Memoir of Maurice Magnus

by D.H. Lawrence

Offers a profile of Magnus, a journalist and foreign legionnaire, and includes background information on Lawrence's relationship with Magnus

Genres: Biography

Hardcover

First published December 1, 1987

About the author

David Herbert Richards Lawrence was an English writer of the 20th century, whose prolific and diverse output included novels, short stories, poems, plays, essays, travel books, paintings, translations, literary criticism, and personal letters. His collected works represent an extended reflection upon the dehumanizing effects of modernity and industrialisation. In them, Lawrence confronts issues relating to emotional health and vitality, spontaneity, human sexuality and instinct.

Lawrence's opinions earned him many enemies and he endured official persecution, censorship, and misrepresentation of his creative work throughout the second half of his life, much of which he spent in a voluntary exile he called his "savage pilgrimage." At the time of his death, his public reputation was that of a pornographer who had wasted his considerable talents. E. M. Forster, in an obituary notice, challenged this widely held view, describing him as "the greatest imaginative novelist of our generation." Later, the influential Cambridge critic F. R. Leavis championed both his artistic integrity and his moral seriousness, placing much of Lawrence's fiction within the canonical "great tradition" of the English novel. He is now generally valued as a visionary thinker and a significant representative of modernism in English literature.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D.H._Law...

Reviews

[Sketchbook · Rating 5 out of 5]

"There is nothing quite like it among his writings," advises
DH scholar Keith Cushman in the introduction. Unknown to many, this profile of an obscure American careening toward an appointment in Samarra may be one of the finest things Lawrence ever produced.

While Frieda was in Germany in 1919, DH passed some time in Florence where novelist Norman Douglas ("South Wind") introduced him to US travel writer and Isadora Duncan's former manager, Maurice Magnus, a faded twinky in his 40s with "a cockatoo-pink face" who confronted financial crises. In fact, all three sorta survived on the kindness of rich sponsors.

Magnus attached himself to DH and inveigled a loan, though he stayed in luxe hotels. (You just want to smack him). When Frieda joined DH and they traveled to Syracuse and Taormina, guess what? Magnus always popped up. DH was both fascinated and offended by the snobby, well-dressed and sexually waffled worldling who, because of debt, was fleeing the Italian police.

Magnus was busily writing about his three months in the Foreign Legion (ow, the horny fool) and his daredevil escape. Excised portions from a censored version, describing thievery and buggery, are included here. Magnus, who discarded his US wife, traveled on an American passport, but was a bastard of the Kaiser, or something like that. His finale created a rift between Norman Douglas and DH that evokes the Charles Ludlum play title, "When Queens Collide."

DHLs atmospheric and, at times, Ortonesque study of a hapless booby abroad who nonetheless speaks several languages is hilarious and heartbreaking. The result is a dramatic biographical episode in the Italian sun that you won't forget. DH outshines himself in a relaxed and personal voice. "Magnus rather despised me because I had no money to spend," DH says upon meeting him in Florence where he was the pet of Norman Douglas. Magnus counters, "Why that's the very time to spend money, when you've got none." And Douglas sniffs, 'Precisely. Spend hard then."
This trio is in for trouble. Cue: the entrance of Frieda. She is not amused.

[Andrew Westphal · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read DH Lawrence’s Memoir of Maurice Magnus as part of the larger Lawrence collection in Geoff Dyer’s 2019 collection ‘The Bad Side of Books,’ which is an introduction to Lawrence through a selection of essays. I enjoyed this story so much, it seems worth reviewing in its own regard. If you enjoy this story, also check out Hemingway’s ‘The Sun Also Rises,’ which is a similar travelogue-style story from the interwar period, but set in Spain instead of Italy.

[Godine Publisher & Black Sparrow Press · Rating 5 out of 5]

"This little-known memoir, originally the introduction to Magnus's Memoirs of the Foreign Legion , recounts Lawrence's short, tangled relationship with this obscure writer. The essay touched off a literary controversy between Lawrence and Norman Douglas, who felt Lawrence's account was inaccurate and mean-spirited. Cushman's edition includes Douglas's response, Lawrence's counterresponse, and excerpts from Magnus's book. The edition contains crucial passages on homosexualtiy previously unpublished in the original Memoir and brilliant character sketches and descriptive passages by Lawrence."
-Donald P. Kaczvinsky, Library Journal