Blackpool lightens Lawrence

HE called it “a crowded, vulgar Lancashire seaside resort”, but when DH Lawrence visited Blackpool with George Neville in August 1910, he knew he’d enjoy it. He did!

Booked into a boarding-house near the North Pier, Neville records they soon enjoyed “a little promiscuous dancing on Central Pier”. Lawrence had “a few turns” with “a real Lancashire mill lass from Oldham”, who exclaimed “Lead me aht, ah’m ma-a-azy!”, making Lawrence chuckle “with glee”.

A professional violinist played Brahms in their drawing room. They sang along softly. At breakfast the hostess introduced the newly arrived “wonderful figures” of two unmarried schoolmistresses from Wolverhampton, “magnificent though incongruous” in dressing gowns of gold and rose. “Old Gold” and “Rosie”, Lawrence sniggers, behind his serviette.

Neville talks football. “Horribly brutal people playing horribly brutal games,” the ladies declare. Lawrence agrees. Lawrence has “never played football”, George protests, and surely you ladies “have never donned jerseys and shorts”. Cue Lawrence’s “silly squealing laughter” – “stylish” ladies blushing to their roots!

Guests admire “what a delightful place Blackpool is” in “early morning sunshine”, Neville suggests to the pair: “I expect that, like us, you find it preferable to kid-walloping.” Outraged, their fellow teachers cry, even talk of leaving. Lawrence soothes them.

There follows Lawrence’s “lovemaking foolery” with Yorkshire lass Clara. He’s on his knees. She’s fondling his forelock. “I asked him to fasten me sho-lace, but I think he’ll be having to fasten me garter as well, while he’s at it.” Lawrence looks like he wants “motherin’ a bit... as if a bottle o’ stout or two would do thee good.” Lawrence’s “lucky find” is “real”, he says. However, he won’t “help lower the level of the whisky bottle” in Clara’s room.

In Sons And Lovers, another Clara bathes with Paul Morel at dawn, off the Lincolnshire coast, as “a golden glitter of the sun” appears. “Oo, it will be cold,” Clara says, hugging “her breasts between her arms, cringing, laughing”. A “better swimmer”, “velvet skinned” Clara braves the “fine waves” first, “her shoulders in a pool of liquid silver”. She plays around Paul, “in triumph, sporting with her superiority”. They run laughing to the sandhills to get dry. Clara is “magnificent”, thinks Paul.

100 years ago, in August 1921, Lawrence tells Percy Whittley they leave Thumersbach “tomorrow for Innsbrook on our way to Florence”. Whittley will join them there. Lawrence receives £7-11s-2d from The Nation, for his Whitman essay.