the dark Sydney streets, he was the most remote. He strayed round in a torture of fear, and then at last suddenly went to the Carlton Hotel, got a room, and went to bed, to be alone and think.
Detail for detail he thought out his experiences with the authorities, during the war, lying perfectly still and tense. Till now, he had always kept the memory at bay, afraid of it. Now it all came back, in a rush. It was like a volcanic eruption in his consciousness. For some weeks he had felt the great uneasiness in his unconscious. For some time he had known spasms of that same fear that he had known during the war: the fear of the base and malignant power of the mob-like authorities. Since he had been in Italy the fear had left him entirely. He had not even remembered it, in India. Only in the quiet of Coo-ee , strangely enough, it had come back in little spasms: the dread, almost the horror, of democratic society, the mob. Harriett had been feeling it too. Why? Why, in this free Australia? Why? Why should they both have been feeling this same terror and pressure that they had known during the war, why should it have come on again in Mullumbimby. â Perhaps in Mullumbimby they were suspect again, two strangers, so much alone. Perhaps the secret service was making investigations about them. Ah, canaille!
Richard faced out all his memories like a nightmare in the night, and cut clear. He felt broken off from his fellow-men. He felt broken off from the England he had belonged to. The ties were gone. He was loose like a single timber of some wrecked ship, drifting the face of the sea. Without a people, without a land. So be it. He was broken apart, apart he would remain.
The judgments of society were not valid to him. The accepted goodness of society was no longer goodness to him. In his soul he was cut off, and from his own isolated soul he would judge.
D. H. Lawrence was born in Nottinghamshire in 1880; he died in the South of France in 1930. This passage is from the autobiographical novel Kangaroo , an account of a visit to New South Wales of an English writer (Richard Lovat Somers) and his German wife which includes the chapter âThe Nightmareâ, a flashback to Lawrenceâs experiences in England during the war. Brutal experiences no doubt made worse by Lawrence having a German wife and the perception by the army recruiters in the Midlands that he was an intellectual trying to avoid doing his duty for King and Country:
He hated the Midlands now, he hated the North. People here were viler than in the South, even than in Cornwall. They had a universal desire to take life and down it: these horrible machine people, these iron and coal peopleâ¦
During the war, the Lawrences were accused of spying and signalling to German submarines from the Cornish coast at Zennor, where they lived. In 1917, the Lawrences were forced to leave Cornwall under the terms of the Defence of the Realm Act. This extract from âThe Nightmareâ forcefully conveys the sense of crushing oppression and harassment Lawrence experienced during the war.
SIEGFRIED SASSOON
DONE ALL THAT WAS EXPECTED OF IT
from Memoirs of an Infantry Officer
G OING INTO LIVERPOOL WAS , for most of us, the only antidote to the daily tedium of the Depot. Liverpool usually meant the Olympic Hotel. This palatial contrast to the Camp was the chief cause of the overdrafts of Ormand and other young officers. Never having crossed the Atlantic, I did not realize that the Hotel was an American importation, but I know now that the whole thing might have been brought over from New York in the mind of a first-class passenger. Once inside the Olympic, one trod on black and white squares of synthetic rubber, and the warm interior smelt of this pseudo-luxurious flooring. Everything was white and gilt and smooth; it was, so to speak, an airtight Paradise made of imitation marble. Its loftiness made resonance languid; one of its attractions was a swimming-bath, and the
Detail for detail he thought out his experiences with the authorities, during the war, lying perfectly still and tense. Till now, he had always kept the memory at bay, afraid of it. Now it all came back, in a rush. It was like a volcanic eruption in his consciousness. For some weeks he had felt the great uneasiness in his unconscious. For some time he had known spasms of that same fear that he had known during the war: the fear of the base and malignant power of the mob-like authorities. Since he had been in Italy the fear had left him entirely. He had not even remembered it, in India. Only in the quiet of Coo-ee , strangely enough, it had come back in little spasms: the dread, almost the horror, of democratic society, the mob. Harriett had been feeling it too. Why? Why, in this free Australia? Why? Why should they both have been feeling this same terror and pressure that they had known during the war, why should it have come on again in Mullumbimby. â Perhaps in Mullumbimby they were suspect again, two strangers, so much alone. Perhaps the secret service was making investigations about them. Ah, canaille!
Richard faced out all his memories like a nightmare in the night, and cut clear. He felt broken off from his fellow-men. He felt broken off from the England he had belonged to. The ties were gone. He was loose like a single timber of some wrecked ship, drifting the face of the sea. Without a people, without a land. So be it. He was broken apart, apart he would remain.
The judgments of society were not valid to him. The accepted goodness of society was no longer goodness to him. In his soul he was cut off, and from his own isolated soul he would judge.
D. H. Lawrence was born in Nottinghamshire in 1880; he died in the South of France in 1930. This passage is from the autobiographical novel Kangaroo , an account of a visit to New South Wales of an English writer (Richard Lovat Somers) and his German wife which includes the chapter âThe Nightmareâ, a flashback to Lawrenceâs experiences in England during the war. Brutal experiences no doubt made worse by Lawrence having a German wife and the perception by the army recruiters in the Midlands that he was an intellectual trying to avoid doing his duty for King and Country:
He hated the Midlands now, he hated the North. People here were viler than in the South, even than in Cornwall. They had a universal desire to take life and down it: these horrible machine people, these iron and coal peopleâ¦
During the war, the Lawrences were accused of spying and signalling to German submarines from the Cornish coast at Zennor, where they lived. In 1917, the Lawrences were forced to leave Cornwall under the terms of the Defence of the Realm Act. This extract from âThe Nightmareâ forcefully conveys the sense of crushing oppression and harassment Lawrence experienced during the war.
SIEGFRIED SASSOON
DONE ALL THAT WAS EXPECTED OF IT
from Memoirs of an Infantry Officer
G OING INTO LIVERPOOL WAS , for most of us, the only antidote to the daily tedium of the Depot. Liverpool usually meant the Olympic Hotel. This palatial contrast to the Camp was the chief cause of the overdrafts of Ormand and other young officers. Never having crossed the Atlantic, I did not realize that the Hotel was an American importation, but I know now that the whole thing might have been brought over from New York in the mind of a first-class passenger. Once inside the Olympic, one trod on black and white squares of synthetic rubber, and the warm interior smelt of this pseudo-luxurious flooring. Everything was white and gilt and smooth; it was, so to speak, an airtight Paradise made of imitation marble. Its loftiness made resonance languid; one of its attractions was a swimming-bath, and the
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