Abstract
This volume offers a wholly new account of D. H. Lawrence’s manuscripts after his death. Collecting more than 300 letters and documents, all of them previously unpublished, the book traces the fate of D. H. Lawrence’s manuscripts from their arrival at Jake Zeitlin’s bookshop in 1937 to the sale of the three versions of Lady Chatterley’s Lover to the University of Texas in 1964. Because all the manuscripts were so nearly purchased together in 1937, only then to be sold individually to collectors or given away as gifts, the letters have the tension of a dramatic performance. As they unfold, they capture the vagaries of Lawrence’s reputation in the decades after his death, freshly reveal how the manuscripts provided his wife Frieda with financial support, exhibit the art of negotiation, and, by articulating the varied responses that the manuscripts evoked, provide a valuable coda to Lawrence’s life. This Introduction aims to put the letters in a historical context and to characterize the persons who figure most importantly in the volume; it draws largely on personal interviews with those most fully acquainted with Lawrence’s manuscripts — Jake Zeitlin, Lawrence Clark Powell, Warren Roberts, and Amalia de Schulthess.
Keywords
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Notes
- 1.Quoted in Sean Hignett, Brett, From Bloomsbury to New Mexico: A Biography (New York: Franklin Watts, 1985) p. 204.Google Scholar
- 2.The Collected Letters of D. H. Lawrence, ed. Harry T. Moore (New York: Viking, 1962) p. 1191.Google Scholar
- 3.Frieda Lawrence and Her Circle: Letters from, to and about Frieda Lawrence, ed. Harry T. Moore and Dale B. Montague (London: Macmillan, 1981) p. 7. The two quotations that follow are from pp. 9 and 10.Google Scholar
- 4.Frieda Lawrence: The Story of Frieda von Richthofen and D. H. Lawrence (New York: Viking, 1973) p. 263.Google Scholar
- 5.The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, vol. rv, ed. Warren Roberts, James T. Boulton, and Elizabeth Mansfield (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987) p. 277.Google Scholar
- 6.Unpub. letter (MS HRC), Frieda Lawrence to Angelo Ravagli, 3 December 1938.Google Scholar
- 7.Emmy (“Galka”) Scheyer (1889–1945) had emigrated from Germany in 1924.Google Scholar
- 8.Jake Zeitlin, “Introductory Note”, The Manuscripts of D. H. Lawrence: A Descriptive Catalogue, compiled by Lawrence Clark Powell with a foreword by Aldous Huxley (Los Angeles: Public Library, 1937) p. v. See Appendix B, hereafter referred to as the Powell catalogue.Google Scholar
- 9.They were divorced in 1930. Jake married his second wife, Jean (“Gina”) Weyl, in 1931.Google Scholar
- 10.The first volume of Powell’s autobiography recounts this period of his life. See his Fortune and Friendship (New York: Bowker, 1968).Google Scholar
- 11.Among Jake’s papers is a note that reads “750 – 75 cents / 750 copies $350. / 25% cost JZ. / 50% cost Mrs. Dakin.” Presumably Belt provided the difference. A close friend of Jake’s, Susanna Bryant Dakin (1905–66) lived in Pasadena; she was a wealthy patron of literature who died in a plane crash in Mexico.Google Scholar
- 12.The Letters of Aldous Huxley, ed. Grover Smith (London: Chatto & Windus, 1969) pp. 421–2.Google Scholar
- 13.Letter to Roy Fenton, in ibid., p. 425.Google Scholar
- 14.Azul had been Frieda’s horse since 1924, when she and Lawrence first moved to the Kiowa Ranch.Google Scholar
- 15.Confirmation can be found in Letter 71 (1 April 1937), in which Angelo wrote to Jake: “The girls was very beautiful, but insignificant for me beacause I found them very could –”.Google Scholar
- 16.For example, Frieda asked Jake to send her the manuscript of “New Mexico”: “I want to give it to Christine Hughes” (Letter 163). Frieda wrote to Witter Bynner, “Did I tell you I left you one of Lorenzo’s Mss. in my will?” (undated letter in Frieda Lawrence: The Memoirs and Correspondence, ed. E. W. Tedlock Jr (New York: Knopf, 1964) p. 320). To Richard Aldington she wrote on 29 November 1949, “I want very much to give you a Lorenzo Mss!” (Frieda Lawrence and Her Circle, p. 96).Google Scholar
- 17.The manuscript was “A Little Moonshine with Lemon” (Catalogue, No. 75), according to Jake’s notation: “Gift by Frieda to young man (unknown)”. In a communication written 5 November 1987, Larry Powell recalls that Willard Hougland may also have been the recipient of Frieda’s generosity: “Hougland appeared in my office at UCLA in the 1950s and gave us one or more of the mss – one being Powell #1B.”Google Scholar
- 18.Her book about their marriage is titled The Art of Love & the Love of Art (Blue Earth, MN: Piper, 1975).Google Scholar
- 19.Frieda Lawrence and Her Circle, p. 113.Google Scholar
- 20.See “D. H. Lawrence at Texas: a Memoir”, University of Texas Library Chronicle, n.s., no. 34 (1986) pp. 23–37. Hereafter cited as “Memoir” in the text.Google Scholar
- 21.Frieda Lawrence: The Memoirs and Correspondence, p. 383.Google Scholar
- 22.Only two Lawrence manuscripts were in the second collection: a black notebook of 161 pages (Catalogue, No. 118) and two manuscript versions of “Art and Morality” (No. 116).Google Scholar
- 23.Knud Merrild, A Poet and Two Painters (1938), reissued as With D. H. Lawrence in New Mexico: A Memoir of D. H. Lawrence (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1964) pp.64, 83, 85.Google Scholar
- 24.Earlier the typescript of Apocalypse had been purchased by T. E. Hanley for $450.Google Scholar
- 25.Letter 254, dated 1 October 1954, confirms Hans de Schulthess’s intent to purchase.Google Scholar
- 26.Along with a rare copy of the novel (one of two) printed on blue paper by the Tipografia Giuntina in Florence.Google Scholar
- 27.The Humanities Research Center paid $50 000 for the three manuscripts of Lady Chatterley’s Lover (private communication, 16 August 1987). Letter 316 also indicates that $50000 was the anticipated selling price.Google Scholar
- 28.Frieda Lawrence: The Memoirs and Correspondence, p. 402.Google Scholar