Ravello is one of the many beauty spots along the Amalfi Coast. Perched 335m up, this large village, with superb all-around views, reminded me of David Herbert Lawrence (1885-1930). Lawrence’s and my life touched a few times, albeit separated in time and space. Ravello is an excellent place to visit and easy to get to – just 30 minutes by bus from Amalfi.
Lawrence was an English writer, novelist, and poet. I got to know him through his last book, Lady Chatterley’s Lover, written in Ravello (1928) and published in Italy. Ravello must have given him a conducive atmosphere. He finished the book with a rush of creative enthusiasm as if he knew how little time he had left. He died of TB two years later in France.
I read Lady Chatterley’s Lover while doing my A-levels – the first time “our paths crossed”. I knew it was a controversial book previously banned for obscenity in the West (UK, United States, Canada, Australia) and other countries, such as India and Japan. The book was notorious for its story of the physical (and emotional) relationship between a working-class man and an upper-class woman. I was “shocked” by its explicit descriptions of sex and its use of the then-the unprintable and unmentionable four-letter word. Curiously, I could now see the word (“fuck”) explicitly printed on T-shirts sold in Ravello. At Lawrence’s death, his reputation was that of a pornographer.
Lawrence’s creative work offended many readers. He had to endure persecution (and suffer misrepresentation of creative work) and spent most of the second half of his life in voluntary exile. However, many prominent contemporaries described him as “the greatest imaginative novelist of our generation.”
Lawrence came from a working-class background – his father, barely literate, worked in the coalfields in Nottinghamshire. During my postgraduate years in Nottingham (the second time “our paths crossed”), I renewed my acquaintance with his life and times. After I received the Fellowship from the Royal College of Radiologists (FRCR), I took on a job as a locum consultant in the Derbyshire Royal Infirmary – just down the A52 from the Queen’s Medical Centre, University of Nottingham, where I was trained.
My job in Derby took me once a week to Ilkeston, a small town not far from Derby and Nottingham. (Incidentally, in the novel, Lady Chatterley’s lover was a working-class man who spoke the local broad Derbyshire dialect, which I was familiar with). Lawrence did his pupil-teacher training in Ilkeston and eventually graduated with a teaching diploma from the University of Nottingham in 1908. I finished my training in Nottingham 76 years later.
Because of Lawrence’s background, coal mining was a recurrent and familiar theme in his writing. Coalfields surround Nottingham, and soon, I became an expert in the radiological diagnosis of pneumoconiosis – a chronic debilitating lung disease due to industrial exposure to coal dust. Even though we do not have pneumoconiosis in Singapore, local trainees sit British postgraduate examinations, which require them to be familiar with the condition. When I left Nottingham, I brought back many X-ray films to familiarise local trainees with the disease.
Time has moved on. If Lawrence were alive today, he probably wouldn’t have died from TB. He is also unlikely to be persecuted for his preferred way of self-expression. Times have changed – but then again, in the present circumstances, he might not be the same creative D.H. Lawrence we know today. The era we live in, and the unique circumstances of our life, make us who we are.
Vince
Dr Vincent Chong is a retired Professor of Radiology at Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, National University of Singapore.
