Dedicatory Epilogue
to
Laura Riding
I have used your _World’s End_ as an introductory motto, but you
will be glad to find no reference at all to yourself in the body of
this book. I have not mentioned the _Survey of Modernist Poetry_ and
the _Pamphlet against Anthologies_ as works of collaboration between
you and me, though these books appear in publishers’ catalogues and
obviously put much of my own previous critical writing out of account.
And though I have mentioned printing, I have not given details of
it, or even said that it was with you, printing and publishing in
partnership as The Seizin Press. Because of you the last chapters have
a ghostly look.
The reason of all this is, of course, that by mentioning you as a
character in my autobiography I would seem to be denying you in your
true quality of one living invisibly, against kind, as dead, beyond
event. And yet the silence is false if it makes the book seem to have
been written forward from where I was instead of backward from where
you are. If the direction of the book were forward I should still be
inside the body of it, arguing morals, literature, politics, suffering
violent physical experiences, falling in and out of love, making and
losing friends, enduring blindly in time; instead of here outside,
writing this letter to you, as one also living against kind—indeed,
rather against myself.
You know the autobiography of that Lord Herbert of Cherbury whose son
founded the Royal Welch Fusiliers; how he was educated as a gentleman,
studied at Oxford, married young, travelled, played games, fought in
Northern France and wrote books; until at last his active life
ended with a sudden clap of thunder from the blue sky which did ‘so
comfort and cheer’ him that he resolved at last, at this sign, to print
his book _De Veritate_, concerning truth. If you were to appear in my
_De Veritate_ it could only be as ‘this loud though yet gentle noise
... one fair day in the summer, my casement being opened towards the
south, the sun shining clear, and no wind stirring.’
For could the story of your coming be told between an Islip Parish
Council Meeting and a conference of the professors of the Faculty
of Letters at Cairo University? How she and I happening by seeming
accident upon your teasing _Quids_, were drawn to write to you, who
were in America, asking you to come to us. How, though you knew no
more of us than we of you, and indeed less (for you knew me at a
disadvantage, by my poems of the war), you forthwith came. And how
there was thereupon a unity to which you and I pledged our faith and
she her pleasure. How we went together to the land where the dead
parade the streets and there met with demons and returned with the
demons still treading behind. And how they drove us up and down the
land.
That was the beginning of the end, and the end and after is yours.
Yet I must relieve your parable of all anecdote of mine. I must tell,
for instance, that in its extreme course in April last I re-lived
the changes of many past years. That when I must suddenly hurry off
to Ireland I found myself on the very boat, from Fishguard, that had
been my hospital-boat twelve years before. That at Limerick I met Old
Ireland herself sitting black-shawled and mourning on the station
bench and telling of the Fall. And so to the beautiful city of Sligo
celebrated in song by my father. And the next train back, this time
by the Wales of the Royal Welch Fusiliers. And the next day to Rouen
with you and her, to recollect the hill-top where you seemed to die as
the one on which I had seemed to die thirteen years before. And then
immediately back. And then, later in the same month, my sudden journey
to Hilton in Huntingdon, to a farm with memories of her as I first knew
her, to burst in upon—as it happened—David Garnett (whom I had never
met before), gulping his vintage port and scandalizing him with my
soldier’s oaths as I denied him a speaking part in your parable.
After which.
After which, anecdotes of yours, travesties of the parable and so
precious to me as vulgar glosses on it. How on April 27th, 1929 it was
a fourth-storey window and a stone area and you were dying. And how it
was a joke between Harold the stretcher-bearer and myself that you did
not die, but survived your dying, lucid interval.
After which.
After which, may I recall, since you would not care to do so yourself,
with what professional appreciation (on May 16th) Mr. Lake is reported
to have observed to those that stood by him in the operating theatre:
‘It is rarely that one sees the spinal-cord exposed to view—especially
at right-angles to itself.’
After which.
After which, let me also recall on my own account my story _The Shout_,
which, though written two years ago, belongs here; blind and slow like
all prophecies—it has left you out entirely. And, because you are left
out, it is an anecdote of mine.
After which.
After which, even anecdotes fail. No more anecdotes. And, of course,
no more politics, religion, conversations, literature, arguments,
dances, drunks, time, crowds, games, fun, unhappiness. I no longer
repeat to myself: ‘He who shall endure to the end, shall be saved.’ It
is enough now to say that I have endured. My lung, still barometric of
foul weather, speaks of endurance, as your spine, barometric of fair
weather, speaks of salvation.
[1] ‘Why,’ said the cobbler, ‘what should I do? Will you have me to
go in the King’s wars and to be killed for my labour?’ ‘What, knave,’
said Skelton, ‘art thou a coward, having so great bones?’ ‘No,’
said the cobbler, ‘I am not afeared: it is good to sleep in a whole
skin.’—Merry Tales of Skelton (_Early sixteenth century_).
[2] I do not know what happened to Miller. This was written in the
summer of 1916.
[3] Jenkins was killed not long after.
[4] The quartermaster excepted.
[5] The gas-cylinders had by this time been put into position on the
front line. A special order came round imposing severe penalties on
anyone who used any word but ‘accessory’ in speaking of the gas. This
was to keep it secret, but the French civilians knew all about it long
before this.
[6] Major Swainson recovered quickly and was back at the Middlesex
Depot after a few weeks. On the other hand, Lawrie, a Royal Welch
company quartermaster-sergeant back at Cambrin, was hit in the neck
that day by a spent machine-gun bullet which just pierced the skin, and
died of shock a few hours later.
[7] He was recommended for a Victoria Cross but got nothing because no
officer evidence, which is a condition of award, was available.
[8] I cannot explain the discrepancy between his dating of my death and
that of the published casualty list.