First words in the early hours (1973)

Mira nascitur, non fit

Tuesday 23 January 1973

'SOFT... orange-bitten gleams from the guardian street lamps shafting the watery windows, reflected from a rapidly mottling mirror onto the surrounding, patchy whiteness. Weary clinkers topple in the grate and distant motors pass away into the night. Fairy folk scrub the skirting-boards. I am asleep... slipping gradually into a heavy-headed fathomless realm of undisturbed slumber; riding on motiveless reflections that flow through a distended unconscious...

'Suddenly a start, and momentary confusion, somewhere an involuntary pulse is breaking the sound barrier. Turning my head, I see E. She is awake and seems to have got out of bed. My eyes can just make out the look of pain unsettling her features... It has begun.'

These are the first words of four pages I wrote before dawn after E gave birth to Em. The narrative continues with a description of the trip to the hospital, preparations for delivery and my eventual exile to a waiting-room. Here are the final words:

'I am returned to the deserted waiting-room where I curl up in a corner and seek rest. It's not coming. I take a magazine and pore wearily over an article about life after death. I doze fitfully, beset by images of spiritual mediums in blue smocks;the name of Marie, or Jean Blashke, figures large. The settee on which I lie evidently resents my eleven stones and retaliates by thrusting iron bars and cushiony lumps into sundry spinal vertebrae. 

Sometime after three, Midwife Cooper summons me - I learn that mother and baby are doing fine. Baby is big and baby is a girl. Baby Em ***, accordingly. 8 pounds 15 ounces. A double success. Something of a triumph, I feel.

'Yes.

'All in all, quite a night, I suppose...'


I placed the pages inside an envelope marked MIRA NASCITUR NON FIT. E was eighteen and I was nineteen, waiting to go up to Cambridge for the start of my first Michaelmas term.

Ste Thérèse

The little flower in the picture above (a *rose*) is a reference to Ste Thérèse of Lisieux (shown left). She is known as 'the Little Flower' and this was a name we later associated with Em. Ste Thérèse was born in January 1873, almost exactly 100 years before Em (23 January 1973). Before her death aged 24, Thérèse wrote her life story: L'Histoire d'une Âme. I  have a beautifully illustrated first edition in French that includes her poems. I also have a 1921 French edition of the Manuel du Chrétien, a volume that Thérèse used daily. My aim is to publish reviews of these two books as soon as time permits.

*'Je veux passer mon ciel à faire du bien sur la terre... Après ma mort, je ferai tomber une pluie de *roses*.'