David Herbert Lawrence

Lady Chatterley's Lover

Chapter 1

Ours is essentially a tragic age, so we refuse to take it tragically.

The cataclysm has happened, we are among the ruins, we start to build up new

little habitats, to have new little hopes. It is rather hard work: there is

now no smooth road into the future: but we go round, or scramble over the

obstacles. We've got to live, no matter how many skies have fallen.

This was more or less Constance Chatterley's position. The war had

brought the roof down over her head. And she had realized that one must live

and learn.

She married Clifford Chatterley in 1917, when he was home for a month

on leave. They had a month's honeymoon. Then he went back to Flanders: to be

shipped over to England again six months later, more or less in bits.

Constance, his wife, was then twenty-three years old, and he was

twenty-nine.

His hold on life was marvellous. He didn't die, and the bits seemed to

grow together again. For two years he remained in the doctor's hands. Then

he was pronounced a cure, and could return to life again, with the lower

half of his body, from the hips down, paralysed for ever.

This was in 1920. They returned, Clifford and Constance, to his home,

Wragby Hall, the family `seat'. His father had died, Clifford was now a

baronet, Sir Clifford, and Constance was Lady Chatterley. They came to start

housekeeping and married life in the rather forlorn home of the Chatterleys

on a rather inadequate income. Clifford had a sister, but she had departed.

Otherwise there were no near relatives. The elder brother was dead in the

war. Crippled for ever, knowing he could never have any children, Clifford

came home to the smoky Midlands to keep the Chatterley name alive while he

could.

He was not really downcast. He could wheel himself about in a wheeled

chair, and he had a bath-chair with a small motor attachment, so he could

drive himself slowly round the garden and into the line melancholy park, of

which he was really so proud, though he pretended to be flippant about it.

Having suffered so much, the capacity for suffering had to some extent

left him. He remained strange and bright and cheerful, almost, one might

say, chirpy, with his ruddy, healthy-looking face, arid his pale-blue,

challenging bright eyes. His shoulders were broad and strong, his hands were

very strong. He was expensively dressed, and wore handsome neckties from