JULIAN OF NORWICH, HER SHOWING OF LOVE AND ITS CONTEXTS ©1997-2008 JULIA BOLTON HOLLOWAY  || JULIAN OF NORWICH  || SHOWING OF LOVE || HER TEXTS || HER SELF || ABOUT HER TEXTS || BEFORE JULIAN || HER CONTEMPORARIES || AFTER JULIAN || JULIAN IN OUR TIME ||  ST BIRGITTA OF SWEDEN  ||  BIBLE AND WOMEN || EQUALLY IN GOD'S IMAGE  || MIRROR OF SAINTS || BENEDICTINISM || THE CLOISTER || ITS SCRIPTORIUM  || AMHERST MANUSCRIPT || PRAYER || CATALOGUE AND PORTFOLIO (HANDCRAFTS, BOOKS ) || BOOK REVIEWS || BIBLIOGRAPHY ||

MOSAIC (continued)

May 7

Sir Harry Newton

No, nothing is the matter, nothing, nothing, nothing. I assure you. I am old. There is sunlight coming into the room. I watch it as I sit here quietly wrapped up in age. It creeps along the polished oak table, picking out, one by one, as if they were the hours of sundial, the books in their glass cases around the room. The books. The books, with their fine leather bindings, leather as rich and as lustrous as the conkers I played with as a child picked up from under the horse chestnut ress in the park that seemed as monstrously huge as a forest then.

I have learned since that the forests of childhood are but woods, but that there are more terrible forests, deeper forests of thick undergrowth, that reach across to ensnare one when one is least aware of their treachery. And now I stand upon the threshold of the darkest of them all. But I welcome it. This darkness will be complete and it is only shadows that terrify, that half light that deceives and seems worse than reality, that plays tricks with the brain. I am not afraid of death,

I have often read the lesson to the parishioners sitting quietly in their oak pews, the sunlight streaming down upon them from the windows in the white church walls. Our parish church is Norman, austere, blunt. There is nothing to detract from its solidness. For years I have read the lesson out of the big Bible on the brazen spread eagle, the pompous music of the King James'. I would like to go back just once.

But no. A wheelchair would look strange there. They would stare. I, who once played rugger, who heard the cheering of the watching schoolboys as we tackled in the mud, culminating in victory. I, who am now old, shrunken and wasted by sickness. They would pity me and I will have no pity.

I will have no pity from any man. But I weep for myself. No, I do not weep. Not one tear have I shed for him. And she shed too many. A woman is not a Stoic. And my sorrow is not more than others. It is not. It is not. But why was this done to me?

I am alone now, this book by my side. It is one I picked up in my Oxford days, when I began to love books. They surround me and their words reveal to me other men such as I, but none of them have felt as much sorrow as I. No, that is wrong, Lord Chesterfield's son died also. We live in times of war and many are killed. It is hard to believe the war is now over. It seems only yesterday that the evacuee children were here in this very room. Poor little Cockneys. My father had been Lord Mayor of London. I showed them my books. I let them handle them. It is good for the leather to be held and handled. It nourishes it. But there was the day they came in when I was in the village at the funeral of a machine-gunned child. When I returned they had built a castle of my books on the oak floor. And they were bombing it with others. The cover was ripped off of a Gibbon that I had found in London in 1936 when my son Jeremy was seventeen. Other books were scratched and pages torn. After that the library doors were kept locked.

I have a title to give my son when I die. But my son is already dead. I have written him a book, modelled on Chesterfield's Letters, a book on the care and value of old books, of rare first editions. This fine collection that surrounds me in this room, it is all for him. But he was shot dead on the beach of Salerno.

But it was I who died then, not Jeremy. It was my blood that seeped through the sand coloured uniform in the monotone of surrounding sand making a momentary brilliance until the sun dried it to the colour of mud and dung. I was the only son of the Lord Mayor of London but now I have no son. I am Sir Harry Newton, Baronet of Westfield Place, but there will be no Sir Jeremy to succeed me when I die. The taste of my bitterness is gall and ashes. The life is all spilled away without issue. And this is the end, amidst these lifeless books that know no death nor life but simply pass as objects from hand to hand, estate to estate, culture to culture. They are skeletons, photographic images, teasing dead things that cannot tell of my son's smile, his promise, his bodily strength and manly beauty, his bravery because it only came to nought, did not capture kingdoms, invent, discover, merely gave one tired old man all that he could ever desire, then was torn from him by the brutality of a mad war. Death will come pleasantly to me, will lead me from this room of horror where I commune each day with my sorrow.

Haec studia adolescentiam alunt, senectutem oblectant, secundas res ornant, adversis perfugiam ac solatium praebunt, delectant domi, non impediunt foris, pernoctant nobiscum, peregrinantur, rusticantur.

                                                                                                                            Cicero

May 8

Dearest Professor,

I have been dreaming. I awoke with a start knowing in a split second, hering a metallic thump, that the baby had got hold of the alarm clock, and that I had better rescue it if we wished still to possess a working timepiece. The dream is still with me. According to psychologists, it lasted by a second. Here it is.

In my dream, although at first I knew I was here asleep in my bed, I was in your office, as we actually were yesterday morning. Only we had more time to talk. After the preliminary conversation about the two boys which had really taken place, you asked if I were still writing. 'Yes,' I had answered. You went on to ask about my style. What were my sentences like when I wrote in your class? I had answered that they were terribly short and childish and that later I rebelled against the earlier style and had taken to wild, run-on sentences but that this was unsatisfactory and I had destroyed a lot of this writing. You had looked both horrified and pleased at the thought of a writer wilfully destroying pages and pages of work. Then I declared, forgetting this was only a dream, 'I am writing a novel, my second. The first one I destroyed when it was half-finished. This one is turning out better'. You were very pleased, in the dream, and cried out that I was becoming a writer. I was no longer just a student in your writing class. You talked of my short stories you had read. In my dream you gave descriptions and explanations of them which seemed most apt but which now appear so much nonsense. I remember you labelled them 'stories of realization', epiphanies, among other things.

Then we got into a ridiculous discussion of the masculine and feminine in architecture. We positively scintillated. The straight Georgian columns and the ornamental round balls got dragged in. You were showing me drawings of English and Italian houses, also of their interiors. Then I told you of a children's book I had written for Robin in which each page is a drawing of an interior of a house with doors opening from room to room in diminishing perspective. You asked to see it but I had already sent it to a publisher and was now patiently waiting for the reject slip. 'The Editor rejects . . . ' of which I boasted I now had ten for various stories and poems. You asked where I had sent them. And I listed a whole lot of magazines of which I had never heard. The children were restless at this point in the dream, too, when I suddenly heard that clunk of a clock! Did I really dream all that in a second?

At any rate, all this writing did happen in more than just a dream. I had hoped yesterday to talk to you about it. As a consolation for the dental visit which brought us down to San Jose en famille! But there was no time. Now there is. Mosaic is now 120 pages of single and double spaced typing, a colossal muddle needing a tremendous amount of retyping and revising. But it does exist. It is probably to experimental. As an artist has to limit himself to the canvas and pigments that are at hand, so have I had to evolve a style and work plan that I can use and still every few minutes leave it to tend to my two sons. So I finally decided on a form in which roughly the same story is told countless times, the presentation of many facets. It is basically autobiographical. That is something that is so hard to escape. It is a description of the family, acquaintances, Sussex. It is something which occurred in one dimension and which is now viewed from another. I had already started this before I read Michel Butor's Degrees. So it is not plagiarism. But when one embarks on something like this one has a heightened awareness of anything in the least similar to it. I have just finished Vintila Hora's God was Born in Exile: Ovid's Memoirs at Tomis, which has the same theme, of banishment from a world which in the end turns out not to be as magnificent as it once seemed, though a regret lingers.

But primarily I draw inspiration from the Fauvist painters, from Matisse with his love of pattern, his manner of analysing a room, not into tables, chairs and things, but into the design of colour, fabric, the primary hues and repetitive shapes that children love. I have always wanted to try out this technique in writing. You know how different people furnish their homes to suit their characters. The objects they surround themselves with are emanations of their personalities. I am trying to see if it is possible to delineate the characters in a book in this manner. It is quite easy to do this with the thinly disguised people I once actually knew. There is the bachelor vicar who, after his mother's death, prides himself on his disposable paper dog collars, his washing machine, his nylon sheets and shirts, trying to show everyone how self-sufficient he is and at the same time showing marvellous sympathy for anyone who likewise suffers from loneliness. There is a tyrannical matriarch who worships her family history, who passionately believes in aristocracy and paints the holes in the red stair carpet where the white paint wood shows through a matching deceiving red. This when a couple of ambassadors come to visit her house which is dilapidated but 'one of the gracious homes of England'. She has to sell off a family portrait or two to keep the house heated in winter. These are just some of the minor characters of the book. But you can see the method.

It is written from the viewpoint of a child who sees objects and associates them with different people in her world, whose eye is caught by beautiful things which hold secret meanings for her. Her mother is always seen in rooms filled with dark Jacobean designs, meandering trees of life, which can also be serpents of evil. Her mother's passion for antique furniture, Marlowe, intrigue, scarlet and tawdry gold seem to point to a basic unreality in her mind, a desire for passion and guilt. She attempts to force the different members of her family to act these out as a scene in some violent Jacobean drama. When they refuse they are driven away and the family is in diaspora. In exile the patterns of childhood, which then seemed random and delightful, begin to show their true shape and design and a key unlocks their meaning. Underneath can be seen something rather hideous, yet it has a fascination.

Some days I can write pages and pages of it. Then, later, I go through it ruthlessly cutting out great hunks, unravelling Penelope’s web. In your writing class the stories I submitted were the first draft and yet I felt there was almost nothing I could change in them. But in this there is so much snippeting and cutting and tailoring to do! Some day, I'll have it in sufficient shape to show you, if you have time for such nonsense. I dare not show it to anyone else. Least of all my husband. I destroyed the first novel, written for him, as is this one, when he sneered at it.

I hope we did not take too much of your time yesterday. The children are wonderful.

Julia

May 10

A profusion of plums and mulberries spills across our floor, a Bokhara carpet. It has been carried on the backs of camels in caravans along the ancient roads from Samarkand. The fine roseate hues were concocted in the desert town of Bokhara. The warp and woof were woven by young girls slaving for their dowries in nomadic tents pitched along the Indus River. They have mixed camel hair dyed both pink and orange red together and used lines of black and white goats' wool to harmonize them. And they have thrown in dark plum blue for measure. The laden camels still to this day amble along the golden road to Samarkand where merchants haggle and determine the distribution of their precious burdens.

Coleridge rhymes of mighty underground arterial rivers. The veins are roads. Rivers germinate and fertilize civilizations, and roads carry their products, their wealth, throughout the vast bodies of land mass. Amber, after the flints, that came from Danish warships to Norway and the interior of Germany some four thousand years before Christ, was the previous substance of international trade. An amber statuette was priced at one able-bodied slave. Not only did it serve as ornament but also as medicine. Unlike diamonds, which are inorganic and cold, amber is warm to the touch, rich in colour and made from the living sap of trees. Often in it are imprisoned insects, caught in a translucent trap. From the shores of the Baltic, throughout Europe, to the peninsulas of Italy and Greece this substance found its way. Schleimann found amber at Troy, four hundred beads in a kingly grave.

Etruscan workshops were set up in Italy and Switzerland to work the crude material into beads and statuettes. The main trading in amber continued when the martial Romans swallowed up the Etruscan towns and their peaceable civilizations. Pytheas, in 350 B.C., became the Columbus and the Vasco da Gama of the ancient world by sailing from Marseilles out to the Atlantic, up to the North Sea, and through to the Baltic where he observed savages to use the precious amber washed up from the sea as fuel for their fires. On his return no one would believe his fantastic accounts, and the Graeco-Phoenicians from Marsilia became the laughing-stock of his century.

An English fin-de-siècle merchant was also the laughing stock of his day. Julia Bolton's great grandfather, a Yorkshire mill owner, would return from his trips to Imperial Russia, where he had been purchasing the wool of the angora goat that he might weave it with the wool of the alpaca llama from Peru to make coats for the world, declaring that 'Russia is a country with a great and unlimited future!' Men laughed at his ideas. Russia was so backward, so Asiatic, so disorganized. How absurd to think it could become anything but what it was, a third-rate power, becoming more and more insignificant each day while the rest of the world, Europe and America particularly, forged ahead into the glories of the industrial age.

Nevertheless my great grandfather, Sir James Roberts, Bart., quietly invested in Russian mines and industries with his millions. He endowed a Chair of Russia at Leeds University. As a prominent Liberal he was listed as a Veto Peer when the power of the House of Lords was to be broken. The Peerage was not realized but he intended to take his seat and argue for greater recognition of Russia's importance. When the Bolshevist revolution came, the prophet sorrowed; his prophecy was a two-edged sword, and it had turned in his hand.

Among his Russian investments was a mine of amber near the shores of the North Sea. For each child, each grandchild, and each great grandchild of his there came a string of amber beads. Julia's were lost, they were loaned to a cousin by her mother and never returned. But Julia can remember their rich glow and warmth. Before each party her mother would ask which she would wear with her white silk dress, the coral beads or the amber. And from her jewel box lined with scarlet satin and edged with white silk within the walnut drawers would come the necklaces and the Indian silver bracelet set with turquoises. She would dance before the mirror, pirouette and curtsey, then turn and run down the stairs to throw herself into the arms of her brother, her father.

On other days, when she and her brother wore the brown Holland pinafores of everyday, they would play, if it rained, in their mother's dressing room. Julia would explore the jewel box, the great ring from China, the silver bracelets from Persia, pins, brooches, ear-rings in coral, amethyst or peal. Her brother would dive into the great chest that contained the fancy dress clothes their parents had used for parties. The Napoleon coat whose black silk tails would hang down on the floor behinf her brother's feet. The peasant dirndls her mother had made for her in the Tyrol. There were Indian saris, a silk embroidered Mandarin coat, and black silk trousers. Also her father's white silk suits for tropical wear which from time to time the village dressmaker would make into skirts for Julia. There was a cavalry uniform for the Bombay Light Horse. And a Masonic apron. Violet spats, waistcoat and cravat for weddings, stiff-fronted shirts and a collapsible black silk opera hat.

For hours they would play on rainy days with the riches of yesteryear that came tumbling out of the great oak chest. But around them lay the shadow of war, bleak and dark. Other days they made games of dressing up in gasmasks. Once, on Julia's birthday, neighbour children came with a gift of fine white silk polka dotted with coral. It was for Julia, they said, since it had arrived on her birthday. Their father had sent it from Burma, where his regiments was going to fight in torrid jungle warfare garbed in hideous camouflage. He had sent the precious silk for his own children. Her mother thanked the little children and the next day she had the dressmaker make a blouse of the material for Julia to wear with the heavy Indian silk skits. Julia never liked to wear it. She wished the family had kept it. Their father was away for three years. It would have reminded them of him, brought him closer. Instead they had given away the most precious gift they had, silk from the Orient, paid for in the coinage of human blood. They say that trade is the whitest cockade a British soldier wears in his hat. The French are more honest with their plumes of brilliant red.

May 11

I lie here, my child within my womb, about me castle walls, beyond,

The sky's star-spangled cloak of darkness.

A moonlit castle,

Silver moat and baroque

Pinnacles and towers.

The hours echoing in the sylvan valley

Of its clock chiming,

Daring to measure the infinity

Of being

With that loving and curious

Science of man

That cares not for gold nor power

But for the purity of curious truth

Alone.

I found some of these lines, scribbled six years ago in a margin and then condemned to banishment. A trite memory of the Château of Chantilly. I add to their beginning a fragment from a now-lost poem, a Browningesque soliloquy. For they use an image I still employ - the sunlight in Sir Harry's library, the mechanical clock of St Mary's Church, Rye.

May 12

Jean de France, the third son of the king, Jean le Bon and his queen, Bonne de Luxembourg, Duc de Berry and of Auvergne, comte de Poitou, d'Etamps et de Boulogne (1314-1416) was a passionate collector of art and he loved especially fine Books of Hours. His Très Riches Heures now in the Condé Museum at Chantilly, France, were begun by three artist brothers from Holland, Pol, Jean and Herman Limbourg. Later Jean de Colombe took up the work, but the illuminations were never completed. Part of the Book of Hours contains an appropriate illumination for each month of the calendar:

The month is January.The great medieval hall is filled with noise. Dogs are barking. The gold dishes and wine vessels clink musically.
The warmly and richly dressed courtiers come in from the cold outside. 'Ma foi!' they exclaim to each other as they hold their hands 
out to the great fire, turning their faces away from the blaze, 'But this is a cold winter'. They do not wear shoes but motley hose and 
they walk on a woven rush mat.

Behind them on the wall is a great tapestry showing armoured knights jousting at a tournament under a summer's sky amidst green 
hills. Or perhaps it is a full-scale battle, for more knights essay forth from the great gateway of the town on horseback, coming to the 
combatants' aid.

But outside there must be snow on the ground, or at least a cold black frost. Perhaps a bitter north-east wind blows, chilling all to the bone.

In front of the great fire seated at a white-clothed table the artist has painted a great nobleman dressed in a loose blue robe embroidered heavily with gold and wearing a fur cap upon his head. A gold chain is around his neck. His face is like the face on the statue of an Italian Quattrocento condottiero.

By his side sits an ecclesiastic in red and white vestments. He is Martin Gouge, Bishop of Chartres, and later of Clermont. He listens closely to what the noble Duc de Berry says.

A servant feeds a graceful white hunting dog. Two little dogs run along the table eating the food out of the dishes near the massive gold cellar which is intended, as was the famous salt cellar of Benvenuto Cellini, to tell where the guests were supposed to be seated, above or below the 'salt'. Another servant cries, 'Approche, approche', to the entering courtiers. The words are painted in gold above his head.

As we turn the pages month by month we see snowy February, the farmyard with its four beehives, the sheep in the fold, the birds come to eat the spilled grain, a peasant guiding his panniered donkey to the next village over the snow-covered hills, and another peasant holding his cloak over his mouth against the cold.

 
March is the month of field-ploughing and pruning the vines within the walled vineyards. Behind the agricultural scene rises Lusignan, one of the great castle of Jean de Berry.

April shows two golden-haired girls picking flowers from the grass. One is dressed in pink and the other in rich blue and black. Their 
supple movements contrast with the stately pose of two lovers exchanging rings in the presence of two witnesses. The lovers are 
dressed in the richest robes. The woman has a great coral necklace that plunges down the side of her blue and gold dress. Her 
petticoat is cloth of gold.

In May are celebrated the Spring rites. Riding through the forest comes a cavalcade of gay courtiers with green ivy leaves twined in their hair. Three young girls wear green robes, and the others wear blue with accents of deep red. The young girl who is in the centre of the picture rides a white palfrey with green trappings. The girl's sleeves are lined with gold-embroidered deep blue cloth. A coral necklace hangs over her arm down the brilliant green of her dress.

The sound of the trotting horses and the barking dogs is accompanied by the music of trumpets, for the cavalcade is led by four heralds. Their golden instruments adored wit deep blue pennants point to the blue May sky. Behind the trees rise the Gothic towers of the town of Riom. A may bush is in flower.

In June two women and three men make hay on the banks of the river Seine. The men scythe the grass while the women rake it into heaps to dry. The river flows past them bordered by willow trees. Beyond rise the old wall and towers of Paris. The blue summer's sky shimmers in the heat. The labourers wear blue and white against the green of the grass. One woman has tucked up the skirt of her blue gown into her bodice. Her white slip reaches down to her bare ankles.

July is the month of sheep-shearing and harvesting. It must be evening, for golden clouds are painted onto the blue sky that reaches up 
from behind the white and blue castle of Poitiers. In the stream that drains off the castle moat are two swans sailing past the rushes.

August is hot and dry. The green has turned to yellow. The Château d'Etamps is golden in the hot sun. Some courtiers are out with
their falcons, The women ride pillion behind the men on their richly caparisone horses. Two dogs accompany the falconers. Some young 
peasants are swimming in the cool waters of the lake, while others harvest the golden wheat. 

September brings the wine harvest. Two bullocks draw great vats filled with the purple grape. A woman holds her aching head while she 
pauses from her gathering. Donkeys pass down the pathways with grape-filled panniers across their patient backs. Behind, the chaste 
white towers of Saumur rear up against an autumn sky.

In October the seed is sown and the earth harrowed. Brids come flying down to eat of the seed. An archer, or rather a scarecrow, tries to shoot them. Willow trees grow along the banks of the river, and the ferries are working overtime outside the walls of the city of Paris.

And in November the hogs are taken out under the turning oak trees and there they snout out the acorns. The swineherds beat them with their sticks aided by their dog. Beyond the trees can be seen the low-lying land of islands and blue green water.

December. In the clearing of a golden autumn forest a wild boar is being dragged down by the hunting dogs of the Duke. One of the huntsmen, the one in blue with orange hose, blows his horn and the sound winds out through the still evening air. The other two huntsmen drag off the dogs. Shouting all the while. Beyond the golden-leafed trees are white towers, the castle of Vincennes where Jean de Berry was born. They are lit by the rays of the setting sun. All the melancholy of December is there. The golden leaves lie on the ground beneath the great trees.  

May 14

Taking a map of the shires and counties of England you will find Sussex to the south, bordering Kent. There lie flat marshlands, while its western half is down land, green hills covering chalk white soil fit only for grazing sheep. Between the marshes and the downs lies the Wold, a rich fertile belt composed of streams and green meadows and ancient shady oaks.

There rivulets girdle the fields and traverse the woods, laughing and rippling over the stones. Creepers hang down and tree roots swing the streams around in delightful curves. They run under the narrow bridges of roads that had been first built by the helmeted Romans, that had known the pilgrims going to Canterbury à horseback, the ox carts and hay wains of the people, and coaches, then new cars and heavy steam rollers that laid down gravel and brown molten tar.

The streams are older than the roads. Once they had been great and wide rivers opening to the sea. The Danes and Normans had come rampaging up them. The Saxons had quietly farmed their valleys. Monasteries were built beside them so that monks could fish lazily in the sunlight of a Lenten spring Friday. Castles were built for strategic defense by the banks. Now both abbeys and castles like in magnificent ruins, amidst the meadows embroidered with daisies and buttercups and cowslips and wild orchids.

Once great forests had stretched over this land where sheep and cows now graze in the fields. The forests had slowly been chopped down, their wood used to build houses and ships, Drake's ships, English man o' wars to fight the Spaniards ad the French. The great trees had been burned to make charcoal for smelting iron ore. The forests are gone now.

The farmers now erect play forests, stately Gothic aisles of delicate greenery, hops. They are harvested by sallow Cockney families and the scent, acrid and bitter, of the crop, hangs over the countryside. Dried in the oast houses and then shipped away. The Cockney crowds gone too. Leaving only the memory of the tracery, the arcuated pattern and the chatter above bushel baskets and bins. The wind turns the vanes on the churches, the cowls on the oast houses. The sun revolves the shadows of gnomens of garden sundials. Time continues and the patterned seasons return.

Even if I cannot.

May 15

A painting by John Nun Bolton hung  above the stairhead at Darbyes of a young woman with loose brown hair, wearing a green dress. She has just finished playing her violin and her eyes have a trick of following you around the room. Julia's father can remember the portrait being painted at Quaker House. Aunt Dorothy would play gay dances on her violin for the boy. The sun would come into the raftered room, lighting up in turn the vivid pigments and making strange shaped shadows of the long brushes. The smell of linseed oil, of turpentine, was everywhere. It was not unpleasing.

May 16

It is interesting to see how great writers are surrounded by parasitical hordes, those who imitate them and those who turn a pretty penny criticizing them. The former are more honest. At least, they try to reach the heights attained by their paragon. One can only censor them for the harm they do to their source. Look how Milton's magnificence was dulled and leadened by his copiers.

But the critics, horrors! They do not dare to write on their own, their minds can only attack the work of others in a desperate attempt to prove what they cannot emulate to be on a part with their own third rate thoughts.  Lawrence is surrounded by them like Gulliver in Lilliput. His writing is lead and gold. They can outshine his lead and hire out his gold to eke out their own fame and fortune.

Ah, but this is unfair. Not all criticism is a rationalization of this order. Some fine minds can clarify the meanings of giants in order that our pigmy mind can grasp and comprehend their full glory. These critics, there, are the interpreters of the great to the small. They speak and understand both languages in order to hold this job. Their stature cannot be petty in this case.

But there is a cult that is a passion amongst the writers on writers. They take the life of the writer on the one hand and his work on the other and they attempt to twist the two together as if they could possibly be warp and woof. Truly, some writer should play a practical joke on them, catch them at their own game, write his autobiography and intersperse it with stories, inspired by the different incidents in the reality of his life. Cheat them of their prey. Plan clues of deliberate confusion.

But I doubt they would get the point. They'd gaily continue to write their shallow books on his books. Samuel Butler even had those written in 'righteous' indignation by his relatives and those of his admirers taking up the cudgels in his defence! And so the gallons of ink and reams of paper continue to be manufactured for those who wish to participate in these wars of the ego.

However, better the splashing of ink on paper than that of blood on sand.

May 17

Fingers of intensity

Feel and braid across a night sky

As they braid like stiff wire

Above the arcuated trees.

Bullets land in the quietness

Of a village street,

A little child is killed,

Its body riddled through.

The swastika is become

A most hated symbol.

Searing searchlight rip up

The darkness of the sky.

And comes war.

'Bestial lunacy',

Said Leonardo

And all the while

Fingers of intensity

Feel and grope

Across the dark,

May 19

At Dante's tomb, at Ravenna, the people took the candles from the altar to honour him. 'Thou art more holy than the other, the one they crucified'.

The San Franciscan monastery of Fiesole. There the monks have each a skull in their cells to contemplate death amidst beauty.

The last Pope to be in Jerusalem was visited by the Polos seeking to carry out the Khan's request for missionaries to Cathay.

                                                                                                The Notebooks of Albert Camus

Amato carried my Robin into the Duomo of Florence and there led us to the Michelangelo Pietà. I have seen Amato pray at the tomb of Michelangelo with Robin at his side. I sketched in sanguine chalk. Robin, leaning out of Amato's arms, beat time to the singing. The sermon was a denunciation of the film, La Dolce Vita. Why? Surely, the film, too, was a sermon.

In Fiesole that day while visiting the little hilltop monastery we were caught by a fierce thunderstorm. The birds sang amidst the peals and the little brown friars with silvery hair ran out of service to cover the bird cages with cloths. One friar took Robin by the hand and showed him the old tortoise that lived in the tiny cloister. A group of nuns, come for confession, were terrified by the storm and cowered in archways. But Robin had no fear. The rain poured down in torrents. High on the hill above Florence it seemed that surely we would be struck. But we were not. And, until the storm lessened, we amused ourselves by looking round the museum where were gathered precious porcelain and embroidery brought back from China by Franciscan missionaries. Blue and white china from Cathay and beneath us, veiled by rain, Florence.

In Saveverell Sitwell's Traveller in Time is quoted a description from Burney's account of Venice. Burney is in the Byzantine Duomo listening to the music. The choir is singing lustily, led by a nun, who wears a sprig of daphne over her ear.

There beneath the domed roofs and mysterious mosaics, Robin had wandered. An old woman, praying at a shrine, saw him, clasped him in her arms, kissed him. He returned to me holding in his hand the gift of a picture, a card with an engraving of a Madonna and Child. He held it out to me. And a shaft of sunlight struck him from a far window as he came.

Venice, Nicopeia

May 20

Sussex.

This real, unreal world existed, must still exist today. I knew it so well. Loved it too well. In my dreams I am there still. But change in time for me has also been change in dimension. I map the past and know it is not the future. Therefore it is irreality and this manuscript is absurdity, a mythical history, a fabulous geography.

May 21

Powdermill House  A Satirical Comedy

Dramatis Personae

Mrs Evelyn Webster

Godfrey Webster, her son

Mr and Mrs Glorney Bolton

Julia Bolton

Richard Rothwell Bolton, their children

Dean Naylor, Dean of Battle

Clorinda Naylor, his daughter

Michael Pembroke, M.P. for Hastings

(The action takes place at Powdermill House, Sussex, England, after the end of WWII, during the days of austerity. The curtain rises to show the drawing room, a large white room in Georgian style. Family portraits are hung on the walls. Some are Elizabethan, others are Restoration. There are some by Lely, some by Van Dyke. French windows open onto the Italian terrace and the garden beyond. An Italian Renaissance statuette of a naked boy balances joyously on the balustrade of the terrace. Mrs Webster is discovered sitting in a chintz covered armchair, half turned towards her son, Godfrey Webster, who is leaning against the mantelpiece of the fireplace. His attitude is a nonchalant one. He sports a monocle. The room has a slightly worn, shabby air.

After an exasperated pause Mrs Webster speaks.)

Mrs Webster. Godfrey, you are grieving me terribly. This is not the first nor the second time I have     had to speak to you like this.

Godfrey. Nor the third nor the fourth nor the fifth . . . perhaps the tenth or the thirteenth.

Mrs Webster. Godfrey, darling, do be serious.

Godfrey. Yes, Mother. (He moves away from the fireplace, sits down and starts filling his pipe.)

Mrs Webster. Godfrey, I do no approve of pipe smoking in the house. It is unmannerly. (Godfrey puts his pipe away again and leans forward in his chair, putting his elbows on his knees.) I don't quite know how to say this. (She pauses and then continues.) It is some months now since we gave your twenty-first coming of age ball. It is really time that you think about proposing to some nice girl.

Godfrey. Mother. Really. (He speaks sardonically.)

Mrs. Webster. The Glorney Bolton girl is all right. The trouble is, these days, that all the girls that come from nice families have so little money and the estate just swallows funds. But the rich girls all seem to have fathers who own factories. And that would not do at all. You must realize that you come from a very fine old family. (She includes the paintings round the room with a gesture of her hand.)

Godfrey. (By now standing up and beginning to pace the floor.) Mother, darling, I'm only twenty-one. There's still quite a lot of time left really before we need worry about that. And besides I want to make these decisions myself. God damn it, Mother, I'm not a child anymore.

Mrs Webster. Godfrey, my darling. (She is upset.)

Godfrey. Sorry, Mother. But you know how it is.

Mrs Webster. (Coldly.) Fetch me my jacket, Godfrey. I am going to take a turn in the garden. Thank you, darling. (Godfrey helps her with her jacket and opens the French window for her. He watches her go into the garden. He then walks to the book shelves and handles some of the books. The room begins to darken. It has started to rain outside. The ring of a doorbell is heard. Mrs Webster offstage calls 'Godfrey'. Voices are heard approaching the drawing room. Mrs Webster and Mrs Glorney Bolton are talking nineteen to the dozen to each other.)

Mrs Webster. How nice it is to see you, Sibyl darling.

Godfrey. (Shaking hands with Mr Glorney Bolton). Nice to see you, sir. Dreadful weather we're having.

Mrs Glorney Bolton. Evelyn, how lovely to see you again.

Mr Glorney Bolton. Yes, aren't we. But you know the sun was actually shining when we left London this morning.

Mrs Glorney Bolton. Oh, yes. You know we've been having a perfectly divine spell of weather in town lately, Evelyn, perfectly divine.

Mrs Webster. And how are you, dear Julia?

Julia. Very well, thank you, Mrs Webster.

Mrs Webster. And you, Richard? Godfrey, you go and take them bags to their rooms.

Godfrey. Yes, of course, Mother.

Mr Glorney Bolton. I'll come with you, Godfrey.

Godfrey, Well, thank you, sir. (Exit Mr Glorney Bolton and Godfrey Webster.)

Mrs Webster. What a pity it is raining. Just when you arrive, too. It has been so lovely this morning. It clouded over just as you came.

Mrs Glorney Bolton. Never mind, Evelyn. After all it is just April weather. Oh, by the way, can my children help in any way?

Mrs Webster. Oh, please, do not worry about that, Sibyl. By the way, Julia, how are you getting on now? I hear you have left school now. And Richard?

Mrs Glorney Bolton. Yes, you know, Julia's head mistress tried to persuade her to accept a state scholarship she won to go on to university. But I said no. I do not approve of girls going to university and I don't want my Julia turning into a blue stocking.

Julia. Mother, I afraid I still do not see why you so disapprove of Oxford.

Mrs Glorney Bolton. It is not that I disapprove of Oxford, dear. Were you a son I would be only too happy. But too much education is disastrous in a young girl.

Mrs Webster. Then you wanted to go, Julia?

Julia. Oh, yes.

Mrs Webster. Couldn't you let her go, Sibyl? But perhaps your mother is right, Julia. None of  us would want you to become horribly intellectual.

Julia. But you don't understand, Mrs Webster . . .

Mrs Glorney Bolton. Julia, go and help your father with the bags.

Richard. Will you excuse me? I'll go with Julia.

Mrs Webster. Certainly, my child.

(Exit Julia and Richard.)

Mrs Glorney Bolton. Oh dear, whatever possessed me to have a mad cap daughter. Richard is so good compared to her. But Evelyn darling, what is the news with Godfrey?

Mrs Webster. Oh, he's just the same as ever. I wish he would settle down and marry someone. But perhaps it is rather soon to be talking of that.

Mrs Glorney Bolton. Er . . . Does he ever talk of Julia, Evelyn?

Mrs Webster. Oh, sometimes. I wish . . . Oh, the rain is coming through the ceiling again. It has spoilt my dress too. Help me move this chair out of the way, Sibyl, please. (She shakes out her dress and she and Mrs Glorney Bolton push the heave chintz chair out of the way of the water.) This is always happening here. Someday when we can afford it we really must fix that ceiling. I have to keep a bucket in this room specially for it. (She searches for something.) Ah, here it is. (She brings out an old bucket from behind the chintz sofa and places it under the dripping water. Sibyl, darling, I really must apologize for the state of my house. I suppose your London place never does this. Shall we do and see what the others are doing?

(Mrs Glorney Bolton and Mrs Webster leave the room. The fastidious Mrs Glorney Bolton is obviously not quite sure what to think about the physical condition of Powdermill House but Mrs Webster does not notice her guest's attitude.)

Curtain

Scene 2

The curtain rises. The set is the same as at the end of scene 1. It is now evening. A fire is burning in the fireplace. If at all possible there should be a spaniel dog or two on the set lying before the fire. Mrs and Mrs Glorney Bolton, Julia and Richard are on the set. And so is Michael Pembroke, M.P. Julia is trying to engage him in conversation. Godfrey is walking about the room. He wears an embroidered waistcoat. He seems to be secretly amused about the whole set up.

Mr Glorney Bolton. Well, sir, and how are things in the House right now.

Pembroke. Oh, pretty well just now, sir.

Mrs Glorney Bolton. And . . . er . . . how is your wife?

Godfrey. (Leaning over Michael's chair.) Oh, you know, Michael's a bachelor as far as they go. Aren't you, Michael?

Pembroke. Well, yes, Godfrey's jolly right.

Julia. Oh, Mr Pembroke, are you often in town?

Godfrey. And that, my dear little Julia, is something you surely know as well as Mr Pembroke himself. An M.P. would be no good at all if he just stayed down in the country all the time. They say, Michael, don't they, that you're quite a promising junior Member. Eh?

Pembroke. Oh, Godfrey, I wouldn't say that. (Laughing)

(There is a pause.)

Mrs Glorney Bolton. This rainy April weather.

(Mrs Webster enters the room. She looks worried.)

Mrs. Webster. The dear Dean has not come yet. And he promised me he would. He's bringing Clorinda, his daughter. She's at Oxford now and doing pretty well. (The doorbell is heard ringing.) Ah, there they are. I knew they wouldn't fail me. Will you excuse me, please?

(The men stand as she leaves the room. Beyond can be heard their voices talking about the rain as they take off their wet coats. Then Mrs Webster brings in the Dean of Battle and his daughter, Clorinda.)

The Dean. Well and how is everyone, this jolly evening? It's good to see you all. (The Dean is a large person, extremely benign, with a rich ecclesiastical voice that makes his everyday language sound slightly alien.)

Mrs Webster. (Standing up.) It's good to see you, sir, it's good indeed. (Clorinda shakes hands with Godfrey. Gradually the group finds places to sit down and they recompose themselves. Mrs Webster leaves the room to get the coffee service.)

Mrs Glorney Bolton. I hope, sir, you did not find it too wet coming over.

The Dean. Oh, not at all, not at all, I assure you.

(There is another silence)

Ah, I do not see my Julia.

Mrs Glorney Bolton. Oh, I do believe she is upstairs somewhere. She said something about having found a book that fascinated her. It's very rude of her not to come down when there's company.

(Julia enters.)

Julia. Oh, hello everybody. Please excuse my coming down late. Hello, Clorinda. (Clorinda gets off a chintz chair and offers it to her.) Why, thank you. (She sits down and is buried in the chintz. Richard sits on the arm of the chair. Godfrey comes round the other side.) Why, you are all treating me like a queen. (She smiles.)

(Mrs Webster enters with the tray with demi-tasses of Turkish coffee. Clorinda and Julia jump up to help her.)

Mrs Webster. No, Julia. Clorinda can help me. Thank you, my dear. (The coffee is served and the conversation starts up again.)

Julia. Clorinda, you are lucky! They won't let me go to Oxford.

Mrs Glorney Bolton. You know, Dean, we decided Julia should not go. She would become a blue stocking.

The Dean. But, Mrs Glorney Bolton, I would have thought it would have been a wonderful chance for her.

Julia. Clorinda, you have a nice father. I wish he would change my mother's mind.

Pembroke. Richard, do you care much for riding?

Richard. Oh, I like it tolerably.

Godfrey. You picked the wrong horse there. You should see Julia mounted. She is something to sing about.

Julia. Godfrey, I won't have you say such things.

Godfrey. Why on earth not? You do ride jolly well.

Julia. Yes, but Richard's not bad either.

Mrs Webster. Well, when you've stopped quarrelling, maybe we can go into dinner. I think I heard the bell just them.

The Dean. May I have the pleasure?

Mrs Webster. Certainly, dear Dean.

(He takes her down, Pembroke takes Clorinda. Mr and Mrs Glorney Bolton go into dinner together. Both Godfrey and Richard take in Julia, all three of them laughing.)

Curtain

Scene 3

The curtain rises. Mrs Glorney Bolton, Julia and Richard are on the set.  Mrs Glorney Bolton is seated in an arm chair. Richard sits by her. Julia is perusing the books on the shelves.)

Mrs Glorney Bolton. Listen, children. (She raises her voice.) Julia, are you paying attention? 

Julia. Just a minute, mother. Look, Richard, look. (She takes a leather covered volume down from the sehlves.) It's a first edition of Gibbon. Is it not perfectly beautiful?

Richard. Oh, come on, book worm. Mother has something to tell us.

Julia. All right, sour puss.

Mrs. Glorney Bolton. Children . . . when will you stop fighting? Julia, come over here this minute. (Julia comes.) Now listen. While you are staying here I don't want you to be shy of young Godfrey Webster. He has a very good name. Do you understand?

Julia. Mother! I positively refuse to be bartered off in this way . . . You are always trying to marry me off. Why can't I decide that?

Richard. Julia, aren't you rather rude to speak to Mother like that.

Julia. (Disgusted.) Oh, Richard. (She stalks over to the shelves, takes out Gibbon, laying the great book across her knees, and starts reading it.)

Richard. While we are on this subject, Mother, what do you think of Clorinda?

Mrs Glorney Bolton. Not too bad, either. Though Oxford makes her a bluestocking.

Julia. (Standing up.) I don't care two hoots for old Godfrey. See you later. (She walks through the open French window. Richard and her mother exchange exasperated glances.)

Curtain

Scene 4

It is moonlight. The rain has stopped and clouds drift across the sky. The great drawing room is lit only by the moonlight. The little Italian statuette can be seen through the open French window.

Julia. Oh, Michael.

Michael. Julia!

(They stand in front of the open French window.)

Julia, Michael, I . . .

Michael. Let us be silent. It is so beautiful.

Julia. Michael, I . . .

Michael. What is it, sweet Julia ?

Julia. Look how the little statue stands so gaily. He's laughing at us, perhaps.

Michael. Julia.

Julia. Can one wish to the moon?

Michael. What would you wish?

Julia. That I could go to Oxford.

Michael. Why not.

Julia. Oh, Michael, I daren't. My mother . . .

(They stand silently.)

Michael. Go to Oxford.

Julia. Yes, I will.

(They stand and look at the moon and then step out onto the terrace into the garden. A pause. Then Richard and Clorinda enter.)

Richard. Look, Clorinda. Look at the mad moon.

Clorinda. Why do you call it mad, Richard?

Richard. Oh, I don't know . . . Clorinda, will you marry me?

Clorinda. Oh, Richard. Do you really mean it? Yes, let's go and ask Father.

Richard. Oh, stay here a minute.

Clorinda. (After a pause.) Oh, Michael, let's go and tell my Father.

Richard. All right, Clorinda. (They leave.)

(Julia and Michael come back up on the terrace running into the house. They are laughing. They leave. Then Godfrey and Mr Glorney Bolton enter the room talking. Godfrey fumbles with the light switch and then the light is turned on. )

Godfrey. Someone has left the damned window open. The crazy fool. (He goes over and closes it.) There'd be no point in lighting the fire now but, brrh, it' cold. Care for a smoke, sir. (He hands a box of cigarettes to Glorney Bolton who demurs. Godfrey lights one for himself.)

Godfrey. You know, sir, I've been wondering. Is there anything a young chap like myself can do? I mean in the business world and all that sort of thing.

Mr Glorney Bolton. You mean you would like to try your hand at something?

Godfrey. Yes, sir. I was wondering how one could go about it. You see I'm tired of being a bloody gentleman. I want to get moving. I want to be among a group of people who don't care about my social standing, my centuries' old name, my estates and what have you. I get so sick and tired of all these silly portraits. Look at that man there in the ruff. He's Godfrey Webster. And that old chap with the lace ruffles on his sleeve. He's my namesake, too. All of them are. I want to get somewhere where I can forget about the whole damn crew.

Mr Glorney Bolton. You've quite a problem there, Godfrey. For one thing you have no training for anything. Eton just gave a kind of polish. Ardingly did the same for me. It just simply means that other men are always slightly afraid of you. I know and hate it, too. You didn't go to university, which was a pity. Perhaps you could do that. Or maybe you want to be something elegant. Why not be a winetaster. I know several public school boys like you who've done that for a living.

Godfrey. But all that's just the very kind of thing I want to get away from. I want to get away from it all. I want to go to the farthest ends of the earth, where people do not know who I am and do not care.

Mr Glorney Bolton. That isn't such a bad idea, Godfrey. You could go abroad. There are plenty of commercial jobs going to men like you. And away from your own people there would be no one to criticize you. But wouldn't you miss the hunting, old chap? You're a great one to follow hounds.

Godfrey. I could give that up easily to get my freedom, sir. I want to be a man, not a puppet with a name. But it's late, sir, Can I see you to your room? This house is so dark at night.

Mr Glorney Bolton. That's all right, Godfrey. I know my way. Thank you.

Godfrey. Thank you. And good night, sir.

(Godfrey turns off the light and follows Mr Glorney Bolton out of the room. It is left in moonlight.)

Curtain

Scene 5

(It is a day in early summer. Mrs Webster and the Dean are in the drawing room, talking. Mrs Webster is arranging flowers in a large vase.)

Mrs Webster. I had a letter from dear Sibyl the other day. She says she is terribly lonely without her two children. Richard and your Clorinda have had their honeymoon. So we can expect to see them soon. I still can't see that Julia at Oxford.

The Dean. Oh, Clorinda writes a lot about her. She loves punting on the river best of all, she says. They ride, too.

Mrs Webster. Really. I wonder either of them find time for their studies.

The Dean. Oh, they're both doing very well.

Mrs Webster. I remember you once liked to row . . .

The Dean. Yes, Evelyn. I once liked to row . . . But that was a long time ago, a long time ago. (The Dean looks rather sad and gazes out of the French window onto the gardens.)

Mrs Webster. Ah, but Dean, not so very long ago. (A noise is heard as of suitcases being lifted down the stairs.) Why, what can be happening? That crazy son of mine. I can't think of anyone suitable for him. And he must get married. After all, there has been a Webster at Powdermill House, at Battle Abbey, at Bodiam Castle, for hundreds of years. I can't say I haven't warned him. I wish his father had not left when he was so young.

The Dean. Ah, yes. I have often that way about my Clorinda's mother's death. But Clorinda is a fine lass, a fine lass.</