My father said, "Since we have neither child nor shirt, this divination is not much use." She made no little shirts, during those months, only pretty pen-cases and my scissor-case, and the mending of sheets. She stays in her room mostly. Gode says she is not fevered, nor in decline, but very weak.
Last night I had a nightmare. We were by the side of a great pool, very black, with a surface like jet, lumpy, with a sheen on it. We were surrounded by hollies, a thick hedge of them-when I was a girl, we used to pick the leaves, and prick our fingers ever so slightly from thorn to thorn, moving around the circumference, "II m'aime, il ne m'aime pas." I taught this to Christabel, who said holly was better for this game of chance, which in England is played with the petals of daisies, which they tear off, one by one. In my dream I was afraid of the holly. I feared it as one automatically fears snakebite, if something rustles in the undergrowth.
In my dream we were several women by the edge of the water-as in many dreams it was not possible to see how many-I was aware of some behind my shoulders crowding me. Gode was launching a small parcel-at one point this was all swaddled and wrapped, like pictures of the hiding of Moses among the bulrushes. At another point it was a stiff little nightshirt, all pleated, which sailed out into the centre of the pool-there were no ripples-and then raised its empty arms and struggled with the air, and tried to heave itself out of the thick water, which swallowed it very slowly, more like mud or jelly than water, more like liquid stone, and all the time the thing twisted and waved its-so to speak-hands, for it clearly had no hands.
It is clear enough what all this is about. But the vision changes my sense of the shape of events. When I ask myself, now, what became of the child, I see the black obsidian pool, and the lively white shirt going down.
MAY IOTH
A letter came today for my father from M. Michelet, and enclosed in it one for Christabel. She took it composedly enough, as though she had been expecting it, and then when she saw it properly, caught her breath and put it aside, unopened. My Father says M. Michelet writes that it is sent by a friend, upon a hope rather than a certainty that Miss LaMotte might be with us. He asks us to return it to him, if she is not here, and it goes undelivered. All day she did not open it. I do not know when or if she did.
Note to Maud Bailey from Ariane Le Minier.
Dear Professor Bailey,
Here the journal ends, and the notebook almost ends. It is possible that Sabine de K. took it up in another book; if so, it has not yet been found.
I made up my mind not to tell you much of its content, as I wished you, perhaps a little childishly, to have the narrative shock and pleasure that I had from discovering it. When I return from the Cévennes we must compare notes, youand I and Professor Stern.
I was certainly under the impression that students of LaMotte believe her to have lived a secluded life, in a happy lesbian relationship with Blanche Glover. Do youknow of any lover or possible lover who might have been the father of this child? The question imposes itself - was thesuicideof Blanche connected to the history related in this text? Perhaps you can enlighten me?
I should also tell you that I have made efforts of my own todiscover whether the child survived. The convent of St Anne was the obvious place to look, and I have been there and have convinced myself that there is no trace ofLaMotte in their somewhat scanty records. (Much was cleared out under a zealous Mother Superior in the 1920s who believed dusty papers were an unnecessary waste ofspace and nothing to dowith the timeless mission of the sisterhood.)
I still suspect the Curé, if only because there is no one else, and Icannot quite believe the child was born and murdered in a barn. I imagine it may well not have survived, however.
I enclose a few English poems and parts of poems I found among Sabine's t hings. I have no access to any specimen of LaMotte's handwriting, but I t hink they may be hers, and confirm the view that all was not well?
Sabine 's story after these events is part happy, part sad. She published the t hree novels I wrote of, of which La Deuxième Dahud is much the most i nteresting, and depicts a heroine of powerful will andpassions, an imperious m esmeric presence, and a scorn of the conventional female virtues. She is d rowned in a boating accident, after having destroyed the peace of two h ouseholds, and whilst pregnant with a child whose father may be her meek h usband or herByronic lover, who drowns with her. The strength of the novel i s its use of Breton mythology to deepen its themes and construct its imaginary o rder.
She married in 1863, after a prolonged battle with herfather to be allowed t o meet possible partis. The M. de Kergarouet she married was a dull and m elancholic person, considerably older than she was, who became obsessively d evoted to her, and died of grief, it was said, a year after she died in her third c hild-bed. She bore two daughters, neither of whom survived into adolescence.
I hope all this has been of interest to you, and that we may compare our findings at leisure at some later date.
May I say finally, as I hoped to be able to say during our brief meeting, h ow much I admire your work on liminality. I think from that point of view t oo, you will find poor Sabine's journal interesting. La Bretagne is full of t he mythology of crossing-places and thresholds, as she says.
Mes amitiés
Ariane Le Minier
A page of scraps of poems. Sent by Ariane Le Minier to Maud Bailey.
Our Lady-bearing-Pain
She bore what the Cross bears
She bears and bears again-
As the Stone-bears-its scars
The Hammer broke her out
Of rough Rock's ancient-Sleep-
And chiselled her about
With stars that weep-that weep-
The Pain inscribed in Rock-
The Pain he bears-she Bore
She hears the Poor Frame Crack-
And knows-He'll-come-no More-
It came all so still
The little Thing-
And would not stay-
Our Questioning-
A heavy Breath
One two and three-
And then the lapsed
Eternity-
A Lapis Flesh
The Crimson-Gone
It came as still
As any Stone-
My subject is Spilt Milk.
A white Disfigurement
A quiet creeping Sleek