Lawrence’s head in the clouds
D.H. Lawrence collapsed with Spanish flu at his sister Ada’s home in Ripley in 1919. He was bedbound several weeks, fortunate to survive that virulent pandemic.
Feeling “feeble”, “seedy” and “shaky”, he began recovering back at Mountain Cottage, Middleton-by-wirksworth. But an icy east wind postponed the spring.
He had “a vivid little dream”. Writer friend Katherine Mansfield met him in Cromford. She couldn’t climb the hill. They beheld the night sky. He wanted to point out Orion. But all was puzzlingly different, with “thick close brilliant new constellations”. Suddenly a planet appeared, so “beautiful. . .large, fearful, strong”, they “were both pierced by it, possessed. . .” This “was a star that blazed for a second on one’s soul.”
In another dream he attends a church service at Heanor, with Cynthia Asquith!
Easter approaches; our convalescent hopes to send Easter eggs to friends from Matlock. Ada visits with his “little nephew” 3-year-old Jack. “Jackie-boy” at the window suddenly cries with wonder to Auntie Frieda that “The sky’s moving”, causing Lawrence to contemplate then compose his “super-celestial” essay Clouds.
On this “last day of March”, Lawrence ventures forth. “Willow catkins are silver and tiny, hazel catkins a doubtful gold.” On some slopes “the blue-bells are up”, “the first primroses” glinting. As he reaches a “lovely high level”, to “lay down in the sun”, a hawk “softly” departs.
He sky-gazes. “Swift and lightfooted go the fleecy clouds”, while “massive white clouds radiant with distance, seem suspended in their own marvellous atmosphere.” Some being “immense, like magnificent, many-budded sky-flowers.” Two resemble “great white lions of the snow-fields”, “their snowheads lowered and watching, snow-manes curled.”
He ponders on these blossomings “from the unfathomable blue”, believing the “great distances” and “deeps of the sky” give birth to the clouds, being “tired of clouds like conjurers balls flying up and down from the palm of the sea.”
100 years ago, 26th March 1921, he tells Mary Cannan that, despite hating Taormina, “everybody is so nice to me here – natives and Britons and all.” But the Britons tire him when he goes out and “the natives somehow I distrust.”
It’s “very green”, with “those little blue irises everywhere”, and “Etna is grand and white this morning” with “much more snow than last year.” He doubts he “shall get to England.”
On 1st April Irene Whittley learns of his plans to “go shares” with Mountsier in a 100 tons, 100-120 feet ship. It’s his “heart’s desire to have a boat” and “cruise” the Med.