My thanks to Lawrence Brown for giving permission for this account of his pilgrimage to the Lawrences' ranch to appear here.

My thanks also to Randall Albright who provided the photographs of the ranch on this page, which he took on a visit to the ranch in the nineteen seventies.
A strange thing happened whilst I was adding these pictures to the page. Randall's scans looked a little dark on my computer so I tinkered with the "weighting" a little and what appeared in most of the pictures but..... a rainbow. How perfectly Lawrentian!

Homage to the DH Lawrence Ranch in Taos, New Mexico

© Lawrence Brown 1997

 

"I think New Mexico was the greatest experience from the outside world that I have ever had. It certainly changed me forever......O, let me get away! But the moment I saw the brilliant, proud morning shine high up over the deserts of Sante' Fe, something stood still in my soul, and I started to attend."
Phoenix, The Posthumous Papers of DH Lawrence

      I wanted to share with whomever, my experience of visiting the DH Lawrence Ranch and "The Shrine" a little over a year ago. It was in the cold of December when I made my way out to New Mexico and up to Taos. Had never been there but wanted to get a feel of the place and pay homage to DH Lawrence.
      I stayed in Taos and saw the Lawrence paintings one evening , then spent an afternoon driving the 45 minutes or so north of the city to the ranch. It's well marked and you drive up a long graveled rutted path up and into Lobo Mountain...the mountain itself almost 8,000 feet. I can imagine many a visitor failing to make it up this path to visit the Lawrences either by exhaustion or car failure. The Ranch is now owned by the University of New Mexico and is used for retreats. There is a large cabin that was built post-Lawrence and then two small ones....one for the Lawrences in 1924 and apparently one for Brett................the trio who ended up briefly making up Lawrence's living-in-the-spot Ranamin.

      The Lawrence cabin was rustic and one could almost envision DH and Frieda coming out the front door and onto the porch to meet you. They built this porch. Could not go into the cabin but looked in all windows. The whole ranch was deserted for the hour I was there and I had the place to myself.
      Looked into the kitchen and could envision Frieda hitting Lawrence over the head with a skillet. Into the main room and envisoned them entertaining guests in a bout of charades (somehow I still can't imagine Lawrence playful in this). The bedroom was towards the back and appeared just as if they still lived within.

      Outside, was the mammoth Pine that Lawrence would spend his mornings under and writing at a small table. He loved this tree, and O'Keeffe who stayed there later in residence painted this Pine from a position of laying on the bench there and looking upward.....the painting is now called "The Lawrence Tree" and it recently sold for a half a million....but I am getting off the path here. Lawrence wrote about it himself...

"The big pinetree in front of the house, standing still and unconcerned, alive....the overshadowing tree whose green top one never looks at. But on the trunk one hangs the various odds and ends of iron things. It is so near. One goes out of the door and the tree-trunk is there, like a guardian angel. The tree-trunk, and the long work table, and the fence!"
Moonshine with Lemon.........Mornings in Mexico

      I walked around the grounds where they spent 1924 together and where Frieda would live out the most of the rest of her life after Lawrence died. Mabel Luhan Dodge in a way gave them this ranch. Frieda gave her in return the manuscript for Sons and Lovers. Mabel in turn gave it later to her psychiatrist in a kind of barter for all his many years of service to her.
      On the grounds one could again envison them horseback riding, gardening, Lawrence making his bread or milking his cow. But here again...Lawrence himself says it better..........

" I wonder if I am here (Italy), or if I am just going to bed at the Ranch (Taos). Perhaps looking in Montgomery Ward's catalogue, and drinking moonshine and hot water, since it is cold. Go out and look if the chickens are shut up warm: if the horses are in sight: if Susan, the black cow , has gone to her nest among the trees, for the night. The cows don't eat much at night. But Susan will wander in the moon. The moon makes her uneasy. And the horses stamp around the cabins. In a cold like this, the stars snap like distant coyotes, beyond the moon. And you'll see the shadow of actual coyotes, going across the alfalfa field. And the pine-trees make little noise, sudden and stealthy, as if they were walking about. And the place heaves with ghosts. But when one has got used to one's own home-ghosts, be they never so many, and so potent, they are like own's own family, but nearer than the blood. It is the ghosts one misses most, the ghosts there, of the Rocky Mountains, that never go beyond the timber and that linger, like the animal, round the spring-water. I know them, they know me: we go well together. But they reproach me for going away (back to Europe). They are resentful too".
Moonshine With Lemon.........Mornings in Mexico

      But he would return with his ghosts, if not alive, or with his questionable ashes, but in a spirit of the place and with a "Shrine". Will tell more of the ascent up to the Shrine and quote some admirer's (and some not so admirers) quotes from the guest register there within...............in the next instalment.

Best Regards.....
Lawrence

Homage at the DHLawrence Ranch - Part Two

"Ah, that was beauty!---perhaps the most beautiful thing in the world. It was pure beauty, absolute beauty! There! That was it......this beauty was absolute. From her doorway, from her porch , she could watch the vast, eagle-like wheeling of the daylight, that turned overhead in the blue, turning their luminous, dark-edged-patterned bellies and under-wings upon the pure air, like winged orbs. So the daylight made the vast turn upon the desert, brushing the farthest outwatching mountains..............but morning came again, with the sun peeping over the mountain slopes and lighting the desert away in the distance long, long before it lighted her yard......Ah! it was beauty, beauty absolute, at any hour of the day: whether the perfect clarity of morning, or the mountains beyond the simmering desert at noon, or the purple lumping of northern mounds under a red sun at night.......it was always beauty, ALWAYS! It was great, and splendid, and for some reason, natural. It was never grand grandiose or theatrical. Always, for some reason, perfect. And quite simple, in spite of it all. So it was, when you watched the vast and living landscape. The landscape lived, and lived as the world of the gods, unsullied and unconcerned. The great circling landscape lived its own life, sumptious and uncaring."
St. Mawr

The Lawrences came to the ranch on March 21, 1924 and stayed until leaving America on September 21, 1925. The Ranch was given to the Lawrences by Mabel Dodge Luhan and is known under a variety of titles...."Flying Heart Ranch", "Lobo (wolf) Ranch", "Kiowa Ranch" (after a local tribe), and presently as the "D. H. Lawrence Ranch" owned by the University of New Mexico. It is 160 acres nestled into the Sangre de Christo Mountains near San Cristobal and Taos.

            This was quite a grouping settling onto the ranch in 1924. The ranch was in disrepair not unlike the situation in Lawrence's writings about a farm in "The Fox". There was DH and his wife Frieda. Dorothy Brett, the painter, in a smaller cabin to the rear. Visiting Mabel Dodge Luhan from Taos would reside in another small cabin. Throw in five horses..Contentos, Chiquita, Poppy, Azul, and Bessie. There was Susan the cow that Lawrence would milk daily. That dog Bibbles that would cause such a stirring of reactive emotion out of Lawrence ( "little Walt-Whitmanesque bitch"). Then there was Timsy Wemyss the cat, and eleven hens.. Add to this three local Indians in Tee-Pees out back and a Mexican helping with repairs and here was quite a assortment. It certainly must have been a lively place for its time.

            After the Lawrences' return to Europe and Lawrence's death, Frieda would return to this ranch to live out the rest of her life with her new husband Angelino some 13 years younger then her and "married with a family" in Italy. In 1934 it was decided by Frieda, that Lawrence's body should be exhumed and cremated and brought back to the ranch for an enshrinement. There are many stories about what transpired in attempting for this to happen. His ashes were left at the train station. His ashes were left at friend's home. His ashes possibly were dumped somewhere in Europe en route and replaced with some different ashes once in New York. There was the conflict between Frieda and Mabel Dodge Luhan over what should be done with the ashes....the possible heisting of the ashes and the mixing of them in a large vast of a concrete block to thwart any such plans. There was the canceling of an Indian dancing ceremony by a certain tribe for the opening ceremonies.....out of fear of disturbing the dead man's spirit. And the key speaker bowed out under political pressure from Mabel who abhorred the thought of Lawrence being entombed in "that outhouse of a shrine". Colorful stuff here.

            When I visited the ranch , the last leg of the visit required the hoofing it up the side of the mountain to ascend to the shrine. The path is behind the main cabin at the ranch and it is a straight ascent up a series of steps, and there above, cut out of the pines all surrounding, is the white shrine....the day I was there it was fully in the sun and was striking with the Phoenix proudly sitting up on the front roof. It was similar to a small roadside chapel, and could have been confused for the same if a cross had replaced the Phoenix upon the roof.. I was the only one present over the hour that I visited the ranch and it was very special for me. Frieda died in 1956 and she is buried on the outside of the chapel just to the left of the front shrine (Angelino returning to his family in Italy....with the royalties of Lawrence's work) The tombstone has a picture of Frieda and a quote from Angelino saying...."For all the incomparable 25 years we spent together".

            Entering the small shrine.....the large concrete block is located in the midsection of the rear wall. Another concrete Phoenix sits in a niche behind this block and the large intials DHL are carved into the concrete of the block. There are yellow flowers painted by Dorothy Brett and a large pinwheel-like window on the rear wall. There were two large candle holders to each side of the concrete slab. An assortment of natural things were laid down by visitors past.

            Each admiring enthralled visitor might bring something and take something away from this site. I had been to an Indian reservation earlier and had purchased a loaf of bread there. Lawrence had a spiritual connection to the bread he would bake himself there on the ranch.......so the bread was broken there and part eaten for my self nourishment with another part left on Lawrence's silver painted concrete block. What I took away from the site was a pine cone and a fist sized rock which lay in back of the shrine. The pine glued onto the rock...it now rests comfortably on one of my home tables.

            When you enter the small shrine, there is a sign-in quest register to the left. Of course people can't just sign their names, and many must right a comment....for Lawrence usually. Here is an assortment of the samplings.

"Thanks for all the hours spent in the glow of your passion" Scott and Jeff

"To and from all those I know still searching for 'the passion' and believing it there although as yet undiscovered" Lusil

"Odd....a man without a religion buried in a shrine"

"I don't believe that either Lawrence....and I FOUND IT! Peace and Thanks for a leading path.." (this is in reference perhaps to the ending of 'Women in Love')

"I rubbed the rodent shit off of your tomb....sorry to see you lain here in such a state".

"I think this is a GREAT spot!!!!!!"

"Why is it that you are buried on the inside but your wife is buried on the OUTSIDE??? That's OK...she can probably weather it better then you could".

            So I spent my time there and enjoyed the really magnificent view looking out from the shrine and down through the path of pines on each side and then onto the mesa far far below, and farther still the desert and the Rio Grande. It was truly spectacular to see and to me seems a wonderful spot to honor Lawrence....to help capture his spirit irregardless of the "shrine" controversies. Here with the heart of nature all around...with his 'ghosts' in kinship.

"Pan keeps on being reborn, in all kinds of strange shapes. The Pan relationship, which the world of man once had with all the world, was better than anything man has now."
Pan in America.... Phoenix

            It was good to have a place to go to honor this man and give him homage as his due. But his works are his final contributions to us, and live on to enliven us. Frieda Lawrence had it right here as she writes in "Frieda Lawrence: The Memoirs and Correspondence"................

"What he had seen and felt and known, he gave in his writing to his fellow men, the splendour of living, the hope of more and more life he had given them, a heroic and immeasurable gift "

Lawrence Brown