Inner Legacy (12 page)

Emma-1

Dear Adam,

It's been a long time since we were together. Could we meet  sometime if it is convenient? I miss your company and our shared confidences. I can't tell you much I appreciate you sending me the completed writings of your Grandfather. You must be exhausted after getting it all down on paper. I value your trust in me and I have taken my time to respond simply because I have had to read it all several times before I could really get a chance to take it all in. Do you want my copies back - I hope you have a copy and didn't send me your only one.

I must confess I am a little puzzled by the writings. There could be so many explanations not only for the main body of work but also for the fragments you found elsewhere although you neglected to tell me where you found them and that aroused my curiosity.

I have mixed feelings in reading about the Room. It could be taken in many ways. At first reading I thought it as his way of coming out that he was gay and had been hiding from it all his life and only found peace when he at last admitted it. It could certainly be taken that way. I hope that doesn't cause you offence? And yet when I analysed it that way it didn't fit comfortably at all with the rest of the writings. The key for me was remembering The Light of the World by by William Holman Hunt. Do you think the one at the door was the Christ of the painting? That would rule out the gay theory and also I recalled The Hound of Heaven written by Francis Thompson. It was included in the Oxford Book of English Mystical Verse which I have in my library. Do you think that might be part of the whole theme of all the writings? Or does the Room manuscript perhaps reflect an earlier part of his life? Is it unrelated to the notebooks? I'm not sure whether you are familiar with the poem. So I have copied it out for you.

I fled Him, down the nights and down the days;

I fled Him, down the arches of the years;

I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways

   Of my own mind; and in the mist of tears

I hid from Him, and under running laughter.

            Up vistaed hopes I sped;

            And shot, precipitated,

Adown Titanic glooms of chasmèd fears,

From those strong Feet that followed, followed after.

           But with unhurrying chase,

           And unperturbéd pace,

       Deliberate speed, majestic instancy,

           They beat--and a Voice beat

           More instant than the Feet--

       "All things betray thee, who betrayest Me."

   I pleaded, outlaw-wise,

By many a hearted casement, curtained red,

    Trellised with intertwining charities;

(For, though I knew His love Who followèd,

            Yet was I sore adread

Lest, having Him, I must have naught beside.)

But, if one little casement parted wide,

    The gust of His approach would clash it to:

    Fear wist not to evade, as Love wist to pursue.

Across the margent of the world I fled,

    And troubled the gold gateways of the stars,

    Smiting for shelter on their clangèd bars:

            Fretted to dulcet jars

And silvern chatter the pale ports o' the moon.

I said to Dawn: Be sudden--to Eve: Be soon;

    With thy young skiey blossoms heap me over

            From this tremendous Lover--

Float thy vague veil about me, lest He see!

   I tempted all His servitors, but to find

My own betrayal in their constancy,

In faith to Him their fickleness to me,

    Their traitorous trueness, and their loyal deceit.

To all swift things for swiftness did I sue;

    Clung to the whistling mane of every wind.

          But whether they swept, smoothly fleet,

        The long savannahs of the blue;

            Or whether, Thunder-driven,

          They clanged his chariot 'thwart a heaven,

Plashy with flying lightnings round the spurn o' their feet:--

    Fear wist not to evade as Love wist to pursue.

            Still with unhurrying chase,

            And unperturbéd pace,

        Deliberate speed, majestic instancy,

            Came on the following Feet,

            And a Voice above their beat--

        "Naught shelters thee, who wilt not shelter Me."

I sought no more that after which I strayed

            In face of man or maid;

But still within the little children's eyes

            Seems something, something that replies,

They at least are for me, surely for me!

I turned me to them very wistfully;

But just as their young eyes grew sudden fair

            With dawning answers there,

Their angel plucked them from me by the hair.

"Come then, ye other children, Nature's--share

With me" (said I) "your delicate fellowship;

            Let me greet you lip to lip,

            Let me twine you with caresses,

                Wantoning

            With our Lady-Mother's vagrant tresses,

                Banqueting

            With her in her wind-walled palace,

            Underneath her azured dais,

            Quaffing, as your taintless way is,

                From a chalice

Lucent-weeping out of the dayspring."

                So it was done:

I in their delicate fellowship was one--

Drew the bolt of Nature's secrecies.

            I knew all the swift importings

            On the wilful face of skies;

            I knew how the clouds arise

            Spuméd of the wild sea-snortings;

                All that's born or dies

            Rose and drooped with; made them shapers

Of mine own moods, or wailful or divine;

            With them joyed and was bereaven.

            I was heavy with the even,

            When she lit her glimmering tapers

            Round the day's dead sanctities.

            I laughed in the morning's eyes.

I triumphed and I saddened with all weather,

            Heaven and I wept together,

And its sweet tears were salt with mortal mine;

Against the red throb of its sunset-heart

            I laid my own to beat,

            And share commingling heat;

But not by that, by that, was eased my human smart.

In vain my tears were wet on Heaven's grey cheek.

For ah! we know not what each other says,

            These things and I; in sound I speak--

Their sound is but their stir, they speak by silences.

Nature, poor stepdame, cannot slake my drouth;

            Let her, if she would owe me,

Drop yon blue bosom-veil of sky, and show me

            The breasts o' her tenderness:

Never did any milk of hers once bless

                My thirsting mouth.

                Nigh and nigh draws the chase,

                With unperturbèd pace,

            Deliberate speed, majestic instancy;

                And past those noised Feet

                A voice comes yet more fleet--

            "Lo! naught contents thee, who content'st not Me."

Naked I wait Thy love's uplifted stroke!

My harness piece by piece Thou hast hewn from me,

                And smitten me to my knee;

            I am defenceless utterly.

            I slept, methinks, and woke,

And, slowly gazing, find me stripped in sleep.

In the rash lustihead of my young powers,

            I shook the pillaring hours

And pulled my life upon me; grimed with smears,

I stand amid the dust o' the mounded years--

My mangled youth lies dead beneath the heap.

My days have crackled and gone up in smoke,

Have puffed and burst as sun-starts on a stream.

            Yea, faileth now even dream

The dreamer, and the lute the lutanist.

Even the linked fantasies, in whose blossomy twist

I swung the earth a trinket at my wrist,

Are yielding; cords of all too weak account

For earth with heavy griefs so overplussed.

            Ah! is Thy love indeed

A weed, albeit an amaranthine weed,

Suffering no flowers except its own to mount?

            Ah! must--

            Designer infinite!--

Ah! must Thou char the wood ere Thou can'st limn with it?

My freshness spent its wavering shower i' the dust;

And now my heart is as a broken fount,

Wherein tear-drippings stagnate, spilt down ever

            From the dank thoughts that shiver

Upon the sighful branches of my mind.

            Such is; what is to be?

The pulp so bitter, how shall taste the rind?

I dimly guess what Time in mists confounds;

Yet ever and anon a trumpet sounds

From the hid battlements of Eternity;

Those shaken mists a space unsettle, then

Round the half-glimpséd turrets slowly wash again.

            But not ere him who summoneth

            I first have seen, enwound

With glooming robes purpureal, cypress-crowned;

His name I know, and what his trumpet saith.

Whether man's heart or life it be which yields

            Thee harvest, must Thy harvest-fields

            Be dunged with rotten death?

                Now of that long pursuit

                Comes on at hand the bruit;

            That Voice is round me like a bursting sea:

               "And is thy earth so marred,

                Shattered in shard on shard?

            Lo, all things fly thee, for thou fliest Me!

            Strange, piteous, futile thing!

Wherefore should any set thee love apart?

Seeing none but I makes much of naught" (He said),

"And human love needs human meriting:

            How hast thou merited--

Of all man's clotted clay the dingiest clot?

            Alack, thou knowest not

How little worthy of any love thou art!

Whom wilt thou find to love ignoble thee,

            Save Me, save only Me?

All which I took from thee I did but take,

            Not for thy harms,

But just that thou might'st seek it in My arms.

            All which thy child's mistake

Fancies as lost, I have stored for thee at home:

            Rise, clasp My hand, and come!"

    Halts by me that footfall:

    Is my gloom, after all,

Shade of His hand, outstretched caressingly?

    "Ah, fondest, blindest, weakest,

    I am He Whom thou seekest!

Thou dravest love from thee, who dravest Me."

Do you think he might have experienced the Hound of Heaven while he was in the cabin? I know you are less familiar with the mystical terms of Christianity than I am and wondered whether he was writing in an allegorical sense of the mystical sense of Christian experience. Might the Room precede in time the experience in the cabin, did one in fact describe his coming to Christianity and the other the deepening of the spiritual experience? I just ask and am only throwing ideas into the melting pot for further discussion. I feel we would probably manage better to discuss all this if were able to meet again face to face. I know and understand your reluctance to do that, I think. I too feel the temptation when we are together or am I misreading our situation? Perhaps I have said too much?