I will have to switch on the light soon, for my eyes, staring into darkness, wonder if again I crossed the threshold. No, I am sure about the cactus. I am not quite sure about the butterfly.
I was wrong about the butterfly. I did not break off a heavy cocoon, but I gathered the enormous green caterpillar with the tobacco-flower stalk and placed the stalk and worm in a cardboard box. Did I cut holes in the box? There was ventilation somewhere. This was my own worm.
In the box, among the fresh green tobacco leaves, and the old brown tobacco leaves, he wove his huge cocoon.
How did he get out of the box? Did I hear him scratching?
Did he flutter and beat his wings against the box?
How did I get the cardboard box onto the top of the tall bookcase? Did I climb up on a chair? I was not tall enough to reach the top shelf, even with a chair.
Did I make it all up? Did I dream it? And if I dreamt it, did I dream it forty years ago, or did I dream it last night?
It was the huge green caterpillar that I gathered with the blossoming nicotiana.
I am wrong about my father’s birthday. My father’s birthday is in November.
Why did I say today, March 4th, is my father’s birthday?
4
Hibou sacré! I asked him how he was and he smiled a charming, wrinkled smile that reminded me of D. H. Lawrence. He told me (in French) how Napoleon’s mother used to say, even at the height of his fame, “That is all right as long as it lasts.” I spoke of the last war-year. He said he had reason to remember the epidemic, as he lost his favorite daughter. “She is here,” he said, and he showed me a tiny locket that he wore, fastened to his watch-chain. She had died of the epidemic in Hamburg, though the baby she had just had survived. I remembered Dr. Sachs speaking of this girl, “the beautiful Sophie.”
So the beautiful Sophie died, having her child about the same time as I was having mine, early spring 1919. I had the same Spanish influenza and though it was common knowledge that in no instance did both child and mother live after the depletion of pneumonia, yet I was the miraculous exception. It was not the child nor my critical physical condition that caused the final collapse.
But there was so much to tell. I dodged the actual details of my desolation and told the Professor how kind Havelock Ellis had been to me when I saw him in his flat in Brixton, those few times before the birth of my child. I had written to Dr. Ellis, although Daphne Bax who had arranged for me to stay in a cottage near her in Buckinghamshire, during the winter of 1919, had tried to discourage any idea of my meeting Havelock Ellis whom I so greatly admired. Mrs. Ellis had had a house at one time in Buckinghamshire, near Daphne. Daphne said, “Oh, Havelock — no one ever manages to meet Havelock. He is remote, apart, a recluse, a Titan, a giant.” Perhaps Daphne’s so taking things for granted spurred me to approach this Titan. I received a courteous note in answer to my letter to him, and the next time I made the trip from Princes Risborough to London, I went to see this Titan. He served China tea, with a plate of salted pecans and peanuts. There was an unexpected charm and authenticity in his artist décor. He wore a brown velvet smoking-jacket and showed me some of his treasures, a Buddha that his father, a sea captain, had brought back from China, a copy of a famous bust of himself done by — I forget who. There were various autographed photographs of people I had never met but heard of; Walt Whitman among others looked down from the wall. There were Russian cigarettes and Dr. Ellis served lemon, in the Russian or American manner, with the tea. I went on talking to the Professor of the effect that Dr. Ellis had on me; I had expected to meet the rather remote, detached, and much-abused scientist, I found the artist. Sigmund Freud said, “Ah, you tell this all so beautifully.”
Dr. Ellis was in my fantasies when I went, July 1919, with Bryher to the Scilly Isles. He knew Cornwall and had lived there off and on, for many years in “retreat” as Daphne would have said, working on his famous volumes. The Scilly Isles, in the flow of the Gulf Stream, suggested the Mediterranean to me. There were great birds; they perched there in “retreat,” at certain seasons, both from the tropic zones and from the Arctic. It was here at this time I had my “jelly-fish” experience, as Bryher called it. There were palm-trees, coral-plants, mesambeanthum, opened like water-lilies the length of the grey walls; the sort of fibrous under-water leaf and these open sea-flowers gave one the impression of being submerged.
We were in the little room that Bryher had taken for our study when I felt this impulse to “let go” into a sort of balloon, or diving-bell, as I have explained it, that seemed to hover over me. There was an old-fashioned sideboard and I remember thinking, “I must really ask for another jar to put those flowers in.” They had stuck a great bundle of calla-lilies, wedged tight into a jam pot. Two or three of the flower-stalks would have been more effective, with a few of the spear-like leaves. There was an engraving of the inevitable Landseer’s Stag at Bay over the fireplace, screened now with a ruffle or fan of red paper. When I tried to explain this to Bryher and told her it might be something sinister or dangerous, she said, “No, no, it is the most wonderful thing I ever heard of. Let it come.”
I tried to write a rough account of this singular adventure, Notes on Thought and Vision. There was, I explained to Bryher, a second globe or bell-jar rising as if it were from my feet. I was enclosed. I felt I was safe but seeing things as through water. I felt the double globe come and go and I could have dismissed it at once and probably would have if I had been alone. But it would not have happened, I imagine, if I had been alone. It was being with Bryher that projected the fantasy, and all the time I was thinking that this would be an interesting bit of psychological data for Dr. Havelock Ellis.
When I returned to London, I sent my Notes to Dr. Ellis. I thought he would be so interested. But he appeared unsympathetic, or else he did not understand or else he may have thought it was a danger signal.
Dr. Ellis did not understand but the Professor understood perfectly.
As I was leaving, the Professor asked me, “Are you lonely?” I said, “Oh — no.”
No, I was not lonely. There were museums, galleries, the walks in the Stadtpark, visiting old churches. I scribbled in my notebook, and leafed over magazines and books sent me from London and America. It did not occur to me, until I was back in my bed, that I had omitted to tell the Professor the story of the caterpillar that had so concerned me last night before falling to sleep. Now, I must assemble the picture again.
Where had I left off? There was some snag somewhere. There were, now I recalled, several snags. To begin with, I had got my father’s birthday all wrong. Why substitute March for November, but the four was right; yes, I was certain that November 4 was my father’s birthday.
That caterpillar? No, it would not scratch and beat with its wings inside the box, for surely when it had woven its shell, I would have left the box-lid off altogether. Why this box and box-lid? There is that rather gruesome old print in the Professor’s waiting room, called “Buried Alive.”
I must have taken fresh leaves one day and found the spun sheath. But how long did it take a caterpillar to weave its elaborate vestment? Why did I forget the caterpillar? Why did I remember it?
There it is on my table, that last volume that I disliked so. It was sent to me from London, another fanatical woman writing her story of D. H. Lawrence. Lawrence? It was in March he died.