HvS | 1971 to Brigid on "The Borrowed House" (Epiphany) (3 of 3)

HvS Sketch of Rhine Mermaids in a  Fountain.

[This third letter from Hilda van Stockum to her daughter Brigid in (an educated guess) 1971 expresses an epiphany. HvS has finally figured out how to end her book, which was later named The Borrowed House.]

Dear Bridgie,

I think I have the answer to my story! It is in the ring. 

[From the beginning of the book, Janna is wrapped up in the story behind Wagner's Ring of the Nibelung opera cycle, which was favored by Hitler and was widely told to young Germans in the late 1930s. The German educational system was made over to support Hitler's racial theories. Nazi racial theories and German myths replaced Bible stories and Greek and Roman history and literature.]

She [Janna] finds the ring in the fountain in the garden. The fountain has three mermaids, which are together with their tails and then lean backwards in a dance. But they had snow on them. She thinks they are the Rhine Maidens, clears the snow off them and finds the ring, which she this is their present.

Now the interesting thing is this: She wants power–she is obsessed with the helplessness of creatures and she wants magic. She imagines she has this power. She thinks if she turns the ring three times and makes a wish it will come true. But then she finds it comes true in a way she doesn't want [the Monkey's Paw theme].

She wants Mina, who won't let her see Sef much, for wise reasons, to be less interfering. When Mina falls downstairs (on the ordinary staircase; the other is too complicated and unnecessary) she feels terribly guilty. She didn't mean that. Then the difficulties she experiences in looking after Sef frighten her. When he disappears to deliver her documents she doesn't know what to do and she wishes with all her heart for Mina back. She turns the ring to that effect, only to find that Mina is ill in bed and only another person for her to take care of. 

She turns the ring and asks for the Baron to be removed–then sees the scene in which her mother turns him out–her weeping and misery–and turns the ring to bring him back with disastrous results at the dance.

I'll have to think up some other examples. I can do this (where I can't use real magic) because I know she doesn't influence events at all. So I don't have that horrible feeling of arbitrary happenings. But people who like magic may think she does.

The interesting thing is that is really her mind that is being affected. Whereas she could have been serene and trustful, thinking it was God's will, she gets panicky and guilty when she thinks it is her own [doing].

I told you once it [The Borrowed House] was a book about God, but I didn't know how. Now I know it is how trust in God changes our attitude so we can deal with things. Hugo tells her that. Hugo has a talk with her after he tells her of the Jewish couple who would not accept his help, but were content to let God's will be done.

Janna says: "It isn't God's will, it's Hitler's will."

Then Hugo says: "It's what you think it is. If you think it is Hitler's will you will feel differently about it than if you think it is God's will, and that is what makes the quality of your life. If you insist on everything being in your own control, you'll find sooner or later that you lack the love, the wisdom and the knowledge to do so. Those who let God rule their lives know He has all three and they have the security and peace the others lack."

So when, through disastrous wishes, she finally contemplates the burning house, Janna knows Hugo is right, that she hadn't the knowledge and the wisdom and the love to steer events properly, she throws her ring in the water, says goodbye to Bruenhilde and the old gods, and is content to be  Janna, to trust God's wisdom and God's providence.

And she does this at the moment she sees the Baron pleading with her mother–because she suddenly wants her mother to be free, to make the choice herself–then, as she throws the ring in the water, her mother sends the Baron away.

Do you know, I almost feel it should be called "The Ring"? And is it not interesting how a book grows–and how opposite it is to what you think? Anyone would say that this idea should come first, that it would be impossible to have everything fit in otherwise. But for me it had to come last, the idea of magic would have repelled me–I can only handle it because I know (though the children won't) that there was no magic, only an illusion. An illusion which caused the child great suffering. And it is an illusion shared by primitive people–who often think they have caused disasters that are natural.

And this magic does not take away from the reality of the story, whereas the magic I envisioned before did. I don't know whether she ever realizes there was no magic–perhaps when she grows older she'll know–but in the book she firmly thinks it was magic, or she would not throw the ring away. And see how beautifully that rounds off The Götterdämmerung [the last opera of Wagner's Ring cycle]–the burning of the heathen conception of magic, the old gods, Brunhild. 

Do you understand now that I sometimes think a book is there, in the beginning, and you only dig it out, and find off pieces? Wouldn't you say so, from the way this story grew?

And yet, done the other way, it would have been all wrong.It would have been a religious and political tract. Perhaps there is a same truth in our lives. That we slowly have to find out the meaning in the seeming jumble of our circumstances, because if we started with the meaning, our lives would be too poor. I don't know. Tell me what you think!
Lots of love,
Mim

P.S. This is not only the answer to the story, it is the answer the the questions people ask: "What does prayer do?" What it does is, [permits people] to be able to meet circumstances freely, because they have chosen them–in the trust of God's knowledge and love. Having chosen them makes all the difference, like [the difference between] a love-act and a rape. Maybe we don't influence circumstances with prayer–but we do influence attitudes and the most important thing about circumstances is the attitude! The only real freedom we have is to choose what IS. "I am who am."
M

Posts on The Borrowed House: New Edition of The Borrowed House (Purple House Press) . Letter 1 . Letter 2 . Letter 3 . The van Arkel Portrait

Order a copy of the new (October 2016) edition of The Borrowed House.

HvS | 1971 to Brigid on "The Borrowed House" (Evil) (2 of 3)

The original cover by
Farrar Straus, 1975.

[The following letter from Hilda van Stockum to her daughter Brigid was a postscript to, and as long as, Letter 1 but was much more than a postscript. It's a self-contained, thoughtful exegesis on evil–as treated in The Borrowed House, and with extraordinary relevance to today. Within the past two weeks, I heard someone say that "the U.S. attempt to democratize Middle Eastern politics has resulted in the Middle-Easternization of U.S. politics". Now read the third paragraph below, which I have put in bold face.]

Letter #2 from HvS to Brigid (c. 1971)

P.S. I keep adding to this letter. The more I think about it, the more I can't see it [The Borrowed House] as a simple conversion story [i.e., conversion of Janna from Hitler Youth to an opponent of Naziism].

First of all, I wonder whether my reluctance to depict evil or to have evil happen is so wrong. At present we are fed with a steady diet of violence and it is unfashionable to think up happy endings, but don't you think that contributes to violence?

Is it accident that all the old tales were about heroes who surmounted evil? Don't we become finally what we aspire to, and does it not depend on the model we have? I believe the modern lack of spine and permissiveness came through a generation of books that told people they were not responsible, fate decided, you had to bow before fate.

I felt inspired writing that second chapter [of The Borrowed House].  Do children need to read about another weak sister who sees finally the error of her ways? The more I think, the more I read about this subject, the less it evolves in such a simple pattern. I am glad of your criticism for it forces me to think deeper.

If Gurdjieff is right, then depicting evil and good in simple terms is bad, then that means staying in the opposites. People don't like that Janna stole and lied, but she had a soft heart. I've just read The Gift Horse by Hildegarde Knef [who died in 2002] and it is an extraordinary book. I think Hildegarde and Janna have a lot in common. If you can't get it I'll send you my copy. It gives a very good picture of Germany before, during and after the war.

Hildegarde was not a Nazi either. [She] managed to stay out of Hitler Youth. [But she] suffered from Germans, Russians and the Allies. And the simplifications that people made of good and evil were the reason. She never fitted. So I think these simplifications are wrong. Christ wasn't kidding when he said love your enemies.

I must not show Janna as evil and becoming good, but I can show that her judgement changes and that what she thinks is bad in herself she finds out is good. She is ashamed of her own soft heart.

I have been trying to think what the real evil of Naziism is, because most people just stop at the violence, and violence we see even in an innocent baby. Cruelty is also a universal trait; I was cruel to my donkey and very ashamed of it afterwards. I took real pleasure in beating him.

Unless we recognize that, we can't sift the real reason why Hitler was so bad. I think it was that he waged psychological warfare against good, spiritual good. For instance, when the Dutch wanted to go on a General Strike to protest arrests, the Nazis would spread rumours that the arrest [story] was not true, so that the moment passed and the Strike became half-hearted and ineffective. There was a diabolical knowledge of how to use human frailties to thwart good intentions.

The Pope has recently reaffirmed the existence of the devil and I don't think anyone can understand Hitler except as a puppet in Satan's hand. The funny thing is that I read in the Nuremberg trials his plans for the future, which included killing all American Jews and negroes, abolishing all churches etc. At the end he says: "And then I will retire and do some farming." [I have not been able to find this reference. JTM] I wonder if that strikes you also as excruciatingly funny? It can only indicate that here the real Hitler was permitted to say something [after his death]!

I suddenly saw my story [The Borrowed House] more as a What Daisy Knew tale, innocence besieged by lies and evil.

The funny thing about writing is that it IS on the level of contrasts. Painting is on a higher plane; there the contrasts are merely merely mechanical and the aim is unity. Poets are the only writers who achieve that too. Abstract painting has been following the contrasts by eliminating the psychical meanings and making the mechanical the most important. Maybe that its descriptive of our time.

You see the story [of Janna] as a completely Hitlerized girl, who does Hitler things, then goes to Holland, goes into a house where she is surrounded by Nazi grownups and hostile Dutch. Why should she be converted?

I see the story as a very individual child who has been fed beautiful lies about Naziism but has not met the horrors. She has natural virtue and when confronted with the situation in Holland see through the lies, at least partially, and takes action. I can't see it any other way.

Hilde Knef writes very amusingly of how she got into trouble with her Nazi schoolmarms, asking questions like:

• "Who do have to defend ourselves against? Nobody has attacked us." and
• "Why do you want to bring all those Germans in Sudetenland and South America back if we lack lebensraum?"

Of course, I can't let Janna do that. It would spoil my story completely. Janna must be acquainted with the good side [of life in Germany under the Nazis in the 1930s], which there was. One of my pupils just told me that they got letters from German relatives saying Hitler was the best thing that ever happened to Germany–no unemployment, no vice, etc. [My pupil] Mildred is worried because people here are saying: "Hitler wasn't so bad–it was only about the Jews he was bad, we need someone like him." 

I think it is far more important for me to pinpoint what Hitlerism really was, than to have Janna undergo a moral revolution. Tell me what you think.

Love, Mim

Posts on The Borrowed House: New Edition of The Borrowed House (Purple House Press) . Letter 1 . Letter 2 . Letter 3 . The van Arkel Portrait

Order a copy of the new (October 2016) edition of The Borrowed House.

HvS | Eleven Poems

Feeding the birds. Hilda van Stockum, 1934.
Courtesy of the Estate of the Author.

Let me know which poems you like best and I will post them in order of popularity.

1. The Bird

My teacher had a cage with a wild thrush

He had caught it when swinging on a bush 

And he smiled when he showed it off to me

But I only begged him to let the thrush free.

For why did God give birds their wings

And a sky full of blue deep air

If they were to sit upon a stick

And hang in a cage above a chair?

If they can't even stretch their quills

And take one deep long breath,

But have to nod upon their stick

And die a creeping death.

Outside they know the the trees – the clouds

They have their friends like me

But here the dusky little room

Is all that they can see.

And they can't even say a word

To tell how much they long

For people smile and say “How sweet!”

To their broken-hearted song.

I told my teacher and he was still,

And looked into my eyes;

And then he took the cage and let

The bird free to the skies.

2. The Mother

Everyone in turn is my only mite

My sweetest babe

My dearest sprite

Everyone in turn is my fondest boast

And the one that I prize the most.

Sometimes it is my blue-eyed boy

Sometimes my slender girl

Sometimes I find my greatest joy

Is my infant's golden curl.

But always there's one who's my special pet

My darling babe

My precious brat

And always there's one in my lap who'll start

To climb into my heart.

Yes, sometimes it is my eldest one

Who can smile so gay

And run so fast

And sometimes it is the middle one

And sometimes the one born last.

3. The Cold

I had a cold, a sneezy cold

A snuffly teazy wheezy cold 

The doctor said to take a spoon

Of medicine morning night and noon.

I liked the task, I liked the smell

I surely thought I'd soon be well, 

And be once more upon my feet

Like other children on the street.

But oh! The cough, it lingered on

I waited and it wasn't gone!

No wonder for how could a spoon

Three times a day expel it soon?

I took the bottle to my bed

And when my mother came, I said,

“Now I'll be better, sure enough! 

For I have swallowed all the stuff!”

4. Church

On Sundays I may wear my hat

With posies on the crown

And I may put white socks on

For we're going into town

We're riding on the silver bus

We feel it throb and lurch

We'll get out when it stops at last

For we must go to Church.

On Sundays when the bells ring

I wear my whitest dress

And walk on tiptoes up the aisle

From very holiness.

For God is listening and He likes

The Stillness in His house

That's why I always hold my breath

And tiptoe like a mouse.

5. Running Away

My Mother wished to wash me, but I fled

into the night where stars shone o'er my head

I would not go into the lamplit realm

Where the bath reigned with curling wisps of steam

No, on my back I dropped on heaving ground

Where shrub to shrub gave forth its whispered sound.

And all the dazzling lights on Heaven's bow

Held fast my eyes till they no more let go.

Was I still looking up? Or did I swing

In peril o'er a gulf where night was king?

Was I but lightly clinging to Earth's extremity

Whilst looking down the abyss of Eternity?

It dizzied me, my hands grasped the green turf -

I feared to move lest I fall off the earth.

And what a breathless fall that fall would be

Till I struck bottom in Eternity.

I turned a summersault. My nose pressed in the grass

And under me I felt the earth's big mass

Faithful once more I felt it's firm embrace

And the sky rose to its accustomed place.

I ran into my yellow lamplit home

Where Mother waited with the brush and comb.

And where the bath no longer seemed a bane

I was so happy to be safe again!

6. The Princess

When I am grown I`'ll marry a Prince

With a white and tender face

He'll ride on a black and gleaming horse

And he'll wear a cloak with lace.

I'll be his Queen and I will live

In a Castle near the sea

The roses will bloom and everyone

Will come to bow to me.

That's why I wouldn't listen

When Jim sat on the gate

And promised he would marry me

If I would only wait.

7. My Rabbits

I had two snuffly rabbits

That flip-flopped over the place

With nibbly-nobbly habits

And lumpity lumpity pace.

They were my very ownest

To do with as I pleased

I used to feed them grasses

And watch them when they sneezed.

I called the male one Adam

He was the first I had

The female one was Eva

I fed her bits of bread.

One day I found my Adam

All stiffened in his shed.

His eyes were round and glassy

And I saw that he was dead.

It might have been the cold

It might have been the rain

But I never saw my Adam

Go hopping round again.

I took him on my knees

And I sadly stroked his fur

Which was as soft and silky

As though he could still stir.

His little eyes had looked at me

Only the day before

And he had eaten cabbage leaves

And wheedled me for more.

Once Adam and Eve were less than this

Stiff form upon my knees;

Yet they became a man and wife

Though God's enchanting breeze.

Perhaps if I just blew a whiff

Into his pink still nose

A miracle might happen

And it might be that he rose!

I blew and blew but only

The fur stirred on his back.

No light came to his glassy eye

No life in his limbs, alack!

I wept and scattered my tears upon

The stiff and breathless clod

And for the first, most bitter, time

I knew I was not God.

8. The Hut

We built a hut, my brother and I,

Over a sandy pit

With sticks that bowed and met above

And a sheet to cover it.

We sat and all around the rain

Came rushing, roaring down

We said if we were out in it

That we would surely drown.

We were happier than the birds

Perched up in the tree

And richer than kings and princes

In our splendid hut, were we.

And though the drops splashed freely

Through the thin sheet from the sky

We still sat gladly shivering

Believing we were dry.

9. The Master

I have a Master, his face is pale

And stern and a little sad

But when he smiles his face lights up

His very nose is glad.

I love to watch that smile of his

Whilst bending o'er my slate

And when his smiles are slow to come

I wait and wait and wait.

But once I brought a funny book

Which I lent him for awhile

That morning I couldn't do my sums

From watching teacher smile.

10. The Friend

I wish I had a bosom friend

Who loved me best of all,

Who'd give me all her books and dolls

And never scold or bawl.

I wish I had a bosom friend 

To sit with in a tree

To tell her all my secrets

And what I want to be.

To talk to in soft whispers

About angels wings and death

And the wonders of a baby

And how it draws its breath.

I wish I had a bosom friend

To walk with arm in arm

When the sun is dropping down to sea

And the evening weaves its charm.

I want a girl who'll understand

And think the way I do

But she must always love me most

And never walk with you.

11. The Walk

When I have to go out with a lot of people

I always lag behind

And then nurse is angry and tells me to hurry

But I don't mind.

For the noise of the trampling boots is too loud

And the tattling talk

All the fairies are frightened and fly away

Where grown people walk.

I want to go where the dust has settled

Back on the street

And twittering birds return to their branches

With merry tweet tweet!

I want to see ghostly wings of fairies

Flit through the trees

Their floating cobwebby veils all misty

And light on the breeze.

Then I walk very softly and I think

That perhaps I'm a fairy too,

And soon will have wings and fly in the night

And drink the morning dew.

That is what I would like the most 

To be born in the cup

Of a wet white flower in the light of the moon

And forever to sup

With the fragile fairies on honey and mist

And call each blossom my home

And forever to own the sweet twilight hours

And the night's vast dome.

Well I would sleep, rocked by the night-wind

On a thin reed

I would live like a spirit, transparent and cool

Without aching or need.

And when I wished I could open my wings

And soar up ahead

As light as a bubble to dizzying heights

Of the sky blue and glad.

I wouldn't need mother or father or friend

Like a bloom

I would be enough to myself with plenty 

Of room.

That's why I like to watch fairies a -flit

Through the trees,

For one day the miracle may happen and I may

Be one of these.

And that's why I lag and loiter behind

And don't mind.

HvS | 1971 to Brigid on "The Borrowed House" (1 of 3)

Just reissued in a new
edition–The Borrowed
House, Oct. 3, 2016.

During the early 1970s, Hilda van Stockum and her daughter Brigid were in frequent correspondence about HvS's new book, which would be called The Borrowed House. It was an urban version of The Winged Watchman.

In both books, HvS wrestles with the question of Hitler and Naziism. The Winged Watchman is written from the perspective of a Dutch patriot during the Nazi Occupation. The Borrowed House is a more difficult book because it starts with a committed Hitler Youth girl and follows her gradual understanding of the evil that Hitler represents and creates.

HvS in the early 1970s corresponded with Brigid about the book rather than talking with her because she was still in Washington, D.C. and Brigid (like her sisters Sheila and Lis) was in the UK.

Here is the first letter to Brigid about The Borrowed House. There is no date on it, but it is on U.S.-sized 8.5"x11" paper and therefore would have been sent from Washington, D.C. The reference to the Tasaday tribe suggests it was soon after 1971 (see link to the Tasaday in the letter), and the latest date would have been 1973, when HvS moved to Berkhamsted and would have had no need to write to Brigid any more because they saw each other frequently. I have corrected typos and I have broken the text up in a few places to make it easier to read.

Letter 1 to Brigid (c. 1971)

Dearest Brigid,

I just got your letter about my story [The Borrowed House] and I am so glad you understand... I think the middle course is the thing: especially as my reading shows me more and more that there was no real unity behind Hitler [or against him! JTM]–

• There were the people for whom Hitler was a messiah who fulfilled the violence and hatred in them,

• the timid ones who wanted to get on with their own lives and not be  bothered (it is after all only righteous indignation that makes you brave the dangers of protest, and not everyone is capable of it, but God bless it, we need it), and

• the brave ones, some who merely saw to it that their children knew the truth and tried to keep them out of the schools and [Nazi] organizations,

• some who actively were protesting and putting their lives on the roulette table, and 

• others who plotted Hitler's death.

Such a kaleidoscope! But some youths were poisoned [by Nazi propaganda], and went on fighting after the armies surrendered and forced the Allies to fight babes of thirteen to fifteen who threw grenades and handled machine guns. I hope God gave them credit for their bravery in a bad cause! The Nazis hadn't had them long enough to do irreparable harm, but the Communists, who have, are faced with a rebellious youth. So who can say there is no God?

What you say about yourself is true but I love you for it. You did shirk work and your generosity sometimes outruns your capacity, but then I wonder if I am too cautious. I know that whatever I do [in the way of giving] will have to be repeated over and over again, one donation and a monthly envelope comes, and when I feel I can't afford it, a voice tells me: "You mean, you're going to save on your FRIENDS?"

By the way, in the Wendepunkt [published in German by the family and followers of Dr. Max Bircher-Benner, who espoused a vegetarian diet and invented Bircher Müsli–JTM] of this month are some interesting articles. Ralph [Bircher] tells of a tribe [the Tasaday] they have found south of the Philippines which has never had any other human contact. These people live solely on the fruit and roots and leaves that grow naturally and on some crustaceans they catch with their hands, wrap in leaves and roast by the fire. They know no steel, don't hunt, don't cultivate, have no herds.

When the people who discovered them imagined them to be hungry because they eat no meat and gave them weapons and told them they could killed and eat animals they were deeply shocked. "But they are your FRIENDS!" they said.

They use the weapons to get the bark out of palm trees, a luxury for them. They live in perfect peace, which suggests that the story of paradise [in Genesis] may have more foundation than people think. The name of the group is Tasaday. [Later, the Tasaday story was questioned and was found to be partly true and partly bogus.–JTM]

There is also an article by a Mrs. Tina Keller, who trained in psychotherapy under Jung and belonged to the Oxford Group. She says that Jung feels that wholeness in a person means balance, and when she became Grouper she became very one-sided. She wanted to put her knowledge in the service of God and the Group loved to count doctors among its members.

Jung had  taught her not to neglect her inner self, but the group forced her into more and more outward activity. She enjoyed that. And she found out that even good things can become an addiction.  They honored her. She was a fighter in a great cause. Her ideals pulled her along with a super zeal. And suddenly she fell into an abysmal depression, until she took the time to listen to her unconscious again. (This is strange, for the Group does recommend quiet time every day, but I always found it pretty impossible; it's not so easy to sit down and have communion with God like that!)

She got her balance back by writing, anything and everything, until she had written herself out. She then had an hour with Jung and they discussed this experience. It had taught her how necessary the daily communication with her unconscious was, and that she had to remember the opposites if she wanted to keep her balance, among the heights and depths of her life. She says that when she neglects this she is in trouble but when she pays attention to her soul she gets help from all sorts of sources. 

She sounds as if she has read Gurdjieff, but of course Gurdjieff is based on Jung.  She says almost what you say, that a high ideal can waft you into an illusion, that one swings happily away from concrete facts and one's own shortcoming. But these belong to the wholeness. Progress is only possible by steadfastly eyeing the facts of one's concrete existence.

That is what you have done. That is what is so wonderful about children; they teach us so much and one can always be sure of their forgiveness–they so pathetically want to believe in us!

She goes on to say that every virtue has in it a vice, which is a truism but one we have to keep in mind, I suppose! She ends by saying that while the old idea was that a family represented wholeness, now they want the wholeness to belong to the individual, and she does not know whether that is progress. I'm sorry you don't know German; I could send these things to you.

Have had no answer yet about about a house in Switzerland! [Spike was working for the AARP, setting up the International Federation on Aging, and they could well have moved from Washington to Geneva. What happened a year later is that Spike gave up his IFA job and they moved to England to be near to their  three daughters and their many grandchildren. Their first UK house was high up on Castle Hill Road in Berkhamsted, Herts.–JTM]

Lots of love,
Mim

Posts on The Borrowed House: New Edition (Purple House Press) . Letter 1 . Letter 2 . Letter 3 . The van Arkel Portrait

Order a copy of the new (October 2016) edition of The Borrowed House.

HvS | "The Borrowed House" – "Stunning" New Edition!

Books Ready to Be Shipped for Oct. 3, 2016.

The third English-language edition of The Borrowed House by Hilda van Stockum has just appeared.

A friend who has been in the publishing business for decades just wrote to me to say that  it is a "stunning" edition. (I haven't seen the book yet because I am in the UK, but I have a photograph of the books getting ready for shipment, at left.)

Once and future cover.

The first edition of the book appeared in 1975, published by Farrar Straus. My mother always considered it her best book. It went out of print in the 1990s and Bethlehem Books picked it up with a different cover. Then the Bethlehem Books edition went out of print and the price of the book on Amazon went up to above $200 a copy.

The new (Oct. 3 pub date) $13.95 edition by the Purple House Press in Cynthiana, Kentucky brings back the original cover, with a better-then-ever-quality scan of the painting on which it was based.

Meanwhile, a Dutch translation of the book has appeared recently, the second book of HvS to have been translated into her native Dutch.

My sister Brigid worked with my mother HvS on The Borrowed House, and I have just received two letters that HvS wrote to Brigid about the book that I will hasten to type up and post here. They are deeply philosophical and I am eager to share them with you. Be back in touch!

Meanwhile, get the book! Here is a link to Amazon.