As well as lacking the intimate female reader he said he needed, Lawrence had, since Hueffer's dismissal of ‘The Saga of Siegmund’, also been without a mentor in the literary world. This began to change in August when he heard from Edward Garnett, who acted as a literary adviser to publishers and had been a great supporter of Conrad and Galsworthy. Edward Garnett was also a name to conjure with for Lawrence, being the son of Richard Garnett, editor of the twenty-volume International Library of Famous Literature, bought by Ernest ten years earlier and a treasured possession in the Lawrence household. Garnett contacted Lawrence on behalf of the Century Magazine to ask for short stories. The stories Lawrence sent were rejected, but Garnett was to be a major influence on the progress of his second and third novels. In the case of Sons and Lovers, he was to have the final hand in shaping the published form of the novel for eighty years.

More immediately, by sending ‘Paul Morel’ to Jessie, Lawrence reconnected with his most important female reader. The two met on 7 October, when Lawrence, accompanied by his brother George, and Jessie with Helen Corke, met at the theatre. Jessie thought Lawrence looked ‘profoundly unhappy’ and ‘under a severe strain’ (ET 187). This impression may have been retrospectively coloured by his severe illness the following month, as well as by Jessie's hostility to his engagement to Louie. However, she claims corroboration from George, who told her that Bert wasn't at all well and that ‘He calls out in his sleep, thinks somebody's trying to kill him’ (ET 188). George also, according to Jessie, believed that Lawrence and Louie were a mismatch and that they would never marry.

‘Some time after’ this meeting Lawrence sent Jessie the manuscript of ‘Paul Morel’ (ET 190). The editors of the Letters date this immediately after the encouraging meeting with Heinemann on 20 October. On the evening of Friday, 3 November, he wrote to Louie that he was about to begin his novel again, and asked for her prayers in support of his task: ‘It is a book the thought of which weighs heavily upon me’ (L1 321). Between this date and the onset of pneumonia on 19 November he wrote at least eighty-five pages, totalling about 20,000 words.