When DH Lawrence first saw the Taos Valley in 1922 he said, “Something stood still in my soul and I started to attend.” He described New Mexico in general as “the greatest experience from the outside world that I ever had.
A tubercular DH Lawrence came to Taos on Mabel Dodge Luhan’s invitation in 1922. New Mexico’s dry climate was thought to be beneficial. Mabel, a wealthy American woman who had run literary salons in New York and Italy, knew upon arriving in this small town nestling between the mountains and the mesa, that here she could found her long dreamed of community of artists, writers and thinkers. With her fourth husband, Tony Luhan, an Indian from the Taos Pueblo, she created a three storey house full of light in stark contrast to the squat low adobes of local architecture. In addition to Lawrence, visitors included Georgia O’Keefe, Carl Jung and Willa Cather. Lawrence went on to do some more painting while here and his notorious “pornographic” pictures are now kept in a locked room behind the reception desk at the garish La Fonda hotel on that mournful plaza. They can be viewed on request. I requested and got to see what are probably the least accomplished works on display in the whole town.
His New Mexican stay inspired Lawrence's short story "The Woman who Rode Away." Lawrence himself would not, in the end, ride away from Taos. His ashes are enshrined here at Mabel's ranch a short drive outside town. The novelist who travelled restlessly around the world has returned to Taos forever.
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