rider and breaks several of his bones. The lowest character in Mr. Lawrence's scale is Flora, who after the accident seizes upon Rico for a lover, and proposes to buy, castrate, and tame the horse. The immediate upshot of the affair is that mother and daughter fall in love with the horse and with the grooms and carry them off to America.
A superb creature, St. Mawr, if one knows how to ride him.
If one has but the merest rudiments of symbol-reading, the main meanings of all this and subsequent developments will be clear enough. The story is excitingly told, independently of its meanings. But it is obvious that this symbolical novel is intended to be mordantly satirical, as well. Mr. Lawrence's first theme is the emancipation of the two American women from the perfunctory type of men, and their adventure in quest of an independent self-hood. His second theme, pervading his entire conception of the tale, is his own profound revulsion from polite tea table literature, his sense that the English scene is exhausted, his quest for a newer, younger land in which, as George Moore would say, to "enwomb" a vital art.
The concluding chapter, in a slackened tempo, pictures the last refuge of Lou and her mother: an abandoned, rat-pestered, goat-ruined ranch in the mountains of the American Southwest. I know what Mr. Lawrence means by that, but I believe in leaving something to the imagination of readers. To mine, I recommend reading "St. Mawr," and thinking it over for some time before deciding whether or not it is a deeply suggestive piece of symbolism.
