“She is a real renaissance mistress.” Then the sirens blew for an air raid warning,
bringing me back to monstrous cramps and headache.
Can you explain this apparition? Is it a pure elemental? A form from naid or
dryad realms? Am I alone in encountering such phenomena ? I feel exhausted
and confused by experiences like these but I know I must persist.
My growing sense of isolation is compounded by my social situation. As a
Scholarship boy from a Cardiff grammar school I find it hard to fit into this
genial squirearchy of rugby players and would-be lawyers, whose rituals
revolve around sconces of beer and Bump Suppers. The few apologists for the
Left have a totally sentimental notion of ‘working-class life’ in industrial areas.
I have refused to be their mascot. My tutors change constantly.
I am anxious to serve my country but I’m told my medical history (TB and a
childhood head injury that sometimes affects my vision) may well have
grounded my dreams of flying; although I expect call-up papers at any time. In
the meantime, it seems more important to raise one’s whole Being to the Gods
than to tinker away with essays about the Scottish Chaucerians or the influence
of Trollope.
Your Brazen Head society sounds most attractive and it would be a great
privilege to attend the next meeting. I could volunteer a paper on the
Enochian Magic of Dr. John Dee, but feel I am indeed ready to go beyond academic
research into collective working of rites. I think you would find me an
eager pupil.
Yours most sincerely in the fellowship of The Gods,
Richard Firestone.
(There are gaps, lacunae, broken spaces, and now the God of the Gaps is
laughing at me, and I forget how many letters there were at this stage. I have a
confused vision of a huge alcoved reception room, black walls, indigo recesses,
old women in ratty furs natter coldly, a spider crawls down the chandelier, but
it’s going too fast, I can’t get it down, I keep missing it, have to go on, on, into
the summer of ’43 . . . )
