Gothic House,
Lenwade,
Norwich.

January 2, 1956

Dearest Dooley,

To say that I am absolutely flabbergasted is to put it mildly. What a perfectly marvellous birthday gift! It is almost worth being 70 to receive it. I simply cannot thank you enough. I have never done anything to deserve your kindness. I used to take you out for drives for my own pleasure. It would have been very dull for me to have gone out by myself every day. When I think what an insipid brainless creature I was I cant see how you put up with me all those years.

After getting your last letter I relented and wrote to Ezra for Christmas. I told him I had decided to stop writing but as we had both reached the 70 mark I might as well keep it up. I also told him that, as De Forest had died last November(54) and I had told him so in my last letter I couldnt very well forward his pamphlet to him. I enclose his reply which is typical. You can do what you please

If I am never able to travel again I can always live over in my mind all the exquisite places I have visited. I am glad my children were all able to see a lot of countries before they settled down. It always makes their lives so much more interesting. That is the difference between my two daughters-in-law, Roddy's wife Rosemary has done quite a bit of travelling abroad but Barbara hasn't gone anywhere outside of England and she/is very narrow-minded.

We had a lovely Christmas with Roddy and Rosemary (whom I love) for a week and Ber coming over on Boxing Day. He is still with me but they are hoping to get a house in Norwich soon and their family can all be together again.

Unfortunately poor Bernard was quite ill over Christmas but was able to come into dinner on Ch. Day and Boxing Day. He is better now but he missed most of R&R's visit.

R&R are very pleased with their house, a good-sized bungalow, with central heating - which I envy them-etc. It has a large garden so most

of Roddy's presents were gardening tools.

Wasn't it amazing to have so much peace or
Earth this Christmas! Bernard was grumbling that
there was so little news over to holidays but I
think it was wonderful that the world was so peac-
ful that there was nothing to tell.

Poor Muriel and Fen were very much delayed
in sailing from Sydney and were then held up
by strikes in Brisbane. But I ho e they finally
sailed just after Christmas( instead of Nov. 30)
and will reach Boston the end of this month.
They are on a freighter wit h only six passengers
But they have very comfortable quarters and good.
companions with the exception of a little Greek
who used to sell ice-cream on Sydney wharf.

I sent Ethelwyn Bryher's book for Christmas
as the thing I t ought she would like most. She
is always interested in you both.

With my heartfelt thanks and my very best
wishes for all you desire in the coming year,
Love to you both.

From your grateful old friend,

with it. He always takes pains not to put
his proper signature. I told him all about
De Forest and the difficult life he had had.
How could he have been any different brought
up first by a mother who had never had brothers,
in a girl's school, the only boy on the place
being forbidden as he had done something dirty
of which we had told our mother. When he started
at the Hamilton School we three and some of the
older Burd girls always went to 63rd St. to put
him on the car. Even when Father sent him to
boarding school he only had one pair of long
"pants" so got moaned ragged for it. I also
told him about the death of his wife when the
papers came out with headlines "Clergyman's wife
commits suicide". He had developed into a very
fine character which I only appreciated on his
last visit here. We got to know each other better
than we ever had before.

I would like to see that poem to which
Ezra refers. Of course you meant Helen of Troy
and he knew it.

I am so glad you were able to spend
Christmas at Lugano with Bryher. It is a charming
spot and I have very pleasant memories of it.

C/O P.O. Whangaroa,
Northland,
New Zealand.
June 2, 1968

Dear Professor Pearson,

My friend Bryher has written to tell me the good news that you are planning to write a biography of H.D. I was delighted to hear it for I know of no-one who would be better able to do it.

Hilda often spoke to me about you and of how much help you had been to her. I wish I had been able to have seen the Exhibition you had at Yale for her 70th birthday. I sent her some old snapshots of her I had for that but I am afraid they arrived too late to have been of use.

I did not know Hilda in Bethlehem as Bryher seems to think but they moved to the Flower Observatory of the University of Pennsylvania when she and I were ten years old. I lived three miles nearer Philadelphia. My father was the Warden of the Burd School, an orphanage for the daughters of clergymen. As our chapel was the nearest church to the Observatory Mrs Doolittle brought the family down to us for the Services and that was how we met them. There were no other children near us at all so our two families depended on each other.

When Hilda was sent to Miss Gordon's School in West Phila. Mrs. Doolittle persuaded my father to send me at the same time. There we met Matilda Wells and we three became inseparable.

I had a pony and trap and the Doolittles had none so every afternoon after school I used to drive up to Hilda's and we would explore the countryside, which was then mostly open country.

After two or three years Hilda left Miss Gordon's and went to the Friends' School in Philadelphia but we still continued our drives.

Our friends then were mostly girls we had met at school or children of the U. of B. Faculty. We used to have dances at our various houses but in Lent we turned it into a walking club. We used to do as much as ten to fourteen miles during the day. One of my family would drive to our rendezvous with the picnic baskets and we would have supper there before walking back.

APPROVED FOR POSTING IN NEW ZEALAND TO OVERSEAS ADDRESSES

Ezra Pound and Wm.C. Williams were two of the boys my brother had brought from the university. There was also the son of the Greek professor, Robert Lamberton who was later mayor of Philadelphia.

Bryher wrote that you might be coming to N.Z. on your way to Australia in August. If you think I could be of any help to you I would be very glad to see you. Unfortunately my daughter and her husband will be in Fiji then and I would have no car. Otherwise I would ask you to stay here but there is a hotel a few minutes' walk away-The Marlin-There is no airport near us so you would either have to take the bus from Auckland to Kaeo, six miles from Whangaroa or fly to Whangarei and come from there by bus. We are 200 miles from Auckland and 70 from Whangarei.

I shall be going to Fiji myself early in September.

With best wishes for your biography and hoping to
meet you,

Yours sincerely,

BY AIR MAIL

AEROGRAM:

If anything is enclosed,
this form will be surcharged
at rate for Air Mail Letters.

See inside back here

SENDER'S NAME
AND ADDRESS

Mrs. B. W. H. Pratt
Whangaroa
Northland
New Zealand

To be sent post

June 2, 1968

Dear Professor Pearson,

I did not know Hilda in Bethlehem as Bryher seems to think but they moved to the Flower Observatory of the University of Pennsylvania when she and I were ten years old. I lived three miles nearer Philadelphia. My father was the Warden of the Burd School, an orphanage for the daughters of clergymen. As our chapel was the hearest church to the Observatory Mrs Doolittle brought the family down to us for the Services and that was how we met them. There were no other children near us at all so our two families depended on each other.

When Hilda was sent to Miss Gordon's School in West Phila. Mrs. Doolittle persuaded my father. to send me at the same time. There we met Matilda Wells and we three became inseparable.

Our friends then were mostly girls we had met at school or children of the U. of E. Faculty. We used to have dances at our various houses but in Lent we turned it into a walking club. We used to do as much as ten to fourteen miles during the day. One of my family would drive to our rendevous with the picnic baskets and we would have supper there before walking back.

Ezra Pound and Wm.C.Williams were two of the boys my brother had brought from the university. There was also the son of the Greek professor, Robert Lamberton who was later mayor of Philadelphia.

Yours sincerely,

Margaret L. Pratt

P.S. Wilda used to visit me every summer at an
_cott_ at Watch Hill N. T. and we both used
to spend several weeks with Matilda at Bailey's
Island in Tasco Bay. Marie, Matilda died years ago.

To open face here

BY AIR MAIL

AEROGRAMM

AFFIX STAMP HERE

Pratt, N. H. Pearson.

2731 Hill of Graduate Studio

Yale University.

Farm.

N. S. Ammon.

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SENDER'S NAME

AND ADDRESS

ISSUED BY THE NEW ZEALAND POST OFFICE FOR
POSTING IN NEW ZEALAND TO OVERSEAS ADDRESSES

← To open cut here

To open cut here →

19 June 1968

Dear Mrs Pratt,

It was with immense delight that I had your letter of June 2nd and know that I might be able to see and talk with you in New Zealand. Bryher was somewhat wrong in saying I would be there in August, for that is the month when I shall have to be visiting Australia. The Australian-American Foundation is flying me out to attend a conference at the end of the month, and making me pay for my banquet by speaking on occasion at a number of the Australian universities. Similarly the State Department has planned a fortnight for me in New Zealand, but that will be for the first two weeks in September when you will be in Fiji.

So, if it is convenient for you I should like to stop at New Zealand on my way out, in or about the last week in July. It would be splendid for me if I could stop for a day or two at the Marlin, and I will arrange to get there and from there to you if you will see me.

I suppose the questions I have to ask are silly ones, but no one but yourself could in fact answer them any more. And they are not completely uninformed, for Hilda had given me her correspondences before her death and left me the copyrights to her writings at her death. I have added some papers since, among them the letters from Hilda and her mother to Mrs Sydney Skidmore, written in 1905-08 in which you are often mentioned. Both Ezra and Bill Williams were friends of mine so that Hilda's and my paths crossed often.

Will you let me know if it is convenient to you to see me for a couple of days in the last week or ten days of July? If it is I will let you know and perhaps you can engage a room for me at the Marlin. I shall try to be as little of a nuisance as I can, and the prospect of seeing you and your part of New Zealand delights me.

Sincerely,

23 June, 1968

Dear Prof. Pearson,

How unfortunate that our visits coincide so that I
will be in Fiji when you are due in New Zealand. I would
have been so pleased to have you stay with us and meet my
daughter who also knew Hilda.

However, it will be most interesting to have you come
to Whangaroa in July when I will, I hope, be able to be of
some help to you. I only hope that I can make it worth your
while to take this long journey. My only excuse for letting
you come so far out of your way is that I am the only
person left who can give you any information about Hilda's
early life.

If you will let me know when you want to come here I
will book a room for you at the "Marlin". It is just a few
minutes' walk from our house. It has a lovely situation
right on the Harbour.

Any time that you can come will suit me.

Looking forward to meeting you,

Whangaroa,

July 24th, 1968

Dear Professor Pearson,

It is quite exciting to think that you are really on your way and that you will be in Whangaroa next Tuesday.

I have booked your room at the Marlin for those two nights—the 30th and the 31st.

I suggest that you come north by bus and return from Kaitaia by plane. I am glad you will be taking the bus one way for it will give you a good idea of the country which is really lovely. You take the bus to Kaeo (pronounced like Ohio) and I will meet you there or will have a taxi there for you.

When you leave on Thursday some friends of mine, a charming couple, will take us to Kaitaia where we will see you off (I hope) on the plane. I am glad you are going that way for it is a beautiful run along the coast from here.

I only hope this dreadful weather we have been having lately will wear itself out by then. This has been one of the worst winters on record.

If you travelled the opposite way you would have to leave Kaeo at an unearthly hour or the mid-day bus gets in at 8.p.m. and you would miss a lot of the scenery.

12 Ha y Street, Collaroy, N.S.W.

November 21, 1968

Dear Norman,

As you see, I am now in Australia, having come over here on Tuesday to see my sister who is ill. I shall probably be here a fortnight.

The letter I wrote to you on board the plane to Fiji and sent to the South Pacific Hotel in Auckland, posted in Landi, was returned to my address in Suva and re-forwarded to me at Whangaroa. I received it about two weeks ago.

My T/V set is doing beautifully and I certainly do enjoy having it. The store is still trying to get me a trolley to move it from my sitting-room to my bedroom.

It is giving me a great deal of pleasure and I am very grateful to you for making it possible for me to have it. I still haven't had a bill sent to me yet, but these country stores are very slow in that respect.

This is a very old machine of my sister's so do excuse the eratic writing, and bad ribbon. In fact she gave up using it ages ago and it looks as if I will have to do the same. It has no maggin stops.

I must send this off for I do want you to know that the T/V is working.

I suppose you are in the midst of lectures etc. as well as all your other activities.

I'll write again when I get back to my own typewriter.

Yours sincerely
Margaret Pratt

Whangaroa,
Northland,

New Zealand.

December 10, 1968

Dear Norman,

At last I have Moselen's bill for the T/V
set. He waited until he was able to get the
trolley for it to stand on so that it could be
moved from my sitting room to my bedroom. It is
too heavy to carry it. Also the trolley is very
light and easy to push.

I do hope the bill won't give you a shock.
The licence was £/13.00.

The T/V has given me a great deal of pleasure
already and I am very grateful to you for giving
it to me as a memorial to Hilda. I am sure she
would have been pleased.

Bryher writes that she is planning to sell
her Swiss house and move to the U.S.A. and will
live near Perdita. I am sure they will both
be pleased when she can do that. I know she loves
it over there and she feels that Perdita and her
children are her family.

You will be looking forward to your Christmas
holiday I am sure. Do your daughters come home
for it?

I returned from Australia last week. It was
a very strenuous time for me as I spent five or
six hours a day with my sister which was very
frustrating. I was staying with a very pleasant
couple so I did manage to have some enjoyable
hours. One night at the theatre, once out to
dinner, and once to luncheon with an old friend.

The fires were terrible all round and the air
was always full of smoke. The luncheon was inland
and we passed a huge park called the Wild Flower
Park where acres of wild flowers were cultivated.
The next day it was all wiped out by fire.

The day after I left Sydney they had rain at last and most of the fires, especially round the Blue Mountains, were extinguished. 120 houses had been destroyed up there and hundred of acres were burned.

One day the temperature was up to 97 in Sydney but the next it was quite cool. But coming back to N.Z. I found it cold again. Summer is a long time coming. The Maoris believe that the weather won't change until the "Wahine" is removed from Wellington Harbour. They are working on her now. They are salvaging all they can then they will haul up what is left and take it outside and dump it in the ocean. Until that is done there is a taboo on the harbour and no-one is allowed to fish there.

Janet King, who brought you to Whangaroa in her little car is going back to England after school breaks up this term. Her parents are coming out for a visit here with her first. We will miss her.

With very many thanks for your kindness and best wishes for a Merry Christmas,

P.S. I am looking forward to seeing Hilda's book on Freud.

CONDITIONS GOVERNING THE ISSUANCE OF A FOREIGN CHECK

The drawee is herein referred to as the "Payer". The Payer, or any intermediary, may be credited by us or by our correspondent at any time with the amount of the check (or its equivalent) and, following any such credit, we and our correspondent may regard the amount so credited as being in all respects for the account of the Payer and/or intermediary and as subject to the order and control of the one credited, and we and our correspondent shall be without liability for (a) any acts or failures to act on the part of the Payer and/or intermediary, or (b) failure of the funds to reach the Payee of the check.

The check shall be presented promptly to the Payer for payment, and if drawn in a currency other than that of the place of payment as indicated thereon, it shall be payable to the holder thereof at the then buying rate of the Payer for checks of that currency on the date when payment is effected unless the holder thereof arranges otherwise with the Payer and pays all its charges in connection therewith.

Should the check not be paid by the Payer and a refund be desired by the holder, the original of the check duly endorsed and each counterpart thereof which may be outstanding shall be surrendered to us, whereupon as and when the Payer and/or intermediary shall have made freely available to our correspondent the amount which may have been credited relative to the check, we will, subject to any official regulations then applicable thereto, refund the amount of the check to the holder; provided, however, that, if the check is in other than United States dollars, it shall be optional with our correspondent as to whether refund will be made (a) in United States dollars at its buying rate for the amount of foreign currency on the date of refund, or (b) in the amount and currency of the check, or (c) by instructing the Payer to hold the said amount of foreign currency for the holder's account and risk.

July 21, 1969

Dear Margaret,

It is unbelievable that I should not have answered your letter of February 10th until now. But I sometimes think I have never had a year that was so busy, and sometimes I never quite seem to catch up to the privilege of any sort of leisure. Indeed even now after Yale has closed down for the summer I have been kept busy at my desk with chores rather than given the privilege of writing my friends. But things are a little better now and so I send you my thanks not a bit lessened because of the interval of time.

It is strange to think that it is almost exactly a year since you and I were together in Whangaroa. I look on my visit there as one of my pleasantest experiences. Quite apart from visiting so lovely a harbor was the chance of meeting you. If you see my fisherman friend who took me out in his boat do remember me to him.

Early in June, much to my surprise, when I went to New York for a small reception for an anniversary of the Academy of American Poets, who should quite unannounced appear but Ezra. He had arrived that morning with his friend Olga Rudge (the mother of his daughter Mary). No one had known that he was to appear, not even his publisher. He was certainly not loquacious but not mute either. We embraced and kissed in the best European fashion and when I introduced my wife to him he was very kind indeed. The papers let him very much alone and I am told he paid a visit to his birthplace in Idaho. Otherwise his only social event seems to have been the return to Hamilton College for commencement. I was so surprised to see him that I forgot to say that I had been with you in New Zealand the summer before. He looked very well, leaned on a cane constantly, and had white bushy hair of a really artist-like disorder. It was the first time I had met Olga and I liked her very much indeed.

You ask whether I ever met Mrs. Doolittle. I never did but by now of course almost feel as though I knew her. She was certainly a godsend in Europe as a grandmotherly nurse for Perdita. I wish I could have had one of her ginger animal cookies at Christmas or tasted those Moravian mints that I always liked so much when I went to Bethlehem on Hilda's business. I think I told you that her brother and I made all the arrangements for her burial there eventually. If you still have the recipe for the Christmas cookies, that Mrs. Doolittle gave you, I wish you would send it along to me. Not only would we try them on our grandchildren, but I know that Perdita would like nothing better than to have this souvenir of her grandmother.

Bryher writes me that your daughter and son-in-law are going back to Fiji this winter but that you are staying on in Whangaroa and that you will have a friend living with you. I wonder if it would be asking too much if I were to send you some photographs that Bryher recently turned up at Kenwin, and which we cannot altogether identify. I expect

that you must be in some of them and one at least looks as though It might
have been taken on that trip that you had to Florence, I would send them
out by airmail and you could write on the background if you recognized
any of the people or the time at which the pictures were taken. Now that
our summer and your winter beginning it is a good chance for me to get back to
Hilda again. In the fall the University of Wisconsin is publishing a
special number of their magazine devoted to her and I will send it along.

With affectionate best wishes,

Sincerely,

Whangaroa,

February 10, 1969

Dear Norman,

Thank you so much for sending me the copy of Hilda's manuscript, especially sending it by air. I found it most interesting and it revived many memories.

I was amused at Hilda's poetic licence with her "long dark velvet curtains" for Father had no curtains at all at his windows and as the girls' classroom was directly opposite the study across a quadrangle they must have had full view before Ethelwyn drew down the shades.

I shall be interested to hear from Mildred Brown. I cant place her but when I hear her maiden name I shall probably know at once who she is.

The girl to whom Ezra proposed-one of the many I imagine was Bessie Ellicott not Elliot. I did not know at the time about that, not until the other day when our old friend Janet Childs Macou wrote that he had proposed to Bessie once and that she was insulted! Bessie went to France during the First World War and stayed over there where she died. She never married.

I also never knew that Louise was also one on his list. I knew that he said she was like Bottecelli's "Spring". He was always very fond of my sister Ethelwyn but just as good pals. He came out to see her once when she was visiting me in Bromley outside London and said he wouldn't gave gone to "suburbia" for anyone else. He gave her a bear hug which made my husband furious.

Janet wrote that Mrs. Doolittle always gave lovely partie s especially one at Easter when she hid Easter eggs all over the grounds and we had to hunt for them.

Did you ever meet Mrs. Doolittle? She was a lovely character and we all loved her. She and I got on famously especially when we were all in Florence together. She was then (or was it later when she was living with Hilda) having a difficult time understanding H.D.'s poetry, as she confided to me. Later I think she got to appreciate it. She used to make Moravian Christmas cookies of animals-a delicious ginger recipe which luckily she gave me- and special Moravian mints that were at least two inches in diameter, white, green, and pink.

When we arrived at Florence (Hilda had joined us in Genoa and Father had left us there) we went to the Hotel Berchielli on the Lungarno quite near the Ponte Vecchio. Hilda and I were quite embarrassed as the professor insisted that he have a double bed. The proprietor said they only had twin beds but in the end he said he would put two of them together and make them up as one and that satisfied him.

When Harold got a motor bicycle, one of the very first ones, he let me try it. There was a large circle drive in front

of the house and all he told me was to turn the ends of the
handlebars to accelerate. Naturally I grabbed them hard so that
half-way round the circle I crashed and got a broken wrist. All
the Prof. said was, as he had been watching me start off, "I thought
Margaret shoudnt have tried to ride that." But he didn't try
to stop me!

I must have visited Hilda at the Nursing Home a couple of
days after Ezra's visit, to see the little Perdita. She didn't tell
me that Ezra had been there.

I went with Hilda once to the Norland Nursery to see her
baby and found three babies of three celebrated poets- Yeats,
Pound, and H.D. in one playpen together. Someone should have ta
taken a snap of them but they weren't all famous then.

I am afraid I have exhausted all my memories of H.D. If
I ever recall any more I will write to you about them.

I shall look forward to seeing "The Gift". It is very good
of you to send me these books.

I do hope your wife is quite well again after her flu.

Sincerely,
Margaret

First post here

6

BY AIR MAIL

AEROGRAMME

Post. Norman Peersen

2731 11.4.8.

gale university

New Haven.

lowa.

N.S.A.

Second fold here

SENDER'S NAME
AND ADDRESS

NEW ZEALAND

To open cut here

← To open cut here

October 15, 1968

Mrs. Margaret S. Pratt
Whangaroa
North Island
New Zealand

Dear Margaret,

I thought of you happily in Fiji as I flew back over the Pacific by way of Tahiti. I had a good two months in Australia and New Zealand, altogether, but no moment of it was happier than my visit to you in Whangaroa. The chance to meet you after so many years and to talk about Hilda as we did was a rare privilege to me. I returned only on September 20th, after classes had begun at Yale so that I have been up to my ears with preparations and with trying to catch up with the accumulation of mail on my desk. For that reason I shall not try to make this any kind of account of my visit in general but will wait until later for that. However, by now you must be safely back at Whangaroa again and I hope you have determined how many New Zealand dollars will be needed from Hilda's royalty funds to give you the television set I know she would be happy to think you had as a kind of legacy from her. Do be sure to include all the costs of installation as well as the cost of the machine itself and what taxes are necessary. I can then send a bank order to you for this amount.

When I was in New Zealand for the second time, I mailed you a little paperback book which I had finished with and which I thought you might enjoy. If you would like an occasional book from here please be sure to tell me. Nothing could please me more than the chance to send something to you in the way of reading matter.

I did have a full two weeks in New Zealand at the beginning of September. I went first to Palmerston North, then Wellington, then Christ Church and Dunedin, and at the last to Hamilton and Auckland again. I really saw none of the great scenic sights at the Sound but I did manage to see a good deal all the same. Alas for the newborn sheep in the neighborhood of Dunedin the temperature was three degrees of frost, so, as you know thousands upon thousands of them died from the cold.

It is good to be back and we had the rare chance of seeing Bryher for a few days after I got here. She had been for a couple of weeks with Hilda's daughter on Long Island and seemed rested. She has not been able as yet to sell Kenwin but has hopes. Naturally all of the difficulties in Czechoslovakia make it somewhat less desirable for foreigners to buy land even in Switzerland. She has such a lovely site however that I am sure eventually she can manage to put it into other hands.

I shall send you the books and typescripts I promised once my desk is a little clearer. With all best wishes and gratitude to me when I visited Whangaroa,

Sincerely,

November 20, 1968

Dear Margaret,

This is just a note in answer to your letter of October 23rd to
remind you to be sure to let me know the total cost for your tele-
visionset, for the aerial, and for the tax. It would be nice
for me to be able to send you the New Zealand dollars for it so
that it could be Hilda's Christmas present to you.

I am delighted that your trip to Fiji was such a success. As I
think I told you I myself had almost nothing but rain while I
was there so I imagine you must have gotten much more out of it.
Last night and early this morning I spent in putting some kind of
final arrangement to the pictures I took on my trip. They really
start off with my visit to Whangaroa and you. I was lucky to be
able to get several fine views of the harbor as well as the country
as a whole.

On my return I went to Wellington, Palmerston North, Christchurch,
Dunedin, Hamilton and Auckland, with quick visits to the Glowworm
caverns and to Rotorua. But nothing gave me greater pleasure than
the trip to Whangaroa, and certainly no one made me feel more at
home in New Zealand than you.

Separately I am mailing you by surface a copy of Hilda's book on Freud, with its many references to her father. Do let me know in detail how this jibes with your own recollections, or other memories of yours if they are stirred. The other typescripts I will send later.

With all best wishes,

Sincerely,

Whangaroa,

October 23, 1968

Dear Norman,

Your letter, or two thirds of it as it was chewed up in the cancelling maching at New Haven, arrived on Monday. Fortunately the important part at the top was intact but most of the lower was torn out. Curiously your signature at the end was still there.

I wrote to you to the South Pacific Hotel on Sept. 3rd but I am afraid you never received it. I had no other address in these parts.

I am sorry to be so late letting you know about the T/V but it was only installed yesterday after many delays. I had it on last evening and it was going very well.

I have got a small one-12 inches-as I decided that a portable one that I could move from my living room to my bedroom would be most suitable. I am going to get a tea trolley to move it around. It can stay on it and I can have it where I want. My rooms are too small for one the size of Vincent's. I was hoping not to have an aerial but being so close to hills the sound is cut off. Also they said it couldn't be taped on to Vincent's aerial so I had to have one of my own but it has two leads so that it can be attached in either room.

I can't let you know how much it will cost yet as I haven't got the bill nor had the tax for it.

I am thrilled to have it and I am very grateful to you for letting me get it as a gift from Hilda. I am sure she would have been pleased.

The visit to Fiji was a great success. I enjoyed every minute of it and the Hybiscus festival was most interesting.

It was too bad that you had to get the flu in Melbourne. Everyone here seems to have had it while I was away. We were lucky for it hadn't reached Fiji before we left so we missed it.

I would like very much sometime to hear of your experiences in Australia and New Zealand. How much of the latter did you cover? You certainly must bring your wife out here before long and try to persuade Bryher to join you too. Peggy and Vincent are looking forward to meeting you. Everyone here enjoyed your visit and hope to meet you again.

↑ 16 of 1

Thank you for sending me "Madame Sarah". I found it most
intriguing. I always enjoy Cornelia Ottis Skinner's writings.
Her first book "When We Were Young And Gay" was so very much like
my sisters' and my tour of Europe when we were young. We were just
about as crazy as she and her friend were.

I'll write to you again when I get the particulars.

You have probably seen her lately as she wrote she was going
over for a short visit.

I am expecting to go to Australia next month for two weeks
to visit my sister who isn't well. She lives near Sydney.

With best wishes,

Yours sincerely,

First post here

BY AIR MAIL

AEROGRAMME

Second fold here

SENDER'S NAME

AND ADDRESS

To open cut here

To cut here

Whangaroa,
Northland,

January 6, 1969

Dear Norman,

Your letter with its enclosure arrived
today and it was especially welcome as it is
my birthday and I always used to have a line
from Hilda on that day. Thank you very much for
the draft. The T/V has given me a great deal
of pleasure, even much more than I thought it
would. It was certainly a very kind thought of
yours to give it to me from Hilda.

It was good that you could have your
family with you for Christmas. That is the
big drawback to me living out here for I can
never see my sons or my young grand-children.
We three were on our own this year but my
grand-daughter's new in-laws came for a visit
right afterwards and we enjoyed taking them
round as they had never been this far north
before. Patsy is now married and is living in
Perth but she and her husband will probably
come back to New Zealand in a year or two.
My grandson, Jim, is in Cairns but is planning
to return here in February.

Did you know that Francis Gregg married
LLlewelyn Powis, John Cowper Powis's brother?
A mong those snaps I sent Hilda when she was
70 was one of Mrs. Gregg, Francis, and my father
at the entrance to Windsor Castle. When I wrote
you about that snap before I had forgotten
about whom she had married. It was only when I
came across J.C.P.'s name the other day that
I was called it.

I am looking forward to Hilda's book on
Freud. It should arrive shortly but mails are
unpredictable at this season. In fact they can
be most aggravating. I had my first letter today
from my sister since I left Australia.

2.

I wish I could be more help to you about Hilda's early life but my brain seems numb.

She often visited us at Watch Hill where we had a cottage and she and I went on up to Bailey's Island to visit Matilda Wells.

We had met Matilda when we attended Miss Gordon's School in West Philadelphia. When Hilda started at that school her mother persuaded my father to send me there too. Hilda would come down on the Westchester trolley which passed her house then she and I would take the trolley at 63rd St. to 42nd st. and walk to the school or on good days we would cycle all the way.

Once there was a blizzard that brought down all the trolley wires so no cars could run. We cycled to school taking care to avoid the wires lying in the road. On the way home we stopped at a confectioner's and ate ice-cream sitting over a register in the floor.

After a couple of years (I don't remember how many) Hilda left Miss Gordon's and went to the Friend's School in Philadelphia that Louise Skidmore attended. Hilda had already met Louise at our house. It was from there that she went to Bryn Mawr.

After Hilda was married I saw quite a lot of her in London, both before and after I was married (in 1915). When Ezra married they were quite annoyed when he moved into a flat above them in their building.

I met many famous people at their place. Once I passed a large lady inmannish clothes and smoking a large cigar, on the staits as I was going up to their flat. Hilda told me she was Amy Lowell. I often saw John Cournous there. And I was with them when Gautier Brjeska returned from France during the war. He had left France when he was a youth to escape conscription but when war started he became patriotic and returned to France. He gave himself up and said he had missed his conscription but he wanted to fight for France so he had come back. Instead of welcoming him with open arms they locked him up

and would send him to prison for desertion. That
might he climbed out of his cell and got away,
returning to England. He waited a couple of years
then tried again. By that time they were only too
glad to have him in the army. He was killed at
Verdun. I saw a bust of Ezra and a rabbit made by
Gautier in Violet Hunt's garden.

Another person I saw, after the war when Hilda
was staying at the Martha Washington Hotel with
her mother, was Havelock Ellis. He was calling on
Hilda in her room and I had to wait until he came
down before she came to see me. She thentold me who
he was.

During the war when our husbands were abroad,
Hilda asked me to share a house in Speen with her.
That was in Buckingham before Perdita was born. My da-
daughter was a year old then and I had a nurse for
her so we three joined Hilda there until the end
of the war. Arnold Bax's wife lived in the next
house.

I will tell you what little I know about
Hilda's father after I read her book.

With best wishes for the New Year, and
many thanks for your gift,

Yours sincerely,

P.S.

Please forgive my very bad typing. It seems to
get worse instead of improving. My thoughts run
ahead of my fingers.

Whangaroa,
Northland.

January 26, 1960

Dear Norman,

At last Hilda's book on Freud has arrived
and I was most interested in reading it. I knew
that Freud had wanted Hilda to be his successor
but it is fascinating to read just how it came
about. It was tragic that the Dutchman should have
been killed just after he had received all that
training.

I also knew that Hilda had stayed in
London all through the blitz to help shell-shocked
soldiers. She must have done wonderful work there.

I did not realize how close Hilda and her
brother Gilbert were. Twice she wrote for publica-
tion that she was alone when she heard the news
of his death in Action (twenty-five minutes after he
had reached the trenches for the first time) but
I was with her in Speen at the time. She certainly did
kept her feelings bottled up for I seemed to be
more affected by the news than she was. The cottage
where we stayed was called "Peace Cottage" and we
were there when we heard that the war was over. It
must have been named for the Boer War.

Although I was at the Doolittle's nearly
every day and often spent the night I saw very
little of Prof. Doolittle. He always stayed in his
study, only coming out for meals. Mrs. Doolittle sat
at one end of the table but the Professor sat in
the middle, not at the top. He was very quiet and
hardly spoke. I stood very much in awe of him though
he was the mildest of persons. I think it was his
appearance. He was very tall and thin with very
blue eyes and high cheek bones. Hilda looked like him.
He also had a straggly white beard.

I think he must have been of Scandinavian
d decent for all his children had nordic names-
Alfred, Eric (which they pronounced Baric) Gilbert,
Harold, Hilda, and Melvin. He would not let Hilda be
called Hildagarde as he said she would be called

2.

Hilda anyway and he didn't like shortened names.

I saw very little of Alfred who lived in Washington. Every Christmas he sent each of his brothers and sister a gold piece. He married a R.C. which upset the family, being Moravians, and they saw very little of him after that if at all.

Eric married a school teacher whom he had met on the trolley car one day when he was going home. His ride was only three miles but he was so intrigued by Sarah that he rode all the way to Westchester, 25 miles away to talk to her. As he wasn't sure which was her house he went all that way the next day just to verify the number. When they were married a flat was made for them over the library at the Doolittle's house but they took all their meals with the family. When Hilda was engaged to Ezra she used to meet him at Eric's as her father didn't approve of him (nor did any of our parents).

One night when I was staying at Hilda's her parents had gone into the city to some affair. About 10.p.m. we heard someone at the door. When we opened it we saw the professor with his beard dark from blood. He was very dazed and all he could say was "Mama, Mama". Later he was able to say that she had stayed on for a bit so wasn't with him. He had signalled the conductor to stop but he hadn't seen the signal and the professor never noticed that the car hadn't stopped so just stepped off into space. Luckily he wasn't badly hurt.

Father and I travelled with Brof. and Mrs. Doolittle to Naples in 1912 where Hilda met us, but she may have joined us in Florence where we went at once. Father, who was assistant clergyman at the American Church in Nice had to go there but I stayed on in Florence for about a month with the Doolittles.

Prof. Doolittle had attended classes in Italian at the U. of P. all summer, with the young students-to be ready for his tour to Italy, but it was about Dante he studied so his Italian was too Dantiesque and with my poor Italian had to ask for directions when we were going places. He, Hilda, and I had Italian lessons from a very red-cheeked Italian by the name

3.

Tantussi.H.D. and I had one hour then the prof. had an hour. It was quite fun. Tantussi also acted as guide for us too. Just after I left to re-join my father Richard turned up as he and Hilda were just engaged.

I think I told you about our crowd, mostly girls from our school or university families. We used to have dances at each others' houses about once a fort night but during Lent we gave them up and took long walks instead, one of the Snivelys driving to the rallying place with the picnic baskets where we all met for a picnic supper. Then we would walk back to my place and they would take the trolley to their homes. We were mostly brothers and sisters and never thought of chaperones. But once I asked a boy I knew in Watch Hill. It happened his father was a judge in Philadelphia and his mother was a noted gossip. The next day Mrs. Doolittle came down to see Father with Mrs. Wells (Matilda's mother -"Hilda, Matilda and Me") both weeping and saying our reputations would be ruined as Mrs. Willson would tell everybody that we did this awful thing for of course Laurence would tell her all about it. Of course that spoiled our picnics after that. Laurence hadn't told his mother anything except to say what a wonderful time he had

I do hope I haven't repeated my self. I should have kept notes as well as you! They are all very trivial things I have told you. If I think of anything later I'll write it to you.

Bryher has written that your wife was quite ill with the flu. I am so sorry to hear it. I hope you are both well again after your bouts. The Hong Kong flu hasn't reached N.Z. yet but they say it should be here about October-cheerful thought!

With best wishes, yours sincerely,

2 February 1969

Dear Margaret,

Tomorrow morning I will stop at the postoffice and mail off to you a xerox copy of Hilda's memories of Ezra. Since you figure in it and were involved in so much it will be fascinating to see if your memories are different from hers. I am sending it by air, since surface takes so abominably long.

I can't tell you how pleased I have been to get your letters of the 6th and then of the 26th. I simply don't know why it never clicked to me before that Francis Gregg was married to Llewelyn Powys. Hilda had never mentioned who he was, nor seemed to think of him as a literary person. Somehow, in fact, I rather got the impression that Hilda and Francis had drifted apart from each other, perhaps had really split.

What an extraordinary group the London bunch were. I don't think anything quite like them has ever taken their place. Most of the names you mention are in one sense mythological figures to me; in another sense however I learned so much that they almost seem like familiars.

By the way, I sent a Christmas card to a Mildred Brown who writes me and to whom Hilda sent Christmas candles. She was at your father's school. I told her of seeing you in New Zealand, and she wanted your address. I sent it, I hope you don't mind. Bryher wanted to visit her so we stopped off on a visit to Maine.

I was of course particularly interested in your comments about the Freud book. And of your impression about Hilda and Gilbert. I simply assumed they were, because she kept saying so. There is much about him in sections of her unpublished novel, *The Gift*, which I'll send along after you've finished with the Pound( by the way don't bother to return the xerox copy.) The Gift has much about the accident to Hilda's father. But she leaves it as a mystery. I'm glad you told me what really happened.

Our winter has been a mild one, but everyone down with the flu--my wife especially. She gets better now however, I am glad to say. How beautiful it must be as you look out over the bay from your window!

January 19, 1970

Dear Margaret,

I am delighted to learn that my interview about H.D. arrived safely and am pleased that you found it interesting. I must have misled you about the photographs for what I originally wrote in a letter that may have been mangled was that Bryher had dug up some early photographs of Hilda both at Pennsylvania and in her first years abroad. I thought that perhaps you might help us to identify some of the persons in them. Indeed some may have been taken in Italy when you were with her. Because, however, I am leaping on February 1st and will not be back until the end of August I will wait until the fall and send them out then if you are willing to look at them. You may know no one, but at least we can have a fling.

I was delighted to hear of the impending visit from Bernard, about whom you told me when I was with you. I am sure that he will find it interesting and I trust that all will go well with the wife. Do give Joe my greetings, if he remembers me. He is lucky to be able to keep his paddock so close to his boat. I remember very well how kind he was to take me out on a foggy day and give me a real feeling for the harbor.

We have had a cold winter with the temperature below 20 or hovering around there most of the time. We had a snow the day after Christmas which melted slightly and then froze into an almost impenetrable mass. We still have to stumble wherever we go. It will be good on February 1st to leave for Tahiti. I will not be back until the end of August but anything sent to me at Yale will always be forwarded. Or if it is to keep for me, it will be kept here.

With affectionate greetings,

January 11, 1970

Dear Norman,

Many thanks for sending me your interview about H.D.
I found it most interesting and intriguing. I am sorry to
be so long in acknowledging it.

You say you sent me some photographs that Bryher had
of Hilda but I have never received them. If I had, I would
have written right away about them. I do hope they haven't
been lost but mails at this season are very irregular so
they may still turn up as other late letters have done.

No, I didn't go to Fiji this year-I mean last year-
with Peggy. Instead a friend has come to live with the Harveys
so I shall always have someone with me when they go away.
They seem to be making a practice of going to Fiji every year.
Vijcent has a bad heart so he likes to get to a warmer
climate during the winter. They will probably go back there
this year.

My older son, Bernard, left England yesterday with
his wife and a sister-in-law to spend a month with us in
New Zealand. We are quite thrilled as I haven't seen him for
ten years and it is longer since Peggy has seen her brother.
They are flying via Singapore and Hong Kong and will stop off
in Perth to see Peggy's daughter and will spend six days in
Sydney where they will visit my sister.

I was very interested to hear of your going to Japan
to teach for a term. How exciting for you and your wife! I
am only sorry that you won't be coming to New Zealand during
your travels.

It seems to be the thing for Yale professors to teach
in the Orient for I had a friend-Prof. George Adams- who spent
a year in Pekin teaching, many years ago. I don't know what his
subject was that he taught. I had met him in Spain when I
was travelling with my father.

You know the paddock where the fisherman Joe lived? Vincent
has just sold it to a Dutchman and he is building a house
on it. The house is at the far end of the paddock and he is
letting Joe keep his caravan on it and also will still use
the front as a car-park. Joe is busy building a boat for a
farmer. He is making a very good job of it.

What a pity you had so much rain last summer. In England
they seem to have had glorious sun all summer but they are
making up for it now. It will certainly be a chance for Bernard
to leave that intense cold and arrive in Singapore! That is the
worst of flying.

We are having a very warm sunny summer. It is marvellous
for the holiday makers but not so good for one who tries to
keep a flower garden.

Whangaroa,

January 16, 1972.

Dear Norman,

Thank you very much for sending me Bryher's book. I read it with much interest. It is good of her always to let me have a copy of her books and I have enjoyed reading them all.

I have just had some reviews of Ezra's daughter's book sent to me from England. I haven't seen it and I would be glad to have a copy of it, as you suggested.

I met her mother when she first came to England. Ezra had invited me to lunch in London. I was to meet him at the restaurant at I.P.M. but I sat for an hour waiting for him to turn up and was just on the point of leaving when he came down the stairs. He said: "Why didn't you come up? We have nearly finished lunch." He had the young violinist and a Communist just over from prison in the U.S.A. (but I don't remember who he was). Ezra later invited Bernard and me to a soirée to meet her and to hear her play but we didn't go down to London for it. I think Dorothy was very good to give her that evening, but I guess she had no say in the matter.

I used to send Ezra a Christmas card, 'at Bill Williams' urgent, when he was at St. Elizabeth's but after he left the U.S.A. I stopped doing that. Those cards were the most difficult I ever bought. You can imagine finding one that would be appropriate under the circumstances!

I was sorry to hear from Bryher that you had been ill when she was there. That was hard luck for both of you. I do hope you have quite recovered by now.

We are having lovely summer days now while you are probably deep under snow.

I never told you that I might have been the wife of a Yale professor, did I? He also spent six months in Japan, I think at the University of Tokio. He was a professor of English but, as he was 15 years older than I he must have died years ago. (I think he was in China, not Japan. Now I must have died in Japan.)

Bryher writes that she is not now selling her house. I think she would have been sorry to have given it up after all the years she has lived in it. But it is hard luck that she can only be out of the country three months in the year!

With best wishes for a happy new year,

Yours sincerely,

January 26, 1972

Dear Margaret:

I have just now mailed off to you a copy of Mary Pound's memoirs and hope it reaches you safely. I sent it, extravagantly, by air since otherwise it would be the fourth of July before it got to your hands. This was a copy I happened to have and so I will order another for myself. There was no reason why you should wait meanwhile for mine to come. I found it a rather touching book and will certainly be interested in your reactions to it. Mary's mother seems to have been upset by it, understandably, but my sympathies are not entirely on the mother's side.

Naturally I am pleased that Bryher's book reached you and hope it will pass some pleasant hours for you and your daughter. I am asking an Australian publisher to send you a copy of his edition of a book on espionage within England by Sir John Masterman, to which I wrote a foreword. This is not strictly your cup of tea I daresay but perhaps my connection with it will be another reminder of me and of the war. It will be a book which at least you can pass around in Whangaroa.

Some months ago Bryher sent me out a number of photographs from Hilda's girlhood which she found tucked away at Kenwin. Neither she nor I can identify the people in them and I wondered if by chance you could do so if I were to post them out to your I would naturally send the postage back, but nothing could repay the knowledge you could give by even a few identifications. Often I wish you had the inclination to sit down and write out your reminiscences of both Hilda and Ezra, and even Bill Williams. These would be invaluable to others in years to come. If you look at your little volume of Shakespeare which Ezra gave you on *Twelfth Night* it might serve as a crystal ball.

Oddly enough we are not having snow at the moment and the thermometer is often as high as sixty. My wife is sorry, for her plants and shrubs need the cold, she says. I am not sure that I do. With affectionate greetings as always,

Sincerely,

Whangaroa,

March 13, 1972

Dear Norman,

It was very kind of you to send me your copy of Mary's book. We have all read it with interest and we have all been thrilled reading the double spy system.

You are an extraordinary man. You seem to have so many irons in the fire and new bits of your activities crop up all the time. You must have had a very strenuous time during the war.

Thank you for giving me the copy of the spy book. I am very glad to have it and I found it fascinating reading.

Yes, do send me Hilda's photos. If I know any of the people I'll write their names on the backs and will return them to you. When you had that 70th birthday celebration for H.D I sent her all the old snaps I had of her so I haven't any of them left.

I will try to think up some reminiscence of Hilda, Ezra, and Bill Williams but I don't think they would be of much interest.

Can you tell me what year Hilda went to Bryn Mawr and how long she was there?

Do you know anything about our mutual friend-H.D.'s and mine-Matilda Welles Palmer? We three were inseparable Hilda and I met Matilda when we attended Miss Gordon's School in W. Philadelphia. We often stayed at each other's houses and Hilda and I visited the Welles at Bailey's Island, Maine and they came to me at Watch Hill where we had a cottage. Matilda and her husband afterwards moved to California where he worked on "The Examiner" and she died there many years ago.

It was when Hilda and I were at a house party at the Lambertons, at Point Pleasant, NJ, that Bill rescued her from drowning. It just happened that Bob Lamberton rescued me from the same fate just after that but no-one saw us as they were all gathered around Hilda. We had been used to swimming in the still water of the Bay at Watch Hill and neither of us had met breakers at all so we gaily swam out beyond them and both got caught. (Bob was afterwards Mayor of Philadelphia).

Hilda met both Ezra and Bill at our house, for my brother brought them out from the N. of P. He met Ezra at the fencing club there. I don't remember if Bill was there too. But I think Ezra and Bill met at our place for the first time.

Our crowd used to have a dance about once a fortnight at one of our houses. When Lent came we changed it into a walking party. They would all meet at my house and we would walk into the country and one of us-my two sisters or me - would drive to an appointed place with picnic baskets and we would have a picnic tea. I think the most we ever walked was fourteen miles. We were all brothers and sisters and never thought of shaperones until once we had a boy out for the

first time. He happened to be the son of a judge. The next
day Mrs. Doolittle and Mrs. Welles turned up to see my father. Both
were weeping as they said Mrs. Willson was the biggest gossip in
the city and our reputations would therefore be ruined. Laurence
had had a wonderful time and we never heard anything about her or
chaperones but it spoiled our picnics.

We have had a very dry, sunny summer but the last week
has been foggy and humid, not nice at all. It is better now and
will get better.

You will soon be having lovely spring weather and I hope you
will enjoy it.

With renewed thanks for your kindness,

Yours sincerely,

First Post New Zealand

BY AIR MAIL

AEROGRAMME

Prof. Norman Pearson,
2731 H.G.S.,
Yale University,
Harvard,
Connecticut,
U.S.A.

AIR POSTERITY

Second Post Here

SENDER'S NAME

AND ADDRESS

To open cut here

January 9, 1973

Dear Margaret,

I was very happy indeed to have your letter of December 11th. It was waiting for me when my wife and I returned from ten days in Ireland where I went on American Studies matters, a very much of the same sort that took me to New Zealand and to Australia when I saw you there. I am delighted of course that you had both books. It would have been unthinkable for you not to have had Hilda's, and as I understand this is the only one of Bryher's post-war books which you lack. At least that is what you told her in your letter. If there are others let me know and I will see if I can dig them up for you.

No, Bryher never did write either the novel on the Arctic or as yet any section in her memoirs. I think she realized that probably on the whole she knew too little about the Norse for the novel, and if she writes at all on the third volume of her memoirs it will be first on the trip she took out from the Scilly Islands on a boat she used to charter a few years ago. She began the third volume and then did decide on a novel on Roman Britain, but whether this will actually ever be finished or not I don't know. She keeps very busy as her own housekeeper and I somehow feel that the mood has not as yet really seized her. I think too that she was disappointed that Mars had no reviews at all in this country. I am afraid the War seems too far back for an American public which if it is concerned with war at all is concerned about Vietnam.

My wife and I spent New Year's Eve with Mary de Rachewiltz and her daughter Patrizia who have come over to be in New Haven for a while. As you may know, Ezra's manuscripts and correspondence have been in the Yale Library for several years now although Yale has not formally been able to buy them. There is a question about how the sum is to be divided within the family, and this always makes for trouble.

I call on you again for help to solve a problem. New Directions sent me the enclosed (which you need not return) for me to answer. I should suppose it was quite possible that Hilda did give the book, but I have no idea who Cora could have been. Do you? Nor do I know whether she usually signed herself H.D. before Ezra tatooed it on her image. Most of the early letters I know are signed as with a pet name or as Hilda. The initials look rather more like her writing than the statement. Anything that you could help one way or the other would be of value to me in answering.

I still wonder if you would like to have a little job from me in trying to identify those photographs I once spoke of. My desk is becoming a little clearer and I should still like it barer than it now is. I have the pictures and can send them out to you. Does the television set still work, or do you need another one.

With affectionate wishes for the new year,

Sincerely,

December 11, 1972.

Dear Norman,

Thank you so much for sending me both Hilda's and Bryher's books. I was delighted to get both of them. It is very good of you to think of me and I do love to get their books.

Bryher never did write that book on the Artic, did she? I k
s e went up there for that purpose but that was some years ago.
always find her books most interesting and I have a friend in
Long Island who is one of her greatest fans.

I was glad to hear that she was over there last summer and
you were all able to take a trip together. (Do excuse all the
mistakes. My fingers seem to hit all the wrong notes this morning.

I am very pleased to have that book of Hilda's poems. I ha
several copies of her first ones. One is "Some Imagist Poets" and
is inscribed on the frontispiece "With our love and best wishes to
Margaret from Richard and Hilda". Richard wrote all of it but Hi
signature. I am sorry I didn't show you that when you were here

It is sad to think that Ezra has gone. He was one of the
very few of our old crowd who used to come out to our place for
dances who was still alive. Professor Doolittle couldnt stand him.
is why Hilda and Ezra used to meet at our house.

I think I told you that I had met Mary's mother when she
first come to England? I had lunch with them one day.

Merry Christmas and best wishes from
Margaret

I am certainly haywire this morning. I thought that was the bot
tom of the page! So I'll carry on.

She was only 19 then. There was also a Communist who had
just been in prison in the U.S.A. but I can't remember his name
Bernard and I were afterwards invited to the Pound's when she
was introduced to his friends. But we weren't able to go. Bernard
never liked him but men hardly ever did when they were friend
of their wives. He came out to see us once when we lived in
Bromley and my sister Ethelwyn was staying with us. He was
always very fond of her and they got on famously together. He
gave her a bear hig whom he saw her. Bernard said to me if he had
had done that to me he would have thrown him out of the house"
The only thing they had in common was Social Credit in which
my husband was interested in for a while and they corresponded
about that.

Ezra came to see us from Lake Garda when we were in
Venice and he took Ethelwyn and me out in a gondola. When we go
got back to the hotel the door was locked and we had a job
getting in. That was in 1909.

I was always sorry that I was unable to get up to London
when Hilda read her poems at a Charity Concert when she was
presented to the queen. I would have loved to have heard her.

This really is the bottom so I'll say good-bye.

March 21, 1973

Dear Margaret,

I have been so engrossed in Hilda's War Trilogy, which I am writing a foreword to for a new edition to be published in England and the States this fall, that I have hardly had time for letters. But I was particularly pleased to have yours of February 5th so that I could at least write the man who asked about Cora and say that none of us seem to have any knowledge. Gretchen Baker (who was a Wolle) had never heard of her either. I think it must have been just a coincidence.

I am taking you up on your offer to look at some of the photographs in the hope that you might be able either to identify a few or when I know them to be of Hilda herself to get an approximate date for them. Anything helps, and it is even a help to know that you cannot help. I am enclosing a draft to help cover the cost of sending them back. If there is any change, buy a coca-cola with it. I joke of course about that but I am really most grateful.

Ezra's daughter Mary is still here waiting for the first of April when it will be decided whether the Pound archives are to be sold to Yale or to go elsewhere. They have finally at least reached the point within the family, or families, of signing an agreement that the collection will not be split up. Yale thought it had bought them several years ago but of course the value of the dollar has gone down and their need for money gone up. It should be an astonishingly rich archive because of Ezra's connection with so many people. As for Mary's adoption by Hilda or Bryher, Ezfa was always optimistic. Or perhaps I should say anxious to get Mary off his and Olga's hands.

Thank you for sending me Matilda Wells' son's name, I shall certainly write him.

We have had an unusually early spring although on Sunday it began to snow slightly. But the bulbs are all up and it will not be long before we have blossoms. Do give my best wishes to your daughter. You always have them for yourself of course.

Sincerely,

Whangaroa,

February 5, 1973

Dear Norman,

Thank you for your letter.

I am afraid I am very little help to you.
I don't know who Cora was nor can I tell you whether the handwriting is like Hilda's or not as I don't remember what hers was like.

I don't think she was called H.D. before she went to England but it may just be a co incidence that she signed that book H.D. I always called her Dooley and that is how I wrote to her too. But I don't know if anyone else called her that.

I shall be very pleased to see your photos and will try to identify them when you send them to me. If I do recognize them would you like me to write the names on the back?

I do hope Bryher will write that book on the Artie some time for I assure it will be most interesting and there arent many written about the Norsemen.

Since you sent me "Beowulf" I think now I have had all of Bryher's books. I am delighted to have them and, of course, Hilda's too.

I was just thinking of writing to Ezra again when I heard of his death. You know Bill Williams got me to write to him when he was at St. Elizabeth's and, believe me, choosing a Christmas card for him under the circumstances was the most difficult task I ever had.

When my family were in Venice one time, Ezra, who was living at Lake Garda then, came over to see us and took my sister ethelwyn, of whom he was very fond, out in a gondola. The hotel was locked up when we returned and we had quite a job stirring them up to let is in.

You probably know that when Mary was a baby Ezra tried to get first Hilda then Bryher to adopt her but both refused.

My T/V is still going strong, thank you. I do appreciate it.

We are having glorious weather, warm, sunny days. We could do with some rain, though, as we have to have water carted by the Council from Kaeo. Yesterday it was up to 108' in Canterbury bury. They get it very cold down there in the winter. I am glad we live on the North Island.

We have all enjoyed reading Bryher's war reminiscences and I have sent them on to my sons in England.

We are flourishing here as usual and enjoying life.

Did I ever give you David Palmer's address? He is Matilda Wells Palmer's son and he may be able to tell you something about Hilda when she, Matilda, and I were inseparable. He is a professor at California University. I am sure he would be pleased to hear from you. His address is Dr. David W. Palmer, 1952 Fox Hill Drive, Los Angeles, 90025, Cal.

He also may have some snaps of Hilda.

Best wishes to you and your wife and hoping to see you both out here some time with Bryher too,

March 21, 1973

Dr. David W. Palmer
1952 Fox Hill Drive
Los Angeles, Calif. 90025

Dear Dr. Palmer:

A recent letter from Margaret Snively Pratt whom you will know as your mother's friend and whom I saw a few years ago in New Zealand, has just written me and given me your address. "He may be able to tell you," she says, "something about Hilda when she, Matilda and I were inseparable." H.D. did indeed often speak to me of your mother, especially on the visit to Bethlehem when I brought her back at the time of her 70th birthday. She pointed out your mother's house with loving memory.

H.D. left me all of her papers and her copyrights and I have been trying to get matters as much into shape as possible. Under separate cover I am sending you a copy of a book of newer poems which appeared last November.

If you should have any letters from H.D. to your mother and were willing to let me have copies of them or copy them here and return them to you, I should be most grateful. Eventually all of H.D.'s papers will go to Yale; indeed most of them are already there.

NHP/wh

Whangaroa,

April 12, 1973

Dear Norman,

Thank you for sending me these photos. I have been quite interested in them.

I am only sorry I could not identify more of them. But I don't know any of the ones of Hilda herself so think they must all have been taken in England or at least after she had left the U.S.A. I ensure I took the small one in the woods with Hilda in a long dress and hat. I think that must be Melvin on the horse with her.

Thank you, for the cheque. It came just as I was taking a friend to Cape Reigna, when four of us spent two nights in Awanui, where we had lunch with the Ferriers, so it was most helpful.

Bryher writes that she has decided, after all, not to sell her villa, at least not yet. It would be an awful upheaval for her, I think.

I am sorry to be so long in returning these but I have had a friend visiting me from England the last two weeks and haven't had time to do anything else.

She is an exceedingly lucky person, for she left England the day before an airport strike started, and she flew from Auckland a half-hour before one started there! She has been flying all round Australia, as she flew first to Perth, then to Sydney and Melbourne, before coming over here. When she left her she flew to Brisbane, then back to Perth, and on home.

We are still hoping to see you, your wife, and Bryher out here one day.

June 4, 1973

Dear Margaret,

I think I wrote you that Francis Wolley and Gretchen Baker had pretty nearly completed the task that you began by identifying the photographs I sent them. A few remain ambiguous still but I doubt that there is any chance of pinning them down. I don't know that it matters particularly for Hilda is pretty well documented by now in terms of photographs at least.

Because whenever I read anything about Ezra's early days I wish Whangaroa were close enough for us to sit and chat about what has been said. The newest and longest exploration of the Philadelphia period has just appeared in Poetry Australia. I am a subscriber so would have been more astonished at the title of the article "Ezra Pound's Pennsylvania" if I had not known that Noel Stock was originally Australian. It seemed to me that this might at least amuse you if for no other reason than the mention of your brother in it. There must have been an immense amount of research on one part or another and Noel Stock lived for a while with the Pounds in Brinnenberg and had access to documents there. The documents themselves are now presumably among the archives that Yale has bought from the heirs but he continues to use them. In a way I suppose it would have seemed simpler to have asked to have a copy of the magazine sent to you from Australia but xerox is so easy these days that I have had a copy made for you and am sending it to you air mail printed matter. There are a few mistakes in it which I can recognize, and perhaps you will find others or it will re-awaken memories that you thought to have forgotten. At any rate it may help to pass a winter hour or two and if so it will have pleased me almost as much as if I could have been with you.

With affectionate best wishes to your daughter and yourself,

Sincerely,

Whangaroa,

July 4, 1973

Dear Norman,

It is quite appropriate to be writing to an American on this day, isn't it?

Thank you so much for sending me the manuscript about Ezra. I have read it with much interest.

There are one or two things that I can remark upon.

I remember Ezra telling us about Wanamaker's fire and how he cut out some of the paintings with a knife.

That Halloween Party where Ezra first met Hilda was at my house. And that's where he met Matilda, too. That was Matilda's son, whose address I gave you, David Palmer in California. She died many years ago.

Mrs. Pound had our whole crowd out to her house one evening. It was a lovely place.

When Ezra came to Venice from Lake Guarda it was to see DeForest's three sisters, not his parents. He took Ethelwyn and me out in a gondola.

I once met Olga, shortly after she had first come over from the U.S.A. Ezra asked me to have lunch with him in London when I was on a visit there once. I thought I was the only one asked. I saw no sign of him when I got there so I sat down and waited. After I had been there about a half hour, Eara came down stairs and said why hadn't I come up. They were nearly finished lunch. Olga and an American-a Communist who had just served a prison sentence over there but I don't remember his name, were at the table. Later, Ezra sent us invitations to a social to hear Olga play. That was her first introduction to his friends. We weren't able to attend.

I told Olga that day that Ezra had taught Sunday School and he was most annoyed with me.

I remember seeing Ezra in "Iphigenia". He made quite a hit as a chorus girl.

I was surprised to read that the E. mM° C of the poem was said to be Eugene M'Cartney. My brother told me it was for Ellieott M'Connell our next door neighbor at Watch Hill.

2.

and I showed the poem to his mother. Elliecott was
also a member of the fencing team at the U.of P.
He also died early.

There is one incident of Hilda that I don't
think I have ever told you. One day, at my place,
she tried to mount my pony, but, being so tall, in-
stead of landing on the saddle she went right
over its head and landed on her head on the ground,
knocking out one of her front teeth. I got the
pony onto a carriage and drove her to a dentist's
in the city, who put the tooth back; it had come out
roots and all), and, after a few weeks it grew back
into place. She had that tooth for many years after
that.

One more thing about Ezra that wasn't in the
manuscript. His first stop when he came out of
St. Elizabeth's was at Bill Williams. He had his
wife and a girl (that must have been Miss Spann).
Ezra came down to see what they had for dinner and
said the girl didn't like soup. Later he brought a
bag of washing dowl and said they wanted it the
next day. As the Williams didn't have a maid Florence
had to do the washing that night! Bill wasn't very
pleased with that visit. They told me about it when
I saw them in 1960.

I am going to England for two months next
month. It will be for my elder son's silver wedding
anniversary and he is giving me this trip. I never
thought I would go to England again! I shall be going
via Singapore so won't be in the U.S.A. He and his
wife are then coming out to N.Z. to live. We are,
of course, delighted.

I haven't heard from Bryher for ages. I do hope
she is all right.

With best wishes,

Yours sincerely,

8 August 1974

Dear Margaret,

Ever since you left me at the airport several years ago, I have tried to find a seahorse for your nice friends who drove us there in their car. I was sure I could find one in Bermuda, for example, or in Tobago. No luck. Then by chance I went to Yale's museum of natural history and found the one I enclose. Give it to them with my belated thanks. Or if they have left, find some local urchin who would like to have it.

I don't think I have written you since your return from England. And now you have most of your family with you, I assume. I trust the t.v. still works. Tonight I shall wish I had one, when at 9 o'clock the President is to give what one expects (and hopes) will be his resignation from the Presidency. The country has never known anything like the present situation, at least openly known it!

I had thought long since to be able to send you another in the series of publications of Hilda's work, *Helen in Egypt* will be put back in print this November, this time by New Directions. But the one you wouldn't already have is a new edition of her *Tribute to Freud*, with twice the material of the shorter earlier edition. Now I am told it should appear in late September. I hope so, for it would be nice to give to Bryher for her 80th birthday. Actually, as you know, this is on September 2nd, but since she is coming to us for a three weeks visit on October 2nd we always wait to celebrate here. Hilda's reputation and recognition steadily grows, principally because of the later poems and because the younger readers accept myth and even occultism more readily than their elders did. I enclose the most recent review of her, which I thought might interest you.

This summer I expected to finish editing her memoir of Ezra, to which his estate wants me to add as an appendix the poems her wrote to her. The one in Hilda's book which he gave her, and which she gave to Francis Gregg; and others which his mother saved. But I had to have an operation on my foot on July 3rd, and only yesterday was able to put my crutches away. I daresay it was worth it, for I had had an infection for almost a year. But I was supposed to keep off it and away from the office.

Naturally I did a good deal of reading however, including the typescript of another of her unpublished novels. This one, from 1927, she called *Her*, a strange book which I don't altogether understand -- about her engagement to Pound and the attraction she felt towards Frances Gregg. Did you know the Gregg? Do tell me what she was like. I don't think she would be a favorite of mine. My impression is that she twisted Hilda always to her own (Gregg's) advantage. Margaret Widdemeyer tells a little about her in her memoirs, of how she always claimed that it was she (Francis) who was engaged to Pound, and not Hilda. Presumably that is how she wangled the Pound manuscript from Hilda.

Who, too, if I may ask, was the family she calls Farrand who lived near to Hilda in what I gather was something of a mansion: Mim (the widowed mother), Kitty (the daughter) and Jimmy (the son) who is the only one she talks about. I gather he offered her the chance to go abroad to be with his mother. And did your sister have a painting "exhibited somewhere in Paris." And you write an article which you sent out and which had some comments on it when rejected?

I badger you, but could you tell me the circumstances of Hilda's first trip abroad. I think it was with you wasn't it, or was it with Francis and her mother whose finances seem to have been uncertain. You are my only source for the Philadelphia years. I reach the end of the page, but not of good wishes

19 Dec.

Lorri mawwrit

I dunno where you can have got the
idea that I had a low op/ of De Forest. Apart from a rep/
for inebriety gained on his freshman tour with the Mask and Wig
I didn't know there wuz any stain on his kerraKter.

If I called him the wold's lousiest correspondent, or some
thing of that sort, it was only cause from a long time back
I couldn't git him to answer letters ( I believe Billyum Wms
found the same)

Thought he considered us uncouth heathen
lying beyond the grace of his ecclesia.

He had at times the air of sHHH disapproval. AND unless
you have an answer to it, expressing proper regret, I find
it had to believe I ever got a letter from you sayin he
had knocked at the pearly.

to think of him as departed. And I wonder if I ever heard about
his wife... living off thaaar in woptalia an not seeing
amurikun publications ..

I got a activ flend in Hai Wai, Mr Kwock, I wonder if he wd
shed a little Confucian light on the Clistian Household
of the Ethelwyn ?

1124 Smith St. Honolulu.

Huhuhuhuh C.H.Kwock . N.China Daily Press

Might give Ted a unconsecrated
job, if he likes the climate. At any rate a lively lad,
and I shd/ think H QUITE unconvertable.

AS to Sidney / only 1HHH link is the favourite
ballad of the tatood lady.

I pied a bob to see ... etc.

and across one kidney

Wuz a birdseye view of Sydney.

Two lively lads Stock and HHH Fleming, bust loose in the
NEW TIMES, and printing most proper activity, against the
current amurikun hogwash.

No idea what tendencies M's famly is likely to have acquired.
Probably vurry conservative. But if they're now aboard the lugger
that avenue of enlightenment probably closed for
8 months, if you mean they are going back there.

Hilda sez she is writin, or has wrut a LONG poEm on Helen
(I spose he mean trojan and not the late ma D/tl.

tanti saluti from both of us to you and Bernard.
and trustin this will arriv fer 12th Night.

WHAT IT WAS

What it was, was not appreciable at the moment. What happened did not take long to happen.

We were sitting round the round-table in the sitting-room, there was a painting-book and a glass for paint-water and Ida had gone upstairs and the baby was asleep and Eric and Mr. Evans were at the Observatory or the Transit House, or in their rooms in the wing of the house.

Mama and Papa had gone to Philadelphia, the way they did, if it was raining or if there were clouds, so Papa could not work. Papa would leave the party or what they called a reception, if he thought it was going to clear up and Mama would have to come home alone afterwards, if she wanted to stay on after he left.

We did not ourselves go in to Philadelphia very often; it was a long trip with a sort of street-car with an engine that ran the two miles to Cobbs Creek that was the city-limit and then another half-hour in the ordinary trolley, to Wanamaker's to see the Christmas things or to go with Mama to see Cousin Laura and Cousin Emily Bell on Spruce Street. This was our house. We had moved here after Christmas, one winter.

I had come first, alone with Papa and Mama and we had stayed at Fetters' Farm, which was the nearest house except the farmhouse and the cow-sheds which belonged to the Flower Farm.

2.

An old man had left his farm to the University for an Observatory and this was it; it was Flower Observatory and Papa was the astronomer and Eric and Mr. Evans helped him with his work.

We had a big thanksgiving dinner and the uncles and the aunts came, and Mama gave an Easter party, like we always had and the University ladies helped hunt the eggs with their children that they brought. Mama drew bunnies in ink, on top of the invitation, or a nest with a duck or a chick with its egg-shell, and some of the letters they wrote back to say they were coming, had ducks or bunnies drawn on, too.

Everybody liked the little baskets, Mama bought, and Harold and I helped with the smaller children, but it was a long way to Philadelphia and we did not have little parties, only sometimes one big party like that, or when they all came, Thanksgiving-day. People did not run in and Mama did not run out across the garden to Mamalie or up Church Street to Aunt Jennie's, and Uncle Fred did not go past the house and wave his music at us (when we shouted at him to come in) and say, "I'm late for choir-practice."

Eric took us for walks. There was not the river and the boats and the summer-house on the island. Dr. Snively lived two miles down the road and the Snivelys came sometimes with their pony to take us out; they were de Forest and Margaret and Ethelwyn and Muriel. They lent me their books and I lent them

3.

mine. They had a *Red Fairy Book* and there were some of my old stories in it, but with different pictures. The mail-man did not pass the house but we had to go for the mail to Upper Darby which was a little town, err Mama said, a village. It was just below the school where we went. We did not like the school but we never said anything about it. Maybe, Gilbert did like it, he played base-ball with the older boys. Sometimes Harold and I went off on the path in the woods, but they would not let us go beyond the first fence through the woods, because there were gypsies camping there sometimes. It was the Sellers' woods. The Sellers had a big old house that we went to sometimes. The Sellers were Quakers or Friends, they called them. The best house was the Ashursts, that was about two miles away or nearer, if you went across the fields, or maybe it wasn't much more than a mile. The Ashursts only lived there in the summer, the house was called the *Grange* because that was what they said the Marquis de Lafayette had called it or they named it for his house, anyhow he and George Washington had walked along a road through the woods that they called Lafayette's Walk. There were box-hedges and a big round bed of heliotrope in the summer, in front of the house.

It was quiet in the room and Gilbert was cutting out some

4.

paper-soldiers with Papa's shears that he wasn't supposed to take
from Papa's table, unless he put them back, before Papa got home.
Harold was helping me with the paint-book that was almost all
painted in, and the piano was there, like it was in the old house
with Mama's books of music piled on top; she played Träumerei
when I asked her, but she did not play the piano so much. She
said I must have music-lessons but it was too far to go to
Philadelphia but Doctor Snively said I could come to their house
and have a lesson when Margaret and Ethelwyn and Muriel had
their lessons, twice a week on Tuesday and Friday. Mama said it
would be too much to ask, and Doctor Snively said the children
were so happy to have neighbours at last; de Forest was Gilbert's
age or a little older and Margaret was a little older than I. I
was between Margaret and Ethelwyn. Soon, I would begin these
music-lessons, Mama said. The piano was open and there was the
Venus that Mama had brought back from Europe, from Paris. The
Venus was called Venus de Milo and there were the same pictures
we had in the old house, and some more of the photographs of
places they had been to in Europe, on the stairs.

The old street-car or steam-car went past the house once
an hour; it was going past soon; we knew when the times were,
ten minutes past the hour when it was on time. There was a switch
opposite the Fetters' farm, where the two cars passed each other,

5.

the one going to the city and the other, coming back, and some-
times they were late. We would wait for the steam-car, that ran
with a sort of engine but not fastened to the car but part of the
car. It went past the house and we waited because perhaps they
would come back but they did not come back, so we went on.

Gilbert went out in the hall, then he came back. Then he took the shears and put them on Papa's table. "But he hasn't come back," I said. Harold was painting a yellow ruffle on a dog that looked like the dog in our old Punch and Judy; the dog in the colored picture, that we were meant to copy the uncolored picture from, had a red ruffle. I did not know if Harold was making it different on purpose, you can hardly see the yellow in the lamp-light.

"The yellow will look different in the morning, yellow looks different at night," I told Harold; I did not say, "but you should have painted the ruffle red," because we did not always paint the picture the same as the colored picture on the opposite page.

I said, "yellow looks different in the morning," Harold said, "I know." The clock was ticking very loudly. Annie should come in and tell us to go to bed but when Papa and Mama were out, they did not always tell us. Now it would be another hour for the trolley to pass the house. We had a drive-way past the house,

6.

it would be better, Mama told Doctor Snively or the Ashursts when they drove up, and their wheels scrunched the pebbles, in the spring, "the University is having it properly tarred and rolled," Mama said. There were three big maple-trees and a wild cherry-tree, by the road, but they said it was not any good for fruit, and in the wrong place, anyway, and it would have to be cut down; there were little trees planted back of the kitchen, they were peach-trees but we had not had any peaches yet. The Ashursts sent things from their garden, iris-roots and different shrubs for the shrubbery.

Well, now there was only the next car to wait for, or Ida or Annie to come in and tell us to go to bed; Gilbert was waiting, his elbows were on the table, he was pretending not to look at us but he was looking at us. This was the same table that we had in the old house, in the sitting-room there. We put on a white cloth and flowers and presents on this table for birthdays, but there would be no birthday for a long time, all of our birthdays came near together, mine in September, the two boys in October. Harold went on painting.

There was a bump on the front-porch by the steps, as if someone were coming up, "perhaps it's them," I said, but then it

7.

was quiet. Gilbert started putting his new cut-out paper-soldier
in the shoe-box, where he had the other old ones. Then I though
I heard someone bump again and I ran out to the front door.
I opened the front door. The light from the lamp in the hall
showed the porch, it was empty, there were two benches built
in the wall that made a little open-room of the roofed-in part
of the porch, by the door.

It was dark and I could not see; the bright light from
the hall went over the floor of the porch only as far as the
steps, then the dark. I stood and looked at the dark, beyond
the porch-steps and then Papa walked across the light.

He walked right across the floor and I said, "O, Papa,"
and ran out, with the door wide open. I took his hand and I
said, "O, Papa," and he didn't say anything. He did not hold
my hand tight in his hand, he did not take my hand the way he
did, his fingers did not close tight round my hand the way they
always did. It had never happened before that his fingers did
not close round my hand.

His hand did not seem to belong to him, his arm seemed
like the arm of a scare-crow or a rag-doll. I pulled at his
sleeve and his sleeve and his arm did not seem to pull him. I
pulled at the overcoat he had on, I pulled at his coat, he was
swaying back and forth. Was this a drunk man? Is this how

8.

drunk people act and he had no hat on, and now I pulled him to
the open door and I looked at him ... and I looked at him.

I pulled him in the door, he stood on the rug on the hall-
floor. There was the rug on the floor and I did not see anything
but Papa's face but I knew what was in the hall, but it went far
away, then it came clear, then everything in the hall was pecu-
liar, I mean it had some special place and some special reason
for being there, as if it were things you cut out of the back of
magazines and paste in your paper-doll house. That is not just
what I mean, but that is what I mean.

The clock stood there and ticked and it was a clock that
belonged to a story, it was a clock that had a door that went
into a tunnel, that led to a house in the woods, and the Old Man
and the Old Lady on the mantelpiece in the hall (that they had
brought back with the square dish with the tulip and the rose
painted on it, from Dresden) were like an Old Man and an Old Lady
in a fairy-story that come alive after the clock strikes midnight.

The clock would not strike for a little while, the car ran
past the house at ten minutes past the hour and the car was late
and then we had waited a little, so the clock would not strike
the hour for perhaps half-an-hour or almost three-quarters of an
hour. The hour was cut in half, it might be almost the half-hour,
because Gilbert had said when he came back from putting Papa's

9.

desk-shears back on his table, "the old car's late, as usual."

He had said that, I remembered it now. Harold was sitting at the table and I said, "yellow looks different by day-light," and he said, "I know." Harold was sitting at the table and Gilbert was putting his new cut-out soldiers in the shoe-box. But really we were in the hall.

Gilbert shut the front-door. Harold was there by me and I pulled at Papa's coat. I pulled at his coat and I pulled him in to his study and Gilbert got the lamp from the hall. When he was pushed down in the chair by his table, my face was almost as tall as his head when he was sitting down, so it looked nearer.

The blood was running down from the side of his face that was by me, and there was dust on his coat and the arm that I had pulled at, on the porch, hung down over the chair.

His eyes were wide open but he did not seem to know us. He sat in his chair. There was the lamp on the table that Gilbert must have put there and Gilbert was not there. Harold and I were alone with him and he did not seem to know us and he did not shut his eyes and his eyes went on looking and looking.

I ran into the kitchen with Harold and we filled the wash-basin with water and brought back a towel and Harold stood there and now the water in the basin was almost as red as the blood on his face, and his beard was thick with blood and I went on washing

10.

his face with the towel and wringing out the towel in water, like
Ida showed me how to do when I was a little girl and helped her and
Annie, wash clothes, but that was in the old house.

This was the new house and we thought, "what fun it will
be to move and go to a new house," and now we were here and
we had little peach-trees in the back-garden by the kitchen-porch
and we had new plants and roots for the shrubbery that the
Ashursts sent us. Where was Mama? Was Mama outside, was she dead

Where was everybody? I went on wringing out the towel and
the basin got more red and it did not really seem to matter.
Nothing mattered because everything was somewhere else. Gilbert
was cutting out paper-soldiers and I was watching Harold paint
the dog-ruffle yellow and we were sitting at the round-table in
the sitting-room and we were waiting for the car that came if it
was on time, ten minutes past the hour, but it was late as usual,
Gilbert said.

Where is Gilbert? I must go and empty this basin and get
some more fresh water. I must get another towel. But I can not
leave him alone and we are alone in his room. This is his study.
There is the desk, there are his ink-bottles and his pens and the
shears that Gilbert took and that Gilbert put back, and I said,
"but he hasn't come in yet."

11.

He hadn't come in but he had been somewhere near and something had happened, while the car went on past the house. Was it robbers? Something had happened, that only happens in stories, the Arabian Nights had a picture of a lady whose head might be cut off but it wasn't, because she went on telling a man in a turban, who was a Turk (or did they say he was Arabian?) a new story. This was a picture in that book or it was the Bible picture when we spread the illustrated Bible open on the floor, before we could read the writing. He was on the stairs, too. On the stairs, He was looking and looking and never shutting his eyes and the thorns made great drops of blood run down his face and Mama thought it was a beautiful Guido Reni.

Harold was there, he held the basin. I could not get the thick blood out of his beard. It tore like my doll's hair, when it gets tangled. If the water was hot, maybe we could get the thick blood out of his beard. I wanted hot water and I wanted a new towel, but if we went out for some more water, then he would be alone. You can not leave him alone, staring.

He looks at the book-case where he has his *War and Peace* and Victor Hugo's *Les Misérables* and some German books in German.

12.

Those are his reading-books (his other books are all along the wall, the other side of the table) and his Gibbon's _Rome_. I have tried to read in these books, because they have covers striped like marbles, with dark blue on the back and triangles of dark blue on the corners, he said I could read them, but I did not read very far in Gibbon's _Rome_.

He is looking at the glass doors of the book-shelf, it is part of an old desk, there is a drawer in the desk that opens; in it, he keeps his pistol. "Did you ever shoot a man?" He said, he never did that he knew of, but now someone or something had shot him or hit him, like an Indian with a tomahawk. You could see that something had hit him. If he goes on looking at the glass-door of the shelves, above the old desk, where he keeps his pistol in the drawer, I will have to push his head round, I can't have him go on looking at one thing like that. If he would close his eyes, it would be better, it would even be better if he fell down but we would not be able to get him up; do dead men sit in chairs?

He walked across the bright light from the open door and I said, "Papa," and he didn't say anything. What he says, when I say "Papa", is "little one" or he says "Töchterlein" and when I take his hand, his hand shuts round my hand like it does, and he holds my hand almost too tight sometimes and he even calls me

13.

daughter.

Then Ida was there, she said, "what?" I saw her stand in
the door, she said "how? Where?" She went away. She had her
hair up, she pins it round her head, she takes it down in front
of the little mirror in her room and makes two long plaits of it,
but she hadn't taken it down; I might have thought she was in
bed, but I had not really thought about her; now she was there.
She went away. The door to the wing opened and Eric and Mr. Evans
were there; now I saw why Gilbert had gone away, he had gone to
get Eric and Mr. Evans. Ida came back, she had more towels, she
pushed me away, she said, "run away, run away;" what did she
mean? She had a bowl, it was one of the big china bowls, there
are a lot of them and they all fit in together, she had water in
the bowl but we had done all that; Harold still held the basin,
she said, "put it down, I'll see to your father," as if he were
coming in for his evening-coffee, or something; she pushed in
front, I could not see Papa. Eric and Mr. Evans stood there in
the way.

Now I stood there trying to get round to Papa, but they said,
"it's all right."

Mr. Evans said, "you children run along;" where were we to

14.

run to? Now Mama was standing in the door-way. There was Papa in the chair, Ida, Eric and Mr. Evans and Gilbert and Harold and me, and Mama in the doorway. She said, "Charles." That is all she said.

She had on a lace-scarf or a lace-shawl over her head, like she wears when she doesn't wear a hat, when she goes out at night. It was black-lace over her head like the lady on the inside lid of the cigar-box that Papa gave me. He saved two boxes and gave them together, mine had the lady with the shawl like Mama had and Gilbert had a man in a big hat with a bull-fight on the little pictures round the edge, on the inside of his tobacco-box.

They were cigar-boxes, there was writing in Spanish, he said it was from Cuba.

Now he saved the two boxes and gave Gilbert the one with the man and me the one with the lady. Maybe, Harold was too small for a box. I never, till now, wondered what Harold had, but maybe he was too small. This was in the old house, we cut out pictures for valentines and kept them in the boxes, then we kept fire-crackers in the boxes. He always gave us his boxes. Now I must have remembered the box because of the lady with the lace over her head and the little pictures were of red and white flowers and there was a gold edge around the whole picture on the inside lid, like a valentine. It was like that.

He smoked a cigar after dinner sometimes, or when Professors

15.

came to talk, but he liked his pipe. The bowl with the tobacco
was on the top of the chest of drawers that ran along the wall,
this side of his table. He had them made for his study, before
we came here. He let us look over the blue-prints with the
architect, who came from Philadelphia with the blue-prints for
the new house, and he would take his pen and make a little mark
here, a door here or a cupboard under the stairs. This was that
house.

We had watched him draw a square for the extra door in the
hall that led out to the field that was now the orchard, since
the peach-trees were planted. We had seen the blue-print for
this room, the double-window that looked out on the orchard, the
book-shelves, built in for his books and nautical almanacs that
were the other side of the table; there was the sofa where he
lay down in the afternoons, sometimes when he had been working at
night. There was the door where Mama was standing with the lace
over her head, there was the wing-door that had opened a crack
when Gilbert slid in first, that had opened wide when Mr. Evans
and Eric walked in.

Gilbert must have run down the wing-stairs to get there
first. That is what he had gone away for (perhaps even to the
Observatory or the Transit House), he had not really left us alone
but Harold and me were alone for a long time.

16.

Now they did not say, "where did you find your father?" The
did not ask, "who found him?" They did not say, "but this is your
father, were you alone with your father? Did you wash his face?
Who got the basin? Who held the basin? Who washed his face?"
They did not say any of this, because now Ida had spread a towel
over his coat, as if it was the barber's, and was pressing round
his head with her hands.

No one said, "but who found him?" They said, "run along,
run along." Mama did not look at us, she was looking at Papa.
She did not say, "O, children, children, who was it found your
father?"

What we did was, we sat on the sofa in the sitting-room.

There was the paint-glass on the table and the paint-brush where
Harold had dropped it when he ran out, and there was the shoe-box
with Gilbert's soldiers. Now I heard the clock tick. I had not
heard it for a long time but it must even have struck because Mama
was back and the car only ran once an hour. I did not hear the
clock strike. It was long after our bed-time. Gilbert sat at the
top of the sofa and I was next and then Harold. We did not say
anything to each other.

Eric and Mr. Evans came in, they talked about "concussion" and

17.

they wondered how soon the doctor could possibly get here. Who
had gone for the doctor? You would think it would be Eric or Mr.
Evans, maybe they got Annie to go for the doctor. Where would the
baby sleep to-night? What was "concussion"? Had he been out
there a long time, had he maybe been on the street-car before
this one? Had it happened an hour before? Or had it just happen-
ed when it did? Had he fallen off the car? Had someone tried
to kill him? Was he dead? How would they get him upstairs?
What was Mama doing? What is concussion? Someone must ask but
I did not know if it would be me or Gilbert.

"Yes, yes, yes," said Eric, very fast, all in one word, and
as if he were answering himself, "yes, yes," very quiet. He
stood there and Mr. Evans said, "concussion of the brain and his
collar-bone is broken."

Why did they stand here talking? Why didn't they do some-
thing? Or had Annie been sent for the doctor? What was Mama
doing alone with him, had they taken him upstairs, how would they
get him upstairs?

"Yes, yes, yes," said Eric over and over, and he felt for a
cigarette-packet in his pocket and he pulled it out and threw it
on the table. The little bent green card-board cigarette-packet
lay on the table. It was lying on the picture of the dog with
the red collar. Someone must say something, Gilbert got up and

18.

picked up the packet, he said, "there's a cigarette left, Eric,
you threw away a cigarette." Eric said, "yes,yes," and took
the cigarette and did not light it.

Gilbert had got the cigarette-packet and he had said,
"Eric, you threw away a cigarette," and Harold would not be
expected to say anything, so I must say, "what is concussion?"

Gilbert was sitting there again and I said, "what is con-
cussion?"

I heard my words and the way I said the word, which I had
never heard before and now we would know. It would be something
that made him stare at the glass-door of the book-shelf and not
say anything. It was something to do with his head, "concussion
of the brain," Mr. Evans had said. Maybe, it meant that he would
be crazy and never speak any more, or maybe it meant that he
would die.

Mr. Evans turned round as if he had not seen us. "What are
you waiting for?" Mr. Evans said.

What did he think we were waiting for?

"Isn't it time you went to bed?" Mr. Evans said. We were
there in a row and Eric was twirling the cigarette round in his
fingers, then he dropped the cigarette. I waited for Gilbert to
pick it up but he did not.

19.

"Ah-er-er -" said Eric, that way he talks, "it's not - it's not -" He did not say, "it's not dangerous," he did not say, "it isn't anything" because he did not tell lies. He did not tell lies to us, he bought us *Puck* and *Judge* which are funny-papers and Mama would say, "you must not spend all your salary the first of the month, on the children, you need some new socks," but he went on buying us *Puck* and *Judge* and a bound volume of *Saint Nicholas* though it wasn't Christmas or anybody's birthday.

He bought me a big *Little Women*, that had more in it about how they grew up and he took us for long walks and we found a violet-farm near Overbrook. The people there were French and they let us pick all the violets we wanted, though we couldn't talk to them. We tried to understand and they tried to understand and they said, "père?" to Eric and Eric told us he did know that that was French for father and he said, "no, no," which we found was the same in French.

They asked us to have coffee in their little house and they had flat wooden trays for the violets. Then Mama said we must get some more violets and she was very happy and she gave us a dollar to buy them next time; it was too far for her to walk, but she kept telling the University ladies that called, "think of it, it's several miles, you can see the glass-frames from the front-porch when the sun is shining on them, and the children came on it quite

20.

by accident - it's a violet-farm, they have double parma-violets,
the children bought me almost a dozen different kinds of single
and double-violets, they can hardly talk any English but they got
the children to understand they could come back and pick violets
to take away."

Those were the sort of big bunches that are very expensive
in florists' windows on Walnut and on Chestnut Street in the city
and they sell them in tight bunches on the street, with silver
paper round the stems and wires, but Mama said "look they're all
loose, such long stems, I really never saw such lovely violets."

It was like that, and she said violets were her favorite
flower but roses were hers too, because June sixth was her birth-
day.

I had thought of birthdays and that they were a long way
off and so they were, but Mama's birthday was in June and so would
come sooner than ours. The baby's birthday was the second of May
but I was thinking of Gilbert and Harold and me when I thought of
how we always had a white cloth on the round-table where the
paint-box was, and spread the presents on it.

Mama's table was easy because we covered her presents with
roses.

21.

Eric said, "we don't know exactly, I mean concussion of the brain is - is if someone gets hit very hard or - er - falls down, then when the head is struck very hard - " I wanted to know exactly what it was and I could see that Gilbert's shoe was kicking at the edge of the rug that wasn't lying quite flat on the floor. If we wanted to get the rug flat, we would have to get off the sofa and lift the sofa, so the little wheel that was fastened in the sofa-leg to push it around with, would go straight on the rug. We could not get off the sofa, we could not move.

We were frozen stiff to the sofa, in a row, but Gilbert was showing that he could move, if he wanted, by skuffing with his heel at the rug, where it humped a little, where it had not been pushed quite flat when Ida or Annie had moved the sofa in the morning when she did the sweeping. It was easier anyhow for Gilbert to skuff at the floor because his legs were two-years longer. Harold's feet were straight out and he was sitting straight up, as if he were having his picture taken.

I could not skuff at the carpet though my feet reached the carpet, but I pushed myself back so that maybe Harold would feel that I wasn't really waiting so hard, and then maybe Harold would sit back.

"It's like that," said Eric, "if a man falls down - "

"Did he fall down, then?" I was the one that was doing the

22.

talking. Gilbert was too busy fastening the leather pad over the knee of his black stocking, that didn't need fastening.

"We - we - don't know - "

Then the clock sort of hammered like a hammer with nails, and Mr. Evans said, "probably your father slipped, as he was getting off the car, or the car may have backed unexpectedly - there should have been a lamp-post set up at the gate, in the beginning. It's quite obvious that your father slipped, that his foot slipped."

Papa wasn't like that. He wasn't the sort of person whose foot slipped.

Mr. Evans walked to the window, then he walked back. Gilbert slid off the sofa.

Mr. Evans said, "I'll take the lantern and go out and see if - " he stopped and Gilbert said, "I'll come with you. He lost his hat."

Mr. Evans said, "no, you wait with the - children. I'm only going out to see if I can find any traces - I mean, do you know, Eric, if his wallet and his watch were taken?"

"I didn't look," said Eric.

"His wallet is in the inside of his coat, or sometimes his

23.

overcoat," Gilbert said, "and his watch is in the little watchpocket.

Mr. Evans said, "did you see them there?" How could Gilbert have seen them?

"No, no," said Mr. Evans, "you stay here," because Gilbert went to the door and was out in the hall, but he came back.

"They put his over-coat on the bench in the hall," Gilbert said, and Mr. Evans went out and Mr. Evans came back with Papa's black wallet and he laid it on the top of the piano and he said, "that's all right."

He was thinking and we knew he was thinking, "then well, it wasn't robbers," but did that make it any better? It would be almost better to think it was robbers, that they had hit Papa for something, that there was some kind of a reason for it, not just this waiting and wondering what concussion was. Mr. Evans went into the hall again, then he opened the front-door, then we heard his feet go down the porch-steps.

His feet went down the steps, the lantern was in the hall of the wing. He could go to the hall in the wing, by walking through Papa's study that had that door that opened into the wing.

He did not go through Papa's study. He had gone down the porch-steps. Then he would turn round the rockery, in the corner between the porch and the path to the wing that led off the drive.

24.

If we listened, we might hear when he opened the wing-door, but
we did not hear.

Gilbert walked round as if nothing were happening and then
he took off the lid of the shoe-box that his paper-soldiers were
piled up in. He just took off the lid and shook the box, the
way he does to get the paper-soldiers in flatter, and he pressed
them down with his hands, like he does to make them not take up
so much room and I got up and walked a little.

We were going to walkaround the room and we were going to
take a book out of the book-shelf, that Papa had made. The book-
shelf was on the wall over the sofa. Papa had his work-bench
and his saw and hammer and tools in the cellar now, "but it's a
perfect work-room," the ladies from the University said, when they
were being shown around the house, "and so warm with that huge
furnace." There were high little windows in the cellar and it
was like a big room with the windows small and high up. The
floor was cement, Eric said the floor was cement. It was hard
but the cellar was not dark like the cellar in the old house and
there were the rakes and the hoe there, and we had the same big
box with the lid, with our shoe-blacking things in it.

Papa made the shelf over the sofa, it was varnished too.
It was William Morris furniture, Mrs. Schelling said, whatever
that was, and he made me a bench for my room like that, and he

25.

made a wooden table for the porch.

We were going to walk around the room. Gilbert had begun
it, and we were going to do things like we always did, so I said,
"Harold, you dropped your paint-brush on the floor, did you know?"
And Harold slid off the sofa and picked up his paint-brush and
he picked up Eric's cigarette.

He stood looking at the cigarette, as if he did not know
what to do next but Gilbert had picked up the shoe-box and was
shaking it to get the paper-soldiers to take up less room, because
the lid bulged when it was on and would fall off, if he did not
tie it up with string or get a big elastic-band from Papa's table.
He would go and ask Papa for a big rubber-band for his box of
paper-soldiers, everything would be just like that, but Harold
would have to say something or do something, because just to
stand there was not doing what we were doing.

I mean, we were doing a charade or a game we called dumb-crambo, when you act words. But Harold would have to be pushed like you do Laddie and Georgine when they make us have them in our games. Only Harold is older and Harold is not a dumb child, though Mama still says she is worried because he talks so little. But why should Harold talk?

"What's that?" I said to Harold as if I did not know. "O, it's that cigarette," I said, "O Eric, it's that cigarette you

26.

lost. We found the cigarette you lost."

Now Eric would come in too and we would play this charade like we did in this room, with the audience sitting in the other room that was the parlor or people called the parlor a reception-room now. The double-doors could be shut, so when we played charades, we shut the double-doors and worked out the word, then we opened them.

Then we left them open where the Rosa Bonheur Horse-fair was on an easel and the picture Mama painted of Willow Eddy, that was a place, on the old river, where she used to go with trips with Cousin Eddy and Cousin Ruth and where she once went to see a gypsy fortune-teller.

That was a long time ago and that was before Mama married Papa.

Eric took the cigarette.

Then Eric looked at the cigarette.

I often wondered what the fortune-teller told Mama, all of it I mean; Mama said the fortune-teller said, she would have a child who would have a gift but Mama always said to the University ladies when they talked about Uncle Fred and the Bach Choir at Bethlehem, "it's funny that the children are not gifted."

Now, if Eric were playing a charade, he would light his cigarette. Now I could not tell everyone what to do, but I waited

27.

and he saw I was waiting.

The fortune-teller said Cousin Ruth would not marry Sammy Martens and Cousin Ruth was cross, Mama said, and Sammy Martens went away to Pittsburg where his uncle was in the steel works there, and Cousin Ruth never married anybody. The fortune-teller, Mama said, had told her she would marry someone; it would be someone with a gift (or there was something about a gift) or it would be a foreign person who was rich but I do not know who that was, and Mama did not tell us about any foreign people she knew who had come to Bethlehem who were rich, and who had gone away, maybe it was someone from the steel-mills there, because people were always coming to talk to Uncle Hartley from Pittsburg.

Eric put his hand in his coat-pocket and he found his box of matches. Gilbert got up and got the flat green-saucer ash-tray from the mentelpiece.

There are the Boy and the Girl there; in the hall, is the Old Man and the Old Lady; Mama brought the Boy and the Girl back, too, from her honeymoon. The Girl has her skirt tucked up and they both have bare legs and they are fisher-boy and fisher-girl. The Boy has a net on a stick, like for catching butterflies, over his shoulder and the Girl has a basket and there are two blue fish-heads poking out of the lid of the basket.

28.

Eric dropped the match in the flat green-saucer ash-tray, and Gilbert put the ash-tray on the table and Gilbert said, "where's the new copy of *Saint Nicholas*, Hilda, where did you put the new *Saint Nicholas*?"

I was watching Eric to see if his cigarette was really lighted, but it was and he was smoking, and he looked at Harold as if he had just seen him and he looked at Gilbert, then he took a pull on his cigarette and looked round the room, then he said, "thank you, Harold," then he said, "thank you, Gilbert, thank you;" he said, "yes, yes, yes," like he does, all in one word and said, "what are you doing? What are you painting, Hilda?"

I said, I wasn't painting, it was Harold and Harold came and stood by me and Eric turned over the pages of the paint-book.

"O", said Eric and he turned back the pages and he said, "maybe that painting ish't dry yet, I don't want to smudge your painting, Harold."

He pressed the middle of the book flat with his other hand and we were back at the picture of the dog with the collar and the clown with the hoop and the lady who was standing on a horse on one toe and who would jump through the hoop. This was a circus and we had been to a circus; when we first came to Philadelphia, Papa took us to a circus; there was a lady in a cage with lions,

29.

dressed like the Prince in my old Grimm and she shot off a pistol
and she said hi-hi and cracked a whip and shot off the pistol
again and the lions jumped around the cage but Papa said they
couldn't possibly eat her, they were old lions, he guessed and he
laughed because we thought the lady would be eaten.

"It's dry," Harold said.

"Yes, yes," said Eric, "O yes, I see."

I said, "he did that a long time ago, he did that before - "
and then I remembered the bump on the front-porch and the way
Gilbert had put back the desk-shears and the way I was thinking
I was glad that Annie had not come in and told us to go to bed.

Gilbert was watching Eric turn over the pages, now Eric
turned over to the boys fishing on the bridge and the mill with
the boat and he said, "that's a nice boat - I - er - we must take
a trip on the river sometime, I mean the Delaware river," he said,
"we could take one of those steam-boats at the wharves at the
end of Market Street, we could take a whole day trip, there is a
steam-boat, Mr. Evans told me, that runs right down the river to
Cape May."

I said, "what is Cape May?" and he said, "O, it's the name of
a place, it's in New Jersey, it's the sea-shore."

Gilbert said, "like Point Pleasant where we went once,"
and Eric said yes, it was; he hadn't been to Point Pleasant but

30.

that is what it was like, there was lots of sand and shells and
you could walk for miles along the ocean and there was always a
place where you could buy balloons he thought, but he was sure
we could get peanuts, he said. He said peanuts grew in New Jersey
and they had farms of peach-trees and he said things grew in New
Jersey like melons because it was so sandy, we would find a place
and get a water-melon, he dropped the ash off into the green
saucer.

"Let me see," he said, "we can't go yet, we'll go as soon
as the excursion-boats start, we could even," he said, "take a
boat to Baltimore."

I had a girl in Baltimore was a song we sang.

Nellie was a girl that Eric was going to marry but when we
said, when he was shaving in the bathroom in the old house, "how's
Nellie, how's Nellie?" and sat on the edge of the bath-tub, he said
"I wouldn't -" and he turned his face to get the light on the side
from the window, where he was shaving.

We waited for him to get off the soap from his chin, and we
waited for what he would say, but he didn't say anything so
"I had a girl in Baltimore, Nellie, Nellie, Nellie," Gilbert went
on with it, to the wrong tune, he was just singing anything.

31.

Then Eric turned round with the soap off his face and he was wiping the razor on a towel and he took up another towel and dabbed at his face and we saw blood on the towel.

"You cut yourself," Gilbert said.

Eric said, "yes, yes, yes," and then he said, "confound it, which isn't real swearing but Mama said we must not say it. Gilbert kicked his heels on the bath-tub, holding on by his hands, we put our tin-duck, tin-fish, small tin-boat that was no bigger than the fish, tin-swan, tin-frog in that tub. We had the window open and we floated our soap-bubbles out of the window till someone wanted to come in, "I told you children you must not lock the door and play games in here," Mama said, so we were not to lock the door.

Eric held his handkerchief to his face now as if he had the tooth-ache, we said, "Nellie, Nellie," at him again, and he looked at the handkerchief and did not put it back and there was the cut on his chin but it was not bleeding very much now and he said in a different voice, "I would be very glad if you wouldn't - make games about Nellie any more or - or say Nellie to me any more."

Then he went and got his coat and went out to wherever it was he was going.

32.

He was turning over the book and he came to the orchard
and the cow in the orchard. It was spotted like the pony in the
circus-picture. It was like that terrible time, that we never
told anybody about, when we were going to a farm in the country
and it was a big farm with an old lady and a barn and pigs and
about six cows and a bull tied up and hens, and the old lady
said we could feed the hens.

What it was, was that Papa and Mama were going to the
World's Fair, but they said we must have a happy time too, so
we talked about it and talked about it and they thought Point
Pleasant was too far and it would be better if Ida took us near,
where her cousin had a house; there was a big farm, Cousin
Clarence wrote, he had a little church near there, Mama said,
and he would look after us.

So we went and looked at the farm and the old lady said it
would be nice to have children and we would all help her feed
the hens.

Then we went back to the station, where Ida's cousin had a
little hot brick-house near the station rails. And Ida said,
"I don't think we want to go to that farm, it's dirty, we don't
want to go there. Here is this nice place and Gilbert can play
with Fritzie and you and Harold will be so happy. Now this is a
nice place, Mrs. Schneider says we can stay here," and it was

33.

terrible, and I do not know what happened that we were so hot
and the lady was always cross and went and sat with Ida on rocking-
chairs and always said, "run away, don't bother me," and Gilbert
went off with Fritzie, who would not let us ride his rocking-
horse, to get frogs and Harold and I were so hot and there was
no one to talk to, but Cousin Clarence came and took us to see
nice people who let us sit on their porch and they had apple-trees.

It was waiting and waiting and every day saying, "have they
sent us a letter?" And the lady who was the mother of Fritzie
said, "maybe your father and mother sent you here to get rid of
you, but I don't want you, you needn't think I want you;" I saw
her count green dollar-bills with Ida. And I thought, that is the
money that Papa gave for us to go to the farm and Ida was counting
two heaps of the money and they each had a heap and maybe it was
true, maybe they had gone to the World's Fair and would never come
back, but I was afraid to ask Cousin Clarence because the lady
smiled so much and talked with him, and seemed kind and said she
was so glad to have us and it was a pity but the farm he had
chosen for us was too far away and anyhow old Mrs. Apfelholzer
was not anxious to have the children, she said, "she couldn't
have them," and that was a lie.

This grown lady told a lie, because the old lady said she
wanted us to help her with the hens.

34.

Ida didn't seem like she was and when we were going home at last, she said, "tell your mother you had a good time, will you," and she gave me a quarter.

I did not know what to do but when Gilbert started saying he had caught frogs with Fritzie, I didn't say anything. It is a dreadful thing if your mother and father go to the World's Fair and you can not write a letter and you can not even read a letter if it comes and even if it comes and you might be able to steal it and take it to Cousin Clarence to read, the lady who was the mother of Fritzie got the letters first and we could only just read our names on the envelope but she kept the letters.

No, I did not really think of all this, when I saw the picture of the apple-orchard and the cow, but that funny thing happened that sometimes happens, when there is a hole in the floor or a stone on a walk will open and I will step in and fall down and then I stop running and walk around the stone.

It is something that happens. I never tell anyone about it, for I really do not know what it is about, but it seemed to be there all the time that summer when we were at that hot little brick-house, with a horrid flower called a fushia that she said, "don't step on," all the time and none of our toys and books because we were going to a farm where there was a barn and pigs and cows and hens and where we could live like farmer's children and

35.

where they said we could get eggs.

Cousin Clarence had written Mama about it and then this
lady said old Mrs. Apfelholzer didn't want us and that was a
story; it was a grown person who was Ida's cousin, telling a lie.

Cousin Clarence did not know she was telling a lie and he
took Harold and me to a nice place to sit on their porch and they
gave us lemonade in blue glasses and they gave us apples and they
said, "I wish you were staying here with us," but we had to go
back to the hot little house and the lady said, "well don't eat
it then," when I did not like the sausage and pickle and she
just took my plate away and she said to Ida, "that will learn her."

So I didn't have any lunch and I didn't tell Cousin
Clarence.

Eric turned the pages and he said, "you've almost painted
all this book, haven't you?"

He turned the pages back again quickly and bits of the
different edges of the pictures were there, and I saw a red slice
of paint or a blue, or green of the grass before the big house
that looked like the Ashurst's house, where there were bees in
the round bed of heliotrope.

The pieces of colour did not fit together and seemed to go
very fast, like turning that kaleidoscope, it was called, that
we took apart and it was little pieces of coloured glass and we

36.

could not put it together again. It was like that old round box
that was at Aunt Millie's house, that Mama had played with when
she was a little girl. You put in a strip of long coloured pic-
tures, the pictures were like the different pictures of a long
funny picture in *Puck* or *Judge* but they were all in one long
piece and were not funny; they were a girl rolling a hoop or a
boy jumping a pony over a fence or a lady like our circus-page in
this book, jumping through a hoop in the same kind of clothes, or
a man walking with a bear, until it stood up on its hind legs.

The colours were separate and bright like the colours in
this book, so now when Eric turned over the pages so quickly, it
was like lying on the floor with the round box of the gyroscope
going round and round. It made you dizzy after a while; you
looked through little slats that were just one large slat when
the box went fast. Now that was like this.

I held onto the table-edge because the box was going so
fast and I remembered only a bit of colour, the pink and ugly-red
of the fushia-flowers that were so ugly and the blue-glasses that
they gave us and the lemonade, a different colour in the glass,
and then the old lady like a good old-witch with a broom, who
said, "but I always wanted children to hunt my eggs, I need
children on this farm," and a picture of an old witch with Hansel

37.

and Gretel, because really old Mrs. Apfelholzer (her name was)
could not have been a bad old woman in a dirty house like they
said, but it was Ida's cousin who was bad and divided the money
up with Ida.

I saw the green of the dollar-bills as they counted them out
like counting cards, for there were three of us and we were to be
at that farm while they were at the World's Fair in Chicago, and
this was the money for it.

I saw the soap-bubble in the tree out of the bath-room
window but that was a whole soap-bubble like a balloon made of
glass, like the glass-mountain the Princess climbed but it was
with nails that she climbed up.

I saw the face of the Man on the stairs and the way his
beard was curly like my doll's hair and Mama said if Papa cut off
his beard, she would leave him and everybody laughed; I would
not leave Papa if he cut off his beard.

Eric has no beard.

Even the table goes round like the gyroscope, on the floor
of Aunt Millie's conservatory that isn't a conservatory any more,
but she keeps her old things there and boxes on the shelves where
there used to be flower-pots.

Aunt Jennie gave me a Chinese-lily that you plant in a
bowl with pebbles.

38.

The bowl Aunt Jennie gave me was blue and shiny, the same
kind of shine that the green-saucer has that Eric puts his ash in.

Eric puts his ash in the saucer, he throws the end of the
cigarette down and it smokes beside the match-stick.

The ash curls up and I go on looking at the smoke of the
cigarette.

Eric shuts the book.

Gilbert is standing by the piano, looking at Papa's wallet.

The table is round like a big wheel.

There was that man in the milk-cart who asked me if I want-
ed a ride, coming up the Black-horse hill, home from school and
I said, "yes" and I climbed in.

The horse was pulling at the milk-cart, going up the hill,
and I was thinking it was fun to have a ride in the milk-cart.
They drove the carts in, early, to the market on Market Street in
Philadelphia, and they came home and slept while the horse climbed
Black-horse hill. The milk-cans rattled in the back of a cart, and
the horse's back came straight, when we came to the top of the
hill. There was Fetters' Farm, at the top of the hill, and the
switch where the cars met each other, and the cart jerked and
the horse began to run.

I looked at the man and I saw he was ... he had ... and
he said ... but I said, "I get out here, I live here," but I did
not live at the Fetters' Farm.

39.

I thought he might not stop the horse, so I slid out and I jumped over the wheel that was going fast and I stood by the switch and I saw Mr. Fetters was driving some cows out of their front field and Mrs. Fetters was shelling peas, on the porch.

I could pretend to go in, at the Fetters' gate, if the man looked to see where I was going, but he did not stop. I saw the back of the cart and the milk-tins that rattled and I crept under the fence, so as to get out of the road and went home through the field, by the side of the road.

The wheel was as big as this table and this table was going round but maybe that was the gyroscope or the soap-bubble that I blew out of the window and once I thought if I had three wishes, like they have in fairy-tales, I would wish for a soap-bubble to stay as it was with the different rainbows in it and floating over the pear-tree, like a balloon but in my wish it would never break. That was one of my wishes.

Now I do not know what I would wish, except that the table would not go round like that wheel when I jumped, and that Eric would take us to a hut in the woods and that we would have Saint Nicholas every week instead of only once a month.

Gilbert had asked me where was Saint Nicholas, but I did not answer and maybe, he was looking for it on the piles of music and magazines on the piano.

40.

Mr. Evans came in. He had Papa's watch in his hand, he said, "I found the Professor's watch and there's someone turning in the drive, I think it's the doctor."

Mr. Evans put down the watch by the wallet that Gilbert had put down again on the piano. Gilbert took up the watch, "it's stopped," he said, "the glass is broken and it's stopped."

Eric took Papa's watch and shook it, Mr. Evans said, "it stopped at quarter past nine, it must have been when - "

There was the crunch of wheels on the drive and Gilbert went to the door.

Mr. Evans said, "but I thought you children were in bed."

The table stopped going round.

"What is concussion, Mr. Evans?" I said.