D.H. Lawrence

1885-1930

David Herbert Lawrence's ashes are buried in a shrine on the Kiowa Ranch, San Cristobal, Taos County, New Mexico, USA. (There is also a memorial stone for him in Eastwood Cemetery in Nottinghamshire, England.)

Shrine to D. H. Lawrence

Lawrence died in Vence in France on the 2 March, 1930 after discharging himself from the clinic where he was being treated for TB.

He was originally buried in the old Vence cemetery, but was exhumed in March 1935. His ashes were then given to Bersaglieri Angelo Ravagli (Frieda's lover) so that they could be transported to the shrine at Kiowa Ranch, New Mexico.

The Lawrence Memorial Altar

There is some conjecture regarding the fate of the ashes. Some say that they were dumped by Ravagli somewhere between Marseilles and Villefranche and that he subsequently procured alternative ashes which he eventually took to Taos. Others say that they arrived safely and Frieda chose to have them added to the concrete of the shrine.

Lawrence had previously lived on the Kiowa Ranch with Frieda. After his death she gave it to the University of New Mexico stipulating that it be used as a study centre. It is now known as the D. H. Lawrence Ranch.

Lawrence is chiefly remembered as a novelist but he was also a prolific poet. His collections include Love Poems (1913), Birds, Beast and Flowers (1923), Pansies (1929), and Last Poems (1929). However, it was not until he abandoned traditional verse and meter forms that he found his own distinctive voice. Influenced by the free verse of Walt Whitman, Lawrence wrote some of the finest nature poems in the English language e.g. Snake and Kangaroo. Lawrence's nature poetry had a profound influence on the work of Ted Hughes.

By the time Lawrence wrote The Ship of Death, he was already gravely ill and it deals with his own impending death. It ends with the lines: ' Oh build your ship of death, oh build it! for you will need it. For the voyage of oblivion awaits you.'