Books: Rare Friendship

A POET AND Two PAINTERS—Knud Merrild—Viking ($3.50).

The poet of this book’s title is D. H. Lawrence. The painters are Knud Merrild and Kai Götzsche, two strapping Danish immigrants who met Lawrence in Taos, N. M. in 1922, lived that winter with him and his wife, Frieda, in a crude ranch shack which they rented to escape Mabel Dodge (Luhan). Among the flood of memoirs—mostly by women—which have appeared since Lawrence’s death in 1930, this one comes nearest to giving an objective picture of Lawrence.

One day at tea, Lawrence proclaimed the need for killing off individual “schemers of all kinds” instead of indiscriminate killing in war. When Merrild asked whom he would kill first, Lawrence said Mabel Dodge. Merrild asked if he would shoot her or strangle her. “No,” said Lawrence growing pale, “I will cut her throat.”

Lawrence quarreled as often with “the Danes” as with anyone else. But for them his brilliant talk and warm-hearted moments more than offset his erratic temperament. Besides, the morning after a tantrum he always appeared bearing a peace-offering of bread and cakes of his own baking.

In the spring, however, when Lawrence begged them to go to Mexico with him, they made excuses. Despite their undying friendship, they concluded “we had had about enough of a good thing. …”