Vol. VI No. 1 - Modernist Magazines Project

THE BERMONDSEY BOOK
of life: he can do it in a single picture. That Englishman he met at
Lucerne who, without pleasure and without joy, had gone from this
place to that place in his scheduled number of days "because he wanted
to do it," would, under another author's hands, be a comic character.
But Lawrence gives such a vision of all that was implied in that figure 5
that when he says, "My heart was wrung for my countryman, wrung
till it bled," you cannot take it lightly.
Thus when he takes one person or one event it has a universal
reference. It might be thought that his chapter in the "War in
Kangroo" giving a personal account of what happened to himself, has
an element of over-estimated self-importance. There is a kind of
reader who might very well say, in a burst of moral indignation, "Good
God man, what's all the fuss about! What's the good of parading with
such solemnity your sufferings in the war like that! And what were
your sufferings compared to others, you who lost nothing, you who
never left England, you who only had to be twice medically examined
and were not allowed to live in Cornwall after a time. You ought to
be ashamed of yourself!"
Such a person/(and I'm sure I'm not inventing her) would be
overlooking the fact that Lawrence could feel the atmosphere of hatred
that spread over England at the time to an extent that few else could
feel it, and therefore suffered in a way not known to the army of the
insensitive ; and further would be overlooking the fact that in the
chapter referred to it is not Lawrence but mankind who is suffering.
Coming back in the train from Cornwall Harriet was horrified at the
expression on Lovat's face—like that of a Crucified Christ. And to
the reader who knows how to read, that face is the face of the spirit of
righteousness in the exact sense of the word, broken down, conquered,
by the spirit of evil. It is not one sensitive man suffering but all sensitive
men suffering, not one brave soul subdued, but all. The reader
feels that it is not the writer but himself who is portrayed. Similarly
when Lovat stands on the shore of the Pacific, it is not Lovat but Man
standing on the beach of life. And when looking at the tremendous
waves he feels a rising in his soul and the falling away of importunate
thoughts, again it is not Lovat Frazer .but we ourselves who are implicated
y we too are standing there for whom questions likewise cease their
siege and problems fade, then our psyches also freely flow and our sin
is washed away.
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