Sons and Lovers

Sons and Lovers, by David
Herbert Lawrence

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Title: Sons and Lovers
Author: David Herbert Lawrence
Release Date: January 16, 2006 [EBook #217]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
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LOVERS ***

Produced by Alan Charles Veeck, Jr. and David Widger

SONS AND LOVERS
D. H. LAWRENCE

CONTENTS

PART I 1. The Early Married Life of the
Morels
2. The Birth of Paul, and Another Battle 3. The Casting Off of
Morel--The Taking on of William 4. The Young Life of Paul 5. Paul
Launches into Life 6. Death in the Family

PART II
7. Lad-and-Girl Love
8. Strife in Love 9. Defeat of Miriam 10. Clara 11. The Test on Miriam
12. Passion 13. Baxter Dawes 14. The Release 15. Derelict

PART ONE
CHAPTER I
THE EARLY MARRIED LIFE OF THE MORELS
"THE BOTTOMS" succeeded to "Hell Row". Hell Row was a block of
thatched, bulging cottages that stood by the brookside on Greenhill
Lane. There lived the colliers who worked in the little gin-pits two
fields away. The brook ran under the alder trees, scarcely soiled by
these small mines, whose coal was drawn to the surface by donkeys
that plodded wearily in a circle round a gin. And all over the
countryside were these same pits, some of which had been worked in
the time of Charles II, the few colliers and the donkeys burrowing
down like ants into the earth, making queer mounds and little black

places among the corn-fields and the meadows. And the cottages of
these coal-miners, in blocks and pairs here and there, together with odd
farms and homes of the stockingers, straying over the parish, formed
the village of Bestwood.
Then, some sixty years ago, a sudden change took place, gin-pits were
elbowed aside by the large mines of the financiers. The coal and iron
field of Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire was discovered. Carston,
Waite and Co. appeared. Amid tremendous excitement, Lord
Palmerston formally opened the company's first mine at Spinney Park,
on the edge of Sherwood Forest.
About this time the notorious Hell Row, which through growing old
had acquired an evil reputation, was burned down, and much dirt was
cleansed away.
Carston, Waite & Co. found they had struck on a good thing, so, down
the valleys of the brooks from Selby and Nuttall, new mines were sunk,
until soon there were six pits working. From Nuttall, high up on the
sandstone among the woods, the railway ran, past the ruined priory of
the Carthusians and past Robin Hood's Well, down to Spinney Park,
then on to Minton, a large mine among corn-fields; from Minton across
the farmlands of the valleyside to Bunker's Hill, branching off there,
and running north to Beggarlee and Selby, that looks over at Crich and
the hills of Derbyshire: six mines like black studs on the countryside,
linked by a loop of fine chain, the railway.
To accommodate the regiments of miners, Carston, Waite and Co. built
the Squares, great quadrangles of dwellings on the hillside of Bestwood,
and then, in the brook valley, on the site of Hell Row, they erected the
Bottoms.
The Bottoms consisted of six blocks of miners' dwellings, two rows of
three, like the dots on a blank-six domino, and twelve houses in a block.
This double row of dwellings sat at the foot of the rather sharp slope
from Bestwood, and looked out, from the attic windows at least, on the
slow climb of the valley towards Selby.

The houses themselves were substantial and very decent. One could
walk all round, seeing little front gardens with auriculas and saxifrage
in the shadow of the bottom block, sweet-williams and pinks in the
sunny top block; seeing neat front windows, little porches, little privet
hedges, and dormer windows for the attics. But that was outside; that
was the view on to the uninhabited parlours of all the colliers' wives.
The dwelling-room, the kitchen, was at the back of the house, facing
inward between the blocks, looking at a scrubby back garden, and then
at the ash-pits. And between the rows, between the long lines of
ash-pits, went the alley, where the children played and the women
gossiped and the men smoked. So, the actual conditions of living in the
Bottoms, that was so well built and that looked so nice, were quite
unsavoury because people must live in the kitchen, and the kitchens
opened on to