LAWRENCE EXPRESSES HIS DISGUST AT THE CONFISCATION OF HIS PAINTINGS AND THE BURNING OF HIS BOOKS LAWRENCE (David Herbert, 1885-1930, Poet, Novelist and Essayist)

Superb long Autograph letter signed with initials to Else (Jaffe Richthofen, his sister-in-law) saying that “Hans says it rains in Bavaria, & Max Mohr says it rains in Bavaria, so I suppose it does. Only now I hope it has left off. Here it is quite decent, sunny mornings, cloudy afternoons, & quite pleasant. The Schwiegermutter [mother-in-law] is here but says she will go back to the Stiff on Thursday. On Friday here ‘heissgeliebese Anita’ [beloved Anita] is due to arrive, with the nichtshoheissgelieber - aberdochgelieber Hinke [nothing dear - but dear Hinke], they will say a while here in the Löwer. [Lion] I have never met the Hinke, so I have a joy in store. We had the 50th Geburtstag bier [birthday beer] on Sunday evening, very noble, Bowle, trout, ducks and nice people - 3 Halms, 2 Schweikbards. 1 Kugler - and they all seemed very happy and we all kept it up very bravely. But alas, next day Frieda was in one of the worst moods I have ever seen here in! a seelerkafter [soulful], or however you spell it. You hear the pictures are to be returned to me, on condition they are never shown again in England, but sent away to me on the Continent, that they may never pollute that island of lily-livered angels again. What hypocrisy & poltroonery, & how I detest & despise my England. I had rather be a German or anything than belong to such a nation of craven, cowardly hypocrites. My curse on them! They will burn my four picture books, will they? So it is decreed. But they shall burn through the thread of their own existence as a nation, at the same time. Delenda est cartago! [Carthage must be destroyed] but she will destroy herself, amply. Che muoia! [Let him die]. Your mother says we are to stay here till middle September. I hope not. We have been here a month on Thursday, and when the heissgeliebse [dearest] Annie is here we shall surely be a superfluity. I should like to move in another week or ten days. Shall we come to Bavaria, to Rolsach, do you thing? or best so south to Lugano? I wonder if Hans is setting off across the mountain! We are going to tea with some Taormina friends, Americans, who are staying in. the Stephanie. Your mother says: Die wirst was schönes schen, Les Stephanie! [You’re going to make something nice, the Stephanie!]. It is all I can do not to make some really rude remark. I am so sick of all those old lies. It is terrible to be old, one becomes a bottle of old, but never mellow lies - lies, lies, lies / everything. Wisheit der Alter! [Wisdom of ages]. 19th Century lies... Only today I threw away the flowers you gathered when you were here & the Toadflax (wilde löwenmaüle) [wild snapdragons] were still fresh...”, 4 sides 4to., on lined paper, Hotel Löwen, [Lion Hotel] Lichtenthal, 13th August

Else (or Elisabeth) Jaffé-von RICHTHOFEN (1874-1973) was a national economist, factory inspector and exponent of sexual emancipation. She married Edgar Jaffé (1865–1921), another former student of Max Weber, in 1902, and he was a well-known economist and entrepreneur. Else became acquainted to intellectuals and authors, including the sociologists and economists Max Weber and Alfred Weber, the psychoanalyst Otto Gross, the writer Fanny zu Reventlow and others. She started an affair with Otto Gross with whom she had a fourth child, Peter (1907–ca. 1915). She also had an affair with her former professor Max Weber and his brother Alfred Weber, with whom she lived together in the same house for several years after her husband died. Her sister was Frieda LAWRENCE (1879-1956, Wife of DHL).
Else was born into the German nobility at Château-Salins (France). Her father was Friedrich Ernst Emil Ludwig Freiherr von Richthofen (1844–1915), an engineer in the Imperial German Army, and her mother was Anna Elise Lydia Marquier (1852–1930).
On June 14th, 1929, the Dorothy Warren Gallery in London opened an exhibition of paintings by a new artist, one not known to the public—except, of course, as the author of the recently published (and recently banned) Lady Chatterley’s Lover. The response was immense—”some 12,000” people came to the show, according to the Encyclopedia of Censorship and “aroused substantial comment, both favourable and adverse.” Art historian Andrew Graham-Dixon explained in The Telegraph. “Most of the paintings showed nude men and women embracing or otherwise communing with themselves and one another in Arcadian landscapes of an abstract character,” The art critics hated it almost unanimously, but it was a member of the public who tipped off Scotland Yard, who showed up to investigate on July 5th, confiscating 13 paintings of the 25. The octogenarian magistrate Frederick Mead who heard the case at Marlborough Police Court on August 9th, apostophised the works as “gross, coarse, hideous, unlovely and obscene.” He refused to hear such expert witnesses as Augustus John and Arnold Bennett, declaring that it was “utterly immaterial whether they are works of art or not. The most splendidly painted picture in the universe might be obscene...” and should be “put an end to, like any wild animal which is dangerous.” Despite his desire to take the case further, Lawrence was advised by his counsel to pay the five guineas costs levied against him and retire from the contest. The paintings were then returned to the gallery owners on the proviso that they would never be shown publicly again. The four volumes of reproductions were destroyed.
Together with a copy of The Vultures and the Phoenix by Robert W. Millett relating to the paintings.

Item Date:  1929

Stock No:  41992      £5000

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