September 11, 2002

Dear Sir,

It is September 11, 2002, and I have just been reading the "Today in History" column in The Royal Gazette. I notice that in 1789 Alexander Hamilton became the first US Secretary of the Treasury. In 1814 we have the Americans fighting the British; 1944 it's World War Two. In my lifetime, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev died; two years later Chilean President Allende died in a military coup. Last year, of course, there were the terrorist attacks on the USA.

I guess there's no news like bad news.

Wanted to let you know that I am celebrating this September 11. On this day in 1885, the greatest writer in the English language of the 20th Century was born. A man second only to Shakespeare when all is said and done, in my opinion. David Herbert Lawrence was the son of a coal miner and a schoolteacher. That notwithstanding, Lawrence, in his short life, wrote some of the greatest works of literature ever penned (or keyboarded!) I suppose if most people think of Lawrence at all, they only connect him to the novel `Lady Chatterley's Lover'. I believe that book was not Lawrence's best work, but it is a fine book about the passion of love. Lawrence, in all his books, was concerned with passion, love and human relationships.

I notice that he did not make the list of "The 100 Greatest Britons" recently produced by the BBC. Lawrence, in his Heaven, may be amused as Shaw, Wilde, Huxley, Keats, Byron, Shelley, Yeats, Woolf, Milton, Donne, Marlowe, Coleridge, Carroll and countless other literary "greats" were passed over for the likes of Boy George, Johnny Rotten, Tony Blair and David Beckham.

Lawrence was hounded and his work was considered obscene, though it is less obscene than the afternoon "soaps" and Jerry Springer on network television.

In fact, parts of the Holy Bible are racier than `Women in Love' or `The Rainbow'.

Let me tell you what is really obscene: the politics of Bush and Blair and Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda and countless others who demand attention and want to carry us all off to oblivion, many seeing it as the will of God.

Preachers of all stripes tell us that we must have an Armageddon before God will rejoin us and insist upon peace. Preachers want to hurry this along! Don't you see that? Hear that?

Lawrence was a pacifist during the First World War. He turned his fear and physical distress (he was dying of tuberculosis) into words, wonderful words, connected so as to form the most exquisite thoughts and stories.

I suppose schoolchildren these days are more familiar with celebrities with "dog" in their names, and think the assault on the English language is progress. I hear the babbling and see so many blank faces. No wonder the only passion that people seek after is that of power and violence ... to re-use a line by Gertrude Stein: "You are a lost generation. Lost to television and politics and religion.

In Lawrence's last year before his death at age 44, he wrote a great deal, mostly poetry. One can read it and realise the man was being transfigured, he was starting to see with the eyes and mind of a god.

I'd like to think one school in Bermuda offers an English course that includes work by D.H. Lawrence. If there is a teacher out there doing that, bless you! Maybe Royal Gazette columnist, Gavin Shorto, will catch on. Mr. Shorto seems to have put away his rifle and has found poetry. There is hope!

Now I'm going to have a muffin from the Portuguese bakery, with real butter and honey on it, and I shall say: "Happy birthday, Lorenzo! You were what Mankind should be about!"

ROSS ELDRIDGE

Devonshire