who were all talking animatedly because of the snow. He liked their company, he liked the white dusky world. It gave him a little thrill to stop at the garden gate and see the light of home down below, shining on the silent blue snow.
(‘Daughters of the Vicar’)
The rain had ceased. There was a wet, heavy, perfumed stillness. Evening was approaching.
He went out and down the little path in the opposite direction from the riding. Connie watched his thin, white figure, and it looked to her like a ghost, an apparition moving away from her.
When she could see it no more, her heart sank. She stood in the door of the hut, with a blanket round her, looking into the drenched, motionless silence.
But he was coming back, trotting strangely, and carrying flowers. She was a little afraid of him, as if he were not quite human. And when he came near, his eyes looked into hers, but she could not understand the meaning.
He had brought columbines and campions, and new-mown hay, and oak-tufts and honeysuckle in small bud.
(Lady Chatterley’s Lover)