Hilda Doolittle - Asphodel

Hermione had stayed with George in Katherine’s studio and it seemed perhaps the most beautiful of many, many beautiful studios, of many lovely afternoons that turned at a breath to evening and then turned (like Danaë in her sleep) to night. Mist and night and dawn took on significance. They held here personality, were people. Four o’clock was a person who entered somewhat briskly, five o’clock was announced in a hushed ambassadorial whisper. Six, seven and eight. Nine, ten and eleven. Was it the way clocks struck, muffled under mist like bells beneath sea water? The castle under the sea that Walter played to them in Clichy here took form, was something. People came and went but the people had less personality than hours, than things. Was it all haunted, here under the sea? England. Had anyone ever, could anyone ever have loved as she did?

“People come like hours and hours transform themselves to people.” “Which hours? Which people?” “Well that frump on the New Era for example it seems to me must be three o’clock. A lost hour, an hour that’s somehow lost, hasn’t a lover.” “Yes. Three o’clock is somewhat that.” “I think of Mary Dalton as somehow always just about eleven. Something hectic before mid-night. An illicit extra cock-tail (but that’s not the time for cock-tails). What do I mean? I don’t associate her with wine but she sets me shaking as if I had been upset, as if someone had offered me a crème-de-menthe instead of early morning tea.” “Rather neat that.” “Katherine Farr here with her solid novels and her income and her kindness seems some inevitable but somehow rather stern hour. Which is it? Is it nine and all the day before one at a hard desk?” “Poor Katherine.” “You could make her, do, into something odd, a little quaint. She might be sometimes the hours moles crawl (she seems like a mole with eyes) out thinking it is night but finding dawn. Just as dawn breaks yet hadn’t the courage of its flowering.” “Katherine on the whole is the best fellow of the damn lot.” “I didn’t say she wasn’t. Perhaps that’s just it. I want her to like me. I feel somehow she doesn’t.” “But she goes out of her way. Asked you to stay this time.” “Yes, isn’t that a little guilty complex? She doesn’t really like me. She looks at me and thinks why don’t I like the little American Her Gart? She looks and wonders. She sees I’m not very old nor very horrible. She can’t say I’m actually a viper. She wants some excuse for her slight bewilderment. I’m apparently a nice girl and I’m living alone in Portman Square and it sounds a bit fishy about my expecting (perhaps) my mother soon to join me. She thinks I’m nice and I don’t do things nice girls do. This for instance.” “Katherine doesn’t know you do this.” “Yes, she does. Everybody does. Somehow everything one does here is everybody’s property. I know and feel she must know. Why did she ask me to stay on here with you?” “Perhaps I asked her to.” “Does that alter it? Would a nice girl do it?” “Well we were — I mean — we—” “We were engaged. Whats that got to do with it? Its just the one reason according to ordinary standards I shouldn’t do this.” Famished and forgetting she lifted hyacinths to George’s kisses.

Drugged and drunk she said she had forgotten. Drugged with the hybiscus colour, with the odd tremors that the clock made striking, striking. Clocks were always striking and the colour of the mist was different. She was sure that each vibration of each clock sent shivers, tremors through the mist. Little paths of light. The bells of Saint Clement’s. Lemons. Not lemon light, silver rather, those high bell notes. Notes, bells. . who is it in me, what is it in me, hears bells, notes? Morse code. . Gart formula. . Walter could you tell me? Bells made forms, notes, pictures were notes and bells made pictures, Walter said, so that he could play when she made a picture (he said) with the two candles against the grey-grey of the Clichy studio walls. . suppressed, something suppressed that sees the very ring and quiver of the clock notes make strange pattern. O I am so happy. George. . and people came in after supper and the candles make exquisite daffodils in the great brown studio. One had even understood Katherine Farr in that light. Katherine. Maybe someone, someone somewhere called her Katy when she was little. Katy did Katy didn’t. She was rather like a Katy did, small and compact, some little busy insect, chirping, scraping music out of its legs, not bird music, not frog music even, but music of a sort (everybody’s music of a sort) understanding other people. Yes, Katherine did understand, was not surprised when she had come back, found Her crouched low before the fire. Nothing mattered. Her had done nothing to matter. After all, George’s hybiscus red did make a warm coal glow somewhere in her heart. She had a heart. A red heart. Someone, everyone (who was it?) said she wasn’t like Undine as she had no heart. Who said that? Darrington. But Darrington didn’t matter. It was a pity about Darrington as she liked the Greek books. Darrington who helped her poetry. But what was poetry? George was right, had long ago, been right. You are a poem though your poem’s naught . Why should she have questioned. Striven. George would write for them both. No. She wasn’t any more engaged. Was she? Wasn’t she? Did it really matter? It was something George gave her here in London. The silver of the mist tempered the heat of Georgio. She didn’t any more care though of course she couldn’t marry him. “But you can’t of course marry him.” No, of course, she couldn’t. Ringing, ringing downstairs. She supposed she’d have to put on the lights, tidy her hair, too late to change. But that didn’t matter. People were polite, didn’t stare. People were all right. Even old Mrs. Towers since Lady Prescott (Delia) came to see her. Delia said the place was funny, frightfully “army.” What did “army” mean or “army” matter? Delia said this was and laughed to people in chairs all about, in tiny islands. Bridge. People being discreet. Lady Prescott.

Nothing mattered, could matter. Light made the room a little common but did that matter (had she been asleep?) a knock and hot water. How funny hot water and no proper running water in the bath room. Baths but real baths not casual rushing in to wash your hands. Water in little pots with a clean towel to keep it warm. A clean towel and all as carefully set and timed as the morning tea-pot with its little fitted muffler. Hot water. Hot tea. All arranged and out of a book and somehow weird and somehow oddly civilized. Little things mattered, not the great things. Things that wracked and tore you were forgotten. Really great emotions were these things, clocks that struck and struck and left a trail of silver. A star on the sea left such a trail of silver. Star. Astraea. But she couldn’t marry . You couldn’t of course marry him. No. Of course not. Hybiscus red and. . famished hyacinths.

A volcanic rock shrivelled, opened, cracked, fell and hyacinths were about her, shrivelled, withered as the flowers dropped by Persephone. Riven hyacinths. She hadn’t asked any great thing, just to be let alone. Perhaps that was the great thing. She hadn’t asked nor walked into a volcano head on, seeing it, just for the sake of the sensation. She had been so happy. She thought she had never been so happy. Candles and Katherine Farr being kind. People and faces and all blurred and nobody being a sharp sword or an angel’s sword or any of those steely terrible, beautiful embodied images of stark pain. Pain had vanished. There was no pain. Pain had departed suddenly, had driven herself before it out of Hell. She had risen from Hell as Persephone from the underworld. She had crossed Styx. This was something unlawful. Terrible. This thing that burned in her hand— “the second bell’s been ringing some time miss.” “I’ll be late. I’ll be coming later,” the letter slipped under her door, the letter that had been slipped under her door. Who had slipped this under her door? “Shall I come in and turn the bed down now or later?” Now or later? Now or later? Something had to be done sometime, now or later. “O now.” Yes, now. She would see, Fayne would see, they would all see how she’d act about it. If she could stand up now and re-read the letter her whole life would be different. If she could re-read the letter she would be able to smile, to say yes, no. To say, no. To say, yes. Don’t marry him. Who had said that? Who had ranted (it was that simply) about marriage, talked about biologic necessities? And being beyond that. Who had done it? It was Fayne Rabb simply. It was Fayne who had said one couldn’t possibly marry. O that . What had she meant? What had she said? Why had she said it? “Did you find that extra bodice miss you was wanting?” “O yes. Yes thank you.” She had said yes, thank you. She had lifted her head up casually from the vivid letter and she had said yes thank you. “Who put the letter under the door?” “I suppose it was James, miss.” James, who was James? “O yes.” Yes, she had given James a shilling just the other day. He would see about the letters. . She had stood out against them, stood out against Eugenia. She had broken with them, given up her summer in the marshes. But she didn’t want the marshes, the canoe sliding like a serpent to her bidding. She didn’t want fire-weed spilling its flower petals. She hadn’t wanted all that. She had had the silver mist, the annihilating beauty. She had felt the peace of nothingness and she supposed she must now pay. The woman pays. She had paid. She was paying. O Darrington, where are you? I sent you away. You were the one person who could understand this. “Yes, tell them I’m coming in a minute.” Darrington would understand this. He had given her books and said her poems were something. You are a poem though your poem’s naught . He hadn’t said that. O yes. Now she saw it. She wasn’t meant to slack and slouch with pretty candles and odd dresses and being nobody, being George Lowndes or was it Darrington? Someone, something wanted her to write. For writing and life were not diametric opposites. “Things like this don’t happen in real life.” That’s what people said when they read novels. But they did, did happen. Things like this did happen. “Listen little idiot, when you get this I’ll be married. An Englishman, a person, not one of your little poetasters. I’ll write you when we get to London. .”