39 - MY EARLY BELIEFS

Summary

I can visualise very clearly the scene of my meeting with D. H. Lawrence in 1914 (Bunny seems to suggest 1915, but my memory suggests that it may have been earlier than that) of which he speaks in the letter from which Bunny quoted at the last meeting of the Club. But unfortunately I cannot remember any fragment of what was said, though I retain some faint remains of what was felt.

It was at a breakfast party given by Bertie Russell in his rooms in Nevile's Court. There were only the three of us there. I fancy that Lawrence had been staying with Bertie and that there had been some meeting or party the night before, at which Lawrence had been facing Cambridge. Probably he had not enjoyed it. My memory is that he was morose from the outset and said very little, apart from indefinite expressions of irritable dissent, all the morning. Most of the talk was between Bertie and me, and I haven't the faintest recollection of what it was about. But it was not the sort of conversation we should have had if we had been alone. It was at Lawrence and with the intention, largely unsuccessful, of getting him to participate. We sat round the fireplace with the sofa drawn across. Lawrence sat on the right-hand side in rather a crouching position with his head down.