The Professor has found me a thick rug now, for the couch. He always seems interested when I tell him of my animal findings and fairy-tale associations. At least, it was not my father who deceived me. The Professor said I had not made the conventional transference from mother to father, as is usual with a girl at adolescence. He said he thought my father was a cold man.
But our father took us out one evening in the snow and bought us a box of animals. He divided them afterwards, as we had done with the Punch and Judy dolls. There seemed no friction among the three of us, as to the choice of dolls or later of the animals. My older brother took the elephant of course, I had the elk, the small boy had the polar-bear. I should have liked the bear but we had first choice in order of age, then second choice. I don’t remember what our second and our third choice was.
The big boy of course took Punch and I had Judy and the little boy loved Joey. That was all right. Then Gilbert took the policeman of course, I had the beadle, the little boy had — surely there was another doll, I know it worked out. I can’t remember the sixth doll — or did we compromise and give him Toby the dog?
The Professor had first written me that he would be ready to see me “next year, January or February.” This is next year, but we decided to wait, as he said he feared the “polar-bear weather” might upset me. I remember writing him that I wanted to come in March, whatever the weather might be. Yes — it was in London in March that I heard from America of the death of my father, though he must have died in February. My mother died too in March but eight years later. The word reached me at Riant Château, Territet, where she had been with us, on the first day of spring, 1927.
Again, I feel, lying on this couch that a sort of phosphorescence is evaporating from my forehead and I can almost breathe this anodyne, this ether.
Am I reminded of happy release from pain and the fortunate auspices, predicted for my daughter who arrived in the vernal equinox, and at the high tide of the sun, at noon exactly?
Surely the high tide of her stars brought fortune to me.
Some of these things I touched on with the Professor. I cannot classify the living content of our talks together by recounting them in a logical or textbook manner. It was, as he had said of my grandfather, “an atmosphere. . ”
I don’t know why I pick on Joan and Dorothy, two devoted friends in London. That is, they are devoted to each other; I am really only an acquaintance. Do I associate them with my aunts? Poor Aunt Laura was so happy when my mother told her, when she visited us in Switzerland, that she could have all her clothes. Joan and Dorothy are substitutes, rivals for my mother’s love. It does not matter who they are. We were together in Florence, too. My modest jewels are precious to me, for their association, a string of smoke-sapphires or star-sapphires and a bracelet (from a shop where at one time Cellini had been master silversmith), some leather frames and old paperbacked Tauchnitz editions, rebound in the patterned red-lily parchment paper.
When I switch off my bed-light, I realize that I might have seen Lawrence there.
March 7
I dream of Havelock Ellis with his white beard. We had once talked of old English public houses or pubs as they call them. We go on with this conversation. I don’t remember what it led up to, but he talks about the “doors.” I finally think in my dream, “He has forgotten I am a woman and do not go into pubs or saloons — men evidently discuss various pubs and pub-doors like this among themselves.” But it is Havelock Ellis, propped up in bed, who has the role of the invalid or analysand while I who sit beside him am the analyst.
Then Havelock Ellis becomes the analyst in the Professor’s place but, reclining on the couch, I think, “Havelock Ellis will be bored, he doesn’t really care for psychoanalysis nor really know much about it; how can I expect him to be interested or to understand me?” We then seem to go on with the conversation in an ordinary way; he wants to find a French girl “with a perfect accent.” I say, “My daughter has a perfect accent.” I wake to realize that someone is rapping — a letter is slipped under my door.
I have been frightened, I do not want to mention blood to the Professor. I opened the front door, ran out to welcome my father in the dark and found blood on his head, dripping. . This was soon after we moved from Bethlehem to the Flower Observatory, outside Philadelphia. The cause of my father’s accident always remained a mystery. He might have slipped off the old-fashioned steam tram or the local train engine might have backfired. We were not allowed to see our father for some days. We were afraid he might be dead. When we finally went to his room he was propped up, as I had imagined Havelock Ellis in the dream, but his hair and beard had turned white. It was another father, wax-pale, a ghost.
I think I was ten years old at that time. I had “forgotten” this until I began my work with Miss Chadwick.
I had “forgotten” my father’s accident for thirty-five years.
I try to outline in a detached way the story of the three children finding their father. I qualify my terror of death by saying, “We overheard Mr. Evans, one of our father’s assistants at the Observatory, say it was concussion of the brain.” The Professor waved this aside. “It could not have been concussion,” he said. I did not know whether he was trying to spare me distress, or if he felt I had in some way forced this recital.
Sigmund Freud said at our next session that he saw “from signs” that I did not want to be analyzed.
I had seen a beautiful etching of him in an art-shop, on the Ring.
Today, I went and ordered a copy.
I am sick today, shaken, unnerved, disoriented.
I feel I should discuss my father’s accident and the discovery of this submerged, long-delayed shock.
Yes, it is true, he must see my conflict “from signs.”
How can I tell him of my constant pre-vision of disaster?
It is better to have an unsuccessful or “delayed” analysis than to bring my actual terror of the lurking Nazi menace into the open.
Yes, I was “Buried Alive.”
Is this why my thoughts return to Lawrence?
I can only remember that last book he wrote. The Man Who Died was buried alive.
March 8, Wednesday
I dream of a photograph of an unbearded D. H. Lawrence. I had such a photograph of my father, taken when he was sixteen or seventeen before he went with his brother to the war. There were daguerreotypes of these two brothers, taken when they were a little younger. The older brother was by far the more attractive. But I looked into the reflecting surface of the silver plate of the younger, and I looked out at myself.
I first met Lawrence in August 1914 at the time of the actual outbreak of war; he looked taller in evening-dress. It was the only time I saw this unbearded manifestation of Lawrence. Richard Aldington said afterwards that Lawrence looked like a soldier in mufti.
In my dream, there is a neat “professional” woman with Lawrence and there is a group of children. Is the “professional” woman a sort of secretary? I acted for a short time as secretary to my father.
Lawrence at one time was a school-master and I always had a longing to teach. The children in this dream “class” or family are of assorted sizes; they stand back of Lawrence and the young woman, grouped round a piano.
My mother taught music and painting at one time, at the old Seminary.
Now the children resolve or dissolve into a picture of a number of models of full-rigged ships.
Havelock Ellis’ father was a sea captain and one of my father’s textbooks was Practical Astronomy Applied to Navigation.