Let me explain what lies behind the next three instalments of Calderonia, which are distinguished guest posts taking us up to 8 March and beyond.
As part of our lockdown season of old films, Alison and I watched a DVD of Ken Russell’s 1969 Women in Love, which I first saw in 1970. To my pleasant surprise, the acting still seemed superb. But to my utter surprise, I found that my perception of the film had swung through 180 degrees. The experience of watching it fifty years on was a kind of dawning revelation, almost an epiphany.
It is difficult to believe now, but in 1970 D.H. Lawrence was a guru amongst Britain’s younger generations. This was the result of Penguin’s mass re-publication of his works, the popularity of F.R. Leavis’s writing on Lawrence, and the failed 1960 ‘Trial of Lady Chatterley’ on a charge of obscenity. I would go so far as to say that some of the embeardification of university students at the time was inspired by Lawrence.
His values and ideas, particularly regarding sex and marriage, profoundly influenced us. Our focus was on those, not on his amazing art as such. I think my own case was typical. By the age of twenty I had read three of Lawrence’s novels, most of his short stories, almost all of his poetry, selected essays, selected letters, Mornings in Mexico, and Penguin’s volume A propos of Lady Chatterley’s Lover. But it was Lawrence the critic of English life that most grabbed me. Consequently, as I watched the film in 1970 I blithely thought of Birkin as Lawrence (Alan Bates had the beard), I approved of everything Birkin said, and cheered him on. I regarded him as the hero seeker after truth.
Fifty years later, it was quite different. I immediately identified with Ursula Brangwen. She is by far the most empathetic person in the film. Where she listens, asks questions of an other, feels, thinks, reasons, and above all loves, Birkin mansplains, preaches, rants, shows off, gratuitously offends, and is most interested in himself. I particularly enjoyed the scene of their big row: as far as I am concerned, everything Ursula says of Birkin is true, and the passion and emotional intelligence with which she says it are magnificent. Her ability to give love makes her luminous. Her instincts and intuition are right. True, Birkin is on a quest, we see him develop and learn, he even has the last word. But he learns from Ursula. In 2020 I saw the film as about her: her growth, the power of her love, her as the superior seeker after truth. And in the last scene I agreed with her, not Birkin.
I then made a very embarrassing discovery. After watching the film, I wanted to check a few things in the novel. I went to the copy that I had bought in 1970, the Penguin edition with Jennie Linden and Alan Bates on the cover as above, and found, beyond all doubt, that I had never read it… I had only ever seen the film! Well, there and then I began reading the novel Women in Love, and could not put it down.
Our stalwart follower, guest-poster and poetic commenter Damian Grant is a lifelong Lawrentian. He really knows his Lawrence. His fundamental work, A Thematic Index to Phoenix and Phoenix II, is published in A D.H. Lawrence Handbook, edited by Keith Sugar, Manchester University Press, 1982, pp. 329-447, and is described as
an index of an original kind, in which 37 terms, pairs of terms, or opposing terms are indexed, with a brief quotation to provide the context. The words chosen relate to Lawrence’s underlying ideas, his ‘philosophy’; his vision of reality itself and the place of the elemental human being within that reality.
I mentioned to Damian that I was ‘in love with Ursula Brangwen’, having never read the novel before. His response was: ‘I am glad you are in love with Ursula Brangwen. She is the right kind of girl.’ He then explained that Ursula literally is the protagonist of Women in Love, because Lawrence had originally conceived of a single ‘Bildungsroman’ exploring her physical and spiritual growth over three decades. This had split in two, and The Rainbow dealt with the earlier part of her life. I plunged into reading it. Straight after, I read Women in Love for a second time, and watched the film for a third.
This experience solved a few problems — for example, the chapter ‘Gudrun in the Pompadour’, omitted from the film, hilariously distances Lawrence from Birkin — but it left many more questions hanging in the air. Has Russell’s film as a film stood the test of time? How faithful is it to the book? Does it flirt with pornography? What are we to make of Lawrence’s descriptions of sex in the novel? What do things like this mean: ‘this was neither love nor passion. It was the daughters of men coming back to the sons of God, the strange inhuman sons of God who are in the beginning’? Why are there absolutely no medical details of Birkin’s numerous illnesses, or indications of the source of his ‘about four hundred a year’ (£35,000 at today’s prices) which enable him and Ursula to become people of leisure? Why are emotions monotonously referred to in terms of electricity and magnetism? Why are there two references to the 1914-18 War in the novel, yet it ends before the War begins? Is there any substance to Birkin’s critique of contemporary marriage, or is it guff? Were there no happy Edwardian marriages?
Suddenly it occurred to me that Calderonia has three long-term followers who could tackle such questions much better than me! John Pym is a film critic, Damian Grant a Lawrence critic, and Laurence Brockliss has made a prosopographical study of Victorian and Edwardian England. They all immediately accepted my challenge, for which I am hugely beholden to them, and their guest posts will appear on these dates:
8 February: ‘Glenda Jackson’s Oscar’, by John Pym
22 February: ‘Women in Love — the novel as prophetic book’, by Damian Grant
8 March: ‘Love and respect in the Victorian and Edwardian marriage’, by Laurence Brockliss
Women in Love is still a contentious novel. Most of our subscribers, I imagine, have read it or seen the film. Please, then, communicate your views, your reactions to the several expert posts, by leaving a Comment, however short, long or vituperative (rather than emailing me personally). I am hoping that we can really get a dialogue going over this major work of twentieth century English literature. Is it, even, its greatest novel?
If anyone would like to do a further guest post on an aspect of Lawrence’s novel, after 22 March, please contact me. I shall eventually blog about connections between Lawrence and Calderon in life and literature.
SOME RESPONSES TO GEORGE CALDERON: EDWARDIAN GENIUS
‘This meticulous yet nimble book is bound to remain the definitive account of Calderon’s life’ Charlotte Jones, The Times Literary Supplement
‘The effort of detection, it must be said, was worth it. The biography is a delight to read.’ Emeritus Professor Laurence Brockliss, The London Magazine
‘It is a masterly synthesis of your own approach with scholarship and very judicious discussion of the evidence.’ Emeritus Professor Catherine Andreyev, historian
‘This comprehensive, meticulously researched and highly readable biography, which the author describes as a “story” rather than an academic biography…’ Michael Pursglove, East-West Review
‘A monumental scholarly masterpiece that gives real insight into how the Edwardians viewed the world.’Arch Tait, Translator of Natalya Rzhevskaya’s Memoirs of a Wartime Interpreter
‘The book is written with great assurance and the reader always feels in safe hands. I liked the idea of it being a story and I read it the same way I would read a novel.’ Harvey Pitcher, writer
‘Presents the Edwardian age, and Calderon in particular, as new and forward-looking.’ Emeritus Professor Michael Alexander, in Trinity College, Oxford, Report 2017-18
A review by DAMIAN GRANT appears in the comments to Calderonia’s 7 September post.
A review by JOHN DEWEY appears on Amazon UK.
Related
Sir Richard Vincent Sutton c. 1913
Basic form of the Calderon coat of arms
George and Kittie Calderon 1905
A happy memory of Trinity College: undergraduates breakfast together in Downy V. Green, p. 77.
George Calderon c.1901
Patrick Miles in his summer house, 11 December 2016
Frontis piece by Frank Calderon
George Calderon, 1912
Jean Ryckaert, May 1916.
Unpublished watercolour by George Calderon, Tahiti 1906
Michel and Vera Fokine in “Scheherazade”, 1914 (The Music And Theatre Library of Sweden, creative commons)
Monarch Butterfly Madeira
Christmas 1901 Cartoon by George Calderon
K.N. Das Gupta and Margaret Mitchell in an Indian Dramatic Society production of The Maharani of Arakan, 1913?
Captain of the 11
Colonel Sir Walter Coote Hedley c. 1920
Figure from Gauguin’s 1899 painting ‘Tahitian Women with Mango Blossoms’ (left); George Calderon’s pencil sketch ‘Manu’ (right)
Book sent to George Calderon in Russia by his mother, Christmas 1895.
The entrance to Fort Brockhurst (picture from Britain’s Past)
‘Hurtler’ Brangwen, woman in love
Let me explain what lies behind the next three instalments of Calderonia, which are distinguished guest posts taking us up to 8 March and beyond.
As part of our lockdown season of old films, Alison and I watched a DVD of Ken Russell’s 1969 Women in Love, which I first saw in 1970. To my pleasant surprise, the acting still seemed superb. But to my utter surprise, I found that my perception of the film had swung through 180 degrees. The experience of watching it fifty years on was a kind of dawning revelation, almost an epiphany.
It is difficult to believe now, but in 1970 D.H. Lawrence was a guru amongst Britain’s younger generations. This was the result of Penguin’s mass re-publication of his works, the popularity of F.R. Leavis’s writing on Lawrence, and the failed 1960 ‘Trial of Lady Chatterley’ on a charge of obscenity. I would go so far as to say that some of the embeardification of university students at the time was inspired by Lawrence.
His values and ideas, particularly regarding sex and marriage, profoundly influenced us. Our focus was on those, not on his amazing art as such. I think my own case was typical. By the age of twenty I had read three of Lawrence’s novels, most of his short stories, almost all of his poetry, selected essays, selected letters, Mornings in Mexico, and Penguin’s volume A propos of Lady Chatterley’s Lover. But it was Lawrence the critic of English life that most grabbed me. Consequently, as I watched the film in 1970 I blithely thought of Birkin as Lawrence (Alan Bates had the beard), I approved of everything Birkin said, and cheered him on. I regarded him as the hero seeker after truth.
Fifty years later, it was quite different. I immediately identified with Ursula Brangwen. She is by far the most empathetic person in the film. Where she listens, asks questions of an other, feels, thinks, reasons, and above all loves, Birkin mansplains, preaches, rants, shows off, gratuitously offends, and is most interested in himself. I particularly enjoyed the scene of their big row: as far as I am concerned, everything Ursula says of Birkin is true, and the passion and emotional intelligence with which she says it are magnificent. Her ability to give love makes her luminous. Her instincts and intuition are right. True, Birkin is on a quest, we see him develop and learn, he even has the last word. But he learns from Ursula. In 2020 I saw the film as about her: her growth, the power of her love, her as the superior seeker after truth. And in the last scene I agreed with her, not Birkin.
I then made a very embarrassing discovery. After watching the film, I wanted to check a few things in the novel. I went to the copy that I had bought in 1970, the Penguin edition with Jennie Linden and Alan Bates on the cover as above, and found, beyond all doubt, that I had never read it… I had only ever seen the film! Well, there and then I began reading the novel Women in Love, and could not put it down.
Our stalwart follower, guest-poster and poetic commenter Damian Grant is a lifelong Lawrentian. He really knows his Lawrence. His fundamental work, A Thematic Index to Phoenix and Phoenix II, is published in A D.H. Lawrence Handbook, edited by Keith Sugar, Manchester University Press, 1982, pp. 329-447, and is described as
I mentioned to Damian that I was ‘in love with Ursula Brangwen’, having never read the novel before. His response was: ‘I am glad you are in love with Ursula Brangwen. She is the right kind of girl.’ He then explained that Ursula literally is the protagonist of Women in Love, because Lawrence had originally conceived of a single ‘Bildungsroman’ exploring her physical and spiritual growth over three decades. This had split in two, and The Rainbow dealt with the earlier part of her life. I plunged into reading it. Straight after, I read Women in Love for a second time, and watched the film for a third.
This experience solved a few problems — for example, the chapter ‘Gudrun in the Pompadour’, omitted from the film, hilariously distances Lawrence from Birkin — but it left many more questions hanging in the air. Has Russell’s film as a film stood the test of time? How faithful is it to the book? Does it flirt with pornography? What are we to make of Lawrence’s descriptions of sex in the novel? What do things like this mean: ‘this was neither love nor passion. It was the daughters of men coming back to the sons of God, the strange inhuman sons of God who are in the beginning’? Why are there absolutely no medical details of Birkin’s numerous illnesses, or indications of the source of his ‘about four hundred a year’ (£35,000 at today’s prices) which enable him and Ursula to become people of leisure? Why are emotions monotonously referred to in terms of electricity and magnetism? Why are there two references to the 1914-18 War in the novel, yet it ends before the War begins? Is there any substance to Birkin’s critique of contemporary marriage, or is it guff? Were there no happy Edwardian marriages?
Suddenly it occurred to me that Calderonia has three long-term followers who could tackle such questions much better than me! John Pym is a film critic, Damian Grant a Lawrence critic, and Laurence Brockliss has made a prosopographical study of Victorian and Edwardian England. They all immediately accepted my challenge, for which I am hugely beholden to them, and their guest posts will appear on these dates:
8 February: ‘Glenda Jackson’s Oscar’, by John Pym
22 February: ‘Women in Love — the novel as prophetic book’, by Damian Grant
8 March: ‘Love and respect in the Victorian and Edwardian marriage’, by Laurence Brockliss
Women in Love is still a contentious novel. Most of our subscribers, I imagine, have read it or seen the film. Please, then, communicate your views, your reactions to the several expert posts, by leaving a Comment, however short, long or vituperative (rather than emailing me personally). I am hoping that we can really get a dialogue going over this major work of twentieth century English literature. Is it, even, its greatest novel?
If anyone would like to do a further guest post on an aspect of Lawrence’s novel, after 22 March, please contact me. I shall eventually blog about connections between Lawrence and Calderon in life and literature.
SOME RESPONSES TO GEORGE CALDERON: EDWARDIAN GENIUS
‘This meticulous yet nimble book is bound to remain the definitive account of Calderon’s life’ Charlotte Jones, The Times Literary Supplement
‘The effort of detection, it must be said, was worth it. The biography is a delight to read.’ Emeritus Professor Laurence Brockliss, The London Magazine
‘It is a masterly synthesis of your own approach with scholarship and very judicious discussion of the evidence.’ Emeritus Professor Catherine Andreyev, historian
‘This comprehensive, meticulously researched and highly readable biography, which the author describes as a “story” rather than an academic biography…’ Michael Pursglove, East-West Review
‘A monumental scholarly masterpiece that gives real insight into how the Edwardians viewed the world.’Arch Tait, Translator of Natalya Rzhevskaya’s Memoirs of a Wartime Interpreter
‘The book is written with great assurance and the reader always feels in safe hands. I liked the idea of it being a story and I read it the same way I would read a novel.’ Harvey Pitcher, writer
‘Presents the Edwardian age, and Calderon in particular, as new and forward-looking.’ Emeritus Professor Michael Alexander, in Trinity College, Oxford, Report 2017-18
A review by DAMIAN GRANT appears in the comments to Calderonia’s 7 September post.
A review by JOHN DEWEY appears on Amazon UK.
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