Professor J D Chambers, younger brother of Jessie, writes in an introduction to ‘E.T’ about their life at the Haggs and the part Lawrence played in it, “The Haggs looks tired and decayed now it may even fall down. a tiny red farm on the edge of the wood….- where I got my first incentive to write.” The home of the Chambers family allowed Lawrence to live, laugh and concentrate on what he loved. It hosts the launch (Sat 1 st Sept) of a new Exhibition about Haggs Farm.
The Breach House at 28 Garden Road, was the Lawrence home for four years. Lawrence Festival, alongside the events planned by the D.H Lawrence Society and the Haggs Farm Preservation Society, the words of Lawrence and his associated life in Eastwood and the surrounding Nottinghamshire countryside will come to life. Here, so many other themes are developed and brought to life in beautiful verse and prose – nature, class, beauty, politics, senses and yes, love. Once we as readers/TV viewers/film audiences get past the preoccupation with sex there is so much more to Lawrence, especially his large and often overlooked collection of poetry and short stories. He turned aside, as if pained.” Surely if Lawrence recalled those times alone with Jessie with such erotic longing how on earth might Jessie herself have felt to read them in print? She was pale and expectant with wonder, her lips were parted, and her dark eyes lay open to him.
Here we see Morel, the main character (clearly based on Lawrence) alone with Miriam, “ Paul looked into Miriam’s eyes. Much is made of Lawrence’s sexual angst (often to the detriment of all his other themes), but in his development as a writer he clearly shows in ‘ Sons and Lovers’ his frustration for physical love alongside his need to set women he adored upon an almost religious altar. Reading Jessie Chambers’ personal account ’E.T’ of her memories of the young boy and developing man in their relationship, it is hard not to see the obvious hurt Lawrence’s portrayal of ‘Miriam’ and the true mirror to their personal feelings that Jessie felt about the book. She was the daughter of a family Lawrence loved, who lived at Haggs Farm, a place forever etched in Lawrence’s recall of the ‘country of his heart’.
Jessie played a significant part in Lawrence’s life and work. In ‘ Sons and Lovers’, one of Lawrence’s earliest (and most autobiographical) novels it is now well established that the character of Miriam is based upon Jessie Chambers. In his novels he is often criticised for the highly personal characteristics of ‘real people’ he has clearly recalled from his life living in Eastwood and Nottinghamshire, who often then felt exposed by his interpretation of them on the page. In many ways those that D H Lawrence loved, he then left.īut they remained burnt into his memory and work.
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