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London,
he
had pressing reasons for going to Berlin; and once, having accompanied her as far as Madrid, he discovered he was needed immediately on Cyprus. This was a great trial to my mother, who believed in unpacking thoroughly. Wherever she was she stuffed the bureaus and wardrobes, and could not be expected to vacate them without two days' notice. Hence she frequently found herself abandoned among strangers in foreign hotels, and understandably the urge for notoriety would overwhelm her in these places. She would go out on the streets and hire anyone who looked like a musician and bring back a troop of improbable cellists for an incredible concert in the lobby. Or she would purchase canvas and an easel and go to museums, which bored her for their own sakes, and make outrageous copies of celebrated paintings, disrobing all the chief figures, except of course those already nude, which she would chastely clothe. Sometimes, out of desperation, she would try to make friends, consulting for this purpose a list of local ladies whom Enoch had entreated her to call on. These occasionally turned out to be less fashionable, but invariably more intellectual, than my mother; they would chatter scornfully of "the American language," and they were uncommonly inquisitive about American writers. None of them, to be sure, had ever heard of
Marianna Harlow.
In one city—perhaps it was The Hague—a purple-coifed dowager, a court confidante and patroness of belles lettres, disclosed that one of her pensioners was at that moment engaged in a majestic translation into the Dutch of the poetry of Karlen Dustworth, the Minnesota laureate. My mother was overcome, not by the poet's reputation, or even the translator's, for she had been aware of the existence of neither, but by the idea of patronage, which seemed to her both novel and elegant. When she returned home she went immediately to William and arranged for the establishment of a fund for a poetry pamphlet, to be issued quarterly. She commissioned as editor a young assistant professor of English, with a Belgian accent, who came from the University of Nebraska expressly to sort verses in the narrow office my mother had rented down-town. This project kept her at home for some months, until at last a dispute with the editor over policy concerning assonance rhyme (the editor was for it, my mother was opposed) grew into a hideous quarrel, and he was dismissed, only to be replaced by another young man, /rom New York University, who looked and talked exactly like the first, but hated assonance. She was so delighted with this second literate that she permitted him to have a staff, an extravagance which alarmed William. "It's better than paying
taxes,
isn't it?" she demanded of him shrewdly, although she was altogether ignorant of the rule for charitable trusts and had never seen an income-tax form; at which William, who was a Republican and admired Thoreau, subsided. And my mother went abroad again. She had ceased to travel regularly in the company of Enoch; she maintained it was no use: on the plane he read books instead of talking to her, he was too unpredictable anyhow, he concealed his Washington cables from her, he would leave her, without a moment's remorse, for any spy. He had actually bounded down the entry-ramp at first sight of the Bulgarian, and bounded up again, to snatch his valise and shout farewell; and then he had allowed the Bulgarian, fake beard and all, to kiss him, and in public, an act which was severely prohibited to his wife.
    "Do Bulgarians kiss?" I wondered. "I thought only Frenchmen did that."
    "Ah," my mother threatened sadly, "Europe is a strange continent. Of course you'll go with letters of introduction; it will be different for you. Still, we should plan an itinerary. First you must go to England and see the Bridge of Sighs at Cambridge, and then directly to Florence: it's the most aristocratic city. Then you must all the time avoid refugees, who are everywhere, even