Dec. 12, 1949.

**Madrigal**: this story of War I was roughed out, summer 1939, in Switzerland. I left the MS with books and other papers with Bryher, when I returned to England, soon after the outbreak of War II. It was returned to me last winter. In leafing over the un-corrected pages, I found an unexpected force and energy. I would re-assemble the romance.

I had been writing or trying to write this story, since 1921. I wrote in various styles, simply or elaborately, stream-of-consciousness or straight narrative. I re-wrote this story under various titles, in London and in Switzerland. But after I had corrected and typed out **Madrigal** last winter, I was able conscientiously to destroy the earlier versions. I had expected at first sight of the torn and weathered MS, to destroy **Madrigal**. The last sections were carelessly assembled, so I finished the story after the "Greek" prelude when Julia writes to Rico.

On re-reading the typed MS, I realized that at last, the War I story had "written itself."

**Madrigal** is a story, a novel in historical time. It is the eternal story of the search. The mythical or religious love-story continues through all the writing. Margaret Fairwood in *Hesperia*, a few years later "in time", finds herself in Egypt. She realized, on her return-trip from Assuan on the Nile boat *Rosetta*, that "Osiris is scattered not only along the Nile river, but along a mud-banks and sand-banks from

2.

Liverpool to Tank-town, Montana.'' Hesperia follows the break
with London that Julia Ashton makes in Madrigal.

In Madrigal, she perceives a compromise. She can live
in the ordinary dimensions and at the same time, in the
gloire. That is, outwardly she can carry on her ordinary life,
yet realize her true fulfilment inwardly, in creative writing,
''I will be living in these notes.'' In Madrigal, Julia Ashton
finds a companion, creatively her equal or superior. But she
sacrifices him or is sacrificed by him. In Hesperia, there is
no sacrifice, there is completion on the material and on the
spiritual plane, at one and the same time. But the night-
vision in the Amen-temple, described in Hesperia, though it
occurs in clock-time is yet conditional by no usual sequence
of events. Hesperia conforms to an exact formula or occasion,
the opening of the Tomb.

The Margaret of the story, in Egypt on somewhat vaguely
indicated secretarial duties, meets the Captain, in the
blazing summer-sunlight of early February, at the Tomb entrance. He
directs her and her companion to the Rest House. The
Captain's own red-robed dragoman attends them. In Egypt and
at that time, there is no ''mystery'' in this. This legendary
figure from the Arabian Nights or from a Bethlehem Epiphany
scene leads the way along a flinty rock-path across the
desert. There are a number of red-tasselled donkeys and a
few riding horses tethered beyond the sand-carts. The Captain

3.

will take the long way round, with his horse. He will meet
them at the Rest House.

They lunch at the Rest House with others who straggle in
from the sand-carts; they explore the little temple of
Hatshepsut after lunch. When Margaret and her companion re-
turn to the Luxor Hotel, they find the Captain on the hotel
verandah, as if waiting for them.

This story was published in Paris in 1926, but I have
no copy of it here. In any case, _Hesperia_, though part of
*Secret Name*, is a story on its own, though *Secret Name* was
written soon after the actual visit to Egypt, winter 1923, and _Hesperia_
was only finally revised last winter.

These are two women, Julia Ashton and Margaret Fairwood.
They are of course, they all are, the same woman. She knows,
February 1923, on her return from the drowned Isis-temple at
Philae, that "women are individually seeking, as one woman,
fragments of the Eternal Lover." As the Eternal Lover has been
scattered or disassociated, so she, in her search for him. In
*Madrigal*, she seeks for him in contemporary time, among her
own associates of England and America, in the years immediately
preceding and in the actual years of War I.

She seeks him in fantasy, myth. She has found him, of
course. But she can not yet correlate or relate the various
entities that make up her own fragments, though in Egypt they
were related for her; the formula was presented. It went round

4.

clock. She meets the Captain at the Tomb, approximately at noon; at about mid-night of the same day, after her visit to the Amen-temple, she says good-night to him on the stairway of the Hotel Luxor.

She sees him briefly the next morning. She says good-bye. The formula is established. She knows that to keep him, she must lose him. She does not know how she knows this. But the seal is set on her knowledge. She can not know that she knows this, until she has progressively retraced her steps, redeemed not so much the fragments of Osiris, as of his sister, twin or double, the drowned and the submerged Isis.

This Isis takes many forms, as does Osiris.

She finds a formula for the Eternal Lover in Pilate's Wife. The scene of this story is the Jerusalem of the traditional rendering of the Gospels. After re-reading *Madrigal* and *Hesperia*, the setting seems over-ornate and artificial. But the treasures of *Pilate's Wife*, Veronica's boudoir suggest the various findings of the Tomb, and the painted ceiling recalls the miraculously preserved decorations of ancient Egypt. Even Veronica herself distantly resembles the well-known Nerfertiti portrait.

Veronica speaks of love, this opiate. But we feel her emotions are in a sense, as unreal or as real in a supersensuous dimension, as the exotic fragrance contained in her imported crystal phials and boxes. She appears at the end, to

book

5.

break her alabaster-box, but her conclusions do not wholly
satisfy us. It is as if in a wave or pre-vision of the next
war, or the suppressed memories of the last, we endeavored to
build a shell, almost a Tomb about her.

Veronica is hard, weary, but she will go on, though "she
had found that her outer Kingdom and her inner sanctity had
some link missing."

It is, "attempt at the re-adjustment of the dead and
living." It is, "this new Mithraism, the religion of the
cohorts." It is, "the world needed a new lover, exactly a new
lover." It is, "what I want ... and always wanted, was an
answer."

There is the same sudden summer in late winter that we
had in Egypt. Veronica's "enervation" reminds us of Margaret's
mood, on the journey inward or downward on the Nile boat,
Rosetta.

It is, "she had found the thing 'almost'."

Almost, on re-reading Pilate's Wife, we find it for her.
She speaks of a little Etruscan statue, a memory of her
childhood, "she always knew it would speak." It does not
speak, not actually in Pilate's Wife. But after our first,
almost stupefying impression of "sheer exaltation of the
intellect", vibrating through this reconstruction, we realize
the search.

"she had had no answer," that is Pilate's Wife, Veronica
remained, at the end, for all her apparent "exaltation",
unsatisfied. But we, on re-reading this, have an answer.

6.

"The Eagle and the legions" takes form or actually manifests, some ten years after the book's final revision, in 1934. In 1944, we are in London. "what the message was or might be, she had no remotest inkling." So Veronica, *Pilate's Wife*. But the protagonist of the final version of the search, Delia Alton, in *The Sword Went Out to Sea*, has had the message.

Dec. 14.

*Pilate's Wife* relates back to *Hipparchia*, the first of three long-short stories, assembled in *Palimpsest*, published by the Contact Press in Paris, in 1926.

*Hesperia* too, relates back to *Palimpsest*. As I have just said, *Hesperia* is the continuation or the conclusion of *Secret Name*. There were these two stories in the volume, *Hipparchia* and *Secret Name* and a third, the middle-one, which I called *Murex*. *Murex* is a "modern story", that is "modern" at the time of writing, in the London of the mid-twenties. At least, I think the story was called *Murex*, I wrote another of the then "period", later on in the twenties, that I called *Narthex*. *Narthex* was published in a volume of collected stories, *American Caravan*, about 1928.

I can with an effort, recall *Palimpsest* and the later *Narthex*. But it is *Hesperia* that concerns me at the moment. The Egyptian sequence if anything, grows more vivid with the years, and it was only last winter that I assembled *Hesperia*.

7.

from notes "left over" from the original story. These notes
were re-written in the mid-twenties and again re-written in the
mid-thirties, but it was only last winter in a final typed
copy, that they "came true."

In the light of _Hesperia_, I felt tempted to re-write
*Secret Name*, as there must be a marked discrepancy in style
between the story itself and its conclusion. There is
almost a quarter of a century between the publication of
*Secret Name*, in Paris and my own satisfaction with the final
version of _Hesperia_, here in Lausanne. It is true that I had
roughed out the story, at the same time as I wrote *Secret Name*,
soon after my return from the 1923 trip to Egypt. I could imagine
the two stories brought together in one volume, if I revised
*Secret Name*, so that its style and rhythm should harmonize or
blend with _Hesperia_. But fortunately or unfortunately, I
have no copy of *Secret Name*, and in any case, I know that it
is better to feel the relation of these stories to one
another and to my life at the time of writing, to remember,
rather than to study, criticize and under-rate them, in their
earlier versions.

I remember _Hipparchia_, the first of the three _Palimpsest_
stories dealing with a Greek girl in Rome, a stranger or half-
stranger, like Veronica. _Pilate's Wife_, Veronica is an
Etruscan, " a little out of step with the procession she was,
of necessity part of."

-----

8.

<u>Hedylus</u> was published in 1928. I seem only to remember
the different covers of the Houghton Mifflin and the Basil
Blackwood editions. I saved copies of both, but they too,
were stowed away in London at the time of the heavy bombing.
I thought with trepidation, of possibly revising <u>Hedylus</u> as
well as the still earlier Palimpsest, but it is better to
remember and try to explain it to myself why the thought of the
first Palimpsest story, <u>Hipparchia</u>, <u>Hedylus</u> and <u>Pilate's Wife</u> unnerves me. They are all set in antiquity, not
strictly of the classic period but of the so-called dispersion.

Perhaps dispersion is the key-word. We were dispersed
and scattered after War 1. The Greek, or the Greek and Roman
scenes and sequences of these prose studies are related to the
early poems. I grew tired of hearing these poems referred to,
as crystalline. Was there no other way of criticizing, of
assessing them? But perhaps I did not see, did not dare see
any further than my critics. Perhaps my annoyance with them
was annoyance with myself. For what is crystal or any gem but
the concentrated essence of the rough matrix, or the energy,
either of over-intense heat or over-intense cold that projects
it? The poems as a whole, and the "Greek" stories I have
mentioned, contain that essence or that symbol, symbol of
concentration and of stubborn energy. The energy itself
and the matrix itself have not yet been assessed.

It is difficult for a critic to do this, it is difficult
for me to do this.

9.

Dec. 15.

Margaret in Egypt, the morning after the mysterious visit to the Greek Temple at Karnak, realizes that in some way, the stranger whom she had met the previous day, in the Valley of the Kings, at the entrance of Tutankh-Amen's Tomb, had projected the vision or the "picture" of the Temple within the Temple. She afterwards found the site of the smaller Temple, marked on an ordinary guide-book map. The smaller Temple, long, long vanished, was referred to as the Birth House. Perhaps Birth House could be translated, Lady Chapel.

The Lady Chapel or the Birth House was not there, when Margaret returned early the next morning, to photograph it.

What happened? How did it get there? Or how did she perceive it? Or how was it possible for her not to realize at the time of the projection of the vision or the "picture", that the small square Temple with its asymmetrical flight of stone-steps was dream or hallucination?

Somehow, somehow, although she can not ask the Captain of the ordinary "daylight dimension" about this, she feels that he has had something, everything to do with it. But the Captain of the mysterious, empty night Amen-temple and the Captain "standing there beside her in the hall of the Luxor Hotel", the next morning, are or seem "separate entities, seen separately and distorted, like two images in a badly adjusted field-glass."

10.

Actually, the images are not distorted, the
Captain is not distorted nor is she. But the perfect Revelation
must be related to time. The seal has been set on her knowledge.
She knows it would be anti-climax to leave her associates and friends
and ride away, as he (she believes half-mockingly) suggests,
into the desert.

But no, he is not mocking. He is assuring her of
her place in this world. But she knows that he knows that
her place in this world, is in this world, not in a romantic
escape to the Bedouin gypsies.

She has her two visions or her two fields of vision.
She realizes these in two separate compartments of her mind or
being. The fields of vision came together that February night,
in 1923, in the Amen-temple.

They are there, the two streams or realms of knowledge
or of consciousness. But her writing continues for the most
part, the tradition of crystalline legend, already forming
about it, during the early years of War I.

It is not until September 1945 that the two fields
of vision or consciousness, come finally together. There is the
Valley of the Kings, there is the Valley of the Shadow. "We
heard the roll of drums, the blare of silver trumpets. At last,
I had a place in the vast pageant and a place that was near the
altar."

Julia Ashton had her "frozen altars", as Rico
called them, in Madrigal. Celastrinly, Margaret Fairwood is near
the altar, at the opening of the Tomb and at the scene or

11.

"picture" of resurrection in the Amen-temple, the night of the
Valley of the Kings' day. But she has been, theoretically at
least, alone. Her message is personal; the Messenger is in
clock-time, though it is true, that he predicts out-of-time
or eternity for her. This is the Valley of the Kings, in
February 1923. The Valley of the Shadow is London and the
senders of the messages that she received in 1945, are a group,
a star-cluster or a star-nebula as Delia Alton describes them
in *The Sword Went Out to Sea*. The messages are from air-men,
not so very recently lost in the Battle of Britain.

But in the Amen-temple, she is alone with the Captain.
The message or the "picture" is presumably for herself alone.
The message or the "picture" of *The Sword*, though sent as to
one (the Air Marshal who directed the battle), is yet pertinent
to the thousands, the millions who directly or indirectly
were participants in the war. *The Sword* is the reward, the
crown of her achievement, her achievement itself, the answer
that Pilate's Wife had not had; though Veronica has intellectually
followed the clues, her shrine, her altar or her Memorial Chapel
is wrought of shell and alabaster; though fire might later burn
there, her altars are, taken all in all, as Rico says of
Julia in *Madrigal*, "frozen."

Delia Alton is not alone in Westminster Abbey, on the
Battle of Britain Sunday, September 16, 1945, when she hears
the roll of drums, the blare of silver trumpets. But she is
alone with the Captain that February night in 1923, in the

12.

Temple at Karnak. Her two companions have wandered off for
that brief interval. She will return with them, guided by the
Captain, through what appears to be an un-ending midnight
tunnel. Was that tunnel part too, of the "picture"?

But there are two others with her. It can not be quite
a dream.

The Captain had been challenged at the entrance to the
Temple. But whispered Arabic word to the robed figure and
they pass out of the circle of the night-watchman's brazier.

If we skip a few years (about twenty, to be exact), we
are in London.

The actual fire has raged round the crystal. The crystalline poetry
to be projected, must of necessity, have that fire in it.
You will find fire in *The Walls do not Fall, Tribute to the Angels*
and *The Flowering of the Rod*. There are certain unpublished
poems, later to be considered; they are not all negligible. But
the Trilogy, as we called the three volumes of poetry written
during War II, seemed to project itself in time and out-of-time
together. And with no effort. The poems were published by the Oxford
University Press, 1944, 1945, 1946.

*The Walls do not Fall* was dedicated to:

Bryher
for Karnak 1923
from London 1942.

13.

It was she who took me, February 1923, and my mother to
Egypt. Neither Bryher nor my mother figure in the Egyptian story. But
they form a background or a frame for *Palimpsest*, as they do later for
*The Sword*.

*The Sword Went Out to Sea* is the final Chapter of the story of
the search; its sub-title is *Synthesis of a Dream*.

It is the same dream.

In a small space, in a short time, the sky, that February night
in the Temple, seemed to shower down its stars upon us. But the infinite
is rendered finite by the four-square "picture" of the small inner
Temple. So, twenty years later, the Cloud of Witnesses is presented
in such a way, that a child could understand the message. The circle
of the zodiac is reduced to the size of a clock-dial, or to be exact,
to a circumference of about three feet in diameter. This circumference
would hold a large clock. But this clock is not fastened on the wall
in a school-room or a railway-station; it is level with the ceiling,
with the carpet.

It is the top of a tripod-table that has been left in Delia Alton's
London apartment by a friend.

The table was left with her, as it had belonged to an old
acquaintance who had recently died.

The table itself had originally been the property of the poet,
William Morris.

We tell time with this clock, but it is not our time.

It is the time-out-of-time, recorded by the ticking of the three
feet of the tripod.

Our left hand is on the table. Our right hand is scribbling

14.

in a note-book, a sort of rough shorthand of the messages.

As I have just said, the messages are from air-men,
not so very recently lost in the Battle of Britain.

Dec. 18.

What it is, is that she was not a God-less child. I mean,
she was possessed in a serene, protected way, by his Idea.
Or Him, the Idea. There is a book (or a so far unpublished
manuscript)called *The Gift*. This book was written in London,
during the days of the bombardment It is autobiographical,
"almost". The author has the privilege of trimming or paring,
of concentrating or expanding, where it will best suit his
purpose or where his purpose will suit him--suit perhaps,
in the old Victorian *Sartor Resartus* manner. The scene is the
town of the author's birth, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. *The Gift*
is dedicated to her mother:

To
Helen
who has
brought me home
for Bethlehem, Pennsylvania 1741
from Chelsea, London 1941

*L'amitié passe même le tombeau.*

We worked on and off at *The Gift* during the first years of
War II, and finally assembled it in 1943. It was in October
1943 that we (or the Delia Alton of *The Sword Went Out to Sea*)
heard a certain retired Air Marshal lecture on spirit
messages. The Gift is a story of *Death and its Mystery* and we

15.

quote from this book of Camille Flammarion, on the title-page
of the first section, *Dark Room*.

*The Gift* is a family-portrait or a series of family-portraits, but more particularly of the Child's mother and the grandmother. In the fifth section, *The Secret*, the grandmother tells the Child, in dream or half-trance, of a memory of her own grandmother's or a fear based on the community memory. The community had been settled by Count Zinzendorf. It was originally known as the *Jednota*, from the Bohemian word meaning association or society. The Latin *Unitas* was later substituted and the remnant of the old Bohemian church became known as the *Unitas Fratrum*, which was eventually called the Moravian Church.

Zinzendorf's father was an Austrian, exiled or self-exiled to Saxony, because of his Protestant affiliations.

Bethlehem, Pennsylvania was named by Count Zinzendorf on Christmas-eve, 1741. It was one of a number of Moravian settlements, having to do with a mysterious *Plan* of "peace on earth." The Child, only half a "Moravian" and mystified by inscriptions on some of the oldest tomb-stones, perceives a strange affinity in *tiny*, dark creature who is her mother's mother. Mamalie is not like anyone else. She is very old but she plays games with them and answers all their questions.

Through Mamalie, the Child traces back her connection with the *Jednota* in Europe and with the vanished tribes of the Five Nations in America, with whom Zinzendorf had made a curious, unprecedented treaty. In fantasy or dream, the

16.

grandmother tells the story of Wunden Eiland, an actual island
which was later actually and symbolically washed away in the
spring-floods.

On this island, certain of the community met delegates of
the Five Nations, who planned together to save the country
(and the world) from further blood-shed. Through the grand-
mother's submerged consciousness, tuns the fear and terror of
the arrow that flieth, torture and death by burning.

This terror was in our conscious minds in London, while
I was assembling *The Gift*.

There was a great deal more to be said than I could
more than hint at, in the seven sections of the autobiographical
fantasy. A friendly critic suggested a tightening-up of the last
section, *Morning Star*. I could not re-work the threads without
spoiling the texture of the "picture". So I added a story, the
last of my *Jednota* narratives, *The Death of Martin Presser*.
This reconstruction of the actual period (1741) seemed to confirm
my later findings (1941), and the motto on an old family-seal,
*L'amitié passe même le tombeau*.

Dec. 24.

From the actual family of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, the
scientific "Pastor", the part-German or Slavonic grandfather
(as well as the scientific father who is yet in a way, "from
outside"), from a legend of a new way of life, a Brotherhood,
dedicated to peace and universal understanding, it is not

17.

really such a far cry to Vienna and to Sigmund Freud.

Count Zinzendorf was an Austrian, we were called Moravians,
Professor Freud was an Austrian, born as it happened in Moravia.

There is a legend of a wandering Jew, of a Hidden Church, of
an unrecognized Divinity or of a reviled Humanity ...these are vague,
too facile generations. But Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, the childhood, the
search recovers its individual direction when we find ourselves,
in 1933 and 1934, a student or analysand of the Professor.

Sigmund Freud is known generally as the Professor, my father was
referred to constantly as the Professor; that is an obvious association.
It is the grandfather really, who comes nearer to Vienna, an educationalist,
a direct descendant of the Brotherhood.

My tribute to Sigmund Freud was written in London, September -
November 1944. It was published in serial form in *Life and Letters*,
London, 1945, 1946. I called the essay *Writing on the Wall*, and dedicated
it to:

Sigmund Freud
blameless physician.

In the very superficial account that I give of some of our
sessions at *Berggasse*, in Vienna, I touch on the family-scene, as
presented in *The Gift*. I also outlined rather starkly, an occult or
supernatural experience that I had had in Greece, when Bryher took me
there after War I. The title of my essay is taken from that experience,
the projection of a series of picture-symbols on the wall of the hotel
bed-room, just

18.

as we were about to leave Corfu.

The *Writing* or picture-writing was in part, the theme of
a novel that I could never finish. This novel purported to deal
with that first Greek adventure, spring 1920.

It was not until 1947 that I wrote *finds* to that story.
I found the title for it, *The Sword Went Out to Sea*, from a
poem of William Morris. But this final version (or *Chapter*, as
I call it) did not deal with the 1920 Greek trip, it had for
inspiration the tripod-table of William Morris and the messages
that I received from it, from RAF pilots in 1945, in London.

Dec. 29.

*The Sword* traces my intellectual and emotional life to
its conclusion or rather to its fulfilment. *The Sword* is the
crown of all my effort, the final version or rather the new
version of the Greek novel that I had written, revised,
discarded and re-written, ever since the time of the actual
experience in the spring of 1920.

The Greek's story is condensed in one of the incidents
of Delia Alton's past. The Julia Ashton and the Margaret
Fairwood of *Madrigal* and *Hesperia* meet in the characterization
of Delia. But Delia, unlike Julia and Margaret, is complete
in her two dimensions. I feel complete with her. Delia Alton
tells the story and Delia Alton signs the book.

As I actually assembled the final version of *Madrigal*
more than a year after I had finished *The Sword*, I feel that
the War I novel should be a companion or an introduction to
the War II novel. So I sign *Madrigal*, Delia Alton.

19.

In the meantime, there is *White Rose and the Red*. This
was written just after *The Sword* and again is a companion to
it. The *Rose* stands as it were on the right hand of *The Sword*,
*Madrigal* on the left. And Dalia Alton, though she writes this
time, of a London, just a hundred years removed from the
scene of *The Sword*, and though she herself does not appear
recognizably as an earlier Julia Ashton, yet she herself
is of necessity the more deeply involved. For the *Rose* is a
tribute to that most lovable of English poets, William Morris
and it was his very table that brought the messages.

Certain of my older friends of the War I period had
known William Morris personally. Chief of these now in
importance, is the lonely, harassed late Violet Hunt. She, so
full of gossip and a most notorious wit, had never hinted
or breathed a word of that sad story of the Pre-Raphaelite
Brotherhood, that most fervid bond between William Morris and
Rossetti that was so tragically broken. Violet spoke to me
almost exclusively of Elizabeth Siddall, and it was I myself,
I am touched to remember, who suggested to her that she call
her volume, then almost ready for the press, not Elizabeth
Siddall, as she had first intended, but *The Wife of Rossetti*.

Dec. 30.

*Writing on the Wall* is a tribute to Sigmund Freud. As I
have already said, in it I record an experience that I could
never adequately describe in the many versions of the Greek
novel. I have in *Advent* (an unpublished section of the *Writing*,

20.

later assembled from the old note-books), a further account
of the trip out from the Port of London to the Piraeus, early
February 1920. That story would never "come true" in the many
versions of the finally discarded novel, but the Greek story
lives adequately for me in the two sections of the Sigmund Freud
papers. I touch on this Greek scene again in the *Sword*;
superficially, I relate it to the Karnak incident. The Greek
contact is as it were the corner-stone of three others, that
seemed (though four-square intent) to have become "broken walls",
until the messages, the table and the meeting with the Lord
Howell of the narrative, renewed or redeemed the pattern.

The *Sword* gives us in the second square (of four squares),
four friendships; Peter van Eck of the condensed Greek
adventure, a young American poet of Delia's Philadelphia
school-days, her husband Geoffrey Alton, and a certain young
scholar who was actually and analysand or student of the
Professor, during my first sessions in Vienna. The names are
altered, of course and Vienna becomes Dresden in the *Sword*. But
the ingredients or the "contents of the test-tube" or the
crucible are the same.

The *Writing* continues but the mysterious or mystical
symbol-writing on the wall of the hotel bed-room, in the
Ionian island of Corfu, spring 1920, is now (in 1945) in Delia
Alton's apartment off Hyde Park in London, the ABC of a child's