Sons and Lovers (Barnes & Noble Classics - D. H. Lawrence [5]
They subjected their reading list to intense scrutiny, discussing the characters during long walks, trying to understand how a novel is constructed. Lawrence was not in the least academic in his approach. He personalized his reading, placing himself within the context of the fiction, trying on various philosophies and approaches as if they were shirts. He began to talk definitely of becoming a writer and, scribbling on scraps of paper wherever he could find them, undertook the task of becoming a poet.
Chambers was, in many ways, Lawrence’s first literary agent. In 1909, after Lawrence became frustrated at some initial rejection slips and declared he would never send off his work again, Chambers submitted three of his poems to The English Review with a letter to the editor, Ford Madox Hueffer (later Ford), expressing her admiration for the poems and for the poet. Hueffer was impressed with the poems and offered to publish them. He also wanted to meet the poet, fancying himself a great discoverer of upcoming literary talent, and invited Lawrence to his house in London. It was through Hueffer that Lawrence met Edward Garnett, a man who would champion his writing in London literary circles and fortify his heart during difficult emotional times. Lawrence wrote in a letter to his friend Ernest Collings dated November 1912 that Hueffer “discovered I was a genius—don’t be alarmed, Hueffer would discover anything if he wanted to—” (Letters). But in reality it was Chambers who first recognized Lawrence’s literary talents and who first encouraged him to write what “he was urged to ... from within” (Chambers, p. 89).
Lawrence tried his hand at writing prose. “The usual plan is to take two couples and develop their relationships,” he said on a walk with Chambers. “Most of George Eliot’s are on that plan. Anyhow, I don’t want a plot, I should be bored with it. I shall try two couples for a start” (Chambers, p. 103). Lawrence wrote The White Peacock on that plan, creating two couples and exploring their relationship. He sent Chambers pages of the manuscript as he wrote them and she, in turn, offered her criticisms. So intense was their collaboration that, upon the publication of The White Peacock in 1911, Lawrence wrote Chambers, “I its creator, you its nurse.”
The pair mostly avoided the topic of romance and sex, although gradually, as they grew through adolescence and into maturity, the issue asserted itself. Lawrence had girlfriends outside of their relationship, even going so far as to propose to one while on a train, but Chambers always occupied a primary position in his heart. “It’s like this,” Lawrence told Chambers, “some strands of your nature are knitted with some strands of mine, and we cannot be parted” (Chambers, p. 141). Later he told the girl that she was necessary to him, the “anvil on which I have hammered myself out....” (Chambers, p. 152).
Despite, or perhaps because of, the obvious mental, emotional, and spiritual connection between the two, Lawrence’s mother disapproved of Chambers. Her antipathy created an atmosphere so charged (Chambers described it as “strung-up” and “tight”) that the girl grew to dislike visiting the Lawrence home. Though Lawrence and Chambers avoided the topic of romance and sex, the issue asserted itself Mrs. Lawrence forced the question upon her son, and Lawrence, bringing the moment to its crisis, talked to Chambers. He told her that he could not bring himself to love her as “a man should love a wife” because, as he explained, between mother love and romantic love, the blood tie was the stronger of the two. “I can’t make myself love you, can I?” he cruelly asked Chambers. “I can’t plant a little love-tree in my heart” (Chambers, p. 141). The situation, as Chambers described it, was simply that while loving his mother with an almost romantic passion, he had nothing left to give a lover. “They tore me from you, the love of my life,” Lawrence remorsefully wrote to Chambers in a letter from March 1911. “It was the slaughter of the fetus in the womb” (Letters).
Mrs. Lawrence grew fatally ill with cancer during the fall and winter of 1910 as Lawrence