Lawrence’s Eastwood

The Daughter-in-Law by DH Lawrence

Theatr Clwyd, 1995

The village of Eastwood lies at the centre of the Erewash Valley on the Nottinghamshire-Derbyshire border, eight miles northwest of Nottingham. During the course of the Industrial Revolution, its population rose to over 4,000 and it became a prosperous market town, providing manpower and supplies for the half dozen collieries which grew up in the vicinity. Arthur Lawrence, the author’s father, would walk north up the Mansfield Road every morning to work at the nearby Brinsley Colliery.

Brinsley Colliery

Arthur Lawrence’s task as a ‘buttyman’ was to pay off his stall of miners at the end of the shift. The weekly wage would depend on how much coal they had produced. Without being a mean man, he was not overly generous and his wife Ludia constantly had to scrimp and save to make ends meet. “We were always conscious of a poverty and the endless struggles for bread,” Lawrence’s younger sister Ada would write later. “I don’t remember [our father] giving mother more than 35 shillings a week [£1.75]. So much was rare. The usual amount was 25 shillings [£1.25].”

Nottingham Road

Eastwood was a ‘company town’ dominated by the local mine-owning dynasty of Barber, Walker & Co. They were not only capitalists but gentry, wielding great influence over the area. Between them the families built the miners’ dwellings below the Nottingham Road, which gave them a double leverage over the community – as both employers and landlords. But urbanisation stopped well short of ruining the landscape. Open fields were always just a few minutes’ walk away. When the Lawrences moved to Walker Street in 1891, north off the Nottingham Road, the broad panoramic view made a lasting impression on the author: “I lived in that house from the age of 6 to 18, and I know that view better than any in the world.”

Birthplace

At number 8a Victoria Street, the shop-sized ground floor window gave Lydia Lawrence an idea of how she could improve the family finances, but her small business in lace goods did not prosper. It was here that the future author was born in September 1885. Before he became the sole apple of his mother’s eye, he was also babied by the whole family. “We all petted and spoiled him from the time he was born,” his eldest brother George recalled.

The Breach

In the stage directions for The Daughter-in-Law Lawrence writes “The action of the play takes place in the kitchen of Luther Gascoigne’s new home… A miner’s kitchen – not poor.” This could also be a description of the kitchen of the Lawrences’ house at the Break, the family home they moved into in 1887 following the birth of the youngest girl, Ada. An end house, its weekly rent – 5/6 (27½p) was 6d more than the rest of the row paid, but the Lawrences benefitted by having windows on three sides which consequently let in more light than their neighbours’. The parlour even boasted a piano beneath which the young Lawrence remembered feeling happy and secure as his mother belted out uplifting hymns on a Sunday night. The kitchen itself was cosy, if hot – miners were used to working in stifling conditions and so were sensitive to draughts – and Lydia’s educated taste was another factor which established an ambience slightly more sophisticated than was the norm. Rather than fill the place with cheap knick-knacks in the prevailing Victorian style, she preferred just a few choice ornaments – a pair of brass candlesticks on the mantelpiece, and a tastefully placed vase of fresh flowers brought in from the fields.

Strip Wash

Miners rarely bathed. There was little privacy, and it was always more effort than it was worth anyway as the effects were lost within five minutes of them reaching the coalface the next morning. The procedure was certainly an early cause of friction in the Lawrences’ marriage. The night following the end of their honeymoon, Arthur Lawrence returned home and refused to wash more than his hands before sitting down to supper, protesting coaldust was only ‘clean dirt’ after all. After the meal and possibly to appease her, he offered to bathe in the dolly tub in front of the kitchen fire, but only if she would scrub his back as was his custom… From that day on there was a rift between them that never fully healed.

The Walk Home

If Arthur was occasionally frustrated by his wife’s gentility, he was too genial a man to let it fester long. He sang as he mended shoes, kettles and pots in the family kitchen, and on his way to and from work kept his eyes peeled for mushrooms or berries to add to the family larder. One night, returning from a late shift, he came across a baby rabbit, barely alive, lying beside the bodies of its mother and three siblings. He brought the orphan home, and Lawrence the author later immortalised it in a story called Adolf. It utterly destroyed Lydia’s lace curtains in the parlour.

(A fuller biography of DH Lawrence and his wife Frieda can be found here)