ON AUGUST 11, 1922,
D.H. Lawrence and his wife Frieda left Sydney aboard RMS Tahiti
en route to America, New Mexico and Taos. Their first port-of-call
was Wellington, New Zealand
'four days over a cold dark,
inhospitable sea'1. Lawrence, after he arrived in Taos, composed
a cursorily-fictionalised account of this brief stop-over. He
appended it at the end of the first typescript (TS1) of Kangaroo
(later discarded, but now referred to as the TS1R ending):
At Wellington a
great fuss filling in papers for the Immigration Authorities,
even though the boat was staying only a day. And another insult
from a fat individual who came aboard as chief official. He
looked at Harriett's form, saw she was not born in England -
or the Empire - and did not give her a landing card. "Why
haven't you given me a landing card?" she said
.Richard
was livid with rage at the fellow's insolence. They waited until
the whole gang was through, and he was prepared to have it out
with the person. But, having kept them hanging about for an
hour, the person was satisfied with himself. He handed Harriett
her landing card, saying suavely: "You are going on by
this boat, Mrs. Somers?" "I am. I've no desire to
stay in New Zealand." After a day in Wellington, cold and
stormy, they had less desire than ever to stay in this cold,
snobbish, lower middle-class colony of pretentious nobodies
[
] 2
This incident offered
Lawrence little reason to like New Zealanders. However, there
was one New Zealander he had a high regard for: Katherine Mansfield,
to whom he sent a postcard from Wellington.
He had not seen Katherine for four years, and did not know her
current whereabouts, so the postcard went via Lady Ottoline Morrell.
Convalescing with tuberculosis in Italy, Katherine reported to
her husband Middleton Murry: 'I had a card from Lawrence today
- just the one word (Ricordi) - how like him. I was glad to get
it though.' 3 The 'memories' Lawrence was looking back to was
the friendship the four of them - Katherine, Lawrence, Murry,
and Frieda - had shared for five eventful years between 1913 and
1918. While on the boat from Perth to Sydney - just over a week
into his antipodean
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adventure - he had
written to their mutual friend, the Russian exile Koteliansky:
'If you were here you would understand Katherine so much better.
She is very Australian - or New Zealand. I wonder how she is.'
4
Before examining the
significance and fruits of Mansfield's and Lawrence's relationship,
it is useful to recall the course of their interaction, for it
was out of this that the literary produce came.5 They met at a
critical moment in their all-too-truncated lives. Although both
had shown promise as writers, as individuals they were outsiders
in the post-Victorian London literary and social scene. Lawrence
had risen out of the coal-dusted mining tenements of Nottinghamshire;
she had, quixotically, fled distant, provincial New Zealand to
try to establish herself as a writer in London. They shared a
number of things, as Katherine later acknowledged: 'I am more
like Lawrence than anybody. We are unthinkably alike, in fact.'
6
The year 1912 was a turning point for both of them. Katherine
and Murry became lovers that year; at the same time 7 Lawrence
had run off with Frieda Weekley (nee von Richthofen), the wife
of his French teacher. A year later, living with Frieda and revising
proofs of Sons and Lovers in Italy, Lawrence received a
letter from Katherine, whom at that time he did not know. She
was working with Murry on a literary journal, Rhythm, and
looking for contributions from promising young writers 8. Lawrence
offered to contribute a short story, without payment. This led
to Lawrence calling in to the office of what had been renamed
The Blue Review on his return to England a few months later.
An immediate friendship was struck up between 'the Lawrences'
and 'the Murrys'. As well as their common literary interests,
there were social bonds, for both couples were 'living in sin',
and thus potential social outcasts, too.
That summer of 1913 the two couples saw a lot of each other, before
they all returned to France and Italy later that year. The following
summer, however, the foursome was back in London, and renewing
their friendship. Katherine and Murry attended, and witnessed,
Lawrence and Frieda's Kensington
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