A letter to the Baroness

FEW husbands correspond fondly with their mother-in-law, let alone send the evocative letters DH Lawrence did, as dutiful “son-in-law” to his “dear” German “Schwiegermutter”, Baroness Anna von Richthofen. He frequently sent money, too!

Writing from Florence a century ago, on September 10, 1921, the eve of his 36th birthday, Lawrence encloses ten pounds. It’s “better than nothing”. He explains how he and Frieda experienced the birthday of the Blessed Virgin Mary – an Italian “holiday”. Many boats “with lovely great lanterns – and lanterns through the streets”. which was “pretty – the evening so warm”.

The pair visited nearby ancient elevated town Fiesole, where “one sees far, far, the Appenines and the great valley”, with the river Arno “which comes down from the distance just like steps”. The city on the plain below is “so lovely... so alone, so feminine”. Ripe grapes hang “mysteriously black beneath the leaves”. Peaches are “so red and gold”. Cypress trees crowd together “like black shadow-flames”. In Tuscany, Lawrence says, cypresses are more “beautiful and proud, like black-flames from primitive times... when the Etruscans were still here, slender and fine and still and with naked elegance, black haired, with narrow feet”.

They take supper on the terrace. The “sun sinks behind the Carrara mountains, the hills grow dark” and house windows shine yellow, making “golden points on the water”.

The Lawrences will visit friends on Sunday, at Castello Ruggario, a beautiful old castle 10km away, for the “Dante festa”. A spectacular procession, with period costumes, weapons and armour, commemorates the author of The Divine Comedy, returning from the “Battle of Campodino” (“Campaldino”, in Lawrence’s Movements In European History) with the victorious Florentines.

■■ Also 100 years ago, on September 12, 1921, Lawrence tells agent Robert Mountsier he’ll send his poem, Bat, “tomorrow or next day”. Bat opens with dusk “making the tired flower of Florence” gloomy. A “green light from the west” enters “the arches of the Ponte Vecchio”. “Swallows with spools of dark thread” are “sewing the shadows together”, swooping beneath the bridge with a “twitch, a twitter, and elastic shudder in flight”. But, in a changing of the guard, swallows have gone – giving way to bats. “flying madly!” Making “one’s scalp creep”. By day bats hang “upside down like rows of disgusting old rags... grinning in their sleep”. The bat is “symbol of happiness” in China. But “Not for me!”, Lawrence cries.