dqmcodebase = "/common/js/"; D H Lawrence Resources Introduction Frequently Asked Questions Holdings at Nottingham University Library George Lazarus ... Online exhibitions Chapter 5 Contents Works Cited Biography of DH Lawrence, by John Worthen Chapter 5: Exile: 1919-1922 So, darling, don't look at the nasty book any more: don't you then: there, there, don't cry, my pretty. No one really takes more trouble soothing and patting his critics on the back than I. But alas, all my critics are troubled with wind.(Mr Noon 142) He and Frieda spent the winter of 1920 and the first quarter of 1921 in a very similar way to the year before; securely at home, with Lawrence doing a great deal of writing: only interrupted by a flying visit to Sardinia in January 1921, partly with the idea of looking for a house there, and partly so that Lawrence could get a travel book out of it. The latter he succeeded in doing; a whole book was finished by the start of March, and - with illustrations by the artist Jan Juta (b. 1897) - came out as Sea and Sardinia in 1923. At this point, Lawrence decided to ask the agent Curtis Brown (1866-1945) to act for him in England: the effort of doing all his own work in the placing of his books had, with his new productivity (and the interest taken in his work), become too much for him: and much as he liked the idea of working as a kind of independent spirit, there were practical drawbacks. But committing himself to America - something he had been trying to do for six or seven years - was not as easy as it had looked: he had a strong sense that America would be barbaric and that he would hate it. Even Taos had a colony of artists - "Evil everywhere. But I want to go - to try" (Letters IV: 151). During the winter of 1921-22, he wavered between going to Taos, and following his friends the Brewsters to Ceylon, where Earl would be studying at a Buddhist temple. He finally resolved the dilemma by deciding to do both; to go first to Ceylon, and thence to America. For a long time Sicily had seemed like the last of Europe: "it all seems so far off, here in Sicily - like another world. The windows look east over the Ionian sea: somehow I don't care what happens behind me, in the north west" (Letters III: 486). | |
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