E-text prepared by MWS
and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team
([http://www.pgdp.net])
from page images generously made available by
Internet Archive
([https://archive.org])

THE FEATHER BED
BY ROBERT GRAVES

With a cover design by WILLIAM NICHOLSON

PRINTED AND PUBLISHED BY
LEONARD & VIRGINIA WOOLF
AT THE HOGARTH PRESS
HOGARTH HOUSE RICHMOND
1923

INTRODUCTORY LETTER

INTRODUCTORY LETTER
TO
JOHN RANSOME, THE AMERICAN POET.

My dear Ransome,

Will you accept the dedication of this poem which seems naturally yours? It was more than a year writing without losing much of the excitement of the original scheme, but when on the cooling of inspiration constructional flaws appeared, these proved to be beyond help of riveting and surface tinkering, so the edition is small and very few review copies will go out. Still the poem is a necessary signpost to those friends of mine who have found the change between the two halves of my recent collection of lyrics, Whipperginny, inexplicably abrupt: and though dissatisfied I am not ashamed. It would be as well, from other considerations altogether, not to let the honest burghers of Nashville, Tenn., already scandalized by your Poems about God, see a copy of the Feather-bed: but if this should happen and they demand an explanation, tell them that I have no anticonstitutional intentions. Explain that it is a study of a fatigued mind in a fatigued body and under the stress of an abnormal conflict, that they can read it, if they will, as a cautionary tale after the style of John Bunyan’s unregenerate Mr Badman, only that Badman was unregenerate (wasn’t he?) to the last, while I leave my young man in the throes of nightmare. Assure them that neither does the author nor in a more normal mood would the hero of the poem himself imagine convent life to be what it here seems to be; but that the staggering rebuff to the young man’s typical bullying attitude in love leads him to invent this monstrous libel in compensation; which libel is merely flattery to his own wounded pride.

The psychological interest of the piece for me, now I have finished, is in the way that the logical argument broken by circlings of associative thought, all however relevant to the emotional disturbance, is continually being caught up again with an effort by the drowsy intellect. When at last the sour grapes idea, with its accompanying fantastics, has determined a reasonable and apparently final decision of rupture both with the girl herself and with the traditional religion she represents, the effort relaxes and the mind is overborne in sleep by nightmares, its revolutionary enthusiasm flattened by the reaction of tradition. The Morning Star theme is an interpolation by the outside Orator to stabilize the drama which without some such solution comes dangerously near a manifesto of atheism.

When you visit us in England I want to talk to you about Lucifer and explain how I had been reading the Old and New Testaments while writing this poem. Briefly in this way, as a record of the progressive understanding of God throughout the ages by a single representative race, the Jews. God is presented in three degrees at least. There is God the creator of the race of man, but of man still animal of the animals, whose daughters the sons of Adam found fair; let us call that God, Saturn. Then there is Jehovah or Jove, Saturn’s successor: the Garden of Eden is the perfect symbolic expression of the birth of Jehovah. It is more than a fable of the dawn of sex consciousness, it dramatizes man’s recognition of the end of a long biological phase, and the birth pangs of the new experimental period called civilization. The old heritage of self-seeking instinct, in conflict with a new principle of social order found necessary for the further survival of the race, split the primitive idea of God into two, the ideas of Good and Evil, Good being the approval by the social mind of those non-conscious workings of the body which further its aims, Evil being the condemnation of the old Adam inclinations which run counter to it. This idea of Good then is Jehovah, the God of the present, predominantly male, violent, blundering, deceitful, with great insistence on uniformity of rites duties and taboos, at whatever cost to the individual; Jehovah’s greatest champion I found in Moses.

Finally there is Lucifer, the God of the future, only a weakling as yet, the hope of eventual adjustment between ancient habits and present needs. As the spirit of reconciliation, Lucifer puts out of date the negative virtue of Good fighting with Evil, and proposes an Absolute Good which we can now conceive of as Peace.

The doctrine of mutual responsibility for error, and of mutual respect between individuals, sexes, classes, groups, and nations, a higher conception than the eye for an eye and tooth for a tooth doctrine of Jehovah, is Lucifer’s. This ideal anarchy is the aspect of God momentarily seen, I thought, by Jesus Christ, before him prophesied by Isaiah and before him by Melchizedek; but since fallen even among Christians under the renewed tyranny of Jehovah. The story of Lucifer’s fall is clearly written in the Acts of the Apostles; where the violence of Moses towards the man who gathered sticks on the Sabbath Day is worthily imitated by Peter when he strikes dead Ananias and Sapphira for a partial witholding of a voluntary gift; where the low cunning of Jacob with Esau is matched by Paul’s stirring up the partizanship of Saducee against Pharisee while preaching the doctrine of tolerance.

This Light-Bringer Lucifer has been persistently misidentified by the priests of Jehovah with the spirit of Evil, their God’s arch-enemy. But I would have it put like this: if John Milton had paused to enquire why Jesus Christ promised his followers the Morning Star as a reward for virtue, Milton would have been spared the compunction which certainly was besetting him in Paradise Lost for having conceived of his Prince of Darkness as so much of a gentleman.

One day I must give you the full history of the famous encounter between the archangel Michael and Lucifer (outlined in the Epistle of Jude) when Lucifer asked the riddle still current in English speaking nurseries and Michael dared not answer or even curse him, because an open discussion of this particular point might prove dangerous to the fortunes of Jehovah. In the Revelations chapter which provides the familiar lesson for All Saints’ Day we hear that Michael had to admit the implied charge by resorting to violence. But guess the riddle and you shall have the answer given you; this is the proper course communication should take between poets.

And so yours in all good will,

Robert Graves.

Islip,
Oxon.
August, 1922.

THE FEATHER BED

THE FEATHER BED

Prologue

In sudden cloud that blotting distance out

Confused the compass of the traveller’s mind,

Biassed his course, three times from the hill’s crest

Trying to descend but with no track to follow,

Nor visible landmark—three times he had struck

The same sedged pool of steaming desolation,

The same black monolith rearing up before it.

This third time then he paused to recognize

The Witches’ Cauldron only known before

By hearsay, fly-like on whose rim he had crawled

Three times and three times dipped to climb again

Its uncouth sides, so to go crawling on.

By falls of scree, moss-mantled slippery rock,

Wet bracken, drunken gurgling watercourses,

He escaped limping at last, and broke the circuit

Travelling down and down; but smooth descent

Interrupted by new lakes and ridges,

Sprawling unmortared walls of boulder granite,

Marshes; one arm hung bruised where he had fallen,

Blood welled a sticky trickle from his cheek,

Mist gathering in his eye-brows ran full beads

Down to his eyes, making them smart and blur.

At last he blundered on some shepherd’s hut—

He thought, the hut took pity and appeared—

With mounds of peat and welcome track of wheels

Which he now followed to a broad green road

Running from right to left; but still at fault

Whether he stood this side or that of the hill,

The mist being still on all, with little pause

He chose the easier way, the downward way.

Legs were dog-tired already, only the road,

The slow descent with some relief of guidance

Maintained his shambling five miles to the hour

Coloured with day dreams. Then a finger post

Broke through the mist, pointing into his face,

But when he stopped to read gave him no comfort.

Seventeen miles to—somewhere, God knows what!

The paint was weathered to a mere acrostic

Which cold unfocussed eyes could never read—

But jerking a derisive thumb behind it

Up a rough stream-wet path “The Witches’ Cauldron

One Mile.” Only a mile

For two good hours of stumbling steeplechase!

There was a dead snake by some humorous hand

Twined on the pointing finger; far away

A bull roared hoarsely, but all else was mist.

Then anger came upon him, in which heat

He fell into deep thought and rhymes came strung

Faster than speech might have kept pace with them.

The Snake, the Bull!

What laughter was it, ended

His allegory and startled the graceful hare

That secure in the mist came leaping down towards him?

Witch in disguise, emissary of witches?

Swiftly he takes a stone up, hurls it at her,

Chases her, bawling childish angry threats;

She screams. Now with red shame sorrow floods back

Making his journey by twice three miles longer

As though once revisiting the witches,

Those unclean—it stood symbol in his mind

For what, but what? He never wished her harm—

She being a hare and having innocent eyes—

It was her fault for blundering on him there.

He never wished her harm, she should have known

His angry fit, frustration, weariness

Breaking a gentler mood. With slackening steps

He once more takes the homeward road, that is,

If it does lead home; it’s making uphill now

And narrowing sadly. That fool finger-post

Had only snakes to brag about and witches,

And the bull roared no very helpful threat.

THE FEATHER BED

“Goodbye, but now forget all that we were

Or said, or did to each other, here’s goodbye.

Send no more letters now, only forget

We ever met....” and the letter maunders on

In the unformed uncompromising hand

That witnesses against her, yet provides

Extenuation and a grudging praise.

Rachel to be a nun! Postulate now

For her noviciate in a red brick convent:

Praying, studying, wearing uniform,

She serves the times of a tyrannic bell,

Rising to praise God in the early hours

With atmosphere of filters and stone stairs,

Distemper, crucifixes and red drugget,

Dusty hot-water pipes, a legacy-library....

Sleep never comes to me so tired as now

Leg-chafed and footsore with my mind in a blaze

Troubling this problem over, vexing whether

To beat Love down with ridicule or instead

To disregard new soundings and still keep

The old course by the uncorrected chart,

(The faithful lover, his unchanging heart)

Rachel, before goodbye

Obscures you in your sulky resignation

Come now and stand out clear in mind’s eye

Giving account of what you were to me

And what I was to you and how and why,

Saying after me, if you can say it, “I loved.”

Rachel so summoned answers thoughtfully

But painfully, turning away her head,

“I lived and thought I loved, for I had gifts

Of most misleading, more than usual beauty,

Dark hair, grey eyes, capable fingers, movement

Graceful and certain; my slow puzzled smile

Accusing of too much ingenuousness

Yet offered more than I could hope to achieve,

And if I thought I loved, no man would doubt it.”

So speaks the image as I read her mind,

Or is it my pride speaks on her behalf,

Ventriloquizing to deceive myself?

Anger, grief, jealousy, shame confuse the issue,

Her beauty is a truth I can not blink

However angry, jealous, sad, ashamed.

Dissolve, image, dissolve!

Make no appeal to the hunter in my nature,

Leave me to self-reproach in my own time;

If I too promised more than you could meet,

Your beauty overrode my sense of fate

And fitness, with extravagant pretence.

Is it true that we were lovers once, or nearly?

Lovers should sleep together on one pillow

Clasped in each others arms with lip to lip,

Their bed should be a masterpiece of ease,

A mother-of-pearl embrace for its twin pearls.

But where do you sleep now, and where am I?

Disdaining all the comforts of old use

We fall apart, are made ridiculous.

You in your cell toss miserably enough

Under thin blankets on a springless couch,

And I two hundred miles away or further

Wallow in this feather bed,

With nothing else to rest my gaze upon

Than flowery wall-paper, bulging and stained,

And two stern cardboard signals “God is love,” and

“I was a stranger and ye took Me in,”

Ye took me in, took me in, took me in, ...

The train of my thought straggles, loses touch,

Piles in confusion, takes the longer road,

Runs anyhow, heads true only by chance.

Sacred Carnivals trundle through my mind,

With Rhyme-compulsion mottoing each waggon.

God’s Love, the Holy Dove, and Heaven above

Sin, deadly Sin, Begin, the Fight to Win

Ye took me in; inn; inn;—and now a jolt

Returns me consciousness, and weary Logic

Gathers her snapped threads up. A mouldy inn

Offensive with cockchafers, sour and musty,

All night the signboard creaks and the blinds bang,

The cupboards groan, the draught under the door

Flurries the carpets of this inn, this inn.

How I came here? Where else could I be bettered?

Loneliness drew me here and cloudy weather

With cold Spring rains to chill me through and through

Pelting across the mountains, purging away

Affection for a fault, restoring faith....

So God is Love? Admitted; still the thought

Is Dead Sea fruit to angry baffled lovers

Lying sleepless and alone in double beds,

Shaken in mind, harassed with hot blood fancies.

Break the ideal, and the animal’s left

Which this ideal stood as mask to hide.

Then the hot blood with no law hindering it

Drums and buffets suddenly at the heart

And seeks a vent with what lies first to hand.

But yet no earthbound evil spirit comes

Taking advantage of my unwrought mind,

Tempting me to a gay concubinage,

In likeness of some ancient queen of heaven

Ardent and ever young. The legends say

They come to hermits so, and holy saints,

Disguised in a most blinding loveliness;

Disrobe about the good man’s bed and twitch

His blankets off and make as if to kiss him

With sighs of passion irresistibly sweet.

Yet he has power to turn on them, to cry

“In the name of Christ begone!” and go they must.

If I were a hermit now—but being myself

I never give them challenge, never bend

Kneeling at my bedside for hours together

Praying aloud for chastity—that’s the bait

Certain to draw them from their shadowy caves,

Their broken shrines and rockbound fastnesses—

Praying against the World, the Flesh, the Devil,

But pausing most on Flesh—that praying against,

Proposing yet denying the fixed wish!

Closest expressed it’s the most dangerous....

How would I say my prayers now, if I tried,

Using what formula? Would instinct turn

To

Gentle Jesus meek and mild

Look upon thy little child

To Gentle Jesus and the entrancing picture

Of Pretty mice in Plicity (where alas,

Is County Plicity now? Beyond what skyline?

I climbed in vain to-day).... When Rachel prays,

Does she still dreamily speak to Gentle Jesus,

The shepherd in that Nurnberg oleograph

Hanging above the nursery mantlepiece?

Her God? Anthropomorphic surely. One

Bearded like Moses, straddled on the clouds,

Armed with thunderbolts and shaggy eyebrows.

“Bless me, dear God, and make me a good child.”

Her childishness obscures her womanhood.

When was I ever conscious in her presence

That she was bodily formed like other women

With womb for bearing and with breasts for suckling,

With power, when she desired, to rouse in me

By but the slightest art in diminution

Of her accustomed childish truthfulness,

A word or gesture hinting doubtfulness,

The angry stream flooding beyond restraint?

And yet no frisky wraith has come to-night

Assuming Rachel’s body, goading me

With false presentment of her honest person

To mutiny and to utter overthrow;

No wanton Venus, no bold Helen of Troy.

For look, a different play performs to-night!

See how come crowding in, with a bold air

Of pertinence I do not dare to question

This odd rag-tag-and-bobtail of lost souls,

Ecclesiastical, furtive, dim, far gone

In their dementia praecox! Doctor Hornblow

On the Pentateuch, Dean Dogma upon Ruth

(Ay, Ruth; the alien corn was not the worst)

Keble and Pusey, Moody and Sankey griddling,

And one most strange Victorian apparition,

The ghost of Gladstone, with his stickout collars,

Goes hand in hand with Senor Monkey-brand,

Comrades who, printed on a paper cover,

Gladstone in front and Monkey on the back,

Made the Impregnable Rock of Holy Scripture

Tacit defence of Darwin’s blasphemies.

There go the ghosts of Mason, Martin Tupper,

Dean Farrar, South, Cautionary Mrs. Turner,

Butterfield with a spotted senior clerk,

And a long rabble of confusing figures,

Nuns, deacons, theologians, commentators,

Spikes in birettas, missionaries like apes

Hairy and chattering, bald; with, everyone,

A book in the left hand tight clasped, the right

Free to point scorn.

My cauliflower-wicked candle

Gutters and splutters on the chair beside me,

Over two books and a letter; the crowd passing

Groans for reproach, confident in their numbers.

But I, long used to crowds and their cowardly ways,

Return these insults with the cold set eye

That break their corporate pride—

What? those are plays.

Yes, dramas by John Ford—Love’s Sacrifice,

The Broken Heart, ’Tis Pity she’s a Whore.

The titles shock? These things are “not convenient?”

Well, try this other by (ah) Canon Trout,

The Wisest Course of Love—why do you smile?

The book of plays I bought, this was a present,

Sent me with Rachel’s letter—but you smile,

You’re smiling still? Then I apologize,

Ladies and Lords. Indeed I never guessed

Humour was a luxury you admitted.

“’Tis pity she’s a ... postulant.” Is it that?

Malicious hearts! but you still nod, laugh, point,

Pointing what joke? The Wisest Course of Love?