Now please tell me, how does your work go? I have most egoistically - and at your generous urging - elaborated on my Ragnarôk and on my Déjà-Vu- but of the Melusina- despite some suggestion that you might not be averse to writing of her - nothing. And yet she it was who caused this correspondence to be opened. I remember, I think, every small word of our one conversation -I rememberyourface - turned aside a little - but decisive -I remember your speaking with such feeling - of the Life of Language- do you rememberthat phrase? I began so ordinary-polite - you said - you hoped to write a long poem on the subject of Melusina - and your eye partly defied me to find fault with this project - as though I could or would - andI asked - was the poem to be in Spenserian stanzas or blank verse or in some othermetre - andsuddenly you spoke - of the power ofverse and the Life of the Language - and quite forgot to look shy or apologetic, but looked, forgive me, magnificent - it is a moment I shall not easilyforget while this machine is to me -
Now -I hope you will write to say that you and of courseMiss Glover - are well-recovered, and able to bear the light of this bright Spring again. I do not so much hope to hear that you are venturing forth to more lectures on the Marvellous - for I am not convinced of their beneficence - but if Quakers and table-turners may have sight of you - maybe one day I may hope - for another discussionof rhyme - if not for the sliced green planisphere -
Dear Mr Ash,
I write to you from an unhappy House - and must be brief-for I have an Invalid dependent upon me - my poor Blanche - quite racked with hideous headaches - and nausea - quite prostrated-and unable to pursue the work which is her life. She is engaged on a large painting of Merlin and Vivien - at the moment of the latter's triumph when she sings the Charm which puts him in her power, to sleep through time. We are very hopeful of this work - 'tis all veiled suggestion and local intensity- but she is too ill and cannot go on. I am not in much better case myself- - but I make tisanes, which I find efficacious - and wet handkerchiefs - and do what I may.
The other members of the household - the servant Jane, my little Dog Tray and Monsignor Dorato the canary, are of no help. Jane is a clumsy nurse - though diligent - and Dog Tray trundles to and fro looking - not commiserating - but reproachful that we do not accompany him to the park, or hurl interesting sticks for him -
So this letter will not be long.
It does me so much Good - that you should write to me of the Melusina- quite as though she were a decided thing - only waiting the accomplishment. I will tell you how the project began - quite back in the mists of time - when I was a child at my dearfather's knee - and he was compiling his Mythologie Française- of which great task I had only an inkling and a wild surmise - I did not know what it might be, his magnum opus as he jokingly said - but I did know, that I had a Papa who told better Talesthan any other Papa - or Mama - or nursemaid - that couldpossibly be imagined. Now, he was in the habit of talking to me some of the time - when his tale-telling ^fr was upon him - as though he were the Ancient Mariner (a much-loved early acquaintance of Mine, through Him) himself- - But some of the time he would talk as though I were a fellow-worker in the field, afellow-scholar, erudite and speculative - and he would talk in three orfour langauges - for he thought in French - and English - and Latin - and of course in Breton. (He did not like to think in German for reasons I shall make clear, though he could and did when occasion arose.)
He told me the tale ofMélusine - often and often - -for the reason, he said, that the very existence of a truly French mythology was dubious - but that if such a thing might be found - the Fairy Mélusine was indisputably one of its eminences and bright stars - My dear father had hoped to do for the French what the Brothers Grimm didfor the German people - recount the true pre-history of the race through the witness of folktale and legend - discover our oldest thoughts as Baron Cuvier spliced together the Mega therium from afew indicative bones and hypothetic ligatures - and his own Wit and powers of Inference. But whereas Germany and Scandinavia have those rich myths and legends from which you drew your Ragnarôk- we French have a few local demons and a few rational tales of trickery in villages - and the Matter of Bretagne, which is also the matter of Britain - and the Druids, of whom my dear Parent made much - and the menhirs and the Dolmens - but no dwarvesand elves - as even the English have - We have the Dames Blanches- the Fate Bianche-I translate - whiteladies - amongst whom my father said Melusina might be numbered, in some of her aspects - for she appears - to warn of Death -
I wish you might have known my father. His conversation would have delighted you. There was nothing he did not know - in his chosenfield - and nothing he knew that was to him Dead Knowledge - but all alive and brilliant and full of importfor our lives - He had always so sad a face - thin and lined and always pale. I thought he was sad for the lack of French mythology - piecing together what he said - but he was sad, I think, to be exiled - and to have no native home - he whose paramount preoccupation - was just the Lares and Penates of the home Hearth.
My sister Sophie took no interest in these matters. She liked things women like - pretty things - she was no reader- it irked her, that we lived secluded - as it irked my mother - who had supposed that a Frenchman was always a galant- a Man of the World - or so I believe she supposed - -for they were ill-matched. My pen runs away with me -I have had little sleep these last three nights - you will think my thoughts are all over the place - how can I be supposing you want my life-history in place of my Melusinaepic? Yet they are so intertwined- and I trust you -
He wore - at first simply for reading - and then always - little round steel-rimmedglasses. I think of these Cold Circles - as the most friendly, the most comfortable and comforting appearance possible - his eyes behind them were underwater Eyes - sad and large and full of veiled friendliness. I wished to become his Amanuensis - and to this endpersuaded him to teach me Greek and Latin, French and Breton, also German - which he did willingly - not to that end - but because he was proud of the speed and economy with which I learned -
Enough of my Papa. I have sadly missed him lately -I think because I have been putting off my epic - and for Reasons -
Yr citation from Paracelsus was of course familiar to me. And with your usual quickness you have seen that I am interested in other visions of the fairy Mélusine - who has two aspects - an Unnatural Monster - and a most proud and loving and handy woman. Now there is an odd word - but no other seems to suffice - all she touched was well done - her palaces squarely built and the stones set on rightly, her fields full of wholesome corn - according to one legend my father discovered she even brought Beans to Poitou - the true haricots - which shows she lived on into the seventeenth century - -for Beans he proves, were not grown beforethat date. Think you not - she was not only Ghoul - but a kind of goddess of Foison - a French Ceres, it might be, or turning to your own mythology, the LadyHolda - or Freya of the Spring - or Iduna of the Golden Apples -?
Her Progeny it is true all had something of the monstrous about them. Not only Geoffroy à la Grande Dent - or Boar's Tusk - but others who became kings in Cyprus and Armenia - had ears like jug-handles - or uneven eyes -
And the Infant Horrible, with three Eyes, whose death she urgently required at Raimondin's hand, at the moment of her metamorphosis - what are we to make of him?