With or Without Halo ?
Reminiscences of D. H. Lawrence. By John Middleton Murry. (Cape. 7a. ed.) Reminiscences of D. H. Lawrence. By John Middleton Murry. (Cape. 7a. ed.) Ma. Wanes latest contribution to the knackers' knockabout is a retort to Mrs. Carswell's The Savage Pilgrimage, which was itself a reply to Mr. Murry's Son of Woman. It consists of
four parts, each quite separate and distinct. The first concerns " Lawrence and Murry " and provides us with yet another exposition of that curiously enigmatic relationship ;
the second is a reprint of the reminiscences which appeared in the Adelphi between June 1930 and March 1931 ; the third is an examination of The Savage Pilgrimage in the form of notes to the reminiscences ; and the fourth is a reprint of the critical notices of Lawrence written and published by
Mr. Murry during Lawrence's lifetime. Put like that, the
book sounds simple and interesting enough. But for the benefit of those who do not happen to have followed this
particular exhibition from the beginning, it may be as well to explain, at the risk of being redundant, exactly how the present controversy arose.
In June 1930, then, Mr. Murry started a series of " Reminiscences of D. H. Lawrence," which appeared in The Adelphi. Later these formed the basis of a full-length, psychological interpretation, which was published under the title Son of Woman. In this work Lawrence was represented
as a mother-complexed abnormal, unable to give complete affection to any other woman, and spending his life in a vain attempt to resist the humiliations of dependence by establishing his manhood at any price. That price Mr. Murry, believed to be little less than complete and deliberate spiritual disintegration : a process magnificently portrayed by Lawrence himself in the long series of his novels. The book was a brilliant psychological study, an ingehious fantasy or a nauseating act of treachery, according to how far you disliked Lawrence and admired Mr. Murry, or how far you admired Lawrence and found it difficult to contemplate Mr. Murry without odium. Mrs. Carswell was all for the Great Betrayal,
with Mr. Murry starring as Judas. In The Savage Pilgrimage
she piously attempted to replace his portrait of Lawrence by a more suitable effigy of her own creation, and lost no opportunity of having a smack at Mr. Murry whenever the
evidence gave her a chance, and periodically when it didn't. Mr. Murry took umbrage at her remarks, ran to the skirts of
the law, and had the book withdrawn under threat of a prose- cution for libel. Yet Mr. Murry had the remedy in his own hands, a remedy which he has now employed with a zest
peculiar in one who professes resentment at having to take " even this action." His resentment, however, does not prevent him knocking Mrs. Carswell out of the ring in almost every round.
There is little more to be said. Mr. Murry's book is Interesting in so far as it supplies a few further details for his pathological analysis of Lawrence, but the interest is limited by the curious unreality of the figure which emerges from that examination. Apart from this the book is a sorry enough production, a depressing example of the depths to which literary controversy can sink when personal animosities are so extensively involved. Mr. Murry, admittedly, writes always with an air of injured innocence, assuring us that these revelations hurt him more than they hurt us: Perhaps they do. And when, later, he complains bitterly that " the existence of Mrs. Carswell makes reticence impossible," we may agree, though we have to confess that we had not previously numbered reticence among Mr. Murry's many conspicuous qualities. But that is by the way. What is more interesting, and possibly more significant, is the almost equal improbability of these two totally disparate estimates of the same man. For in the end Mrs. Carswell's picture of
Lawrence, however nobly conceived in " heart-loyalty " to its subject, carries no more conviction than Mr. Mary's. The one is as clearly betrayed by its blind acceptance as the other by its unctuous pretentiousness and spoof psychology. In common their authors have only a portentous lack of humour a weakness for a romantic notion of " destiny", and a sublime assurance in arrogating to themselves a "special kind of love for Lawrence." Their books, one cannot help reflecting provide an interesting comment on the nature of that affection.
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