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primary education at the Beauvale Board School, as did all the other children in his family. Frail, sickly, sensitive, uninspired by his environment, picked on by the other boys because he could not play games, but encouraged by his clinging mother, whose aspirations for him set him apart, Lawrence does not appear to have been an especially brilliant student, but one who worked hard. In his teacher W. W. Whitehead, Lawrence would eventually find a supporter. Whitehead tutored him for the County Council Scholarship, which Lawrence won at the age of twelve. This scholarship allowed him to attend the Nottingham High School and receive an excellent secondary education. It literally changed the course of his life.

After high school, Lawrence worked as a clerk in Haywood’s, a manufacturer of surgical and orthopedic implements in Nottingham, selling elastic stockings and support bandages. It was during this relatively happy period that a tragic event shattered the Lawrence household and left his mother in a state of chronic depression, alienated even from her beloved children, with little will to live. William Ernest, Lydia Lawrence’s favorite child, died of pneumonia in London, apparently from overwork. During the mother’s grieving depression, Lawrence, who had been at the Haywood’s position for only three months, also came down with pneumonia and was on the verge of death. The threat of Lawrence’s imminent death caused the mother to throw off her grief and immerse herself in saving the son who was still barely alive. It not only saved Lawrence’s life, but it created a bond between mother and son for which Oedipal may be too weak a term and which Anthony Burgess, in his book on Lawrence, Flame into Being, aptly describes as “morbid.”

By the time Lawrence recuperated, he was seventeen years old. He decided he did not want to go back to Haywood‘s, where he might overwork himself and suffer the same fate as his brother. His experience at Haywood’s, though brief, had been a vital one. It gave him experience, and eventually provided an important setting for Paul, Lawrence’s stand-in in Sons and Lovers. Now, though, it was time for Lawrence to move on. His health had become a serious issue. Whether we believe Lawrence’s claim that the pneumonia permanently impaired his health, or believe Lawrence’s doctor that he was already tubercular and that the pneumonia had nothing to do with his future health problems, Lawrence’s health would from that point on partially determine how he lived his life. Thus, faced with the problem of earning a living, Lawrence settled on teaching. In 1902 Lawrence began his teaching career at the British Schools in Eastwood as a pupil-teacher—that is, as a schoolmaster to lower-level students who receives instruction himself later in the day. The following year, Lawrence was transferred to the Pupil—Teacher Centre at Ilkeston, along with another pupil-teacher intern from the region, Jessie Chambers, Lawrence’s first love, whom Lawrence immortalizes as Miriam in Sons and Lovers. Four years later Lawrence and Jessie both entered the University of Nottingham in a two-year program for a teaching certificate.

After receiving his certificate, Lawrence took a position as a schoolmaster in south London. Here he came in contact with Ford Hermann Hueffer, the novelist, editor, and critic now better known as Ford Madox Ford, the name he adopted in 1919. After reading Lawrence’s poetry, Hueffer decided to publish it. He also helped Lawrence publish his first novel, The White Peacock, in 1911. It was, according to Hueffer, “a flawed work of genius.” A serious blow in Lawrence’s personal life countered this great leap forward in his career : his mother’s death from cancer. Before she died, Lawrence was able to give her an advance copy of The White Peacock, apparently hoping that she would know that her love and advocacy on his behalf had not been wasted. The following year, reeling from his mother’s death and worn out by teaching, Lawrence became seriously ill and depressed, and wrote little.

In 1912 Lawrence made up his