The First Lady Chatterley's Lover Read online

  THE FIRST LADY CHATTERLEY’S LOVER

  D H LAWRENCE

  BLACKTHORN PRESS

  Blackthorn Press, Blackthorn House

  Middleton Rd, Pickering YO18 8AL

  United Kingdom

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the Blackthorn Press.

  2015

  www.blackthornpress.com

  CONTENTS

  Introduction

  The First Lady Chatterley’s Lover

  INTRODUCTION

  Lawrence wrote three drafts of ‘Lady Chatterley’s Lover’ between 1926 and 1928: ‘The First Lady Chatterley’, ‘John Thomas and Lady Jane’ and the final version, ‘Lady Chatterley’s Lover’. All three books are published as ebooks by the Blackthorn Press.

  Although all three books have the same story line of an aristocratic woman falling in love with a working class man, there are differences in their tone and sensibilities. Many critics have preferred this, the first version and Geoffrey Strickland, writing in Encounter, in 1971 concluded his article by saying, ‘Why Lawrence altered the novel three times is a matter mainly for speculation. But that he altered it disastrously is, in my view, beyond question.’ Strickland was of his time and for the modern reader, the last version with its more frank exploration of the sexual attraction of the two lovers is perhaps more rewarding. This, the first version, with its muted sexual scenes, lacks the reality and passion of the later versions. All three versions are now available in ebook format from the Blackthorn Press and the reader can now compare and decide.

  Editor’s note: Lawrence’s original manuscript was not divided into chapters and this format has been maintained in this edition.

  THE FIRST LADY CHATTERLEY’S LOVER

  Ours is essentially a tragic age but we refuse emphatically to be tragic about it.

  This was Constance Chatterley’s position. The war landed her in a dreadful situation, and she was determined not to make a tragedy out of it.

  She married Clifford Chatterley in 1917 when he was home on leave. They had a month of honeymoon, and he went back to France. In 1918 he was very badly wounded, brought home a wreck. She was twenty-three years old.

  After two years, he was restored to comparative health. But the lower part of his body was paralysed for ever. He could wheel himself about in a wheeled chair, and he had a little motor attached to a bath chair, so that he could even make excursions in the grounds at home.

  Clifford had suffered so much that the capacity for suffering had to some extent left him. He remained strange and bright and cheerful, with his ruddy, quite handsome face, and his bright, haunted blue eyes. He had so nearly lost life that what remained to him seemed to him precious. And he had been so much hurt, that something inside him had hardened and could feel no more.

  Constance, his wife, was a ruddy, country-looking girl, with soft brown hair and sturdy body and a great deal of rather clumsy vitality. She had big, wondering blue eyes and a slow, soft voice, and seemed a real quiet maiden.

  As a matter of fact, she was one of those very modern, brooding women who ponder all the time persistently and laboriously. She had been educated partly in Germany, in Dresden; indeed, she had been hurried home when the war broke out. And though it filled her now with bitter, heavy irony to think of it, now that Germany, the German guns at least, had ruined her life, yet she had been most happy in Dresden. Or perhaps not happy but thrilled. She had been profoundly thrilled, by the life, by the music, and by the Germanic, abstract talk, the sort of philosophising. The endless talk about things had thrilled her soul. The philosophy students, the political economy students, the young professors, literary or ethnological, classic or scientific, how they had talked! and how she had answered them back! and how they had listened! and how she had listened to them because they listened to her!

  Came the war, and she had to feel bitter about it all. But Clifford, who was an old friend and a Cambridge intellect, was by no means a narrow patriot. He fought for his country, but he sympathised entirely with the young intelligent Germans who were, like himself, caught up in the huge machine that they hated. Clifford would still read Hauptmann or Rainer Maria Rilke aloud to Constance when he was home on leave. Which pleased her very much. She felt she wanted to be ‘above’ the war and, at least, above the war patriotism which exasperated her so much.

  But by the time the Untergang des Abendlands appeared, Clifford was a smashed man, and her life was smashed. She was young and remorselessly, almost crudely healthy. Under the blow she just went silent. And she remained silent, pondering, pondering with an endless unresolved vagueness.

  They removed to Wragby in 1920. It was Clifford’s home. His father had died, and he was now a baronet. Wragby Hall was a low, long old house, rather dismal, in a very fine park, in the midst of newly developed colliery districts. You could hear the chuff of winding engines, and the rattle of the sifting screens, and you could smell the sulphur of burning pit-hills when the wind blew in a certain direction over the park.

  Constance was now Lady Chatterley, with a crippled husband, a dreary old house in a defaced countryside, and a rather inadequate income. She determined to make the best of it. She could work and read and ponder, and she was the lonely, absolute mistress of the establishment. It pleased her to manage carefully, to live within their income. It pleased her to entertain anyone, anyone who would interest Clifford. But he preferred to be alone. She went on from day to day, from day to day, in a strange plodding way. And she had a peculiar, comely beauty of her own, healthy and quiet and shy-seeming, but really withheld. And strangely isolated in herself, being unquestioned mistress in her own surroundings!

  Clifford did not weigh upon her. He occupied himself reading, writing, painting, pulling himself round the fine old gardens in his chair, or slowly, softly trundling across the park into the wood in his motor chair. He gave orders to the gardeners and the wood-cutters and the gamekeeper. He watched over his small estate. Sometimes, in the autumn, he would go in his chair very slowly into the wood and wait for a shot at a pheasant. And sometimes, when he had great courage, he would take his paints and work at a small picture. He had once had a passion for painting, though he did little now. But he seemed almost happy, more happy than before his catastrophe.

  Only occasionally he was anxious about Constance. She was very good to him, she loved him in her peculiar, neutral way. And he, of course, felt he could not live without her. They were true companions, as in the old days before they married.

  But, of course, there was the tragedy that had fallen upon them! He could never be a husband to her. She lived with him like a married nun, a sister of Christ. It was more than that, too. For of course they had had a month of real marriage. And Clifford knew that in her nature was a heavy, craving physical desire. He knew.

  He himself could not brood. The instinct of self-preservation was so strong in him, he could only contemplate the thrill and the pleasure of life or else fall into apathy. He would have days of apathy, which swallowed up what would else have been bitterness and anguish. Then the thrill of life returned. Then he could go in his motor chair into the woods and, if he remained silent, see the squirrels gathering nuts or a hedgehog nosing among dead leaves. Each time it seemed like something he had captured in the teeth of fate. He felt a peculiar triumph over doom and death, even over life itself. Only he practically never went outside the park gates. He could not bear the miners to stare at him with commiseration. He did not mind his own gardeners and wood-men and gamekeeper so much. He paid them.


  Sometimes Constance would walk beside his chair into the park or the wood. Then she would sit under a tree, and the strange triumphant thrill he felt in being alive and in the midst of life would be a nervous gratification to her. He was reading Plato again and would talk to her about the dialogues, often holding her hand as he sat.

  ‘It’s awfully funny — strikes me as funny, now,’ he said, ‘the excitement they got out of argument, and reason, and thought. They’re awfully like little boys who have just discovered that they can think and are beside themselves about it. They’re so thrilled, that nothing else matters, only thinking and knowledge. I suppose, far, far back, man must in the same way have discovered sex in himself and been thrilled by that beyond all bounds — knowledge, nothing but mental knowledge! But Columbus discovering America was nothing to those early Greeks discovering that they’d got logical reasoning minds. It impresses me even now! Because, of course, my hand holding your hand seems to me as real as thought: doesn’t it to you? It is as important as a piece of knowledge, don’t you think? My hand holding your hand! — After all, that’s life too! And it’s what one couldn’t do after death. If one were dead, one’s spirit still might think. I still might think, and I do believe with Socrates that I should know even more fully. But I couldn’t hold your hand, could I? At least not actually physically. Though perhaps, of course, there would still be some sort of connection, some sort of clasp, perhaps more vital really. Perhaps I could still keep hold of your hand, even if I were dead. What do you think?’

  His big, bright, hard blue eyes were very strange, as they gazed into her face. His strong hand gripped her hand weirdly. She saw in him the triumphant thrill of conquest. He had made a weird conquest of something!

  But in his thrill of triumph, she felt chilled, as if the frost of his egoism nipped her. Was he so triumphant? What about herself, and her life: her bodily life? What about her own hand that he gripped as if it were some trophy he would carry off to the other side the grave? She felt chilled and depressed, and a misery surged up in her. After all, she didn’t have much to feel triumphant about — except his remarkable recovery. But if he was mutilated, what about herself? Her body had never been broken. She had not dragged herself out of the grave. On the contrary, she felt as if she were just being buried up to the waist, to keep him company. She was heavily silent and unresponsive.

  A twist, a shadow, like an angry resentment went over his

  ‘I know, dear,’ he said, ‘that in a sense you’re the worst loser. I know how I depend on you: live on you, in a sense.’

  ‘You know I want you to,’ she murmured.

  ‘I know! Yet there’s no getting away from it, you’re denied a very serious part of life. And the fact that you are denied it might work inside you, against your knowing it, and do you a lot of harm. — I want to speak of it now, so you’ll know. — I don’t want you to feel that you’ve brought me a sacrifice. I don’t want you to feel like that, because I don’t believe you’re the right sort of woman to sacrifice that part of yourself. In fact, I married you because you were — a full-sexed woman. You did want me, before this happened, didn’t you?’ She murmured an assent. ‘Oh, I know, and it’s bitter. And I know you will go on wanting even though I’m put out of your life for ever in that respect. It’s rather horrible, but we’ve got to make the best of it. I want to say this to you: if ever there is another man whom you really want, whom you really want to make love to you: don’t let the thought of me stop you. You go ahead and live your own life. My danger is that I might be a dog in the manger to you. I don’t want to be. So I tell you now. I know what happens to women who suppress their sex while they’re young: there’s hell to pay later. So I don’t want you to do it. I wouldn’t like you to make yourself cheap: and I know you won’t make it any harder on me than you need. But if ever you meet a man whom you absolutely want, for your sexual life, take him. Have a lover if you have to! —’

  He spoke bravely, and a little glibly. Evidently he had thought it all out. And evidently it was only hypothetical to him: an abstract man, an abstract love affair: it was easily dismissed, in his head.

  She, sitting on a fallen tree holding his hand, let her head droop and said nothing. Strange feelings surged in her.

  And as if the intense emotion in the air around them had attracted other life than their own, a spaniel suddenly ran out of a path and came scenting towards them, touching Constance’s hand with its soft nose and lifting its head agitatedly. At the same time they heard footsteps. The gamekeeper, Parkin, came out of the cross-path on to the riding.

  Constance released her husband’s hold. Clifford glanced round, rousing from the apathy into which he had sunk. The gamekeeper touched his hat, and was crossing the riding to disappear into the path on the other side, making a faint sound to call his dog.

  ‘Oh I say Parkin!’ Clifford pulled himself up a bit in his chair.

  ‘Sir Clifford!’ said the man, stopping.

  ‘Turn my chair round for me, and get me in the wheel-tracks. It’s less trouble for me.’

  The man came striding without a word. He was alert, smallish for a gamekeeper, and very quiet. Constance knew that some time ago his wife had gone off with a neighbouring collier, leaving him in his cottage with his little girl of five. Since that time he had lived alone and kept to himself, giving his child into the care of his mother in the village.

  His gun slung over his shoulder, he took hold of the back of Sir Clifford’s chair in silence. Only his quick brown eyes glanced into the face of the young wife as she stood beside the chair. Their eyes met for a second, but Constance, strangely disturbed in herself, scarcely noticed him. The man, however, silent and shut off as he was, felt the blueness and the unresolved trouble in the eyes of the young woman. But his face closed to its usual shut-off expressionless look, the mouth shut under the rather big ragged moustache.

  He turned the chair carefully, and brought it into the wheel-tracks where it would go most easily.

  ‘Na shall I wheel yer, or would yer rather manage for yerself?’ he asked, in a broad local accent, but speaking gently.

  ‘You can wheel me if you like,’ said Sir Clifford.

  ‘Ay!’ said the man.

  They set off in silence, each one looking straight ahead without communication. The brown dog ran, softly scenting. Last yellow leaves fluttered down.

  They came to the edge of the wood and saw the open park, with the big beech trees on its slopes, sheep feeding on the grass. In the grey day the old house on the summit of the slope, among old trees, seemed timeless and utterly forsaken.

  The gamekeeper stared changelessly ahead, steering the chair carefully and keeping himself obliterated. His brown moustache seemed to go fiercely in front of him. But he was vaguely thinking of my lady’s blue eyes with their indescribable trouble. She was but a girl after all. Ay, the war hit the gentry hard! Sir Clifford crippled as he was, she’d neither the pleasure of a young wife with her husband nor yet children to look forward to. Ay my word, there was trouble in her young eyes, poor thing! And everybody spoke so well of her.

  He thought of his own wife who had gone loose while he was away at the war. She didn’t have to put up with what this young thing had! No! If she’d had more to suffer perhaps she’d not have gone off, like a trollop, with a collier who drank. But let her go and let her stay. It was good riddance. There were nice women in the world, look at this young thing, married to Sir Clifford, and quiet and soft-spoken! Ay! He wasn’t the only one with troubles. This poor lass had got it worse than himself! And she was so quiet and soft-spoken, she was hardly like a lady; she was the sort of woman a man might go a long way to find nowadays. — Well, everybody must bear their own troubles and eat their own peck of dirt.

  Constance came out of the cloud of her blind agitation at last, and became aware of the gamekeeper as he pushed the heavy chair in silence. The colour was red in his face, with exertion, but he held himself detached, quite out of contact. In his
aloofness he had a peculiar clear-cut presence, she remembered he always stood out very distinct from his background whenever she had seen him. This distinctness, this clarity in his presence, gave her a certain impression of beauty, beauty that men rarely have. He was not handsome, with that rather big moustache. Yet he had a certain distinctness such as wild animals and birds have. She wondered if he had cared for that wife, a florid, common woman. He must have suffered from her commonness without knowing it. Now he kept himself quite alone, detached, in that stone cottage at the end of the wood. She knew nothing about him: she had just looked on him as one of the Wragby dependants. She knew he was a very sharp gamekeeper.

  Sir Clifford let himself be wheeled along, apathetic. And so they came home, and Clifford rested before tea.

  The days of autumn followed one another into winter. Constance took as little heed as possible. If the days would go by one after the other, unmarked, she was willing to let them. She had her duties to the house, certain responsibilities to the village. And there was always Clifford. He required her attention and occupied her feelings almost as young children would have done.

  The only thing that troubled her were strange violent disturbances within herself, with which she could not reckon. She had recurrent violent dreams, of horses, of a mare which had been feeding quietly, and suddenly went mad. And she would get up in the morning with a terrible anger upon her, so that if she had not controlled herself, she could have bullied the servants cruelly and have spoken to Clifford in savage derision. On the tip of her tongue were the terrible, torturing things she wanted to say to Clifford as he sat propped up so bright and coldly alert in bed or lay so apathetic.