Rocked by the Castle
A £33 million refurb during a three-year closure having failed to make Nottingham Castle an irresistible tourist attraction reminds me of how well DH Lawrence knew this once-royal fortress.
At 16, having left Nottingham High School, Lawrence worked briefly at Haywood’s Surgical, Athletic, Veterinary and Magnetic Appliance factory, on Castle Gate, immortalising his experiences in Sons And Lovers. That novel’s young artist hero Paul Morel also wins “first prize awards” for “two life studies, a landscape in watercolour and a still life in oil” at the “autumn exhibition of students’ work” of the Castle Museum and Art Gallery. His mother Gertrude visits several times, proud to read “Paul Morel – First Prize.” She ponders how unlikely it is posh ladies in The Park have sons winning “two first prizes in the Castle”.
Aged 23, Paul enters “the winter exhibition at Nottingham Castle”. Gertrude cries “Hurrah!” waving a letter “wildly.” It says Paul’s landscape has first prize. Is “sold for twenty guineas” to “Major Moreton”.
That “big bluff of Castle rock” rears “above the flat of the town” as lovers Paul and Clara pay “two halfpennies at the turnstile” to cross the Trent Bridge.
Jessie Chambers remembers Lawrence buying photos of “Greek statuary” from “picturesque old shops near the Castle”. In June 1911, Lawrence tells fiancée Louie Burrows about going to the Castle, “en famille”.
When overwork and stress made Lawrence ill he broke with Louie. Soon after, on February 13, 1912 (which by “a cursed irony” was Louie’s 24th birthday), they met to view Nottingham’s “Art School exhibition at the Castle – wonderful good stuff”. On Valentine’s Day Lawrence told Edward Garnett that Louie had lectured, “sarked,” called him “a fool”, stared at portraits of “naked men” then started “to cry” over tea. By Louie’s own account, she was “dumb with misery”. Although their parting was final, Louie’s love for Lawrence remained with her. ■■100 years ago, on November 28, 1922, Lawrence tells Mountsier he “may think” the Studies “too violent now, to print”, being Lawrence’s “first reaction” to “America itself”. The Lawrences “are leaving Mabel Sterne’s territory” as “it is unbearable”. It might be “too impossible”, make him “too sick”, to write the novel of Mabel and “the Indian” but he may “do a novel out here”.
Lawrence tells Seltzer of the move to Del Monte ranch 17 miles away – a “lovely wild place” with “5-roomed log cabin”. Young Danish artists Knud Merrild (“very clever”) and Kai Gotzsche will live nearby.