6

the
That was one thing that interested me the most in the memories that he
wrote and that I read.

And so to go back to historical wars. I naturally liked history and Shakespeare plays and historical novels and there was always war. Of course ancient history was full of war and the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire was full of war but those did not any of them interest me as wars. English wars interested me, some French Wars and the American Civil War. And I was right because the American Civil War was the prototype of all the wars the big two wars that I have completely lived. About the American Civil War.

Naturally my mother being Baltimore there was the South, and naturally
there being ourselves there was the North. My father I never took on in war al-
though he was North.

Of course there were Indian wars naturally there was no cinema then but if
there had been Indian wars would have been like that, although one could know
people who had been in them and could see them the real Indians on the stage
and there was Fenimore Cooper they were not real wars, not as real as some
English wars in history and certainly not as real as the American Civil War. A
very real war.

But naturally all my childhood was not taken up with enjoying past wars
although as an omniverous reader naturally there was a great deal of war. There
was one very funny thing about wars as a child sees it, although there are so
many killed there being so many dead is not very real at all, my feeling about
that was quite a separate thing and had nothing to do with wars. And that is
natural enough. However near a war is it is always not very near. Even when it
is here. It is very funny that but it is true. Perhaps if one were a boy it
would be different but I do not think so, I think even when men are in a war
actually in a war it is not very near it is here but it is not very near. That
is the way it seems to me from all I can hear and from all I can see. But the
Civil War was quite near. As near as a war can be. But as I say my childhood

7

actual childhood had nothing to do with wars. As it really happened there were no wars just then none at all. There were just at the end of my adolescent but never before. From babyhood to the Boer war there was no war. No war at all.

So I had my childhood and my adolescence without outside of me there being any war.

inside

What is there to be done in one that makes one know all about war. You ask questions now why in Russia do not the Germans surrender when they are surrounded. And there is no answer except that perhaps they are afraid to. Perhaps. What is there to be done one that makes one know all about war.

Death stars history and fears. And that begins very soon and dies out little by little or not at all or all.

A farmer on a hill said of the Germans, do not say that it has to do with their leaders, they are a people whose fate it is to always create a man whom they force to lead them in a direction in which they do not want to go.

This same farmer on this same hill was saying, it was after a thunder storm and we were talking about it together. Yes he said it is like them to call it a thunder and lightning war. Thunder and lightning a storm of thunder and lightning can cause a fair amount of damage and frightens you enormously but leaves nothing else behind it, no after-effect at all.

And so from the time I was little all through my adolescence although I read and read about wars, if you like history and historical novels you have to and historical plays, but there was no really outside war at least none that I notices or that anybody around me noticed.

For a very long time I did not know what it was to be a child although I remembered it so well and I wrote as if I knew but actually there is a great difference between having it and remembering it, and there are so many children just now and as many ages as there are in a country school.

I went out in the moon-light, and it was so lovely and not cold although met January and in the mountains and I took a walk and I was on the road a young

I2

a country that was a natural country was at war.

And in between there was religion, which too had to do with adolescence and with war.

There is no love interest in these modern wars. I am speaking of the world wars but particularly of the 1939-1945 war. there is no love interest, very little religion and no love interest. Religious people in these world wars are religious but otherwise they are like everybody in what they do and lovers the same way they may be in love but otherwise they are like everybody which was not at all as war was to me from babyhood to 1900, not at all.

From babyhood to fourteen which is the beginning of adolescence, life is mostly taken up with slowly knowing that stars are worlds, that words are ways and that force is strength and that wiles are ways as words are, in the words that one is one and that the others can come to be with that one that is what is most occupying from babyhood to fourteen, and during that time there are things like having apples given one to take home one for you and the other four for the other four and slowly one by one they are eaten until there is none, and there always is the reason for eating the last one because since the other ones are eaten then of course there is no sense in keeping the last one, because then the story has to be told and why should it since after all all your like you can have it as remorse that it has been done. War is like that, it goes on like that it keeps going on like that and soon nobody has anything to eat that is nobody who does not take what does not belong to them and later although there is remorse the very last one has been eaten if not there has to be an explanation and if there is an explanation that does not help remorse nor does it help any one, remorse does not and not eating it does not, and so as I was then so am I now, and war, was not then but the feeling was just the same and eating was just the same in so many ways. A fish bone can even be a worry anything that can happen or has happened or has not happened can be a worry and that is what war is, and so what is the difference between life and war. There is none.

all centuries do that is why the last war to kill it is so long, it is still
being killed now in 1943, the nineteenth century is just as the eighteenth
century took from the revolution to 40 to kill so the nineteenth century is
taking from 1914 to 1948 to kill. It is hard to kill a <u>million</u> century almost
impossible, as was the old joke about mothers-in-law, and centuries get to be
like that they get to be wearing like a mother-in-law. So as I was saying from
babyhood to fourteen and of course longer much longer it was the nineteenth
century and the wars civil domestic and foreign were nineteenth century wars,
naturally enough.

Saint George and the Dragon, Sinfired and the dragon, anybody and the
dragon, the dragon is always the century any century that anybody is trying to
kill, and the worst of it all is that the one that says he is trying to kill
the century that has to be killed is the last piece of the century that has to
be killed and often the most long-lived, such as a Napoleon a Hitler or a Julius
Ceasar, the century has to be killed and they are the embodiment the most per-
sistent end of it that says in killing it they are to live while really in its
being killed they have to go, only nobody tells them so, nobody and so they never
do know, never do know.

However when I was a baby and then on to fourteen, the nineteenth century
was full on.

In the nineteenth century, there was reading, there was evolution, there
was war anti-war which was the same thing, and there was eating. Even now I al-
ways resent when in a book they say they sat down to a hearty meal and they do
not tell just what it was they ate. In the nineteenth century they often did.
And in these days 1943 when eating well actually it is like prohibition one is
so certain that one is never going to eat again that one is not greedy but one
does eat everything well in these days you would imagine that you would not take
pleasure in what the characters in a novel ate when they did eat, but one does
immensely, well anyway the nineteenth century, liked to cry liked to try liked

K6

are coincidences as there are coincidences that does make superstitions and at
any age, there is the same astonishment and the same delight, and between
babyhood and fourteen there were coincidences and astonishment. There are co-
incidences now yesterday and to-day and to-morrow and then for some time there
are none, but any time they are astonishing when they come. It is a long time
that there has been no correspondence with America and then some one offered
to make one by cablegram and the next day a cablegram came, which is what makes
superstitions and when you are young very young superstitions are frightening
and when you are old quite old superstitions are comforting.

War this war can neglect superstitions the war of 1943 because all the
superstitions
SUPERSTITIONS have been used up used up and passed away, and there is no feeling
about having any now one or any old one. Some wars make everybody tired, not
many of them, this one makes everybody more tired than most, I think the Amer-
ican Civil War made everybody tired but it did not quite exhaust coincidences
and superstitions but this 1943 one, well in a way yes, and when I was in
babyhood to fourteen little by little and all the time there was the excite-
ment of coincidences, and of superstitions, coincidences were more exciting
than superstitions in between superstitions were more exciting than coincidences
and now again coincidences are not exciting but they are soothing now in 1943.

Everything begins again, now they denounce one another, why nobody knows,
just perhaps to make coincidences now that there are now superstitions. Madame
Chaboux just told me this one.

There is a woman living in the country, her husband was a prisoner, there
are more prisoners than she. She was not well and she asked a neighbor to come
and tend to her, she said she had pnuemonia. The neighbor lived with another
woman and the husband of each one of them was a prisoner a war prisoner. Well
the one went to see the other, and she saw that the sheets were blood-
stained, and she said to the woman you have had a miscarriage have you not.
And the other woman said how dare you denounce me. And she said but I did not

I8

basket, they can become a legend, if they hold a flower in each hand, they
can become a legend if they had an accident and lost a finger, they can be-
come a legend, if they walk up and down hand in hand, and one eye of one of
them is always closed. They can become a legend and they do because a legend
any one between babyhood and fourteen does become a legend, a pure legend.
Later on the legend is not so pure because you mix yourself up with it but
between babyhood and fourteen becoming a legend is just like that it is be-
coming a legend. I can remember becoming a legend, I will tell several of
them, several of there becoming legends and what they have to do with war.
This war 1943 is not very legendary, that is one of its troubles, it is not
like I49 I8 and other wars which naturally become legendary, this is more like
the beginning of middle living when being legendary does not happen, but as
I say between babyhood and fourteen everybody is a legend just anybody, and I
was.

Coincidences come to be stronger and stronger between babyhood and four-
teen, they replace faith, coincidences are the foundation of games, they are
the foundation of faith, coincidences, in between are not so important but
from babyhood to fourteen and then again much later, very much later when one
is old coincidences are important, they are real, they recreate faith they
are not games, but they are the reality that makes a present and a future when
perhaps there could not really be any. Take war, in time of war 1943, there
have happened so many coincidences and they are always happening little coin-
cidences, nice little coincidences, later on when I tell all about this coin-
cidental war this meaningless war, this war that put an end a real end an
entire end to the nineteenth century there were so many coincidences and they
were the only reality in this time of unreality. The nineteenth century called
coincidences a law of chance and worked it out but now that the nineteenth
century is dead, coincidences are real again, they recreate faith they make a
future, and they will make the twentieth century. Everybody wait and see.

19

But between babyhood and fourteen, coincidences were only really used as the really necessary basis of games, and what was real then were not coincidences but being a legend and I was, we were.

What makes the legend real between babyhood and fourteen is that there is then the first struggle not to die and the first struggle to help kill the entury in which you are born.

It is a struggle not to die between babyhood and fourteen, not not to actually die, that is a matter for parents and nurses and guardians, but the not to know that death is there, and not to share, that is to be secret and not die, and not to not know why, that is what makes any one shy between babyhood and fourteen, and later on there are other things in between, there is eternity, there is or there is not being a king or a queen, but between babyhood and fourteen, beside reading writing and arithmetic, and counting, and games, and coincidences, and how and cold, one is always either very hot or very cold between babyhood and fourteen.

There is no use in remembering between babyhood and fourteen, actually there was no war then, there might have been but actually there was no war then when I was between babyhood and fourteen and I was a legend then, of course I was, to myself and to them and of course I was struggling not to be dying that is not to know that dying was dying and frightening was not only frightening but connected with anything. Believe it or not, today they say, that children do that is between babyhood and fourteen, does not live any life in between this which is not 1914 but 1943 and the nineteenth century is dead dead dead, and between babyhood and fourteen, I was there to begin to kill what was not dead, the nineteenth century which was so sure of evolution and progress, and esper-anto and their ideas. You might think I mean that between babyhood and four-teen, I might mean to be doing what I was doing, and in a way I was, I see them now, between babyhood and fourteen and in a kind of a way I was.

What is a legend.

20

There are no legends now, because nobody can now can see how they have been not now, this is 1943.

From babyhood until fourteen, to play in a garden in the evening when it is darkening is a legend. It feels like that, it is like that, there is any evening when it is darkening.

Between babyhood and fourteen there comes a time when in reading you can-
not help thinking what happened after and what heppened to their children and
their grandchildren and which one married which one and what war was going on
when they were growing or grown up and were they after all the time it took to
be born and grown were they killed in the war that was going on then. Now in
1943 when there are armies and armies and they come humming in the air at
night when the moon is bright it is full of them going over to Italy to do their
bombing and the mountain makes a reverberation as a woman said to me like be-
ing in a copper cooking utensil well then you keep on thinking how quickly
anybody can get killed, just as quickly just as very quickly, more quickly
even than in a book even much more quickly than in any book, those up there
flying and bombing and those down below, with houses tumbling, and burning.

So between babyhood and fourteen you first begin to think of anything go-
ing on and going on, and at the same time stopping, but that is not reasonable
no not at all reasonable between babyhood, and fourteen.

When they are very little just only a baby you can never tell which one
is to be a lady.

There are some when they feel it inside them that it has been with them
that there was once so very little of them, that they were a baby, helpless
and no conscious feeling in them, that they knew nothing then when they were
kissed and dandled and fixed by others who knew them when they could know noth-
ing inside them or around them, some get from all this that once surely happen-
ed to them to that which was then every bit that was then them, there are some
when they feel it later inside them that they were such once and that was all

2I

that there was then of them, there are some who have from such a knowing an
uncertain curious kind of feeling in them that their having been so little o-
once and knowing nothing makes it all a broken world for them that they have
inside them, kills for them the everlasting feeling; and they spend their life
in many ways, and always they are trying to make for themselves a new ever-
lasting feeling.

One way perhaps of winning is to make a little one to come through them,
little like the baby that once was all them and lost them their everlasting
feeling. Some can win from just the feeling, the little one need not come, to
give it to them.

And so always there is beginning and to some then a losing of the ever-
lasting feeling. Then they make a baby to make for themselves a new beginning
and so win for themselves a new everlasting feeling.

It is never very much to be a baby, to be such a very little thing and
knowing nothing. It certainly is a very little thing and almost nothing to be
a baby and without a conscious feeling. It is nothing, to be, without anything
to know inside them or around them, just a baby and that was all there was
once of them and so it is a broken world around them when they think of this
beginning and then they lose their everlasting feeling.

Then they make a baby or they have the feeling and so they win what once
a baby lost them.

It is not very much to be a baby. It certainly is nothing just to be one,
to be without a conscious feeling. It is something to have a baby come into the
world by way of them but it certainly is not very much to have been the little
thing that was once all them.

It is something to have a baby come into the world through them. It is
nothing just to be one.

First then they make a baby. No it is never very much just to be a baby.
Later in life when one is proud as a man or as a lady it is not right that
they ever could have dandled and kissed and fixed them, just a baby. Such

22

want to
ones never can feel themselves ever to have been a baby.

No it is not very much to be a baby. It is not right to one to begin them until a little they can resist to them who would hold them helpless, kiss and dandle and fix them as they were then, such a very little thing, just nothing inside to them. I say it is not right to many of them then to begin them, but it is not all of them who would resist them. There are some who do not feel it inside to be bad for them to have been a baby without any conscious feeling of themselves inside them, to have been a little thing and that was all there was then of them, they are some who have not any proud kind of feeling in them.

They are some who like it in their later living that they were then such a very little thing and that was then all there was of them and then others kissed and dandled and fixed them. They are those who are within them weak or tender as the strongest thing inside them and to them it is very much to have been a baby and to have had others to feel gently toward them, who kissed and dandles and fixed the helpless bundle they were then. With them being proud is not strong inside them.

Some, and we can know them, have a curious uncertain kind of feeling when they think of themselves as they were then and some so lose the feeling of their continuous life inside them.

It is a very different thing feeling each kind of man and woman has inside them about the baby the very little thing that was once all them, and the very little thing that comes into the world by them, and the very little things that all about fill the world every moment with beginning.

There are many kinds of men and many kinds of women and each kind of them have a different feeling in them about the baby that was once all them. There are many kinds of men and many kinds of women and there are many millions made of each kind of them. Each one of the many millions of each kind of them have it in them a little to be different from all the other millions of their kind of them, but all of each kind of them have it in them to have the same kind of them.

feeling about the little thing that was once all them, about the little
things that come to a beginning through them, about the little things begin-
ning all around them, there are many kinds of men and many kinds of women and
this will be a history of all the kinds of them and of pairs of them.

As I was saying every man and every woman was a little baby once and
knowing nothing. I am saying there are many ways of feeling it inside them in
the many kinds of men and women that they were little things once then and
that was then all there was of them and they were dandled and fixed and kiss-
ed then, little things then and knowing nothing.

Between babyhood and fourteen their names might be Paul and Pauling and
they might know how they learned the why and the when and the wherefor and
how they learned excitement, hope and calm.

Imagine between the ages of babyhood and fourteen being either Paul or
Pauling and living when there is no war or living when there is one.

Between babyhood and fourteen when I was living then there was no war and
my name was neither Paul nor Pauline. I had an aunt named Pauling but I did
not know of her then, and I did not know anybody by the name of Paul although
I always did think it was a nice name and liked it when I saw it in a book.

How many books I read then, I am always reading books, there was of course
Paul and Virginia under an umbrella, I do not know why but they always are
under an umbrella and I thought the way the negroes talked was very strange.
Dialect in books was upsetting, even then and even now, then when there was no
esperanto and now when there is no esperanto, no universal knowledge although
everybody does know everything. You lose a stocking and it was the best one,
it was lost in the stream when they were washing, there is no soap, this is
1943, and so they wash in running water and the stocking went down the stream
and it was the very best woolen stocking, only one but of what use is only one
stocking, and we neither of us slept very much that night, because the stock-
ing was gone, her stocking, and yet in these days, what you keep you have that

24

is you have while you keep it.

Between my babyhood and fourteen that was not true you had what you kept and kept what you had and you could wonder what the children the poor children were doing, particularly if it was already past. All very dreamy and exciting.

Then there was another thing, In Gulliver's Travels there was a description of the people that never die, and it is supposed to show that death is necessary, because those that do not die do not live them when they do not die. That is what some think and when I was between babyhood and fourteen I did think that it was not necessary to be old like that to never die, why could not one be young like that and never die, and if you do not cry and if you like never to die, why not go on being just like that. Why not. To be sure the time passes very slowly between babyhood and fourteen and if it did pass even slower really even slower then certainly there is no reason why any one should not live for ever, no reason. It was many years later that I did think that if everybody did not die the earth would be all covered over and I, I as I, could not have come to be and try as much as I can try not to be I, nevertheless, I would mind that so much, as much as anything, so then why not die, and yet and again not a thing, not a thing to be liking, not a thing.

But to come back to being between babyhood and fourteen and being a legend. Of course I was one. Any one is then One.

Roses and pansies, buttercups and daisies, this is what makes a legend, long before it makes poetry. And by a legend I mean that you do everything, just the way you should look as if you did, and you do. Any little girl and little boy between babyhood and fourteen, know just how they seem, know just exactly how they seem and so it is natural enough that there was no war them, because really a war a really war is not quite legenday enough it is not exactly just the way it seems.

When my brother and I walked and walked up into the mountains on the dusty

2

The next thing that happened was that I was a very little older and we were
in Vienna, a nice place then. And now there was something I could remember as
well as some things I could be helped to remember by hearing them told again and
again, then and later.

Born that way there is no reason why I should have seen so many wars. I have
seen them. The Spanish-American was, the first world war and now the second world
war.

There were of course a number of others that did not particularly concern
me. The Boer was I remembered that one, the Hapanese-Chinese war, and the Russian-
Japanese war I remember that one very well too. Each one of these wars I remember
for another reason. I suppose it is not so unreasonable that I should have seen
so many wars having seen a good many countries when I was a baby and having a
feeling about countries which I suppose sooner or later since wars are make you
be one of those that see them.

And so we were in Vienna and I have never seen it again but it has always
remained to me something very real. It was there that I first came to be and so
of course it was real and then there were really things, there was a public gard-
en and in a kind of a way a formal garden pleases a child. more than a
natural garden. It is more like a garden that you would make yourself. And there
was music and there was the old emperor who was a figure to have in a
mines
formal garden and there was his national anthem and then there were the salt caves
and then also there were butterflies and insects in the woods and there was the
catching of them and there was good eating and on my third birthday a taste of
Vienna beer. And there were my mother and brothers there was a
tutor, one did not realise how important all these nationalities were going to be
to every one then and a Hungarian governess, and there was the first contact with
books, picture books but books all the same since pictures in picture books are
narrative. I have just bought twenty of them for the school children of Bilignin
and they are narrative.

My mother so I heard then say a later day did not like being in Vienna all alone with five children. She had a sister from Baltimore with her, but she had gone away, my father had gone back to America on business and my mother said she wanted to be nearer America so she packed up and left the tutor and governess behind her and with the five children she went to Paris. I continued to be the youngest one. I was about four years old then and I do not know whether I really remembered more about Paris but I think I did. It always does make war because one of the things that seemed to me In 1914 was that Paris was then the way I remembered it when I was four only then there was no war. But war makes things go backward as well as forward and so 1913 was the same as 1878 in a way.

Of course there are a good many times when there is no war just as there are a good many times when there is a war. To be sure when there is a war the years are longer that is to say the days are longer the months are longer the years are much longer but the weeks are shorter that is what makes a war. And when there is no war, well just now I cannot remember just how it is when there is no war.

And then my mother had enough even in of Paris of being away from America and all her family in Baltimore and my father going back to America to do business and so we all packed up, after having bought dozens and dozens of everything and we want to London and then to America. In London there was no war no war at all but the first theatre I ever saw, which was Pinafore and I do not remember it the hall of the theatre and I remember a glitter and I remember that one followed the other and that was all there was of London. The trip home on the boat I do not remember at all and I do not remember that any one ever said there was anything to remember. Up to that time emotions as I had had expressed themselves in german and then in French and then in Baltimore although I do not think we stayed there very long emotions began to feel themselves in English. There was one little Indian two little Indians three little Indian boys, four little five little six little seven little eight little Indian boys. And then also was obtruded itself,

4

I do not quite know how but Baltimore was a place where when my mother was young there had been a war, and where she had seen the Yankee soldiers going from one station to another and they had been shot at and she remembered it and we remembered it and there was a mysterious uncle who went all through the war and came out with or without or only with or only without a pair of shoes and he was then in the shoe business and naturally there was a connection. It was only later when I was passionate admirer of General Grant and the Northern army that I realised that the uncle had been in the Southern army.

After Baltimore we went to California and then I really did begin to remember. I naturally did remember, not all, but at least really some landscape as well as eating and moving. I do not remember that we saw Indians but I was told afterwards that we had, and now for almost a great number of years there was no war, there was history of course and there was the Civil war which had been but otherwise there were no wars. Such wars as there were were inside in me, and naturally although I was a very happy child there were quite a number of such wars. NotMAY with anybody else because I was not quarrelsome and continuing being the youngest in the family continues being very well taken care of by everybody, also being the youngest I had cajoling ways, one has when one continues to be the youngest.

In time of war you know much more what children feel than in time of peace, not that children feel more but you have to know more about what they feel. In time of peace what children feel concerns the lives of the children as children but in time of war there is a mingling there is not children's lives and grown up lives there is just lives and so quite naturally you have to know what children feel. And so it being now war and I seeing just incidentally but nevertheless inevitably seeing and knowing of the feeling of children of any age I do not now have to remember about my feeling but just feel the feeling of having been a certain age. And so there was life in California from about six to sixteen, and as each thing happened it did happen. So many things happened but really in remembering not more than one or two a year certainly not one every month certainly not one every week

certainly not one every day. Well say, two or three a year. Quite enough too to
remember because the rest of the time was just the rest of the time.

During these years there was no war and if there was it was not any way of
mine. But of course there was history, and there were novels historical novels and
so there was in a way war all the time. Why not when there is always war and
sometimes a nice war and sometimes an interesting war. And children do not take
to
war seriously as war. War is soldiers and soldiers have not be war but they have
to be soldiers. Which is a nice thing. I remember that the only war that was not
soldiers to me but war was the Civil War. The other wars were soldiers emotion
and something to see. They said things that sounded like soldiers not like war,
but the Civil War, not the other wars in America, not the revolutionary war or
Indian wars they were soldiers not war. One of the first outside of English wars
that I remember and after all that was an English war was the defeat of Braddock
by the Indians because we had a story about that but this again was soldiers and
not war but the American Civil War was not soldiers it was war. And it is like
the wars now they are not soldiers they are war. Veterans always feel that it is
soldiers even though they know that it is war. Somehow General Grant was not a
soldier he was war and that is the reason I liked him.

Well all this time I went to school and school in California meant knowing
lots of nationalities. And if you went to school with them and knew about this
their hair and their ways and all you were bound later not to be surprised that
Germans are as they are and French and Greeks and Chinamen and Japs. There is
nothing afterwards but confirmation confirmation of what you knew, because nobody
changes, and they may develop but they do not change and so if you went to school
with them then why should you not know them. Some one was just telling me that in
German universities they had professors who studied the characteristics of
races. Quite unnecessary if you went to school with them but naturally the Germans
did not know that. General Grant did. He had been to school with all the generals
of the Civil War so he always knew what they would do.

6

7

inside

What is there to know in one that makes one know all about war. You ask questions now why in Russia do not the Germans surrender when they are surrounded. And there is no answer except that perhaps they are afraid to. Perhaps.

What is there indie one that makes one know all about war.

I went out in the moon-light, and it was so lovely and not cold although January and in the mountains and I took a walk and I went on the road a young

8

gendarmerie. He was not of the village that is to say he had married a girl in the village as he had been in arrison at Belley and they had had a simple wedding and had brought their own champagne and sausages and now they had a baby. And I said how goes it and he said I have just been appointed to the oersibak gyard if the Marshal. Why that I said is a great promotion! Yes he said I do not know why, well I said you are rather better educated than your comrades, no he said just primary school, like they all have. And now he said I am going to Vichy and they are having my uniform costume made and I accompany him wherever he goes on my motorcycle. You know how to ride one I said. Oh yes he said I rode one in the war I was in the cavaly. And said I you were not then always in the Alpine troops, no he said after I escaped I was a prisoner I thought I would like a change. And siad he now I am the personal guard of the Marshal and I am permanently attached to the government and if he dies whoever succeeds him, whether it is a dictator or something different I will be the personal guard of the government. He was only twenty-two and I wished him good luck and said perhaps we would meet in Paris and said he if the government goes there I wull but I hope it will be free and I said I have good hope and he said I always have had and he said he was say good-bye to me before he left and I said surely, and I went on walking with my white dog in the moon-light.

say

So as I say I know what it is to be any age now that there is a war and so remembering back is in not only remembering but might be being.

It is funny about wars, they ought to be different but they are not.

In a way that is what makes it nice about France. In one war they upset the Germans by resisting steadily and patiently and for four years, in the next war they upset them just as much by not resisting at all and going under completely in six weeks. Well that is what makes them changeable enough to create styles.

So I was five years old when we came back to America having known Austrian

10

life in every way and life is strife in every way. The Germans say that war
is natural peace is only an armistice that the natural thing is war, well that
is natural enough because of course it is so, only when you have too much of
it it is just as dull as peace, that is when you have had too much of it. And
so I was a little girl in East Oakland California and of course one did have
to find out that life although it was life there was death although there was
death, and you had to find out that stars were worlds and moved around and
that there were comets and that there was wind and rain, grass and flowers and
birds and butterflies were less exciting in California, but most of all there
were books and food, food and books, both excellent things. And then also and
this is strange if you like but I was then already sceptical about Utopias,
naturally so, I liked habits but I did not like that habits should be known as
mine. Habits like dogs dogs have habits but they do not like to be told about
their habits, and the only way to have a Utopia is not only to have habits but
to be liked to be told about those habits, and this I did not like. I can re-
member very well not liking to be told that I had habits.

To come back to Shakespeare, Shakespeare which I read so much mostly the
plays about wars, English kings and wars often said that nothing was anything
that human beings had no meaning, that not anything had any meaning and every-
thing was just like that. And it did worry me even when I was seven and eight
not really worried me but it was there and then well not them but all the years
I was grown up it was not like that and now when here in France when we all
thought the young men were safe they are now all being taken away well it is
like that. Shakespeare was right it is all just like that, even superstitions
are all just like that, they mostly said the very tall thirteen year old girl
they are always bad luck and then we all hope again, just like that, and al-
though Shakespeare is right, we all do hope again.

Once upon a time the moon shone.

The visitors came.

The piano was struck that is the keys.

I2

And in between there was religions, which too had to do with adolescence
and with war.

There is no love interest in these modern wars. I am speaking of the world
wars but particularly of the 1989-19-- war. there is no love interest, very
little religion and no love interest. Religious people in these world wars are
religious but otherwise they are like everybody in what they do and lovers the
same way they MAY be in love but otherwise they are like everybody which was
not at all as war was to me from babyhood to 1900, not at all.

From babyhood to fourteen which is the beginning of adolescence, life is
mostly taken up with slowly knowing that stars are worlds, that words are ways
and that force is strength and that wiles are ways as words are, in the words
that one is one and that the others can come to be with that one that is what
is most occupying from babyhood to fourteen, and during that time there are
things like having apples given one to take home one for you and the other four
for the other four and slowly one by one they are eaten until there is none,
and there always is the reason for eating the last one because since the other
ones are eaten then of course there is no sense in keeping the last one, be-
cause then the story has to be told and why should it since after all all
your life you can have it as remorse that it has been done. War is like that,
it goes on like that it keeps going on like that and soon nobody has anything
to eat that is nobody who does not take what does not belong to them and later
although there is remorse the very last one has been eaten if not there has to
be an explanation and if there is an explanation that does not helpremorse nor
does it help any one, remorse does not and not eating it does not, and so as I
was then so am I now, and war, was not then but the feeling was just the same
and eating was just the same in so many ways. A fish bone can even be a worry
anything that can happen or has happened or has not happened can be a worry
and that is what war is, and so what is the difference between life and war.
There is none.

I3

So then between babyhood and fourteen there are all these things, and romantic war with them, not to believe in but to dream.

Between babyhood and fourteen there was frequent change of scene. Modern wars all wars are like that, they go places, where they never heard of in many cases and between babyhood and fourteen there had been so many changes of scene. And different ways of traveling about, and that also is like war. Just now all the young men of France have to go, they do not know where, some of them run away and when they run away they do not know where and a great many of them are taken away by war. Do not know where and this is all as it was between babyhood and fourteen. Europe and America and railroad and water and stage coach and walking and horse back and in every way there was no astonishment and that is the way war is.

I remember being very worried in reading, if anybody in the biik died and did not have children because then nobody in that family could be living yet, and if they were not living yet how could they know what was happening. This always bothered me from that time on until just now and now well now it does seem that the future is not important any more, the world has become so shrunk- en and it will never be dirrerent and so what has worried me since my baby- hood does not worry me now. I always understood why Darwin did not want to read a book that had an unhappy ending, I am still that way about books but about the world well now in this year of the spring of 1943 does it mean much. Yes does it.

However from babyhood to fourteen it was exciting, and it is exciting even if if it does not mean much and there is no love interest, it is mostly parents who suffer, perhaps it was like that between babyhood and fourteen.

Dear Life life is strife Claribel used to say, but she did say dear life and in way it is and she did say life is strife but is it.

It was all that between babyhood and fourteen, and it was the nineteenth century between babyhood and fourteen and the nineteenth century dies hard all

I4

all centuries do that is why the last war to kill it is so long, it is still
being killed now in 1943, the nineteenth century is just as the eighteenth
century took from the revolution to 40 to kill so the nineteenth century is
taking from 1914 to 1943 to kill. It is hard to kill a century almost
impossible, as was the old joke about mothers-in-law, and continues to be
like that they get to be wearing like a mother-in-law. So as I was saying from
babyhood to fourteen and of course longer much longer it was the nineteenth
century and the wars civil domestic and foreign were nineteenth century wars,
naturally enough.

Saint George and the Dragon, Sigfired and the dragon, anybody and the
dragon, the gragon is always the century any century that anybody is trying to
kill, and the worst of it all is that the one that says he is trying to kill
the century that has to be killed is the last piece of the century that has to
be killed and often the most long-lived, such as a Napoleon a Hitler or a Julius
Ceasar, the century has to be killed and they are the embodiment the most per-
sistent end of it that says in killing it they are to live while really in its
being killed they have to go, only nobody tells them so, nobody and so they never
do know, never do know.

In the nineteenth century, there was reading, there was evolution, there
was war anti-war which was the same thing, and there was eating. Even now I al-
ways resent when in a book they say they sat down to a heavy meal and they do
not tell just what it was they ate. In the nineteenth century they often did.
And in these days 1943 when eating well actually it is like prohibition one is
so certain that one is never going to eat again that one is not greedy but one
does eat everything well in these days you would imagine that you would not take
pleasure in what the characters in a novel ate when they did eat, but one does
immensely, well anyway the nineteenth century, liked to cry liked to try liked

I5

to eat liked to pursue evolution and liked war, war and peace peace and war and no more.

When I was then I liked revolution I liked to eat I liked to eat I liked to cry not in real but in books in real life there was nothing much to cry about but in books oh dear me, it was wonderful there was so much to cry about and then there was evolution. Evolution was all over my childhood, walks with an evolutionist and the world was full of evolution, biological and botanical evolution, with music as a background for emotion and books as a reality, and a great deal of fresh air as a necessity, and a great deal of eating as an excitement and as anorgy, and now well just then there was no war no actual war anywhere.

In the nineteenth century there was nothing more exciting than climbing a high hill or a mountain and seeing the rain driving across a wide plain or valley with the sun following.

There was nothing more interesting in the nineteenth century than little by little realising the detail of natural selection in insects flowers and birds and butterflies and things and animals and noticing protective coloring noticing more interesting, and this made the nineteenth century what it is, the white man's burden, the gradual diminution of the globe as piece by piece it became known and because all of a piece, and the of Esperanto or a universal language. Now they can do the radio in so many languages that nobody any longer dreams of a single language, and there should not any longer be dreams of conquest because the globe is all one, anybody can hear everything and everybody can hear the same thing, so what is the use of conquering, and so the nineteenth century now in 1943 is slowly coming to an end.

Between babyhood and fourteen years, it is hard to know whether it takes a long time or whether it does not and if it does any part of it is interesting but very little of it is recollecting, very little and so emotion is remembered, and a few , and what is seen and any day.

Some days there are coincidences and some days there are none and when there

16

are coincidences as there are coincidences that does make superstitions and at
any age, there is the same astonishment and the same delight, and between
babyhood and fourteen there were coincidences and astonishment. There are co-
incidences now yesterday and to-day and to-morrow and then for some time there
are none, but any time they are astonishing when they come. It is a long time
that there has been no correspondence with America and then some one offered
to make one by cablegram and the next day a cablegram came, which is what makes
superstitions and when you are young very young superstitions are rightening
and when you are old quite old superstitions are comforting.

War this war can neglect superstitions the war of 1943 because all the
superstitions NUMEROUS have been used up used up and passed away, and there is no feeling
about having any now one or any old one. Some wars make everybody tired, not
many of them, this one makes everybody more tired than most, I think the Amer-
ican Civil War made everybody tired but it did not quite exhaust coincidences
and superstitions but this 1943 one, well in a way yes, and when I was in
babyhood to fourteen little by little and all the time there was the excite-
ment of coincidences, and of superstitions, coincidences were more exciting
than superstitions in between superstitions were more exciting than coincidences
and now again coincidences are not exciting but they are soothing now in 1943.

There is a woman living in the country, her husband was a prisoner, there
are more prisoners than She was not well and she asked a neighbor to come
and tend to her, she said she had pneumonia. The neighbor lived with another
woman and the husband of each one of them was a prisoner a war prisoner. Well
the one went to see the other, and she saw that the sheets were blood-
stained, and she said to the woman you have had a miscarriage have you not.
And the other woman said how dare you denounce me. And she said but I did not

I7

I just asked to know. Well anyway she went home and about a wekk after a man in a uniform can and said the two women had to pay a thousand francs for having falsely denounced a neighbor and they said they had not and he said pay, and they payed. And they saw the other woman and she said she would take everything away from then and they are had husband who were prisoners and they were frightened and they told Madame Chaboux, her husband had been their doctor and Madame Chaboux told the mayor and he told her to go to the magistrate and she did and the police were pleased because they had always wanted a witness against the man and now they had two, and everybody was pleased and relieved even if they did not get their money back and their neighbor was still their neighbor and all the husbands were still prisoners.

Well between babyhood and fourteen no one could believe any such thing, not in the nineteenth century but now well 1943, what can stop anything since although there are still coincidences they are not, not really any superstitions, because there are not. Everybody is too tired to have them even when they get one thousand francs which they do.

Such is war.

Between babyhood and fourteen there is if not everything a great deal there is the suspecting of life and death not being sure of the same but beginning to be doubtful that it might be the same. And then there is nature and its emotion and then there is coming home before it is dark in the evening after playing and then there is the beginning of being a legend. One can become a legend anytime between babyhood and fourteen and one can know how it can come to be true that they are a legend. It is easy to become a legend between babyhood and fourteen, and so ever afterwards books can be read, because books are all about anybody who has become a legend, and I can remember becoming a legend again and again between babyhood and fourteen, and seeing the others between babyhood and fourteen they can become a legend. They know they can because a legend if they have a dog behind them on a bycycle in a

18

Coincidences come to be stronger and stronger between babyhood and four-
teen, they replace faith, coincidences are the foundation of games, they are
the foundation of faith, coincidences, in between are not so important but
from babyhood to fourteen and then again much later, very much later when one
is old coincidences are important, they are real, they recreate faith they
are not games, but they are the reality that makes a present and a future when
perhaps there could not really be any. Take war, in time of war 1943, there
have happened so many coincidences and they are always happening little coin-
cidences, nice little coincidences, later on when I tell all about this coin-
cidential war this meaningless war, this war that put an end to a real end an
entire end to the nineteenth century there were so many coincidences and they
were the only reality in this time of unreality. The nineteenth century called
coincidences a lar of chance and worked it out but now that the nineteenth
century is dead, coincidences are real again, they recreate faith they make a
future, and they will make the twentieth century. Everybody wait and see.

19

There is no use in remembering between babyhood and fourteen, actually there was no war then, there might have been but abtually there was no war then when I was between babyhood and fourteen and I was a legend then, of course I was, to myself and to them and of course I was struggling not to be dying that is not to know that dying was dying and frightening was not only frightening but connected with anything. Believe it or not, toOday they say, that children do that is between babyhood and fourteen, does not live any life in between this which is not I914 but I943 and the nineteenth century is dead dead dead, and between babyhood and fourteen, I was there to begin to kill what was not dead, the nineteenth century which was so sure of evolution and progress, and esper-anto and their ideas. You might think I mean that between babyhood and four-ten, I might mean to be doing what I was doing, and in a way I was, I see them now, between babyhood and fourteen and in a kind of a way I was.

What is a legend.

From babyhood until fourteen, to play in a garden in the evening when it is darkening is a legend. It feels like that, it is like that, even any evening when it is darkening.

Between babyhood and fourteen there comes a time when in reading you can not help thinking what happened after and what happened to their children and their grandchildren and which one married which one and what war was going on when they were growing or grown up and were they after all the time it took to be born and grown were they killed in the war that was going on then. Now in 1943 when there are armies and armies and they come humming in the air at night when the moon is bright is full of them going over to Italy to do their bombing and the mountain makes a reverberation as a woman said to me like being in a copper cooking utensil well then you keep on thinking how quickly anybody can get killed, just as quickly just as very quickly, more quickly even than in a book even much more quickly than in any book, those up there flying and bombing and those down below, with houses tumbling, and burning.

So between babyhood and fourteen you first begin to think of anything going on and going on, and at the same time stopping, but that is not reasonable no not at all reasonable between babyhood, and fourteen.

There are some when they feel it inside them that it has been with them that there was once so very little of them, that they were a baby, helpless and no conscious feeling in them, that they knew nothing then when they were kissed and dandles and fixed by others who knew them when they could know nothing inside them or around them, some get from all this that once surely happened to them to that which was then every bit that was then them, there are some when they feel it later inside them that they were such once and that was all

21

that there was then of them, there are some who have from such a knowing an
uncertain curious kind of feeling in them that their having been so little o
once and knowing nothing makes it all a broken world for them that they have
inside them, hills for them the everlasting feeling; and they spend their life
in many ways, and always they are trying to make for themselves a new ever-
lasting feeling.

No it is not very much to be a baby. It is not right to one to begin them until a little they can resist to them who would hold them helpless, kiss and dandle and fix them as they were then, such a very little thing, just nothing inside to them. I say it is not right to many of them then to begin them, but it is not all of them who would resist them. There are some who do not feel it inside to be bad. They have been a baby without any conscious feeling of themselves inside them, to have been a little thing and that was all there was then of them, they are some who have not any proud kind of feeling in them.

Some, and we can know them, have a curious uncertain kind of feeling when they think of themselves as they were then and some so lose the feeling of themselves that continuous life inside them.

It is a very different thing feeling each kind of man and woman has inside in them about the baby the very little thing that was once all them, and the very little thing that comes into the world by them, and the very little things that all about fill the world every moment with beginnin.

24

26

or without stealing makes vomiting and war. And the end of babyhood to fourteen makes this not a dream, but an awakening. When a baby eat and vomits it is not war. But when fourteen eats and vomits then it is war.

There is one thing certain when there is no food or very little food, it is easy to degiest, that food, much easier than when there is food, regular food. Now in 1943, well there is food of course there is food, and everybody well not everybody but quite a few find food. Every day they start to find food, and every day and in every way they find food. Some one said that it was like prohibition in America but it is not because then they finally found too much food, but here and now the only ones who find too much food are the farmers, and they do not find it, they grow it. They say they and meant it, it is what everybody wants, they want food more than they want anything and we are the only ones that grow it and so we are the only ones who have the right to eat it, and eat it they do. Farmers used to be thin but now they are not. Nobody else used to be thin and now they are, men wear more than women, in general women can get along better with what is found to eat then men. But any way even a little boy a very little boy is a very fat little boy not yet four, when he sees on a strange lady's hat very little aplles at that, says to the lady, I would like to have three aplles like that and even when he knows that they are not real apples, he keeps on saying when he is awakening, I would like three little apples like that.

Anyway between babyhood and fourteen, anything they are, saying, anything they are knowing, everything they are repeating is a legend, because it has to be a legend, to be learned, legs to belong to them, feet to belong to them, hands and fingers come easier to belong to them and are not quite as legendary as legs and feet, not quite as legendary but still legendary enough.

And at the end of babyhood to fourteen, at the end there is nothing in between. What did she say when she was fourteen. She said she was not willing to be a queen. And he, he was not interested in a king or a queen not when he was