AUTOGRAPH LETTER SIGNED (ALS) by LAWRENCE, D. H - 2 December 1918

Middleton-by-Wirksworth, Derby, 2 December 1918. Letter. Creases from mailing, otherwise Near Fine. A fairly early two-page AUTOGRAPH LETTER SIGNED (ALS) on the rectos of two sheets of 5" x 7-3/4" of paper from Mountain Cottage to Selina Yorke criticizing Hilda Aldington Doolittle (the poet H.D.), wife of Lawrence's close friend, Richard Aldington. Lawrence also mentions his wife Frieda, their poverty, and his attempts "to get stories and things done to save our situation," which he describes as a "low water mark." In part: "I understand well enough that sometimes one can't go out when one has promised. Such a lot of complex things go to one's make-up now, it isn't easy to live.... With Hilda, I feel one could never speak to her any more as to a human being who would simply understand: she really has lost her own self. That's why one is hopeless about knowing her. It is somehow too late. As for ourselves, I think we run a bit loose at times, but we come back. Hilda doesn't." He concludes: "I expect I shall be in London again soon. I invoke the gods for you: -- you invoke them for me. We'll have a little gay triumph yet. Never mind -- this is low water mark." Not in the Cambridge edition of THE LETTERS OF D. H. LAWRENCE, and apparently unpublished.

Although Selina Yorke is understood to have done some journalistic work, little further is known about her. Her daughter, Dorothy, generally known as "Arabella," was an expatriate American who stayed with the Lawrences at Mountain Cottage in June 1918. Lawrence portrayed her as Josephine Ford in AARON'S ROD (1922). The background to the present letter was the imminent break-up of the marriage between Richard and Hilda Aldington, and the liaison between Aldington and Dorothy Yorke.