ALS, one page both sides, 5.5 x 8.5, April 6, 1925. Lawrence makes reference to one of his more famous critics in this letter to his British literary agent, Curtis Brown. Written from his ranch in New Mexico, the letter reads, in part: “Today it threatens to snow; but with a good log fire, I don’t care. The Indian is chopping wood in the yard, & his wife is helping Mrs. Lawrence get tidy; everything all right. I’m still not much good, but shall soon pick up. I wish you’d have sent me The Calendar copies that contain The Princess. I should like to see it. A Danish woman, friend of ours, is pining to translate The Captain’s Doll novelettes into Danish. I wish you’d send her a line to say if she can go ahead…I hear Norman Douglas attacks me on behalf of [Maurice] Magnus. Rather disgusting. When one knows what N.D. is & how he treated M., would it give him a son; & when I have a letter from Douglas telling me to do what I liked & say what I liked about that MS; and when one knows how bitter Magnus was about Douglas, at the end. And when one knows how much worse the whole facts were, than those I give. - However canaille will be canaille.” In very good condition, with a narrow strip of edge toning, a couple of rusty paperclip marks, and some scattered creasing. All writing is clear and bold.
Douglas was a British author who engaged in a celebrated back-and-forth with Lawrence upon becoming the subject of an unflattering character in Lawrence’s work, Aaron’s Rod. Magnus, on the other hand, was an individual of questionable character who poisoned himself to evade capture by law enforcement. In fact, Lawrence’s novel, Memoir of Maurice Magnus, is considered one of the author’s finest pieces of writing. As Lawrence notes in this letter, Douglas disagreed with Lawrence’s commentary on Magnus, and in fact criticized Lawrence’s memoir in his own work, D.H. Lawrence and Maurice Magnus: A Plea for Better Manners. In the midst of all the finger-pointing and accusations, Lawrence sums his attackers with the phrase “canaille will be canaille”... referring to his critics as common riffraff and expecting no better of them. Another fine shrug to the immense criticism Lawrence endured during his lifetime.
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