21.

alphabet-chart. It is the tapping of one of the three feet
of the tripod-table that had been brought me, during the
war, after the sale of Violet Hunt's effects, soon after her
death.

The table, as I say, had belonged to William Morris.

In the satisfaction of the achievement, the actual
writing of *The Sword Went Out to Sea*, I can afford to go back
and survey the earlier published and unpublished manuscripts.

*The Sword* has as sub-title, *Synthesis of a Dream*, and I am
now endeavouring to synthesize all the recorded experiences
of my emotional and intellectual life, as I did the actual
synthesis of the final version or Chapter of my life-story,
as I relate it in *The Sword*.

Certainly *The Gift*, the story of the Child, synthesizes
or harmonizes with the Sigmund Freud notes. I assembled *The
Gift* during the early war-years, but without the analysis and the
illuminating doctrine or philosophy of Sigmund Freud, I would
hardly have found the clue or the bridge between the child-life,
the memories of the peaceful Bethlehem and the orgy of
destruction, later to be witnessed and lived through, in London.
That outer threat and constant reminder of death, drove me
inward, almost forced me to compensate, by memories of another
world, an actual world where there had been security and comfort.
But this was no mechanical intellectual trick of mind or memory,
the Child actually returns to that world, she lives actually in

22.

those reconstructed scenes, or she watches them like a moving-picture.

The Gift was assembled before the Sigmund Freud Writing, and during those years, I returned again to poetry. But _The Walls do not Fall_ is, in a sense, like certain passages of _The Gift_, runic, divinatory. This is not the "crystalline" poetry that my early critics would insist on. It is no pillar of salt nor yet of hewn rock-crystal. It is the pillar of fire by night, the pillar of cloud by day. It is divinatory, I say, for it seems to indicate, even to predict that 'Cloud of Witnesses,' the starry cloud or star-nebula, as I later call the group of young RAF pilots; John, Lad, Larry, Ralph and Charles tap out their messages, with (as one of them spelt clearly on the table) o-t-h-e-r-s- m-a-n-y.

Jan. 2, 1950.

A labour of love (though hardly a labour) was the assembling of the story of Elizabeth Siddall, Dante Gabriel Rossetti and William Morris. I call this narrative _White Rose and the Red_ and it is an attempt to re-create the atmosphere of the London of the mid-years of the last century, and the group of writers and painters of which my own acquaintances and friends of _Madrigal_ were, in a sense, the inheritors.

That inheritance was of necessity, imperfect. But the perfect inheritance came to me actually and symbolically, with the tripod-table and the messages from the "warriors of the

23.

Viking ship", as described in *The Sword*.

I do not of course, know the actual history of the simple
round-table that had come from Violet Hunt. But I was anxious
to find out. I could not, by that time, approach any of my
older friends and acquaintances of the War I period, who might possibly
have given me some clue. For they were dead. But death, it was
proved, was no barrier to friendship and perhaps the old
family motto that I had already presented in *The Gift*, was the
actual clue and a more inspiring explanation that I could ever
have obtained from historical data or chance gossip. In the
inner literary circle (as I have already remarked, in the case
of Violet Hunt) there was no gossip about William Morris,
only the staunchest loyalty. But reminiscence, even of most
tender regard, is not the same as actual contact. *L'amitie*
*passe même le tombeau.*

My imagination would reveal the history of the table, I
had only, as in the recording of *The Gift*, to sit back as it were
and watch the moving-picture, I watched and recorded, for by
that time, winter 1947 and summer 1948, in Lausanne and Lugano,
I had leisure, health and if I may say so, a practised stylus,
pen or pencil. I had only to let it take its own line, as a
skilled musician may sit before his instrument and improvise.
It was, in no sense, so-called "automatic writing", but the
technical reward of more than thirty years of actual practice.
I mean, practice in the *art* of writing, for I had been
"writing" perhaps,<sup>e</sup>ver since that historic occasion when I

24.

printed from my first reader, the illuminating legend, the open
sesame, the key to the Kingdom, THE CAT IS ON THE MAT.

The *Writing* as recorded in the Freud papers, was as I
have said, picture-writing, a series of clearly translatable
symbolic drawings or symbols, cast as if by dim sunlight on the
wall. The *Writing* of the William Morris table is not symbolic
and it need not be translated. It is, I repeat, as simple as
a child's Alphabet chart. It is a child's Alphabet chart.

So it seemed to me that I and the senders of the messages
had returned to childhood. I had said in *The Sword*, that at the
memorial service on Battle of Britain Sunday, September 16, 1945,
that they were dead and I was a middle-aged tired woman. That
was because Air Marshal Lord Howell (of the story) had on
September 3, 1945, the anniversary of the declaration of War II,
repudiated or seemed to repudiate the messages that the table
or the RAF had tapped out for him. But they were not dead, they
returned whenever I laid my hands upon the table. Nor was I
a middle-aged tired woman, I was a girl or a child again.

Jan. 4.

But perhaps returning to childhood memories as in *The Gift*
and the Freud *Writing*, is a step toward age, that is with
identification with those we have loved in childhood. Then, they
seemed very old. *White Rose and the Red is*, I repeat, a labour
of love, and the love of the child fulfilled or re-incarnated
in the grown, the middle-aged or the "very old" woman, can

25.

again be re-incarnated. I do not actually mean that I and my
group of *Madrigal* were living in the days of our grandfathers,
that is in the mid-years of the last century. But something
of my early search, my first expression or urge toward
expression in art, finds a parallel in the life of Rossetti
and Elizabeth Siddall. So, as a very subtle emotional exercise,
I go over and over the ground, find relationships or
parallels between my own emotional starvation and hers, between
a swift flowering soon to be cut down, in her case, by death,
in mine, by a complete break after War I, with the group of
artists described in *Madrigal*.

But the artists of the *Rose* though they have other names,
seem near, familiar, *familiars* almost. I have known them
somewhere, perhaps because of my early devotion to their
legend, I know more about them or sometimes seem to know
more about the Rossetti-Morris circle than I do of my own
contemporaries. But no - I do not wish it to be thought that I am
dealing with a vague, mystical commonplace when I speak of
"re-incarnation". It is the sense of continuity that inspires me,
the feeling of intimate communion or communication that renewed
my faith, at the end of the war-years. Although I gave up the
"work", as we called it, before I left England in the spring
of 1946, I must follow up and record if possible, the history
of the tripod-table from which I received messages from the
RAF in the London of War 11.

26.

The table, as I keep repeating, belonged to William Morris.
To find out where and how he found the table, we must go back
to his life at Oxford and his first meeting with Dante Gabriel
Rossetti.

My story of the tripod-table in *White Rose and the Red*,
is of course purely imaginary. But the romance, as I perceive it,
is founded on historical facts.

We have the names of the eight original members of the
*Order of Sir Galahad*, founded at Oxford by William Morris. But
in our romance, this circle dwindled down or crystallized our to
two of the original group. William Morris and Godfrey Lushington
continued the "work" alone. The character of Godfrey Lushington
as I present it, in *White Rose and the Red*, is purely imaginary.
In the story, it is he who introduces Morris to the tripod-table.

Godfrey Lushington in our reconstruction, makes a quixotic
gesture and is lost in the Indian Mutiny of 1857.

Elizabeth Siddall has found her swift flowering in the
adoration of Rossetti and the other artists of the period. But
she is not satisfied. Inspired by William Morris' introduction
to Malory, she dreams of a silver Knight. That is, she has an
actual dream of a soldier Saint or Crusader, at the time of
Godfrey's death in India. The shock of the belated news of the
Mutiny settles her indecision. She had not met Godfrey, but as
a friend and confident of Morris, she had hoped to do so. She
marries Gabriel Rossetti.

27.

It is the same table. It is the same story. But unlike
the *Wife of Rossetti*, the Delia Alton of *The Sword* finds her
Knight or Crusader.

After Godfrey's death, Morris leaves the table with Rossetti's
wife. She has heard of the group in Florence, Elizabeth Barrett
Browning and the Hawthornes and their "messages". She is alone,
after her acceptance of Rossetti's infidelity. But though
seated at the table, she communes, as it were, with her Knight,
whom in some ways, she identifies with the Nelson of her father's
war, she receives "messages."

Delia Alton of *The Sword* inherits the tripod-table. The
sequence as I say, is purely imaginary, but as the Child inherits
*The Gift* in the story of that name, so Delia Alton inherits *The Sword*.

Elizabeth Siddall is confused by the extravagances of
Gabriel and certain of his followers. But she is, as far as may
be, centralized and balanced by the friendship of William Morris.
When that intimacy goes, as it must inevitably do with his marriage
to Jane Burden, and when Gabriel has proved openly unfaithful,
she concentrates on the idea or the ideal. But the soldier or the
Knight, as I say, is killed in the Mutiny, before she meets him.

There is war, the Crimea, echoes of "dad's war", Nelson
and Wellington. There is the Indian Mutiny. But her personal
war-terrors are intensified because of a nightmare obsession with
an actual murder that took place in her neighborhood, when she was a child.

The grandmother's submerged terror in *The Gift* is not
unlike that of Elizabeth Siddall, but the Indian Mutiny, the
last of the series of Elizabeth's war-shocks, is presented in

28.

The Gift as actual memories (although of the preceding
century) of an American "Indian Mutiny." The grandmother in
The Gift and Elizabeth in the Rose are contemporaries in time.

Oddly, as things happen, The Secret, the key-chapter of
The Gift, deals with the family history of the Seidels. The
grandmother's first husband was a connection of a certain Henri,
Chevalier de Seidel, who had been at the Russian court. Though
the name is commonly accepted as German, seidel, a cup or mug
is originally a fremdword according to Grimm's dictionaty, as from
the Latin situlus or situla. Situlus is a small pail, measure,
hence cup - a box or ballot-box. Was it a mere accident that drew me
to Elizabeth Siddall? My grandmother's first married name was
Elizabeth Seidel.

Gabriel Rossetti makes much of the aristocratic genealogy
of his fiancée, though sadly come down in the world. The Siddalls
live on the wrong side of the river. Elizabeth is a shop-girl.
Gabriel insists on the Latin or Norman derivation of the name,
Suddal, Sudal or Suddel.

Jan. 7.

We outline in The Sword, a series of Märchen or fairy-tales.
The Delia of the story conjures up for us, Crete, Athens,
Delphi, Elizabethan England, Venice, Rome and Normandy in the
various scenes or settings of Summerdream, the second half of
the romance. Elizabeth Siddall, Liz as Gabriel calls her, or Lis,

29.

as Morris names her in his fantasy, repeats the device. I use
the word device in its special and heraldic sense. She imagines
or "sees" herself in Provence at the time of the persecutions
of the Church by Simon de Montfort. This is the Church of Love
and in _By Avon River_, we endeavour to show how the Church or
the School of Love as introduced into Plataganet England by
Eleanor of Acquitaine, was the source of a later flowering.
William Shakespeare and his contemporaries and successor
repeat as well, the pattern of the Church of Love, as set forth
in Florence and Verona, in the _Commedia_ of Dante.

_By Avon River_ was written September 19 -November 1, 1946
at Kusnacht, near Zurich. It was dedicated to Bryher who
had helped get me out of London and established me in the
beautiful Manor House, _Seehof_, on the edge of the lake. By _Avon_
_River_ was published by Macmillan, New York, 1949.

_White Rose and the Red_, the Morris-Rossetti story was
begun soon after I finished _The Sword Went Out to Sea_
(_Synthesis of a Dream_). The _Rose_ too, is the synthesis of a
dream. But the dream, it is true, presents the sequence of
events in its own way, "and it is the dream", Rose Beauvais
says in the Normandy section of _The Sword_, "that is so -
curious." The dream is the creative imagination, the actual
personal dream of the narrator, or the still more curious,
estonishing or miraculous dream of those "in that sleep of
Death", to whom we wonder with Hamlet, "what dreams may come."

30.

It is for that reason that I call Book I of *The Sword*,
*Wintersleep*. Book I's concerned chiefly with the "messages"
*from* the young pilots.

Perhaps the most curious thing about this transcendental
dream is that it appears so natural. It seemed to Delia Alton
in 1945, as she sat with one hand resting on the William Morris
table, the other holding the pencil ready to jot down the
messages, that this communication or communion was more natural,
more normal than the series of extraordinary events that had
recently taken place in the external world. In retrospect, when
she writes the story, before Christmas 1946 and in the summer
of 1947, it seems that the voices and the presences ("they spoke,
they laughed, they crowded around the table") had "proved more
enduring than all the high explosives and the sirens."

I said in *The Sword* that possibly at one time, the Lord Howell
of the story, true to the Homeric tradition, had listened to
the siren-voices. Perhaps Delia Alton too, might have been
tempted to dream in that lotus-land, if she had come upon the
psychic-research work or the "work", as they came to call it,
earlier. Fortunately, neither I nor the heroine of the
story, had had any but the most superficial contact with
clairvoyants and mediums. In fact, the young Eurasian of *The Sword*
who gives the first messages, is the first actual medium either
I or she had contacted.

31.

It is only later, summer 1948, in assembling the Rossetti
story, that I realized something of the implications of the
Dante circles. Realized them, that is, as a personal experience.
I re-read Dante Gabriel Rossetti's translation of the *Vita*
and the poems of *Dante and his Circle*. I had as well, the
Italian text and French and English renderings of the *Commedia*.
Now at last, I felt that I had found the clue, not only to
Dante and his School of Love, but to the whole subject of
psychic communication.

But my findings were not to be presented as intellectual
discoveries. No. The story of William Morris and Rossetti
tells, among other things, of their own spiritual research and
psychic investigation. There is the William Morris table from which
I received messages in London. Where did he find the table?
How did he receive his messages? And when? These are some
questions that I asked and tried to answer.

The "work" begins with the group of eight, the original
*Order of Sir Galahad*. But the messages or the communications
do not satisfy Godfrey Lushington who (in the story) had been
introduced to the *télégraph de Dieu* by an outside character
whom we call Roland de Fontenelle. De Fontenelle urges Godfrey
to give up communication after the third member of their "circle",
Godfrey's brother, Vernon leaves them. But Godfrey can not give
up the "work" entirely, until he has found the true inheritor.
So Godfrey's table eventually goes to "William the Englishman" and
so by way of Violet Hunt, to us.

32.

I had seen the series of pictures, the picture-writing or
hieroglyphs cast on the wall of my bed-room in the hotel
Angleterre et Belle Venise, in the Ionian island of Corfu, in
the spring of 1920. But that was, as I say the Freud Writing,
a sort of "freak thought" that had got out of hand. I had
had no experience of the kind before; I have had none since.
But the telegraph or the messages conveyed by the tapping of
one of the tripod-feet upon the carpet of my flat in Lowndes
Square in London, was sustained, logical. It could be renewed
at any moment, given time and opportunity. It seemed in the
end, as natural as receiving a letter or a telegram. Or it
was more like a telephone, the speaker or speakers were con-
nected by some chord, some spiritual device that was to me no
more mysterious than the working of a telephone. I don't know
how a telephone does work, nor wireless nor radio. I didn't
know how this worked, the point was, it went on working.

Jan. 9.

Bryher has suggested that I have a selection of unpublished
poems set up. I choose three sequences that differ entirely
from the recognized H. D. of the "early poems" as well as from
the three sets of poems written during War II, the Trilogy,
published by the Oxford University Press in 1944, 1945, 1946.
The poems I have just selected were written at about the same
time, but they did not belong to the sequence. I have dated
them 1941, 1943, 1944. I would like to sign them Delia Alton

33.

but that must be left to the discretion of the publisher.
For these are not fundamentally "H.D. poems", they seem to
belong to the rhythm and vibration of the experience recorded
in _The Sword Went Out to Sea_.

This seems a digression from the matter in hand, but I
promised myself the satisfaction of re-reading and re-assembling
my so far uncollected Collected Works. The second poem
sequence of the unpublished pages that I have just chosen, is
called RAF. This is a narrative poem. It tells of a meeting in a
train returning from Cornwall to London.

_He said, I'm just out of hospital_
但 I'm still flying.

The woman, the narrator, seated opposite this young
pilot in the crowded train, suggests that he "drop in one day."
He does "drop in" some months later,

_to explain_
why he had not come sooner.

This was an actual experience:

_he stands by my desk_
in the dark.

He did not stay very long and he did not speak.

I call this selection of poems, _What Do I Love?_

Another apparent digression, another "mystery". I had a

34.

vague feeling of un-ease and uncertainty about writing of the
actuál death of the wife of Rossetti. Norman Pearson whom I saw
last summer in Lugano, suggested that the story be intensified at
the end, "it trailed off." I had originally intended to finish
the romance with the section before the present last one. I did
not want to deal with the much debated, depressing details of
Elizabeth Siddall Rossetti's actual end, possibly by suicide.
I had so intensified myself with the story that I could not, for
some strange reason, let her die.

The story would end with her death and I did not want to
end the story. But unexpectedly, I begin to live or to "see"
another story. It is placed in time, at the end of the
eighteenth-century. It fulfils all latent ambition to "make use"
of notes that I had taken before and after assembling *The Gift*.
I had become very devoted to the Zinzendorf legend and suddenly
one of his grand-daughters, another Elizabeth, steps as it were,
out of history to take the place of the (as yet) vaguely questing
Elizabeth Siddall Rossetti of my *White Rose* and the *Red*. I am
delighted with my new idea, as much in-love with my new story as
I was in-love with the *Rose*. I have a title for the new story.
It is called *The Mystery*.

But I am anxious to finish or conclude the preceding romance,
so following the suggestion of Norman Pearson, I add the final
*Rose* chapter and L'Envoi at the grave.

I now dedicate the story:

35.

To
Norman Holmes Pearson
in gratitude for his suggestion
of continuing the story of the
**Order of Sir Galahad.**

The vital centre "mystery" of this sequence of novels, is
actually the first one that I finished, <u>The Sword Went Out to Sea.</u>
In this mystery-story, the name Hal is shouted by a group of young
warriors on what we called the Viking Ship. It is Hal who has
gathered them together. "Why, they have such vitality," said the young
Eurasian who was then presiding at what he called our "home circle."
He went on describing the ship and then concluded, "They are going off.
They are going after the treasure."

The Vikings go off, the original four members of the "home circle" are separated for various reasons, but the Vikings re-appear when Delia Alton is at last alone in her flat, with the little table.

Later when my first friendly critic looked over the typed pages of
the first half of *The Sword*, he wrote me of Hallblithe. The Vikings had
shouted what the medium thought was Halbritt; Gareth, Delia's closest
friend and companion during the war-years, had said it was Hal Brith.
But the friendly critic wrote, "do you remember the hero of William
Morris *The Glittering Plain* is called Hällblithe?"

I did not remember but I found the book afterwards. The first
printed Kelmscott book of William Morris is *The Glittering Plain*.

So William Morris renews the Brotherhood or the *Order of*

36.

Sir Galahad in The Sword Went Out to Sea.

The vitality, the intensity of this story is almost overwhelming to me, at times. It is as if I alone were a receiving-station that is intended to be completed by another. How the Air Marshall repudiates the messages set forth in The Sword. Why he repudiates them, we do not yet know.

But for me, I have delivered their message or their messages, if not to the Air Marshall direct, at least to the few friends who have read the romance. I trust in time, this Mystery may be published. "It was a mystery-play, it would explain everything."

_Madrigal_, the War I novel precedes this in time, by just those "years between", that quarter of a century. As I have already said, _Madrigal_ was roughed out in 1939 and left in Switzerland when I returned to the London of War II, But without the answer, the certainty of the War II experience, the War I novel would probably still remain unassembled. It was not until I had recorded the War II Mystery in _The Sword_ and traced the history of the table back into the mid-years of the last century, with _White Rose and the Red_, that the War I novel appeared to me authentically part of the sequence.

And now to my last romance which I know is written though I have not yet transcribed it. Elizabeth de Watteville, granddaughter of Count Zinzendorf, meets her "mystery" in Bohemia. Elizabeth de Watteville and her cousin Henry, the young Count

Bohus

37.

Dohna make their pilgrimage to the winter-city of Prague,
towards the end of the eighteenth-century.

They are collecting evidence of their grandfather's
spiritual inheritance. Zinzenzorf had re-established a
branch of the dispersed or "lost" Church of Bohemia. This
Church, to my mind, shows marked traces of the still earlier
dis-established or "lost" Church of Provence, the Church of
Love that we touch on, in *By Avon River*. The fascinating subject
of the Hidden Church, the Church within the Church is touched
on in *The Secret*, the section of *The Gift* that reveals the child's
affinity and actual connection with the old *Jednota* of Bohemia,
or the *Unitas Fratrum* as re-established by Zinzendorf, across the
frontier in Saxony.

The child's birth-place, as we have pointed out, was
Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, so named by Zinzendorf, Christmas-eve,
1741. In *The Gift*, we re-trace the path taken by the child,
through her mother as a girl and her grandmother, ("before she
married papalie"), as Elizabeth Seidel.

The Elizabeth de Watteville of *The Mystery*, again re-traces
the path, through her mother, Benigna von Zenzendorf and her
grandmother, Erdmuth Dorothea de Reuss.

We have not finished *The Mystery*. That is, we have not yet
written it down.

But it is in part the same mystery that is presented in
the *Advent* section of the *Freud Writing*. It is a mystery not
uncommon to folk and fairy-tales, the mystery of the appearance

38.

of a stranger or a near-stranger, at a time and in a place,
where he could not possibly have been. Such things have
happened. Some instances of this kind have been recorded by
Camille Flammarion, in _Death and its Mystery_.

I quote Flammarion in _The Gift_ and refer to him in _The Sword_.

This mystery was experienced by me but I could not record it.
"It could happen at any time, with anybody, but unless you were
aware of its happening, it wasn't the Visitor." So St. Germain,
in his role of Brother Antonius, muses in the great
Cathedral, while waiting for the porter to return and "re-light
what's left to Wenceslas."

The porter has just approached Brother Anton, as he calls
him, "Would it be taking liberties, do you think, sacristy
not having come back yet, to put a taper to the lamp
before Our Lady, and re-light what's left to Wenceslas?"

39.

Jan. 21

We are *Within the Walls*, but only just. This is a series
of sketches, written *in situ* as it were, 1940, 1941. I place
*Before the Battle*, the earliest sketch, dated summer 1940,
at the end of *Within the Walls*, as the dream of the mother in the
old grave-yard at Bethlehem, not only pre-visionst*The Gift* ,
the child memoirs, begun about this time, but also acts as an
introduction to the selection of poems *What Do I Love* which it
now seems to me should be included in this volume.

The poems are dated 1941, 1943, 1944. The 1941 poem
RAF, describing the meeting with the young pilot in the train
returning to London from Cornwall, did take place in historical
sequence, the autumn following the spring story, *The Ghost*.
*The Ghost* is the last in the sequence, in time. It is dated
spring 1941, though I actually conclude *Within the Walls* with the
first sketch in time, *Before the Battle*. The actual dates of the
Battle of Britain were later given, 10th July-31st
October, 1940.

The sketches "come alive", they are actually happening,
and the dreams "dream true."

I cannot say as much for the series of short and long-short
stories that I also assembled last winter from a confused
collection of roughly typed MSS. I sorted out the papers,
arranged and re-assembled, but with the exception of *Hesperia*,
of which I have already written, I was not over-happy at reviewing
that past, though AElizabeth, an anecdote, rather than a story,

40.

brought back the memories of a cruise among the islands, spring
1933, and *The Guardians*, introduced again by a dream of the
mother, re-asserting her faith in an almost vanished mother-
symbol, an old Scotch Nannie, who when I stayed with friends
in the country, regaled me with endless reminiscences of "the
children." I wrote this story, September 1945.

*Hesperia* is the first in time, in the series. I have already
touched on Egypt, the historic opening of the Tomb, February 1923.
The first rough notes were dated 1924, though as they were
"left over" from *Secret Name* in *Palimpsest*, published as I have said,
in 1926 in Paris, they must have been written soon after the return
to Switzerland, spring 1923. But again, *Hesperia* was not finally
shaped until last winter, that is, it was only last winter
that it "came true."

*Hesperia* then, is the first and the last of the stories.
But how arrange them? There is *The Moment* that I had first
expected to use as the title of the whole, its theme and
opening. But perhaps it is almost impossible for me to assess
*The Moment*, as the Elaine of the story, my "oldest" friend
(though we had met rarely of late years) was, with her daughter
and mother, killed in an air-raid early in the war.

Jan. 22

But I have re-read *The Moment* and it must serve as title
to this collection of stories. As I say, they are not condensed
in one period as are the war-sketches and dreams of *Within the
Walls*. These stories seem hardly to relate to one another and

41.

I must jump from one psychological dilemma to another, across
the years. There is no jump and only one dilemma in *Within the
Walls*. It is actuality or the imminent possibility of death
from the high explosives.

That death came to the Elaine of *The Moment*.

I mention her briefly in the Freud *Writing*, in connection
with a seal-ring that I identified in the Louvre, when I first
visited it with Frances and her mother, summer 1911. I had
dreamed of this thistle and serpent motive in America, shortly
before taking my first trip "abroad." In the dream, the design
is carved on a rough block of stone, I called it an altar. I
could find no replica of this design and I never saw it anywhere
but in the Louvre. "Under the glass, set in a row with other
seal-rings, was a little grey-agate oval." On this agate is
carved the serpent and the "exquisitely chased stalk, with the
spiney double-leaf and the flower-head, our thistle."

Now I find *The Moment* "exquisitely chased" and I dedicated
it to that design.

In that sense, the stories are all dedicated. They have
that in common. Though they range in time of writing, from
1926 to 1945, or if we count the first and final version of *Hesperia*,
from 1923 to 1948, they are individually separate, dedicatory
Chapels or Chapters ( as I use the word in speaking of *The Sword*.)
They are Chapter-houses, adjoining some vast Cathedral.

Yes, they are that. The Cathedral of the Dream, the *Synthesis of a Dream*. I have already compared the Dream to a Cathedral, in

42.

the *Advent* of the *Freud Writing*. The Dream is there in the
*Writing* but it is only centralized or stabilized with the
conclusion of *The Sword Went Out to Sea*. *The Sword* is reality or truth,
established in that *Synthesis of a Dream*. Having found the answer,
having centralized myself or been centralized by the miracle
of the tripod-table, I can afford to go back, even to those
years of apparently sterile waiting. For they were not really sterile
and the answer when it came, surpassed in magnificence and
simplicity, any dream I had had or any dream that I could have
had, during those years of waiting.

There is too, a genuine psychic-current running through
these stories that serves eventually to relate them to the
final dynamic centre, the tripod-table of the poet, William
Morris.

The three women in *The Moment* are caught in a circle,
opposites attract and the solution or the answer when it
comes, is poignant and tragic, though related, as it were,
only to those three. It is a personal answer, it has answered
the demand, the heart-ache of one person, the message is given
by one person to one person. But in *The Moment* of the final
Chapter or of the Cathedral itself, *The Sword Went Out to Sea*,
the answer is given by many to the whole world.

*Jubilee* and *The Last Time* have this in common with *The Moment*. They are small, set pieces like chamber-music,

43.

the players are few. In fact, in *The Moment*, there is a trio, three women. One man and one woman in *Jubilee* and *The Last Time*, play with variations, the same duet.

*Jubilee* is more important. It tells of a meeting. After fifteen years, the two who had been separated, one gathers in romantic surroundings, now meet in London. The surroundings are not un-romantic, there is the same parchment lamp-shade, the same dim shadows as in *The Moment*. The same interior decorum is lighted or translated into romance by the bibelots on the occasional-table, the cigarette-box, the seven-branched candlestick, the treasured print, brought back years ago from Italy, now curled at the edges, and the tumbler with the Carlo Crivelli handful of small flowers. The flowers in *The Moment* are starry anemones that edge a shallow bowl. The chairs have been re-arranged. The coffee-tray is a tea-tray but it is in substance, the same interior and the same story.

The three women of *The Moment* resolve a problem, temporarily at least. The one woman and the one man in *Jubilee* resolve it in a different way. The Moment of their first meeting, the Moment of the woman's strange aberration on a ship sailing from the Port of London to the Piraeus, spring 1920, is not (fifteen years later) this moment. Actually, the realized Moment is described in the Freud *Writing*, in the so-far unpublished prelude or post-lude that I call *Advent*.

But the moment in *Jubilee* in 1935 London, is not the Moment. Not is the moment in *The Last Time*, a slighter story

44.

but a duet on the same theme.

There is that, at least, about these stories. They are
clearing the ground. There is something that the author must
get clear. She would in <u>The Last Time</u>, delay a parting which
to her, from the beginning, is inevitable. This story was
written spring 1936, and we are here as in <u>Jubilee</u>, in that
maligned decade. She would drift with the others, she would
play with the others. "But I am not so easily allowed to let
go, who lifts balances (invisible) beside me, from the table
to weight his soul."

She weighs her own soul and finds it un-related to the
life around her. "For sometimes, in a crowded room, we feel
not so much alone as simply non-existent."

We found this "non-existent" motive in <u>Hesperia</u> and
<u>Aegina</u>. But the experience of the Moment, in both cases, though
it offers escape, seems to bring its instantaneous message.
Once "out", where are you ? Will you come back? Will you stay
"out"? And once "out", in any case, there is awkward dilemma.
The spirit caught back into the old mysteries of Egypt and
Greece, might be perfected, but on the other hand, it might,
after the initial ecstacy of freedom, wander in some vague limbo.
There is no time to answer these questions, not to so exactly
formulate them on the Nile boat Rosetta, returning from Assuan,
nor watching from the precarious ledge of a Greek island, the
launch assembling the passengers, after their visit to the
temple of Hygenea.

45.

The _Ægina_ story is slight, it is as it were, an after-
thought, almost a grace-note to the overpowering final chord
of _Hesperia_, But grace-note is too slight a simile. _Ægina_ is
a prose-lyric, displaced, not lost, or a chorus out of another
play.

It is all a play. It is, this collection of Moments in
<u>The Moment</u>, really a series of lyrics, or if we may return to
Dante, of Cantos. We may return to Dante. In our way, in our day,
we endeavoured to relate experiences, out of time, to time.
But the was not finally related to time until I had written <u>The
Sword Went Out to Sea</u>.

That was, as I have said repeatedly, written in Lausanne
and Lugano, after I left London, spring 1946. There is the
triangle. London certainly supplied the <u>Inferno</u> of my <u>Commedia</u>.

We find the answer, the fulfilment in Lausanne and Lugano.

<u>White Rose and the Red</u> follows <u>The Sword</u>, and <u>Madrigal</u> is here
presented. The <u>Mystery</u> does not so much re-state the romance, as
re-establish its actually existing in a vast Cathedral. The Cathedral
is implicit in the <u>Rose</u>, the <u>Unknown Church</u> of William Morris.

It is pre-visioned in <u>Madrigal</u>, it is realized in <u>The Sword</u>.

Jan. 25

The Moment is a trio, Jubilee and The Last Time are duets.
They are as I say, chamber-music and the texture of the stories
is close-woven and unique, except that the theme or the themes

46.

are applicable to an only, a sole situation or to a separate
person or a small group of people.

But the décor, the ensemble of _Hesperia_, as of _Aegina_
requires a crowd. The uniqueness is reserved for one person,
as separated from the crowd, but the crowd or the crowd-scene
is necessary. It is there in the motley assembly about the Tomb,
though Margaret alone in the Amen-temple, is quite alone; it is
no duet. For though there are two people, it is almost a union
of two, which become one in the presence of the Infinite. In
*Aegina*, the one is quite alone, the experience is shared by
none and visibly prompted by none. "I was fully expressed. If I
paused one second, I would get out."

So Margaret on the return-trip of the Nile boat _Rosetta_, is
fully expressed. She too, is alone. "All she saw was one star,
luminous in the east." But the star was revealed by an outside
presence, an invisible agent had drawn aside the curtains of her
state-room, but in no vague or shadowy manner. The curtain rings
rattled on the curtain-pole, there was no wind. It was supernaturally
quiet. She saw the star, was paralyzed or illuminated by the
spears of light. The curtains were drawn back.

But who drew the curtains? Who in the Amen-temple. projected
the 'picture" of the little Birth House? Who or what on the island
of Aegina prompted her to wander from the others, till on the
shell-like island-edge, "I knew that I had gone."

"They" were outside. "They" were felt,perceived. But they were
anonymous, as the Captain at the Tomb, or invisible like the

47.

hand that drew aside the curtain, on the Nile boat Rosetta.

One lived in the memory of the Moment but one could not command it.

One could however, in proof of gratitude, record it.

I have arranged the stories now, in this order.

<table><tr><td>The Moment</td><td>1926</td></tr><tr><td>Jubilee</td><td>1935</td></tr><tr><td>The Last Time</td><td>1936</td></tr><tr><td>Hesperia</td><td>1924 (1948)</td></tr><tr><td>AEgina</td><td>1933</td></tr><tr><td>The Guardians</td><td>1945</td></tr></table>

The Guardians is an ordinary story of an ordinary English family. But in some insecure security of a war-time country England, there is the old Sibyl, Nannie, who is watching.

Nannie is the Granny of the child fantasy, The Gift.

47-2

Jan. 28.

The poems "left over" for consideration are even more
difficult to assess. We might call this collection, _A Dead_
Priestess Speaks_, from the first poem of the series.

_I was not pure_
_nor brought_
_purity to cope_
_with the world's lost hope_,
_nor was I insolent._

So she goes on. Her inner life runs counter to her outer, where

_I smiled_,
_I waited_,
_I was circumspect._

She reads her own pattern, she divines her future. But that
future will be out of the (then) life-pattern. This poem was
written in the mid-thirties, in what I have just referred to as
the maligned decade.

She weighs her own soul, as in _The Last Time_ she weighs
the soul of another.

She does not find it wanting,

_I, being dead._

She cannot relly resolve her problem, the world problem
nor is her heart in it;

_No one could write_
_after this wine-dark sea_,
 _an epitaph of glory and of spears._

She brushes aside honours, will not discuss

_the fire, the shout, the glory of the war._

But they suspect her when she

_answered circumspectly;_

48.

they will not allow her to fall out of step with events, but

nominated for the Herald's place
one
Delia of Miletus.

Even when in an ecstasy, she wanders off into the wilds,
associates herself with the boar, the wild-goat, the bird

tasting leaf and root,
even when she returns. dishevelled (we may gather) like a
Maenad and

the last archon saw
me reach the door, at dawn,
even though she feels

he might have said,
Delia of Miletus is a whole,
she wanders in the open street at night,
even so, an honourable place is assigned to her. The archon, the
representative of the social order,

paused, he stood aside.

Very well, the informed, the intelligent may recognize her,
but what of the rabble? She waits

for the crowd to mutter filth
and stone me from the altar.

But contrary to the usual convention of the poet or the artist
at odds with humanity, in this case, the crowd appears easily
swayed by the pronouncement of the archon: Delia the priestess,
has discovered in her questionable night adventures, new herbs,
new berries,

that will stay
the after-ravages of the plague
they brought here from Abydos.

49.

The after-ravages of the plague? Or the pre-ravages
of the plague? We have recorded in the Freud *Writing* of
1944, our feeling and our attitude toward war, toward a war
to come, all too clearly apprehended in the Vienna of 1933
and 1934. The poem therefore, swings between wars. Delia is dead.
Delia

died at mid-day between War 1 and War 11.

But there is life, as in death, resurrection. She could
not know in 1933, 1934 that resurrection could occur in life,
as in death. That is, she could not know it as in actual
personal experience though she could sense it in a dream or she could
resurrect her past adventures, as when in her Freud *Writing*,
she describes the shadow or light-symbols, the hieroglyphs cast
on the wall of the hotel bed-room in Corfu. She could assemble
as in *Advent*, her memories of adventure on a boat sailing
from the Port of London to the Port of Athens, February 1920.
She could dimly apprehend that the greater adventure in the 1923
Egypt of the Tomb. She could assess these adventures, but
only in an un-related manner. She had not (nearing 50) any
fantasy idea or aspiration toward further romance. For romance
is resurrection in this life.

It may seem a sentimental word to use. But romance
suggests something other than a girl's day-dream or a
middle-aged woman's renunciation. Romance is Romany, a gypsy,
also "the gypsy language, the speech of Roma."

What is this speech or language?

50

It means everything to her, she must not let go her hold on
romance or the writing.

But she has confessed,

no one could write.

She can not write as she would, but she will go on writing.

We are through experimenting. We are in the mid-thirties, not
the mid-twenties.

But there must be a new means of expression, of self-expression,
of world-expression.

She has not found it but she goes on assembling her small
treasures. This is done feverishly, through a sort of compulsion,
you might say. It is necessary to tidy-up, to clear the decks. We are
not in the mid-twenties, we are in the mid-thirties. The storm is coming.

She does not succeed in her ambition of having things ship-shape.
She writes and re-writes various "novels", that only "came true" in the
late forties. We have written of these novels, the *how* of the writing
is almost as important to us now, as the writing itself. When, where
and how were these things written? That seems a more adequate
autobiographical directive than the when, where and how did the events
described happen, or when, where and how was the dream dreamed. The
when, where and how however, did not "come true". Neither was the
growing bulk of untidy script shaped sufficiently to be stowed away
(published) within proper book-covers. It was left to simmer, to
ferment.

It was only when I had assembled the harvest of the vintage-years,
1943-1945, in the *Synthesis of a Dream* that I could truly and conscientiously
destroy or enjoy the others.

50 a.

*The Sword Went Out to Sea* was finished July 17, 1947. I label it, I treasure it. A few have tasted it. *Red Rose and the White* is finished summer 1948. Excellent! *Madrigal*, left simmering or fermenting, is run through a vintner's sieve, the dregs are thrown out. Really, this is not bad. We began on that vineyard in 1921. It was stony. We grubbed up dead roots, trimmed and pruned. But the grapes were sour. We went on. It was a pity to let that field (1914-1918) lie utterly fallow. We returned to it, from time to time. At last, winter 1949, we taste the 1939 gathering. Impossible but true. The War I novel has been fermenting away during War II. This is intoxicating, the red grapes of -

War? Love?

Jan. 30

*The Priestess* poems have neither the drive and originality of the "early H.D.", nor the authenticity of the later *Trilogy*.

51.

The *Electra-Orestes* however, has a vivid integrity, with its motive or leit-motif,

*to love one must slay,*

and its answering refrain,

*to love one must be slain.*

Callyso is a charming duet. There is music, regret, over-tones, ornament. But it is whispered dream, nostalgic rather than passionate. Regret? We were approached about this time, to undertake some chorus translations of Euripides, in collaboration with a prose-translator. We had finally shaped the *Ion*. It was published by Chatto and Windus, 1937, after the 1931 *Red Roses for Bronze*. I have copies of neither of these books here with me. I remember a certain satisfaction with the *Euripides' Ion*, as I had had the copy on hand a long time; I had actually started it during War I. But I did not feel that my way or my path lay now in this intellectual pursuit. I should like to have done more of the Greek and to have re-set these *Priestess* poems, but we are as I have just said, in that transition period. I feel it better not to re-work the *Priestess* poems, they stand for that time and having progressed to the *Trilogy*, I can read them now, with a certain detachment. Certainly, the costume, colour and rhythm of the *Electra-Orestes* is striking and authentic.

*In Our Town* is a genre-piece, a dramatic monologue. It stands on its own; though not "early H.D.", it might be an early Browning or a sketchy William Morris. There are out-standing

52.

lines as there are in the other *Priestess* poems, and a
startling prophecy:

she sings of a blue prow
of a far land;
she sings of a sword so white,
so luminous that its own light
alone must slay;
she sings of a sword, a sword, a sword . . .

There is prophecy too, in *Delphi*. The poet seeks the answer;

I went far
to old pilgrim-sites.

I wandered alone;
I said,
on the heights, I will find him.

He was not found, not actually, though he was apprehended.

He was not found in loneliness nor in the dance, in retreat
nor in indifference. He is unpredictable;

when my days are lonely,
he shuns me,
when busy,
he crowds through the throng
of my friends and my guests.

He (song) can not be cajoled, bribed, threatened;

his tune is his own;
in his, not in your time,
ecstacy will betray you.

But ultimately, ecstacy does not betray,

I came back:
he opened my door.

So the door was opened, the gate was un-barred, the way lead
toward unexpected vistas and in an unprecedented manner. Prophecy

53.

is fulfilled. The Delphic tripod is no sinister property
of an alien, dangerous cult. It is the homely and home-y old-
oak table of that most sane and most lovable of poets, William
Morris.

<u>Dodona</u> is a companion-piece to <u>Delphi</u>. Both have luminous lines,
both fall, as it were, between two stools. They are neither
the "early H.D." nor the H.D. of the later <u>Trilogy</u>. These poems
could be splintered into fragments that might glow with the old
crystalline transparency;

<u>burn myrtle and grass</u>
---
<u>millet in a basket</u>
---
<u>Hyades brought tears,</u>
<u>Pleades, misadventure</u>
---
<u>more fragrant</u>
<u>than rose,</u>
<u>than pomegranate.</u>

They are torn from the old Alexandrine palimpsest. But I leave
these and other fragments embedded in the commonplace of that
transition period.

So with <u>Sigil</u>, a series numbered VIII-XIX, "left over"
from <u>Red Roses for Bronze</u>, the 1931 volume. I can not now
discard them, having kept them so long. Lines now and again,
suggest the <u>Trilogy</u> content and technique.

<u>wine, bread, grape and sweet honey</u>
---
<u>the underside's bright amber,</u>
<u>your eyes</u>
---
<u>in coral, yourself,</u>
<u>in conch-shell, myself</u>

and so on. Perhaps <u>Sigil</u> XVII relates back to the death-love

54.

motive of the *Priestess*. Sigil XVII ends,

*take me,*
*O ultimate breath,*
*O master-lyrist,*
*beat my wild heart to death.*

In the *Priestess*, we have,

*I died at mid-day sleeping;*

*they did not see the reach of purple wing*
*that lifted me out of my little room,*
*they did not see the drift of purple fire*
*that turned the spring-fire*
*into winter-gloom;*

*they could not see that Spirit*
*in the day,*
*that turned the day to ashes ...*

A
Jan. 31

We have *Priest*. This actually is a lyric rendering of the
story *Jubilee*. It is a chorus sequence. It reads smoothly and
there is a sure touch and at times, an almost flawless technique.
But the poem shows the same psychological fault or flaw as the story,
*The Last Time*. The poet is "not so much alone as simply non-
existent."

That is, she has transferred her human contact or emotion

to

*a song,*
*a scimitar.*

It is

*the love*
*that is burnt through*
*and burnt out*
*and burnt away.*

55.

It is not impossible to compromise with

rapture
like fire
that is and is not
that sort of thing
you would mistake,
in your innate stupidity,
for desire.

The poet is reduced to quicksilver, radium; she is protected
with greves and

a breast-plate
difficult to bear.

The poet here is

reflector of beauty.

It is a mirror-poem, a moon-poem and it reflects a certain
austerity, a certain will, a certain discrimination,

and I,
I will not die.

The poet is

stubborn as the crescent-moon
at dawn
or evening,
set like a knife
to separate night from day.

She separates herself from herself. She speaks of that

Lover

whose kiss
stings and kills.

It is the Eternal Lover of Hesperia and the Dead Priestess
Speaks.

We call the last poem-sequence of this series The Master.

It is not, as we said of Veronica in Pilate's Wife, the alabaster-box
There is, as in Pilate's Wife,

56.

56.

the attempt to bring a new tribute to the conventional figure
of the Saviour. But the Eternal Lover is more forcibly suggested
by the description of the anonymous Captain, who appears so
unexpectedly at the Tomb entrance in Egypt, or by that Cloud of Witnesses,
the star-cloud, the star-cluster in the Great Nebula of that
final synthesis, *The Sword Went Out to Sea*.

The nine poem-sequences or choruses of which I have just
written, belong in technique and emotional content, exactly to
this transitional period. So I leave them. They are hardly a
bridge, they are threads in a tapestry. Somewhere, they fill in
or fill out a shadow. Somewhere, they lead, each taken separately
to the final pattern.

In *Somehow, their aspect and intention can not be wholly dis-
regarded.*

57.

May 16, 1950

I have before me, three paper-backed volumes, beautifully

Printed
by ...
Imprimerie Darantiere
At Dijon France
M. CM. XXXIV.

That is, two of them were printed, M. CM. XXXIV, the third is
given as M. CM. XXXV.

The first, *The Usual Star*, contains two stories, *The Usual Star*, London 1928, and *Two Americans*, Vaud 1930.

The second, *Kora and Ka*, also contains two stories, *Kora Ka*, Vaud 1930, and *Mira-Mare*, Vaud 1930.

The third booklet is actually one sequence, *Nights*.
But *Nights* falls into two sections, as the *Prologue* is written
or spoken by one John Helforth. John Helforth is one of the two
characters of *Kora and Ka*, and I sign *Nights*, John Helforth,
though the other two booklets are "by H.D." *Nights* itself
was written late summer 1931, thought the *Prologue* was not
assembled until the summer of 1934.

Bryher brought me these books from the store that was
left in London. She brought *Palimpsest* as well. I was not
happy at the thought of reviewing these volumes but I have
been re-living these stories and especially the *Hipparchia*,
*Murex* and *Secret Name* of *Palimpsest*, and I find in spite of,
or perhaps because of startling discrepancies in the matter
and the manner of their presentation, strange treasufes,

58.

dredged from my own sea-depth.

I regret that the proofs of _Palimpsest_ were so carelessly revised. It was my own fault. The book was printed, 1926, by

Contact Editions
29, Quai d'Anjou Isle Saint-Louis
Paris.

The writing was weedy and involved, with many baffling parentheses. It is sometimes difficult to disentangle the central theme from the turnings and involutions. I have indicated in this copy that Bryher brought me, various spelling and punctuation corrections to be made, in case there is ever a re-print of _Palimpsest_. The last of the three stories, _Secret Name_, was continued, as I have said, in the _Hesperia_ that was only finally assembled, winter 1948. _Secret Name_ and _Hesperia_ do not always synchronise, the time-elements do not exactly correspond and the Margaret Fairwood of _Hesperia_ in Helen Fairwood (I think there is only twice mentioned) in _Secret Name_. I had been working, at about that time, on a translation of Euripides' _Helen in Egypt_, which I never finally assembled, moreover my mother, Helen was actually there with Bryher and myself, at the time. The Helen in any revised printing should be Margaret, throughout.

The most fascinating story of the meeting of the mysterious Captain at the tomb-entrance, is presented in _Secret Name_, at times superficially, and the impression of the meeting is sometimes marred in the earlier version, by suggestion of a trivial affair. There is nothing trivial. But at the time of the first writing, I had to "dress up" the characters, had

59.

to "act out" a pseudo-mundane situation in the face of the
giant stars or "the purple bougainvillia that hung background
for the cat-Sekmet."

However, "perfectly, chemically the thing worked."

May 30.

Raymonde of the London 1926 *Murex* story, continues in name and character on into *The Usual Star* of 1928 London. The same Raymonde is found with the Daniel of *The Usual Star* and with the Gareth in *Narthex*. Narthex was published in the Second American Caravan, New York, 1928. The time of the actual story is spring 1927; as I remember, we were in Venice on Mayday. (Narthex, by the way is the "wand carried by initiates ...original plant-stalk by means of which Prometheus brought fire from heaven.")

The names and characters of these long-shortestories and
of some of the unpublished ones, overlap, or the names change
though the "characters" are the same, as for instance, the
Katherine of *The Usual Star* who is the Elaine of *The Moment*.
We start off the more or less contemporary time-sequence with
Raymonde in the 1926 London of *Murex* follows *Secret Name*, though
*Secret Name* by its very nature and content is difficult to
place "in time." I keep on repeating these titles and these
dates as they re-map or re-trace the labyrinth or spiral of
my creative fantasy, in clock-time and in dream-time. Clock-

60.

time and dream-time came together in a miraculous manner,
as I have already said, in *Secret Name* which I continued or concluded
with *Hesperia*. But it took me, as I keep repeating, 1945 minus
1923, or 1948 (when I finally assembled *Hesperia*) minus 1923
years to "catch up." It took 25 years for the Egyptian
experience to crystallize out to my present satisfaction.

Hesperia is a star, a gem; it is the morning and evening star, and
that Star actually did manifest. It manifested, it is true, as
a star-cluster, constellation or star-nebula as I stated in
*The Sword Went Out to Sea*, but it is the same Star. It is, as in
*The Gift*, the symbolic star carefully set aside for the
topmost branch of the fragrant balsam, our own Tree. It is the
Star of Bethlehem.

June 4

It may seem and it does seem that we "dressed up" our
characters, the central Raymonde of *Murex*, the Margaret of
*Hesperia* or the half-materialized Helen of the earlier
*Secret Name*. But we are, as I have said, in the labyrinth and
no formalized (however intricate) static labyrinth. It does not stay,
with all its meanderings, on one plane and time goes slowly,
goes swiftly; our dream-time is relative but we have yet no formula
for this relativity. Our "system" revolves like the clock-hand
but the hours or the years of those clock-numbers are uneven
or un-numbered. That is the reason that I repeat these dates, these
times and places.

61.

I am trying to pin down my map, to plot the course of my journey,
to circumscribe my own world or simply to put a frame around my
clock-face. I repeat these dates, these names and titles for they
are important to me, in this PLOT. The unanswered questions or
the seemingly vague questing are the preliminary to the answered
question, to the quest. The dates become important in relation
to the last date or dates, the July 10-October 30, 1940 of the Battle
of Britain, followed by my own 1945 integration or fulfilment.
It was in the summer of 1945 that I received the messages of the
RAF, tapped out by the little tripod-table of the poet, William
Morris.

In contrast to the later *Sword* and *Rose*, By Avon River
and the yet unfinished *Mystery*, these romances of the late
twenties and early thirties, seem, as I have said, "dressed
up." But why not dress up? We were not Margaret, we are not
Julia Ashton of the War I *Madrigal*. We are not one or any
of those whose lovely names startle and enchant me, as I read
them now as if for the first time, in my own prose and poetry,
Hipparchia, Heliodora, Hedyle. We are hot Hedyle, the stylized
exiled Athenian heteria, not the exquisite child of Hedyle,
*Hedylus* who gives his name to that book. We are not the *Sword*
Rose of de Beauvais of Normandy and Brittany at the time of England's
conquest, nor the earlier Stella, meeting at villa Trevi above
Rome, an earlier conqueror. We are not Raymonde of the first
"contemporary" *Murex* nor yet the later *Narthex*,

62.

who seated with her two friends at the little Florian table, is
fully conscious of the *processus* of the Wheel, as tourists from
the *Nord Stiïn* or from Valparaiso, from mid-west America and the
North of England, swarm across St. Mark's Square, and the old
crone with her dipped or died carnations, returns, this time, to
their little table, counter-clock-wise.

## June 5

We have *Hippolytus Temporizes*, published by Houghton Mifflin, Boston, 1927. This play was inspired by the poem of that name that I had written in the Isles of Greece, 1920. It is a long poem, this three-act play, consistent with the early H.D. crystalline tradition. This and *Hedylus*, the Greek novel (also set up by Houghton Mifflin, 1928, from the Basil Blackwell, Oxford sheets) have for theme and centre, the portrait or projection of the intellectualized, crystalline youth, whose prototype is again found or first found in the actual Greek drama. They reflect the original Euripides' *Hippolytus* and the *Ion*. My translation was brought out by Houghton Mifflin in 1937, from the Chatto and Windus Londòn sheets.

All three of these studies are in a sense, the projection
of the jewel or the crystallization of the jewel or jewels in
the matrix — difficult for myself to assess it. But it is not so
difficult if we visualize or imagine the two streams of consciousness,
running along together (the time-element and the dream or ideal
element) but in separate channels. The streams, as I have already
noted, came together in the end, in the War II and the post War II

63.

novels that I sign Delia Alton.

These earlier volumes have been collected for me fairly
recently by Bryher, some were brought out from London; we
found copies of others where I had stored them in her villa,
at La Tour. Only recently the lost key to that cupboard turned
up. The books had been put away when I left Switzerland, in
the autumn of 1939.

Nor had I returned to them nor reviewed them in the war and
post-war period. Only now that I feel so sustained by the *Sword* and
*Rose*, can I re-live these stories. Indeed, I have been happy too,
finding unexpected phrase and paragraph which merge or weave into
the texture or spirit of the final novels. It is all a search, as I
said earlier in these pages.

"This Isis takes many forms as does Osiris."