understand—then look again. This is to be the pattern for your women: this is the way they must dress; the way they must smell; but what are they doing? They are backing out of hotel rooms; this pretty doll has a blueprint clutched in her black-gloved hand; that one has dropped a dagger to the floor, neatly pinning a paper acknowledging whose black dress this is, whose black hat, whose black stockings, shoes and gloves give her That Secret Look.—That baby’s got a gat! Look, she’s stuffing the plans of the washing-machine wringer into her corsage. Last winter I knitted sea-boot socks until I was blind and let the maid finish them. I wore pins and insignia until it hurt. I was worn to a skeleton reading papers and I never wore a pin five minutes longer than it took to read the Extra that told me it wasn’t fashionable. This winter I won’t wrap another fumble. This winter I am going to be destructive.
God, it smells like Paris! The air is like champagne today.
“Recollections of a Lost Seascape” and “Time and Brother Griphen” (1942) were published in Town and Country, in July and November 1947, respectively. These stories became part of a novel that was subsequently lost, “Memoirs of a Mythomaniac,” which Gysin later described as a détourné autobiography; another chapter was published as the story “Ariadne of Naxos”—in the volume of early fiction, Stories (1984)—based on travels in Greece in the late 1930s, which he recycled long after in a section of his novel The Last Museum (1986), as seen later in this anthology. “Recollections of a Lost Seascape” draws upon his vacation at the elaborate home of an aristocratic friend from school, on the island of Guernsey; “Time and Brother Griphen” reflects the setting of the English public school he attended in the early 1930s, Downside.
Recollections of a Lost Seascape
The island of Herm lies like an enormous, half-submerged whale in the tides and currents of the English Channel. This island was bought by my grandfather toward the beginning of the century, and he lived there in self-imposed exile, a widower with five daughters. Herm does not belong to England but is considered by a curious legal anomaly to be a fief of the Duke of Normandy, who is only incidentally the King of England. The owner of the island is, therefore, a feudatory of the duke and owes him at least nominal allegiance. On Herm itself the owner is the highest legal authority, the dispenser of justice, and a despot who may strike coins or mint stamps if he wishes.
Grandfather had no subjects other than the members of his own family and the servants. He would have ruled them with a rod of iron even if he had not been granted plenipotentiary powers by feudal right. He rarely had any contact with foreigners except for the few fishermen to whom he granted fishing rights in his waters. Actually, Grandfather was in a sense a foreigner himself: that is, he was not English, though the Duke of Normandy, his liege lord, had no more loyal feudal retainer.
When the first great war of our time surprised people who, like the lord of Herm, were living in the past, there were those who whispered that Grandfather should no longer be allowed to retain his island. The gossip about him was common in Guernsey and in Jersey, but he was the last to hear the malicious tales which were invented. These people said that he was entertaining officers from the U-boats which were known to be in the Channel. In truth, my grandfather had more fear of the submarines than anyone.
He was continually on the lookout for them and he thought of little else. He was not afraid for his life or for his property, but for something which he considered to be infinitely more precious. He had five daughters who were all nubile to what he considered an awkward degree. He knew the dangers of that frangible state from certain observations of his own—made much earlier in life, of course—and the jealousy with which he guarded them from contact with the world was, indeed, the principal reason for living on Herm.
The girls were quite content with the life they led, for they knew no other. Their pleasures were simple and healthy. For exercise they took walks to collect flowers, and they were allowed to bathe in the sea. They splashed and shrieked in the water from eleven to twelve on sunny mornings, while Grandfather thought grimly of the submarines which might easily emerge in full view of the beach.
Each morning he scanned the sea from the top of a nearby cliff, and like a nervous passenger on a ship feeling its way through wartime waters, he imagined every stick and every floating bottle to be a periscope. He saw younger men than he pressing around the sighting apparatus, with wild desire shining in their eyes, as they saw the graceful images of his sea-nymph daughters in their blue serge bathing dresses trimmed with white braid and piping, their pretty flowing yellow hair hidden in caps like immense yellow water lilies and their pretty pink toes encased in black cotton stockings and rubber shoes with little rose pompons on the toes.
Grandfather accompanied them in an old green rubberized military stormcoat, worn over a bathing suit with short sleeves and pants which half-hid his cavalry legs, and a black bowler hat which he never took off—even when he entered the water. Neither did he remove his yellow wash gloves until he had finished his dip, for he felt that it was not fitting that a man in his position should come in contact with any fish other than a cooked one, with its knowing eye removed and the socket sprouting a green sprig from the herb garden.
His bowler was a matter of tender and respectful amusement among the young ladies, until finally one day my mother, who was by far the boldest, being the prettiest and therefore her father’s favorite, snatched it from his head and from the top of the cliff flung it out to sea. It caught the breeze and sailed many yards before it plunged down and hit the water, soon bobbing out of sight on the ebb tide. The girls pealed with laughter like a disagreeable set of chimes, and were confined to their rooms. The next day my grandfather again went to the seashore in his bowler. He had retrieved it from the rising tide, and he continued to wear it as long as he believed in sea bathing.
Though there were no other inhabitants on the island, and the menservants were my grandfather’s age, the thought of prying, lustful eyes continued to haunt the old man’s heart. The more he thought of the desires of young men confined in submarines, the more determined he became to stop the daily excursions to the shore, though he did not wish to deprive the girls of their pleasure. At that time it had become almost impossible to leave Herm, and even the short sea trip to Guernsey was dangerous. They were living off the produce of the garden and such fish as could be caught from a small boat a short distance offshore. He hesitated to deprive his naiads of their dip in the ocean, and yet the possibility that a U-boat might appear, a U-boat such as the one undoubtedly in the neighborhood which had recently sunk a fisherboat, made him tremble with rage. His military experience as a youth had acquainted him with the behavior of licentious soldiers in garrison towns and of libidinous seamen in port, and he was certain that these new undersea sailors would be the worst of the lot. He forbade his daughters the shore.
For a while they moped, and then the eyes of five young ladies, deprived of all outlet for their animal energy, confined to croquet on the lawn and the few Graustarkian novels around the house, grew dreamy as they trailed around in vaporous silences, and started abruptly when spoken to in a loud voice for the second time. My grandfather guessed that the young ladies in confinement were allowing their thoughts to dwell too closely on their own nubility, and that the swelling buds of late spring were shaping their thoughts in a romantic way.
He gave orders, and soon there was a great bustling around the house and the home farm, where the wheels of old carts were gathered together and timbers cut and nailed. When the young ladies learned that their father was going to build bathing machines on wheels their joy knew no bounds and they went every day to see how the work progressed. At last the bathing huts were ready. There were six bathing machines in all, one for each girl and one for their governess. Grandfather told them that they might dip in the sea when the huts were drawn down to the beach, but that they must not swim even a few strokes
