Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Note on contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Cue-titles
- Introduction
- 1 Drama and mimicry in Lawrence
- 2 Mischief or merriment, amazement and amusement – and malice: Women in Love
- 3 Comedy and hysteria in Aaron's Rod
- 4 D. H. Lawrence and his ‘gentle reader’: The furious comedy of Mr Noon
- 5 ‘Homunculus stirs’: Masculinity and the mock-heroic in Birds, Beasts and Flowers
- 6 Comedy and provisionality: Lawrence's address to his audience and material in his Australian novels
- 7 Lawrence's satiric style: Language and voice in St. Mawr
- 8 Humour in the letters of D. H. Lawrence
- 9 Lawrence to Larkin: A changed perspective
- Index
8 - Humour in the letters of D. H. Lawrence
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 March 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Note on contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Cue-titles
- Introduction
- 1 Drama and mimicry in Lawrence
- 2 Mischief or merriment, amazement and amusement – and malice: Women in Love
- 3 Comedy and hysteria in Aaron's Rod
- 4 D. H. Lawrence and his ‘gentle reader’: The furious comedy of Mr Noon
- 5 ‘Homunculus stirs’: Masculinity and the mock-heroic in Birds, Beasts and Flowers
- 6 Comedy and provisionality: Lawrence's address to his audience and material in his Australian novels
- 7 Lawrence's satiric style: Language and voice in St. Mawr
- 8 Humour in the letters of D. H. Lawrence
- 9 Lawrence to Larkin: A changed perspective
- Index
Summary
Here, as Frieda would say, is a letter – or part of one – to Esther Andrews, written from Cornwall in August 1917.
The Starrs are at Treveal… Last night they gave a concert in St. Ives: the Starrs: in St. Ives' Pavilion. It was called a Concert Play ‘East & West’ – composed by Starr. I went down with the Hockings: Wm. Hy, Mary, Mabel, Stanley. It was too dreadful. There was a violin solo: then Meredith intoned a dreadful poem of his own concoction: “Oh East is East & West is West & ever the twain shall meet,” fearful. He wore a long night-gown of dark green cotton with a white mark in it: & the violin moaned faintly from behind a curtain, pained. Starr has no ear, and was [illegible]. Then he was to have had an ‘original’ character, Old Rowe, the old man who looks after the mines at Treveal – who scared Gray and Heseltine, & gave Starr a bottle of rum, you remember. At the eleventh hour, old Rowe said he was buggered if he was going, one fool was enough, no need to make it two. The resourceful Meredith, however, in the afternoon came upon an elderly weed singing in the streets of St. Ives, gave him sixpence and his tea, and wherever, on the programme, it said “Daddy White, an Original Song, composed [sic] by Himself” – appeared this piece of street refuse, in Lady Mary's cotton kimono, and yowled a street song, putting up his hand occasionally, automatically, as if someone had given him a penny. […]
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Lawrence and Comedy , pp. 180 - 191Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1996