Maurice Magnus (7 November 1876 – 4 November 1920) was an American traveller and author of Memoirs of the Foreign Legion (1924), which exposed the cruelty and depravity of life in that French army unit in 1916–17 and tells of his desertion from it.Maurice Magnus. Memoirs of the Foreign Legion (Martin Secker, 1924; Alfred A. Knopf, 1925), introduction by D. H. Lawrence. The book is known for D. H. Lawrence's 80-page introduction to it.Lawrence's introduction is reprinted in Phoenix II: Uncollected, Unpublished, and Other Prose Works by D. H. Lawrence (The Viking Press, Inc. 1970); in Cushman, ed. (1987); in Introduction and Reviews in The Cambridge Edition of the Works of D. H. Lawrence (2004); and in Life With a Capital L, Penguin Books Limited (also published by New York Review Books as The Bad Side of Books), essays by D. H. Lawrence chosen and introduced by Geoff Dyer (2019).Lawrence described his introduction to Magnus's Memoirs as "the best single piece of writing, as writing, that he had ever done". D. H. Lawrence: Memoir of Maurice Magnus, p. 9 (introduction by Keith Cushman). Magnus and Lawrence knew each other from November 1919 to May 1920.D. H. Lawrence: Memoir of Maurice Magnus, p. 10 (introduction by Keith Cushman).

Life Magnus's father was Jewish-American, and his mother "believed herself the illegitimate daughter of Wilhelm I, King of Prussia and first German Kaiser," but "there is no surviving evidence to show that Hedwig Liebetrau was a Hohenzollern."Wilson, Frances, Burning Man, p. 184.

Frances Wilson writes:

Magnus learned to speak several languages badly, to produce indifferent prose, to mismanage money, to appreciate good food and to keep up appearances. He wanted to be known as a 'littérateur ' ('littérateur!' mocked Lawrence, '—the impossible little pigeon!'), and his adventures in the world of letters can be traced through the curious trail of publications he left behind. In his early twenties Magnus wrote a play called Eldyle about a visionary who turns his back on the world and builds a monastery to which young and beautiful men can retreat....Burning Man, p. 185.

Eldyle was published in 1898. In the same year Magnus is credited as a 'translator and compiler' in the American Colonial Handbook, volumes one and two. In 1901 he worked — probably as manager — for a new literary magazine called the Smart Set, which would later publish a number of Lawrence's poems and stories. In 1902 he abandoned the Lutheran church and converted to Catholicism, and by 1903 he had left America for good and was to be found in Berlin, writing articles for the Berlin Times and Florence Herald. For a brief period, Maurice Magnus was Berlin correspondent for the New York Herald.Burning Man, p. 186.

Magnus was reportedly the manager of the dancer Isadora Duncan.D. H. Lawrence: Memoir of Maurice Magnus, edited by Keith Cushman (Santa Rosa, California: Black Sparrow Press, 1987), p. 9 (Introduction by Cushman), p. 35 (Lawrence quoting Norman Douglas: "He was manager for Isidora [sic] Duncan for a long time.") "Isadora later maintained that Magnus had been her secretary, not her manager."Harriet Cooper. "Lawrence, Magnus, and Monte Cassino", D. H. Lawrence Review, vol. 26, No. 1/3 (1995-1996), pp. 149-165, n.3, citing Stokes, Sewell, Isadora Duncan: An Intimate Portrait, p. 14 (London: Brentano's, 1928). Magnus was also the manager of the English theater set designer (and Duncan's lover) Edward Gordon Craig.Harriet Cooper. "Lawrence, Magnus, and Monte Cassino", D. H. Lawrence Review, vol. 26, No. 1/3 (1995-1996), p. 150. Also noted in D. H. Lawrence: Memoir of Maurice Magnus, edited by Keith Cushman (Santa Rosa, California: Black Sparrow Press, 1987), pp. 9, 149. Keith Cushman writes, "The business relationship with Craig and Duncan was not a success."D. H. Lawrence: Memoir of Maurice Magnus, p. 149, n.4.

Magnus was homosexual,Cushman, Keith, ed. (1987). D. H. Lawrence: Memoir of Maurice Magnus, p. 9 (introduction by Keith Cushman). but in 1913 he married Lucy Seraphine Ardoine Bramley-Moore, daughter of William Bramley-Moore; "they were officially separated in 1917". Minutes before his suicide in Malta, to avoid arrest for debt, he made Norman Douglas his literary executor.Burning Man, p. 244.Magnus committed suicide by drinking prussic acid. Cleves, Unspeakable, p. 185.

Works Magnus's Memoirs of the Foreign Legion, published in 1924, four years after his death, was notable for igniting a long-running feud between two of the most distinguished expatriate English authors, D. H. Lawrence and Norman Douglas, who had been close friends of his. Both the book and the feud surrounding it touched on homosexuality and bisexuality in a way that could not legally be referenced at the time. More recent revelations have added new insights into Lawrence as the prophet of love.Brenda Maddox. The Married Man: A Life of D. H. Lawrence, published by Sinclair-Stevenson (1994) and by Minerva (1995); published as D. H. Lawrence: The Story of a Marriage by Simon & Schuster (1994) and by W. W. Norton and Company (1996).

His memoirs in their original form, titled Dregs: Experiences of an American in the Foreign Legion,Cushman, ed., p. 8. were unpublishable. But "Lawrence was intent on getting Magnus's book published. He recognized that it would be easier to place if he supplied an Introduction. He wrote the 'Memoir of Maurice Magnus' in Taormina in January 1922".D. H. Lawrence: Memoir of Maurice Magnus, p. 11 (introduction by Keith Cushman). Norman Douglas protested that Lawrence's introduction had maligned Magnus as an unprincipled spendthrift and had exaggerated Lawrence's own generosity towards him.Douglas, Norman, D. H. Lawrence and Maurice Magnus: A Plea for Better Manners, privately printed pamphlet (1924); reprinted (with changes) in Norman Douglas, Experiments, London: Chapman & Hall (1925), and New York: Robert M. McBride & Company (1925), pp. 223-264. Among the changes in the version in Experiments were the omission of the footnote on pp. 38-39, and the addition of footnotes on pp. 226, 238, 239, 243, and 246-247. D. H. Lawrence: Memoir of Maurice Magnus, edited by Keith Cushman, reproduces the first edition of the pamphlet, with technical edits. Lawrence published a letter to the editor in reply.D. H. Lawrence. "The Late Mr Maurice Magnus: A Letter". New Statesman, 20 February 1926. Lawrence's letter is reprinted in Phoenix: The Posthumous Papers, 1936, pp. 806-807; in Selected Essays, Penguin Books, 1950, pp. 349-351; and in The Letters of D.H. Lawrence, Volume V, 1924-1927, Cambridge University Press, 1989, pp. 395-397. Both A Plea for Better Manners and "The Late Mr Maurice Magnus: A Letter" are reprinted in D. H. Lawrence: Memoir of Maurice Magnus, edited by Keith Cushman, Black Sparrow Press (1987). . As Lawrence seldom ventured into biography, Douglas said he detected the fiction-writer's touch in this introduction. An early draft of the introduction in manuscript, now in the possession of the University of Nottingham, shows that Lawrence had intended an even more savage denunciation of Magnus.

"Lawrence used Magnus as a model for his creation of the fictional character Mr. May, the theatrical agent in The Lost Girl."Harriet Cooper. Lawrence, Magnus, and Monte Cassino, D. H. Lawrence Review, vol. 26, No. 1/3 (1995-1996), p. 150. Also noted in Brenda Maddox, D. H. Lawrence: The Story of a Marriage, p. 268, and in Frances Wilson, Burning Man, p. 154. Magnus is also "recognizable ... as the mischievously named Little Mee in Aaron's Rod (1922)."Paul Dean, "D. H. Lawrence the adventurer: A review of Burning Man by Frances Wilson," The New Criterion, vol. 30, no. 1 (September 2021) Lawrence biographer Frances Wilson claims that Lawrence's poem The Mosquito is "a summing up of his relations with Magnus to date and a parody of his belief in a blood brotherhood."Burning Man, p. 231. She also claims that, in Lawrence's poem "Bibbles," Magnus is Bibbles, the "snub-nosed bitch."Burning Man, pp. 154, 222-223.

Bibliography

Blanchard, Lydia. Review of Keith Cushman, ed. D. H. Lawrence: Memoir of Maurice Magnus. The D. H. Lawrence Review, Vol. 21, No. 1 (Spring 1989), pp. 67–68. Cleves, Rachel Hope (2020). Unspeakable: A Life beyond Sexual Morality. University of Chicago Press. . Biography of Norman Douglas. Cooper, Harriet. "Lawrence, Magnus, and Monte Cassino", D. H. Lawrence Review, vol. 26, No. 1/3 (1995-1996), pp. 149–165. Cushman, Keith, ed. (1987). D. H. Lawrence: Memoir of Maurice Magnus.This is the unexpurgated version of Lawrence's introduction to Magnus's Memoirs of the Foreign Legion; Lawrence's discussion of Magnus's homosexuality had been cut in the original. Including: D. H. Lawrence and Maurice Magnus: A Plea for Better Manners, by Norman Douglas; Lawrence's Letter to the New Statesman, 20 February 1926; Excerpts from Dregs: Experiences of an American in the Foreign Legion, by Maurice Magnus.These are two excerpts from the typescript of Magnus's Dregs: Experiences of an American in the Foreign Legion, which was Magnus's title of his book. The first excerpt had not been included in the 1924 and 1925 published editions of Memoirs of the Foreign Legion; the second excerpt had been. Santa Rosa, California: Black Sparrow Press.

Fraser, Keath. "Norman Douglas and D. H. Lawrence: A Sideshow in Modern Memoirs", The D. H. Lawrence Review, vol. 9, no. 2, (1976), pp. 283–295. Lawrence, D. H. "The Late Mr Maurice Magnus: A Letter". New Statesman, 20 February 1926.Reprinted in Phoenix: The Posthumous Papers, 1936, pp. 806-807; in Selected Essays, Penguin Books, 1950, pp. 349-351; in The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, Volume V, 1924-1927, Cambridge University Press, 1989, pp. 395-397, and Cushman, Keith, ed. (1987). D. H. Lawrence: Memoir of Maurice Magnus. Lawrence, D. H. "Accumulated Mail", in The Borzoi 1925: Being a sort of record of ten years of publishing (New York: Knopf, 1925), pp. 119–128; reprinted in D. H. Lawrence, Phoenix: The Posthumous Papers, 1936, pp. 799–805, and in D. H. Lawrence, Reflections on the Death of a Porcupine and Other Essays, Cambridge University Press, 1987, pp. 237–245. Two paragraphs in the essay, on pp. 120–121 in The Borzoi 1925, p. 800 in Phoenix, and p. 240 in Reflections, discuss Lawrence's Introduction to Memoirs of the Foreign Legion. MacNiven, Ian S. Review of Keith Cushman, ed. D. H. Lawrence: Memoir of Maurice Magnus. English Literature in Transition, 1889-1920, Vol. 32, No. 3, 1989, pp. 360–364. Reeve, N. H. and John Worthen. "1921-1922: Maurice Magnus", in D. H. Lawrence, Introductions and Reviews, Cambridge University Press, 2005, pp. xl-li. Vassallo, Peter. "D.H. Lawrence, Montecassino and the 'Spirit of Place, Journal of Anglo-Italian Studies, 2017. Wilson, Frances. Burning Man: The Trials of D. H. Lawrence, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2021; Burning Man: The Ascent of D. H. Lawrence, Bloomsbury Circus, 2021. Wright, Louise E. "Disputed Dregs: D. H. Lawrence and the Publication of Maurice Magnus' Memoirs of the Foreign Legion", The Journal of the D. H. Lawrence Society (1996), pp. 57–73. Wright, Louise E. "The Death of Maurice Magnus", in D. H. Lawrence, Introductions and Reviews, Cambridge University Press, 2005, pp. 419–428. Wright, Louise E. Maurice Magnus: A Biography, Newcastle, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2007. Review by John Worthen.

References

External sources Memoirs of the Foreign Legion (pdf online)