from them. (The ghost of a story in which I was the ghost of a character had a different ending. Rod Craig was set upon and killed by the dark-skinned persons after he had committed the sacrilege of stepping across the outermost threshold of the goddess’s apartments. I was allowed to stay on among the goddess-worshippers after I had given them to understand that I wanted no more than to be able to learn at some future time the ground-plan of the goddess’s building and, perhaps, to erect a modest but not uncomplicated dwelling of my own within walking-distance of her abode.)
When I thought of Huldah as being of marriageable age, I had no way of knowing how much she might have learned about myself-the-ghostly-minor-character who loitered sometimes around the grounds or along the corridors of Kinie Ger. And even when I was able to suppose that she had learned something at least about me, how was I to know whether she felt towards me contempt or indifference or even such a warm interest that I ought to expect before too long some sort of message from her locked room?
When I thought of Huldah as being past marriageable age, which is to say when I thought as a child that Huldah might be forty or older, she was of no less interest to me than the young, marriageable Huldah.
In 1955, only a few years after I had first read about Huldah, I read in one of my secondary-school textbooks the poem “The Scholar Gipsy,” by Matthew Arnold. When I state that I have never since forgotten the poem, I mean, of course, not that I can recall whole lines or stanzas, much less the entire poem, but that I can see in my mind clearly today much of what I saw in my mind when I used to read the poem as a schoolboy and that I can feel today much of what I felt then. The scholar who had to give up his studies at Oxford on account of his poverty and who lived thereafter with gipsies on lonely back-roads or in remote woodlands—or, I should rather write, the imprecise images in my mind of a nameless, faceless figure skulking in the background of a few other images in my mind of a few landscapes of England, a country I have never seen, affect me still today somewhat as the original account of the lad from Oxford seemingly affected Matthew Arnold so that he came to write the poem. Even during the years when I was driven to give every free hour to the latest of my writing projects, I would sometimes be overtaken by a strong intimation that the true work of my life still awaited me: that I had still not discovered the precious enterprise that would occupy me wholly for the remainder of my life in some or another quiet room behind drawn blinds. During my teenage years, however, and during the many later years before any of my writing was published, the equivalent for me of the scholar’s research among the gipsies was always the latest of the poems or the pieces of fiction that I was trying to write. Even as a child in the years when I read such fiction as The Glass Spear , I mostly saw myself-the-adult as a reader or a writer in a house of two storeys overlooking rural landscapes, although I recall a period when I had a rather different vision of my future.
I had been interested in horse-racing from my early childhood, although I had learned early to conceal much of my interest, given that my father’s gambling had caused much hardship in our family. I read each week the copy of the Sporting Globe that my father had discarded but I read it out of sight of my parents. I began to notice in the Globe , as it was commonly called, advertisements for racing systems, as they were called. Each advertiser published the names and the odds of the winning horses selected on the previous Saturday by his system, which was for sale at no small price. In time, I began to envisage the advantages that I might enjoy if I myself were able to select every week several winners at generous odds. I was not interested in buying the sort of goods that many a person might have
When I thought of Huldah as being of marriageable age, I had no way of knowing how much she might have learned about myself-the-ghostly-minor-character who loitered sometimes around the grounds or along the corridors of Kinie Ger. And even when I was able to suppose that she had learned something at least about me, how was I to know whether she felt towards me contempt or indifference or even such a warm interest that I ought to expect before too long some sort of message from her locked room?
When I thought of Huldah as being past marriageable age, which is to say when I thought as a child that Huldah might be forty or older, she was of no less interest to me than the young, marriageable Huldah.
In 1955, only a few years after I had first read about Huldah, I read in one of my secondary-school textbooks the poem “The Scholar Gipsy,” by Matthew Arnold. When I state that I have never since forgotten the poem, I mean, of course, not that I can recall whole lines or stanzas, much less the entire poem, but that I can see in my mind clearly today much of what I saw in my mind when I used to read the poem as a schoolboy and that I can feel today much of what I felt then. The scholar who had to give up his studies at Oxford on account of his poverty and who lived thereafter with gipsies on lonely back-roads or in remote woodlands—or, I should rather write, the imprecise images in my mind of a nameless, faceless figure skulking in the background of a few other images in my mind of a few landscapes of England, a country I have never seen, affect me still today somewhat as the original account of the lad from Oxford seemingly affected Matthew Arnold so that he came to write the poem. Even during the years when I was driven to give every free hour to the latest of my writing projects, I would sometimes be overtaken by a strong intimation that the true work of my life still awaited me: that I had still not discovered the precious enterprise that would occupy me wholly for the remainder of my life in some or another quiet room behind drawn blinds. During my teenage years, however, and during the many later years before any of my writing was published, the equivalent for me of the scholar’s research among the gipsies was always the latest of the poems or the pieces of fiction that I was trying to write. Even as a child in the years when I read such fiction as The Glass Spear , I mostly saw myself-the-adult as a reader or a writer in a house of two storeys overlooking rural landscapes, although I recall a period when I had a rather different vision of my future.
I had been interested in horse-racing from my early childhood, although I had learned early to conceal much of my interest, given that my father’s gambling had caused much hardship in our family. I read each week the copy of the Sporting Globe that my father had discarded but I read it out of sight of my parents. I began to notice in the Globe , as it was commonly called, advertisements for racing systems, as they were called. Each advertiser published the names and the odds of the winning horses selected on the previous Saturday by his system, which was for sale at no small price. In time, I began to envisage the advantages that I might enjoy if I myself were able to select every week several winners at generous odds. I was not interested in buying the sort of goods that many a person might have
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