D. H. Lawrence and Katherine Mansfield as Letter-Writers: The Lamont Lecture at Yale University

D. H. LAWRENCE AND KATHERINE MANSFIELD AS LETTER-WRITERS THE LAMONT LECTURE AT YALE UNIVERSITY* Lours CAzAMIAN T HE letters of D. H. Lawrence and those of Katherine Mansfield are the records of two outstanding personalities; two writers of yesterday , whose voices seem to ring still in our ears. A common virtue of uncompromising sincerity, a nakedness of soul, endears them to us, at a time of stress, when disillusioned man is trying to look unflinchingly at his own self. l(atherine Mansfield has been dead eleven years; Lawrence only four. But he was born earlier (in 1885; l(atherine Mansfield in 1889), and his published correspondence stretches over a longer period (I 909 to I 930; that of Katherine Mansfield, 1913 to 1922). His tormented genius, no doubt, seems to bear more distinctly the very shape, and to show the pressure of our age. Is his spirit, however, nearer to us than Katherine Mansfield 's? Not so, if Katherine Mansfield's be more certainly of all time. l-Ier letters embody as well as his that essential honesty which gives its lasting ~orth. to the searchings of conscience; and the chann of her manner, in its exquisiteness, holds our minds even more strongly than the powerful fascination of Lawrence. His letters will not live longer; hers will seem fresher whe_n the restlessness of our time has worked itself out and *The lecture was delivered at Yale, on March 5, 1934. Quotations are from The LctJers of Katlzerine Man.rfield, edited by J. Middleton Murry, 2 vols., 1928, and The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, edited with an introduction by Aldous Huxley, 1932. 286 D. H. LAWRENCE AND KATHERINE MANSFIELD violence is no more the hall-mark of spiritual truth. We shall respect the fitness, as well as the chronology, of the subject, if we take up Lawrence first; did he not writeand to whom but to l(atherine Mansfield?-" I do think a woman must yield some sort of precedence to a man, and he must take this precedence." But while his "savage pilgrimage" is of absorbing interest, we may well feel even more poignantly the appeal of another quest, that of the valiant soul which through pain, with a finer sense of moral issues, sought to be" crystal-clear." The object of our study is thus the relation, in analogy and contrast, of two sincerities. I From the first, Lawrence's manner in his letters is straightforward, a trifle blunt, or cynical. With time, and the swift development of the fate whose seeds were mainly in his own character, the tone somewhat changes; there appears, in the proved writer, in the prophet vvhose genius is accepted by the many who deny, as by the few who acclaim it, a firmer assurance, a bearing of authority; he expresses himself more fully; his statements are charged with a deliberate energy; he relies on cumulative emphasis, stressing the same points again and again with characteristic dogged insistence. The note of anger, the bitter denunciation of social lies, of the War, of Europe, of a doomed civilization, are frequently heard. Every now and then the 1nood relaxes, and a scene from life, or from nature, is described in graphic touches, slow, vigorous, thick. Often enough the letter will be just familiar and matter-of-fact, thrash out a practical question with ease, simplicity, a touch of irony. Or, chiefly in his last years, Lawrence will send to his friends 287 THE UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO QUARTERLY the n1ere jottings of a tired man, haunted by the fever of his unquiet spirit, by the sense of his ebbing vitality. But always his writing is direct and free, immune from the slightest affectation, from the most venial turn of rhetoric or cleverness. No straining after effect, no fine phrasing, no eloquence except the sheer impressiveness of p1·ofoundly earnest speech. At the root of that manner is a constant motive, a soul of intent, that silently oozes out and soaks into us as we read. Conspicuous all through that volume is .the maxim, shown in the effect over each page: there is no special style of epistolary prose. A letter is part of life, and...