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D. H. Lawrence and the

sources of movements in
European history
P. I. Crumpton
Published online: 05 Jun 2009.

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movements in European history , Renaissance and Modern Studies, 29:1, 50-65, DOI:
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 D. H. LAWRENCE
AND THE SOURCES OF
MOVEMENTS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY

by
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P. I. CRUMPTON

On 3 July 1918, in a letter to the musician, Cecil Gray, Lawrence revealed

the possibility that he might write a history textbook for Oxford University Press:
'The Oxford Press said I might do a school book of European History. If only I
could get books of reference I would.'1
This was a surprising project to be offered to Lawrence, not least because
there was at that time an increasing tendency for history textbooks to be written by
specialists. The idea had come from an acquaintance of Lawrence's, Vere Collins,
who had been seeking a way to help him ever since the prosecution of The
Rainbow in 1915. The chance came with the growing need for school textbooks on
European history as a result of urgings by the Ministry of Education. Collins,
responsible for secondary school books at Oxford's London branch, had a high
opinion of Lawrence's intellectual versatility and he had been struck 'by the
knowledge he showed of history'. As there had already been some recent
publications catering for the upper forms of grammar schools, Collins suggested
that Lawrence wrote 'an elementary text-book for junior forms in grammar, or
upper forms in primary, schools'.2
Surprising as the offer was, and given that he was not a historian, it was
equally surprising that Lawrence responded favourably to it. But it came at a time
when he was in dire need of help. He had been unable to find a publisher who
would risk taking on Women in Love and, with newsprint rationing reducing the
size of journals, he would have found it increasingly difficult to place essays and
stories. As he wrote later: 'We were poor; who was going to bother to publish me
and to pay for my writings, in 1918 and 1919?'3 If he could produce an acceptable
manuscript for Collins, then Oxford University Press would pay him £50. At this
time, too, he had no work in progress. 'I have finished all the things I am writing
1
The Letters of D.H. Lawrence, Volume III, ed. James T. Boulton and Andrew Robertson
(Cambridge, 1984), p.261. Subsequent references will appear in the text, giving volume and
page number only.
2
D.H. Lawrence: A Composite Biography, ed. Edward Nehls (Madison, Wisconsin, 1957-9),
I, pp.470-1.
3
Phoenix II: Uncollected, Unpublished and other Prose Works by D.H. Lawrence, ed. War-
ren Roberts and Harry T. Moore (London 1968), p.303.
 Lawrence and Movements in European History 51

at present-have a complete blank in front of me-feel very desperate, and ready

for anything, good or bad'(111,256).
But it would not be true to say that Lawrence regarded the task simply as
hackwork. He had a genuine interest in it. He was nearing the end of his reading
of Edward Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, which he had begun in
April, and the book may well have contributed to a revival of his spirits and a
renewal of hope for the future which he was experiencing at this time. Although
the war still had some months and more bloodletting to come, Lawrence had
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begun to 'see a turn in the tide of affairs, in the world, for the better' (111,246). He
was enjoying reading Gibbon, whom he admired, regarding him as one of the few
historians who possessed a genuine '.historical sense',4 and he would have found in
Gibbon's monumental work many ideas with which he was in sympathy-a sense of
impersonal forces working through historic events, a view of human nature as
being largely unchanged by history, a belief in an elite minority and a contempt for
the servile masses. Above all, Gibbon asserted that the destructive barbarian
invasions of the Roman empire had resulted in the-emergence of 'the most civilised
nations of modern Europe' (EG, 1,208). Lawrence himself had treated 'the
process of destructive creation' in the unpublished Women in Love and here the
great eighteenth-century historian confirmed history as a continuing process of
death and rebirth—the confirrriation of a view that enabled Lawrence to reassert
his faith in human possibilities and to step beyond Rupert Birkin's misanthropic
visions. Thus it is not surprising that reading Gibbon had put Lawrence 'in a
historical mood' (111,262). He had always been interested in the relationship
between the past and the present and his reactions to Gibbon indicate an affinity
with the conclusions he judged the great historian had come to regarding the
human race. And now, at a time when the teacher and preacher in him was very
evident, the Oxford project would give him access to an audience of the
impressionable young-just when all other outlets seemed blocked. Though
penury may have been the main inducement for Lawrence to take up Collins'
suggestion, the invitation did present him with the opportunity to engage in his
current concerns; that he regarded the task as far more important than simple
hackwork is evident in his statement to Nancy Henry, an employee of Oxford
University Press, when he sent her the sample opening chapters on 26 July 1918: 'I
wanted to make a serious reader that would convey the true historic impression to
children who are beginning to grasp realities' (111,268-69).
Once Oxford had accepted the opening chapter which he had written in
July, Lawrence wrote the rest of the book at great speed between December 1918
and early February of the following year. An additional chapter, on the
unification of Italy, was written at Oxford's request at the end of October 1920.
Movements in European History was eventually published in February 1921 (all
quotations are taken from the Oxford edition of 1971 and abbreviated to MEH).
It has long been known that Lawrence used Gibbon's Decline and Fall as a
source for his 'little History'-indeed he drew upon it for over a third of his
4
Unpublished letter from Frieda Lawrence to L.C. Powell (University of California, Los
Angeles).
 52 P. I. Crumpton

chapter-but Gibbon's work did not extend beyond the fifteenth century and
clearly Lawrence would need other authorities for the writing of the textbook.
Catherine Carswell has claimed that Lawrence 'never collected much of a library,
as he was obliged so often to disperse his belongings'.5 But despite his travels,
Lawrence rarely seemed to find much difficulty in borrowing books from friends
and acquaintances (his niece, Margaret Needham, can recall a bookcase filled with
books at Mountain Cottage where Movements in European History was written),
and there can be little doubt that Oxford University Press made books available to
him-amongst which would be the three Oxford textbooks published for upper
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forms in grammar schools that he drew upon for parts of his history.
It is now possible to identify virtually all the 'books of reference' that
Lawrence utilised, and because of this we can also draw some conclusions about
his method of working. There is a possibility that Lawrence began writing his
textbook by attempting a genuine synthesis of his material, trying to combine a
number of sources in such a way as to avoid being too reliant on any one of them.
But it is clear, from the heavily emended state of the MS, (in the possession of Mr.
George Lazarus), that the earlier parts of the opening chapter caused Lawrence
considerable problems. In its original version the chapter was entitled 'Rome and
Constantinople' and, at this stage, Lawrence was trying to achieve a too even
treatment of too large a period of time. He was forced to narrate and he was
giving himself little scope to select any episode for more detailed treatment; nor
was he yet attempting to build imaginatively upon his sources. And despite his
revisions, which included breaking the account into the opening two chapters of
the published version, he never managed to be satisfied with his handling of the
earlier history of Rome. He later acknowledged that Chapter 1 was the worst part
of the book (111,701). Certainly, the result was a very potted history of Rome
from its beginnings to the 'Age of the Antonines'. And the account is far too
sketchy to enable us to identify the source-books Lawrence relied upon.
If Lawrence did indeed attempt to write 'independent' of his sources, then it
would be easy to foresee that he would have problems. He was not a specialist and
he would lack the historian's discriminating overview necessary for him to
assimilate, interpret, select and organise the data in such a way as to result in a
synthesis sophisticated enough to be satisfactorily and effectively 'his own'. Such
independence from his 'books of reference' was not possible for him, and,
significantly, it was only when he came to base his account of Constantine and the
founding of Byzantium upon Gibbon's detailed treatment of those same events
that Lawrence found a satisfactory way of working. This section of the book
represents a considerable advance in vividness and energy of expression compared
with the immediately preceding account of Rome. From this point on, Lawrence
would usually ground each particular section of his history in one source-book
rather than attempt to draw together and synthesise data from a number of
sources. He would select that source which treated the events in question with
sufficient interest and at adequate length to provide enough detail, read it up, and
'proceed to write' (111,622).
5
Catherine Carswell, The Savage Pilgrimage: a Narrative of D.H. Lawrence (London, 1932),
p.113.
 Lawrence and Movements in European History 53

An identification of the authorities Lawrence used will make the method

clear (the place of publication will be London unless otherwise stated). With one
exception, he preferred to base his work on Gibbon whenever that writer provided
adequate material (from editorial matter that Lawrence incorporated into his own
text it can be determined that he used either Dent's Everyman's Library edition of
Decline and Fall, edited by Oliphant Smeaton (1910) (hereafter EG), or the larger
edition edited by William Smith with notes by Dean Milman and M. Guizot (1862)
on which the Everyman's is based). The chapters on 'Constantinople',
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'Christianity', 'The Goths and Vandals', 'The Huns', and 'The Crusades' are all
based on Gibbon's work. The one exception to this preference for Gibbon was for
the chapter on 'The Germans'; here Lawrence elected to use Tacitius's Germania
(The Agrícola and Germany, trans. Alfred John Church and William Jackson
Brodribb, revised ed., 1885), with a few supplementary details being added from
Gibbon-who, incidentally also used Tacitus as his primary source.
For the early history of France, in the chapters on 'Gaul' and 'The Franks
and Charlemagne', Lawrence turned to G.W. Kitchin, A History of France,
(Oxford, 1881) (hereafter K) because this period was only treated incidentally in
Decline and Fall. The least satisfactory part of Gibbon's work was that dealing
with mediaeval Europe, and for his chapters on.'The Popes and the Emperors',
'Italy after the Hohenstaufens', and 'The End of the Age of Faith', Lawrence
relied on Kenneth Bell, Mediaeval Europe: A Textbook of European History
1095-1254, (Oxford, 1911), R.B. Mowat, The Later Middle Ages: A History of
Western Europe 1254-1494, (Oxford, 1917) (hereafter RBM, Emmeline M.
Tanner, The Renaissance and Reformation: A Textbook of European History 1494-
1610, (Oxford, 1908) (hereafter EMT) and A.J. Grant, A History of Europe,
(1913) (hereafter AJG). He drew extensively upon Gibbon's vivid and lengthy
narrative of the first crusade, but as Gibbon had deliberately chosen to treat
subsequent crusades only briefly, Bell provided the material for the rest of
Lawrence's chapter on those events. Mowat was the source for 'The Renaissance',
Tanner for 'The Reformation', and Kitchin first, and then Tanner, for that part of
the chapter 'The Grand Monarch' which dealt with France up to the time of
Richelieu. For the rest of the chapters written in 1918 and 1919, A.J. Grant was
the single main source.
That Lawrence essentially confined himself to using one source at a time,
even when more than one authority is called upon within a particular theme or.
chapter can be demonstrated by his selection of sources for his account of 'The
Popes and the Emperors': he begins the main theme with Gregory the Great, all
the particularised detail being taken from Gibbon; then, for the Saxon kings of
Germany, treated only briefly by Gibbon, he turns to A.J. Grant; when he reaches
the period treated by Bell, Grant's less detailed history is superseded for the
account of the Hohenstaufens. When Oxford asked for an extra chapter, on
Italy, in October 1920, Lawrence's approach remained the same. The preferred
source was George Macaulay Trevelyan's trilogy on the Risorgimento: Garibaldi's
Defence of the Roman Republic, (1907), Garibaldi and the Thousand, (1909) and
Garibaldi and the Making of Italy, (1911), which supplied the material for the story
of Garibaldi up to his departure for South America, the event in Rome in 1848,
and the exploits of the 'Thousand'. For the period before 1821, the wider picture
 54 P. I. Crumpton

of Italy in 1848, and the years 1861 to 1870, Lawrence needed to turn to the
volumes of Bolton King, A History of Italian Unity: A Political History of Italy
front 1814 to 1871, (1899). The method is one of compiling an account by
'stitching' together material taken from the sources, rather than one of making a
synthesis of that material.
In addition to the sources identified above, Lawrence was indebted to The
Annals of Tacitus, translated by A.J. Church and W.J. Brodribb, (1869, reprinted
1906), for the quotation concerning Nero's persecution of the Christians (MEH,
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p.31). He also supplemented his main sources with a scattering of details which
originate in Caesar's Gallic War, Dio's Roman History, Josephus's Jewish War,
Plutarch's Lives and Suetonius's The Twelve Caesars. Although editions of these
classical works were in print at the time Lawrence was writing the history, it is
impossible to determine conclusively whether he used them directly.
The publications listed above provided almost all the historical material
utilised in Movements in European History. However, it is clear that a small
number of details used by Lawrence for his accounts of the Jewish revolts against
the Romans, of Savonarola (Frieda was reading 'a lovely book of Savonarola' in
November 1916),6 of Leonardo da Vinci, the court at Versailles, the aftermath of
the Thirty Years War, Frederick the Great, Napoleon, and of German unification,
have been taken from other authorities. These additional sources remain
unidentified.
Writing this school textbook was a kind of task that Lawrence had never
undertaken before, a type of assignment that he would never repeat, and the work
was rarely without its problems. Writing to Nancy Henry in January 1919, when
the book was virtually complete, he confessed: 'Every chapter, I suffer before I
can begin, because I do loathe the broken pots of historical facts. But once I can
get hold of the thread of the developing significance, then I am happy, and get
ahead' (111,322). When the relevant material was concentrated together over
consecutive pages and chapters of the chosen source-as it was with Gibbon on the
founding of Byzantium and the first crusade, with Kitchin on Gaul and on the
Franks, with Tanner's accounts of Luther and the Reformation, and with A.J.
Grant on France from Louis XV to the Revolution and on the unification of
Germany-it would be relatively easy to trace the development of the theme. But
there were times when Lawrence had to move about within his source to bring
together the data for a particular topic: Gibbon's writing on the Goths was
chronologically dispersed across three volumes, and several chapters intervened
between his two sections on the Huns; Bell, Mowat and A.J. Grant had organised
their work into chronological periods and to compile his sections on the
Hohenstaufens, the crusades (other than the first), the development of Florence,
the religious movements leading up to the Reformation, and the rise of Prussia,
Lawrence needed to draw together details extracted from chapters that were
separated in his sources.

6
Frieda Lawrence, The Memoirs and Correspondence, ed. E.W. Tedlock (London, 1961),
p.217.
 Lawrence and Movements in European History 55

As he knew from the outset that he would be, Lawrence was very dependent
on his sources for the historical data, but in the early chapters that he wrote in July
1918 for Oxford's approval, he worked actively on the material rather than
reproducing slavishly. Not only was his enthusiasm for the task of making 'a
serious reader' at its height at this time, but also Oxford's assignment that he
should write 'a series of vivid sketches of movements and people',7 in itself forced
him to make a comprehensive adaptation of the material available for the chapters
on 'Christianity' and on 'The Germans'.
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Gibbon had set out to conduct 'a candid but rational enquiry into the
progress and establishment of Christianity' (ZsG,I,430), and his empirical approach
resulted in one chapter dealing with the reasons for the growth and triumph of
Christianity and another describing and investigating the causes of the Romans'
treatment of the Christians. Lawrence required a less analytic, simpler and more
unified design, and by utilising his own knowledge of Christianity he was able to
alter Gibbon's ordering of the material and to select details from across Gibbon's
chapters, in order to piece together an unfolding narrative of the development of
Christianity. The same intention to produce a relatively simple, continuous
narrative dictated the adaptation of the material taken from Tacitus. The
Germania consists of forty-six brief sections structured into two parts: those
dealing with the general customs of the Germans and those describing the
particular characteristics of individual tribes. Such a discontinuous arrangement
did not suit Lawrence's purpose and he built up his own narrative sequence by
extracting details from a range of Tacitus's sections. In each case there was a
sufficient degree of assimilation and adaptation of the details to claim that here
Lawrence was working in a way that was typical of any textbook writer's reliance
on existing sources.
A similarly active response to his source-material is evident in Lawrence's
handling of Gibbon's account of Constantine's founding of Byzantium. Gibbon's
version was detailed and vivid enough to tempt Lawrence to follow it closely, but
he made sufficient changes in characterisation and point of view to alter the story
of the origin of the Empire's new capital from being simply an act of political
prudence and personal vanity on Constantine's part to being a dramatic and heroic
realisation of an old man's vision.
Gibbon is, from the start, ambivalent about Constantine, describing him as
an emperor of immense stature and achievement, yet often indicating his cunning
and unscrupulousness, his vanity and personal ambition. In Lawrence's version he
is ever 'the great Constantine' (MEH, p.lO)-very much a hero figure from first to
last. We can see this process at work in the descriptions of the young Constantine;
in Gibbon he is described as:
tall and majestic; he was dexterous in all his exercises, intrepid in war, affable in
peace; in his whole conduct the active spirit of youth was tempered by habitual
prudence; and while his mind was engrossed by ambition, he appeared cold and
insensible to the allurements of pleasure. The favour of the people and soldiers,

7
D.H. Lawrence: A Composite Biography, I, 471.
 56 P. I. Crumpton

who had named him as a worthy candidate for the rank of Caesar, served only to
exasperate the jealousy of Galerius (£G,I,387).
When Lawrence came to use this passage he removed any tinge of blemish.
There is no suggestion of any lack of human warmth in this portrait of the young
hero:
He was. however, brave and clever and lovable. In appearance he was tall,
dignified, handsome and pleasant. The soldiers loved him, and he soon rose to be
a leading officer.
Galerius, knowing his right of birth, was jealous of him from the first. Seeing how
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the soldiers loved the young officer and respected him in spite of all, Galerius was
afraid of him as a dangerous rival (Af£//,pp. 10-11).
The whole picture is warmer; Constantine is made to appear more
human-a figure made easier for young readers to sympathise with than the cold,
almost invisible character described by Gibbon.
The same process is at work concerning Constantine's motives in founding
Byzantium. In Gibbon, Constantine turns away from a weakened and declining
Rome. He regards her 'with cold indifference' and, in any case, is 'not insensible
to the ambition of founding a city which might perpetuate the glory of his own
name' (EG,11,70-71). Gibbon's distinctively eighteenth-century phrasing
highlights the haughty vanity of the emperor. Lawrence, in a passage of his own
invention, provides Constantine with a more appealing motive: 'A new world was
to begin, and Constantine wished to give it its new centre. He disliked Rome, the
old, terrible mistress of the past. She was too much stained with blood and
violence' (MEH,p.l3). Again, Gibbon explains that Constantine selected the
specific site for its strategic and commercial advantages (EG,II,71) and then later
cynically refers to the emperor's wanting his founding of the city to be seen as the
'eternal decrees of divine wisdom' (EG,II,77). Gibbon scoffs at the emperor's
'modest silence' in not revealing how 'the celestial inspiration was communicated'
and goes on to ascribe the story of 'the nocturnal vision which appeared to the
fancy of Constantine' to 'ingenuity of succeeding writers' (EG,11,77-78).
Lawrence, on the other hand, ignores Gibbon's mocking tone and attributes our
knowledge of the dream to Constantine himself. He brings the description of it
forward to the early part of his own account and omits all other reasons for
choosing the particular location, thus causing the siting of Byzantium to be solely
due to the emperor's unearthly vision.
Gibbon supplies an objective, precise description of the site:
If we survey Byzantium in the extent which it acquired with the august name of
Constantinople, the figure of the Imperial city may be represented under that of an
unequal triangle. The obtuse point, which advances towards the east and the shores
of Asia, meets and repels the waves of the Thracian Bosphorus. The northern side
of the city is bounded by the harbour, and the southern is washed by the Propontis
or Sea of Marmora. The base of the triangle is opposed to the west and terminates
the continent of Europe (EG.11,71).
Lawrence adapts the point of view, causing Constantine to go 'out on the hills to
look' at the site and revealing it to the reader through the emperor's eyes:
He looked towards Asia, and saw himself almost surrounded by waters. In front of
him, looking east, the land narrowed to a blunt point, past which ran the swift blue
waters of the Bosphorus, pouring rapidly through winding straits from the Black
 Lawrence and Movements in European History 57

Sea, into the Sea of Marmora, towards the Mediterranean. On his right hand side,
southwards, lay the waters of the Sea of Marmora, then.called the Propontis,
washing the sunny foot of the land; and orí his left hand side, a mile or two away,
like a wide river curved the beautiful inlet from the Bosphorus, now called the
Golden Horn, the harbour to the town, shining and clear receiving a little river from
the hills (MEH, p.14).
Gibbon's account goes on to give a more detailed description of the area, including
much about its historical and legendary associations. But Lawrence, wanting to be
consistent with his chosen point of view, confines himself to seeing through
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Constantine's eyes and selects only the name of the harbour and the point about
the river flowing into it to complete the passage'quoted above. Here, Lawrence is
functioning as the creative artist rather than the historian; he is utilising Gibbon's
material but adapting it for his own purpose.
We can see the same thing happening with the description of Constantine
tracing the boundaries of Byzantium. Here is Gibbon's account:
On foot, with a lance in his hand, the emperor himself led the solemn procession,
and directed the line which was traced as the boundary of the destined capital, till
the growing circumference was observed with astonishment by the assistants, who,
at length, ventured to observe that he had already exceeded the most ample
measure of a great city. 'I shall still advance,' replied Constantine, 'till HE, the
invisible guide who marches before me, thinks proper to stop' (EG,11,78).
In Lawrence's version this becomes:
Clothed in the purple, with a lance in his hand, and at the head of a glittering
throng, Constantine set out to trace the third side, the base of this wide triangle. He
moved slowly forward, drawing the line with his lance. Attendants followed,
surveyors, taking accurate mark. Then came the great throng of courtiers and
people and soldiers, for it was high holiday. On and on went Constantine, past
fields and orchards and vineyards, olive woods, and groves of laurel arid pine, over
little brooks and up the hillside. The people followed slowly, amazed at the
immense space Constantine was enclosing. They murmured among themselves, and
at last one ventured to remark that already the Emperor had enclosed more space
than was necessary for the most ample city. 'I shall go on,' replied Constantine, 'till
He, the invisible Guide, who marches before me, thinks proper to stop' (MEH,
pp.15-16).
There is no argument about Lawrence's extreme closeness to his source-he
even borrows the triangle image that Gibbon had used earlier. There is no
attempt to disguise the indebtedness. What Lawrence does is to add a few
imagined details-the adaptation is slight, but this, along with the rhythm of his
prose, is very effective in increasing the vividness of the description and capturing
the excitement of the occasion. The reader is brought close to the event. This
building imaginatively upon the source-material is evident again when Lawrence
takes Gibbon's statement, 'A multitude of labourers and artificers urged the
conclusion of the work with incessant toil' (£G,II,80); and expands it into this
description of Constantine coming to view the work in progress:
And the Emperor, in person, wearing his imperial cloak of deep crimson, went to
the harbour to see the ships unlade, thousands of men heaving and hauling, or to the
hills to see the foundations dug, or to the level places to see the first streets laid out,
or to the river to see the aqueduct begun, or to the outskirts to see the deep foss dug
out for the city walls (MEH, p.16).
Throughout the narrative, Lawrence has kept the reader close by the side of
Constantine, the hero figure. Finally, he described the raising of 'the colossal
 58 P. I. Crumpton

bronze statue of Apollo' as the thrilling culmination of the emperor's dream

(MEH, p.17). Lawrence's description of the statue as the 'magnificent work of the
old, dead masters of Greece' gives no hint that Gibbon had used it to symbolise
'the rapacious vanity of a despot' on whose orders the cities of Greece and Asia
had been despoiled of their most valuable ornaments' (EG,11,81).
Lawrence was, of course, engaged in bringing the creative powers of the
artist to bear on the historical material. Such an approach would enable him to
use his creative talent to compensate for the fact that he was not a trained
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historian. It also accorded with his view of history. Lawrence had a great
reverence for the past, and, as he indicated in his introduction to Movements in
European History, it would be an insult to the past if history was to be simply the
telling of 'stories and anecdotes', and it would be mere hack-work to be just
'ascertaining and verifying' facts and ascribing a 'certain sequence and order to
such facts'. Rather-'history proper is a true art, not fictional, but nakedly
veracious', and, at this stage anyway, he was using his unique gifts in an attempt to
enact the historical event, to bring it alive on the page in such a way that his
readers could 'live it once more' and be 'fulfilled in the past'. In this, Lawrence
was in step with current thinking on the subject. In 'Clio, a Muse', an essay first
printed in 1903 and republished in 1913, G.M. Trevelyan had argued that 'a
completely or wholly true account' of historical events was impossible and that the
best writers of history would need 'the warmest human sympathy, the highest
imaginative powers' 8 educationalists were advising teachers to select material
which would result in 'making the past live in imagination'. 9 In this context it
begins to seem less surprising that Oxford University Press invited Lawrence to put
together 'a series of vivid sketches of movements and people'.
Perhaps the best example of Lawrence's attempt to bring the past alive on
the page, using the methods of the imaginative writer, is his description of the
Hercynian forest. With his fascination for trees and his firsthand acquaintance
with southern Germany, it is not surprising that he chose to develop this sentence
from Gibbon:
In the time of Caesar, the reindeer, as well as the elk and the wild bull, was a native
of the Hercynian forest, which then over-shadowed a great part of Germany and
Poland (EG,I,210).
Gibbon added a footnote, referring to Caesar's statement in the Gallic War,
that men had travelled sixty days into the forest without reaching its limits. And
Lawrence may have recalled that J.G. Frazer had mentioned 'the solitude, the
gloom, the silence of the forest' in The Golden Bough, (2nd ed., revised, 1900,1,
167). From these few details Lawrence developed his vivid set-piece description:
No one knew how far it stretched. German natives who had travelled through it
had gone on for sixty days without coming to the end of it. In the illimitable shadow
the pine-trunks rose up bare, the ground was brown with pine-needles, there was no
under-growth. A great silence pervaded everywhere, not broken by the dense
whisper of the wind above. Between these shadowy trunks flitted deer, reindeer
with branching horns ran in groups, or the great elk, with his massive antlers, stood

8
Quoted in Arthur Marwick, The Nature of History (London, 1970), pp.56-58;
9
James Welton, Principles and Methods of Teaching (2nd ed., London, 1909) p.240.
 Lawrence and Movements in European History 59

darkly alone and pawed the ground, before he trotted away into the deepening
shadow of trunks. In places fir-trees, like enormous Christmas trees, stood packed
close together, their dark green foliage impenetrable. Then the pines would begin
again. Or there were beeches in great groves, and elder-bushes, here and there: or
again a stream or pond, where many bushes grew green and flowery, or big, heathy,
half-open stretches covered with heather and whortleberries or cranberries. Across
these spaces flew the wild swans, and the fierce, wild bull stood up to his knees in
the swamp. Then the forest closed round again, the never-ending dark fir-trees,
where the tusked wild boar ran rooting and bristling in the semi-darkness under the
shadows, ready to fight for his life with the grey, shadowy wolves which would
sometimes encircle him:
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Winter came early! In October the first snow began to sprinkle down. And then
for months the unending forests lay under snow, branches tore and cracked,
reindeer pawed the snow to come at the moss or herbage, wolves ran in packs
threading their way between the trunks, and the great bear lay curled up asleep in
his hole. Meanwhile the perishing German natives would creep forth to hunt,
braving the cold with their half-covered limbs (MEH, p,46).
When Lawrence started work again on the history book in December 1918,
after receiving the go-ahead from Oxford, he found the task onerous. His letters
at this time repeatedly express his repugnance at having to do the work-'I am
struggling with a European History for Schools, and cursing myself black in the
face... I'm doing work I don't want to do' (111,304). Whether the change in
attitude was caused by the troubles he was having with Frieda at that time, or
because he was depressed and unwell during those 'cold, black December days,
alone in the cottage on the cold hills'10, or simply because he had lost interest in the
project during the intervening months, he did not again actively manipulate the
source-material to the extent that he had done for the sample chapters.
He still occasionally attempted to build imaginately upon his sources.
Kitchin invites his readers simply to imagine the Gaul 'living in open villages, in
clearing of his forests, or beside the rivers, in circular wattled huts' (K, 1,17), but
Lawrence actually tries to evoke the scene:
Outside the town were the fields where the slaves and freemen worked in half-
hearted fashion, for they thought it more manly to crow challenge, and fight and
steal. Round the huts lay half-naked children, rolling in the dirt, and ragged,
unkept women peered out suspiciously. Pigs grunted around, a goat was tied to a
pole (MEH, p.86).
Tanner simply informs the reader of Luther's disillusionment with Rome in 1511
(EMT, pp.132-3), whereas Lawrence chooses to develop the experience:
Then he saw all the luxury, splendour, and injustice of the Papal Court. He saw
how proud the bishops and cardinals were, how they scorned such a nobody as he
was. He felt they all held him beneath notice, in Rome. Only God would
remember him. In his poor lodging, moreover, he heard many bitter complaints of
men who had waited in vain for justice and a hearing at the court, and of men who
were spoiled, broken in life by the cruel arrogance of prelates and pope. While all
the gorgeous feastings and shows went on, he thought of those who were ruined,
whose grievances were hopeless. He turned to God whose voice spoke to his own
heart, and wondered what all this pomp had to do with Him (MEH, pp.209-10).

10
D.H. Lawrence, Kangaroo (Harmondsworth, 1975), p.285.
 60 P. I. Crumpton

Here Lawrence is still working on his material in the ways of the novelist,
projecting himself into people and events. But the Oxford Press was insisting he
complete the book, and one explanation for the fact that he managed to complete
fourteen chapters between December 1918 and the end of January of the following
year, could be that he now handled his source-material more passively, simply
concentrating on producing the shortened, simplified accounts appropriate for the
intended audience. And his method of working, relying upon single particular
sources for discrete sections of his book, always carried the danger of drawing him
excessively close to the source-material. So closely did he draw upon his sources
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for the sequences and details of his accounts that it can truly be said of him that he
now largely followed the source-books rather than consulted them. And this
closeness was characteristic of Lawrence's handling of whichever authority he was
using.
The process at times virtually became one of simplifying the vocabulary and
sentence-structure of the original as in this account of people preparing to depart
on a crusade:
Their wives and sisters were desirous of partaking the danger and merit of the
pilgrimage: their portable treasures were conveyed in bars of silver and gold; and
the princes and barons were attended by their equipage of hounds and hawks to
amuse their leisure and to supply their table. The difficulty of procuring subsistence
for so many myriads of men and horses engaged them to separate their forces: their
choice or situation determined the road; and it was agreed to meet in the
neighbourhood of Constantinople (EG, VI, 58).
The wives and sisters of the gentry wished to go with them. They converted their
possessions into bars of gold and silver, and, mounted on horseback, gathered
together. Princes and barons took with them hounds and hawks to amuse their
leisure. The hosts were too many to go together, they would never find food, so
they agreed to take separate routes, and meet near Constantinople (MEH, pp.141-
42).
Or with this description of the practices of the Calimala Gild:
All cloth sent out with the Gild's trademark was guaranteed to be of just measure
and quality. The strictest probity was enforced on the Gild members: if a fine was
imposed but not paid, the recalcitrant was expelled by the Consuls of the Gild. As
expulsion meant practically the inability to trade in Florence, the penalty was
sufficiently severe (RBM, p.50).
Every roll of cloth was stamped with the mark of the Guild, and this was guarantee
enough. There would be no false statement of length or breadth, no flaw in the
pieces, the dyes would be fast. If one of the workers or packers attempted fraud or
even slovenliness, he was fined. If he did not pay the fine he was expelled by the
consuls of the Guild. And then, no more work for him in Florence (MEH, p.162).
The older sources and the specialised works written for adult readers
readers-Gibbon, Kitchin, Bolton King, Trevelyan-generally required more
adaptation in this respect than did A.J. Grant's general history and the Oxford
textbooks. Gibbon, writing for mature readers in an eighteenth-century style of
distanced formality, obviously demanded more modification than Tanner who was
writing for 'the lower forms of schools' (EMT, p.iv) in the early twentieth century.
Throughout the book, Lawrence was alert to episodes of heightened
dramatic interest but how closely he came to reproducing the original versions can
be illustrated by this account of the surrender of Vercingetorix:
 Lawrence and Movements in European History 61

Next day he called his men together, and told them he was going to Caesar, that by
sacrificing himself he might save them. And the last scene was worthy of the rest,
and curiously Gallic. Caesar sat on a high tribunal within the Roman lines.
Suddenly a splendid horseman, fully armed, his steed covered with bright trappings,
came in at a gallop, and reined up his horse at Caesar's feet. It was Vercingetorix,
who dismounted, threw down his arms, and silently awaited his doom... Caesar ...
broke out into bitter words and bade the lictors seize him. Vercingetorix was
reserved to 'make a Roman show'; then for six years he lay in prison, before the axe
fell and released his noble soul (K, 1,34).
Calling his starving, faithful bands together, he told them he would save them.
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Then he bade his attendants dress him in his most splendid armour and apparel.
Meanwhile, in the opposite camp Caesar was sitting in high tribunal amongst his
officers. Suddenly there was shouting, a commotion. A chieftain in splendid
glittering armour, with plumes waving from his helmet, bracelets of gold on his
arms, his horse shining with silver and coloured cloths galloped into his presence.
He leaped from his horse. It was seen he was a Gaul, for he wore the close tartan
breeches no Roman would put on. The guards stood round him. He flung himself
at Caesar's feet, crying out that he yielded. It was Vercingetorix yielding himself up
to save his beleagured men.
Caesar attacked him with bitter words, bade the lictors seize him. Vercingetorix
was sent to Rome to be paraded in Caesar's triumph; then he was kept for six years
in prison, fretting his noble soul; then at last beheaded (MEH. pp.88-89).
Another interesting example is the account of the death of the Roman
Emperor, Valens, where Lawrence slightly changes the detail of the source, either
to intensify the drama, or because he has mis-read it:
Valens was removed from the field of battle to a neighbouring cottage, where they
attempted to dress his wound and to provide for his future safety. But this humble
retreat was instantly surrounded by the enemy; they tried to force the door; they
were provoked by a discharge of arrows from the roof; till at length, impatient of
delay, they set fire to a pile of dry faggots, and consumed the cottage with the
Roman Emperor and his train. Valens perished in the flames; and a youth, who
dropped from the window, alone escaped, to attest the melancholy tale (EG, III,
45).
... the emperor was wounded. He escaped, but whilst his wounds were being
dressed in a cottage the shouting Goths surrounded the house. Unable to burst in
the door, they shot burning arrows into the thatched roof, the house was soon in
flames, consuming its inmates. Only one soldier dropped from a window to carry
the awful news to Constantinople (MEH, pp.60-61).
On occasion he reproduced the source almost word for word, as in this
description of Charlemagne:
...he wore the dress of his country, that is, the Frankish dress-a linen shirt and
drawers next his skin; above these a tunic with a silken hem, and the breeches of the
same; then he wrapped his knees and legs down to the ankles with strips of linen;
he wore boots on his feet; his shoulders and breast he guarded in winter with an
overcoat of fur (of ermine or otter); over that a Frankish cloak, and, slung across
him by a gold or silver belt, a scabbarded sword... Foreign dress, how rich soever it
might be, he hated... At ordinary times he dressed almost like any of the common
folk around him (K,\, 120).
He wore the Frankish dress: that is, a linen shirt and drawers next his skin; above
these a tunic with a silken hem, and breeches of the same stuff as the tunic; then he
wrapped his knees and legs down to the ankles with strips of linen; in winter he had
a loose overcoat of fur, ermine or otter, short but warm; and over this he wore a
coloured Frankish cloak, and slung across him by a gold or silver belt, a scabbarded
sword. He hated foreign dress. He lived and ate among the Franks just as one of
 62 P. I. Crumpton

themselves, without show (MEH, pp. 108-09).

And with this account of Gregory the Great:
The rent or the produce of these estates was transported to the mouth of the Tiber,
at the risk and expense of the pope... On the four great festivals he divided their
quarterly allowance to the clergy, to his domestics, to the monasteries, the churches,
the places of burial, the almshouses, and the hospitals of Rome, and the rest of the
diocese. On the first day of every month he distributed to the poor, according to the
season, their stated portion of corn, wine, cheese, vegetables, oil, fish, fresh
provisions, clothes, and money (£G,IV, 478).
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The rents and produce of the church estates were brought to the mouth of the Tiber,
and on the four great sacred festivals, the Pope divided their quarterly allowance to
the clergy, to his domestics, to the monasteries, the churches, the places of burial,
tha alms- houses, and the hospital of Rome and of the diocese of Rome. On the
first day of the month he distributed to the poor, according to season, their
allowance of corn, wine, cheese, oil, vegetables, fish, cloth, and money (MEH,
pp.114-15).
The same plagiarising of the source-material is evident in this description of the
work of revolutionary tribunals in Paris:
Ordinary offenders were sent back to prison, but those who were believed to be
friendly to the monarchy and therefore hostile to the new Government, were thrust
out from the doors of the prisons and massacred in the street. For three, and to
some extent for five, days this hideous work went on, and it is probable that about
1500 persons, among whom were to be found several women, were butchered
(AJG, p.575).
Ordinary offenders, thieves or scoundrels, were sent back to prison. But men
suspected of being friendly to the monarchy were thrust out of the doors and
massacred in the street by the bloodthirsty, howling mob. This went on for three,
even for five days, and more than a thousand people were butchered (MEH,
p.245).
Now, Lawrence was not unusual amongst the writers of history books for
schools in relying heavily upon secondary sources; all textbook authors borrow
from the relevant authorities. The difference in Lawrence's case lies in the nature
and extent of his borrowing. The conventional position was put by J.A.R.
Marriott in the preface to his The Remaking of Modern Europe (1909), a book
written 'For the Higher Forms of Schools', where he confessed his indebtedness to
other writers in this way: 'I have made free use of the works of my predecessors in
the same field, but I hope that I have not, without acknowledgement, appropriated
their ideas or phrases. No one, however, who has been for many years teaching a
particular subject can be at all certain that his most cherished ideas and most
original phrases are really his own.' Lawrence, however, did, consciously and
deliberately, borrow ideas and phrases from his sources and the appropriation was
not acknowledged-even though he made little attempt to disguise this
indebtedness. It is this very closeness with which he adhered to his sources that
has enabled them largely to be discovered.
Despite the archetypal nature of Lawrence's introduction to Movements in
European History, where he claims that the book 'is an attempt to give some
impression of the great, surging movements which rose in the hearts of men',
movements which have no logical cause and which are not predictable because
they are 'in some way related to the motion within the earth', the textbook is not
a work of 'philosophical' history. It could not be, given the nature of Lawrence's
 Lawrence and Movements in European History 63

assignment to produce an elementary history book for children in the lower forms
of secondary schools and the older pupils in primary schools (there is little doubt
that Lawrence's inappropriate 'philosophising' was a major reason for Oxford's
rejection of the Epilogue which he wrote in 1924 for the illustrated edition of the
history book). It is rather, a series of narratives of historical events closely based,
as we have seen, on the source-books Lawrence had in front of him. Thus, it is not
the kind of history which could easily accommodate broad, universal
interpretations of man's nature and development.
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Yet Movements in European History was written at a time when Lawrence

was deeply concerned with the morality of political power and the future of social
institutions-as evidenced by such contemporaneous work as 'Education of the
People', 'Democracy', Aaron's Rod-aná it is only to be expected that the writing
of the history book would be related to these concerns. Indeed, it is true to say
that Movements in European History represents an important phase in Lawrence's
formulation and expression of his thinking on these matters. But although he
began with the serious intention of influencing his young readers, it would be too
rrjuch to say that Lawrence deliberately used the book as a vehicle for his beliefs.
Reading and writing about the events of Europe's past rather enabled him to
explore and clarify his own ideas.
In January 1919, when sending Nancy Henry the final chapters for The
Oxford Press, Lawrence had explained that once he was able to 'get hold of the
thread of the developing significance' in a chapter then he could 'get ahead'. And
despite the problems he had had in the writing, now that the book was finished he
was pleased with it: 'There is a clue of developing meaning running through it that
makes it real to me' (III, 322). The tone of this letter suggests that the
'significance' and the 'meaning' are there in the material; they represent something
that he had gradually become aware of rather than something which he feels he has
imposed.
One major element of 'meaning' which Lawrence detected in this history of
Europe was the rhythmical pattern where 'the motive of peace and increase'
alternated with that of 'contest and martial triumph' (MEH, p.306). The seed for
this was sown during his reading of Mowat whose book had only recently been
published. Mowat has described the decline of the nobility of Florence:
the nobles were no longer very important in Florence. They did not engage in
trade, their only serious work was fighting. They were thus rapidly falling outside
the main current of Italian life. The real interest of the citizens were in peace and
commerce. Inside the city were their workshops and selling booths; outside, by the
new business of banking, and by dealing in the new wares of distant lands, they were
becoming more and more involved in an opulent life of commerce, more and more
wedded to peace. The city nobles were out of date... The rich burghers, a sort of
upper middle class, were the real power in the city (RBM, pp.48-49).
That this scene caught Lawrence's imagination is indicated by the fact that he
recalled it later when he inserted this description of the situation in France after
the Hundred Years War:
Thus industry, agriculture and commerce became the first interest of man. War
merely depended on the great productive activities of a nation. And so gradually
the States became occupied with industry and commerce, the force of the new
Europe grew quietly strong in France as in Italy. The nobles and princes were
 64 P. I. Crumpton

all-powerful apparently: but underneath their martial power merchants,

manufacturers, artisans, peasants, a great silent host of producers, were gradually,
unnoticeably becoming important (MEH, pp.221-22).
This idea of the growing power of commerce became increasingly important
to Lawrence as the history book progressed. He saw the Renaissance as the
crucial moment 'when the desire for peace and production triumphed over the
desire for war and conquest' (MEH, p.293) and from that moment on, the
producers become more important than the kings, the 'war-leaders'. Ultimately,
because 'the producers in the last instance are the workers', Europe will become
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'one vast state ruled by ... the producers, the proletariat, the workmen' (MEH,
p.294).
At the time when he had almost finished reading Gibbon and was about to
start his writing of the history book, he was still viewing people with the attitude
that had fuelled Rupert Birkin's hatred for humanity: 'The chief feeling is, that
men are always alike, and always will be, and one must view the species with
contempt first and foremost, and find a few individuals, if possible-which seems,
at this juncture, not to be possible-and ultimately, if the impossible were possible,
to rule the species' (III, 262). But the very awkwardness of the syntax suggests
that the viewpoint has not been thought through, and it would be modified by his
readings for the history book.
The source-books contained numerous accounts of strong leaders and,
because mankind also lives by the motive of 'contest and martial triumph',
Lawrence was sufficiently confirmed in his belief in the strong ruler to make his
oft-quoted assertion that: 'a great united Europe of productive working-people, all
materially equal, will never be able to continue and remain firm unless it unites
also round one great chosen figure, some hero who can lead a great war, as well as
administer a wide peace' (MEH, p.306). But such a leader must be chosen by the
people; it must be their will that he should lead them. Lawrence had come to see
that far from their being ruled simply for their own good, like masses of mindless
animals, the people had a crucial role to play. When Augustus instituted
autocratic rule at Rome he had made 'the citizens indifferent, irresponsible',
whereas only 'a free, proud people' can keep 'a nation alive' (MEH, p.5). When
people are fawning and subservient, then leaders can be contemptuous and cruel
as in the cases of Tiberius and Caligula (MEH, p.6). Gibbon had described the
consequences of the passive submission to authoritarian rule: 'The minds of men
were gradually reduced to the same level, the fire of genius was extinguished, and
even the military spirit evaporated' (EG,I, 56). Conversely, Lawrence had read in
Mowat how the 'brilliant history of Florence was made possible by freedom, for
every citizen felt himself a part of the community, and shared in its dignity and
greatness' (RBM, p.50). In Movements in European History, the Renaissance is
a crucial turning point when a 'new way of life comes into being'. And in a short
'hymn of praise', not taken from his sources, Lawrence described it in terms which
suggest activeness and freedom:
During the dark, violent Middle Ages man was alive, but blind and voracious. In
the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, however, he awoke. The human spirit was
then like a butterfly which bursts from the chrysalis into the air. A whole new world
lies about it. The narrow devouring little world of the caterpillar has disappeared,
all heaven and all earth flash around (MEH, p.197).
 Lawrence and Movements in European History 65

But even Florence, established upon peace and commerce, needed its tyrant
to protect it from attack, and if society is to experience 'the last reign of wisdom,
of pure understanding, the reign which we have never seen in the world, but which
we must see' (MEH, p. 198), then it must unite around 'one great chosen figure',
but, Lawrence adds with emphasis, 'it all depends on the will of the people'
(MEH, p.306).
County Inspectorate for English, Staffordshire.
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