I had a great desire to write of Sophie Brzeska's life in England during the seven years which followed the death of Henri Gaudier, but the intensity of her emotions, and the setting upon her of the madness, which in 1922 enveloped her have overpowered me.

For ten years I have approached nearer and nearer to her personality; hoping to grow sufficiently accustomed to her strange life to be able to enter into it without becoming absorbed; but always I have recoiled.

When Henri Gaudier died in 1915, Miss Brzeska felt that she had been perhaps instrumental in his death. He had written to ask her to be his wife, his lover, his physical as well as spiritual companion and she had not answered generously; she feared that war might have made him cruel; her situation in England was so hazardous; she had no friends and war was upon her and she longed to be in France amongst a people whose tongue she loved. It seemed to her that Gaudier, instead of asking for her love should bestir himself to obtain her release from the prison which England had become to her, a prison which she had accepted only on his account.

She wrote to tell him this; she seemed to ignore all the outpourings of his heart; after all it was springtime and they were perhaps meaningless. A few days afterwards she wrote him a letter full of affection and love, ready to be all he wanted, but it was too late, her letter was returned to her with another saying that Henri Gaudier had been killed in action. She could never afterwards forgive herself for her ungenerous suspicions; though the torture which she suffered made her feel that God was punishing her too much; that he was being unjust, since she had never before realised the fullness of her love for Gaudier. An unjust God was of course impossible; so God must go, and in this going her last refuge was torn from her. She craved death and prepared to kill herself, but always there was the haunting hope that perhaps, after all, Gaudier had not been killed; that one night she would hear him calling in the street, 'Zosik - Zosik', as he had called that first morning when he so surprisingly returned from the Front. She scarcely dared to leave her rooms, so present was this hope.

Her hectic life of maidenly sterility was beginning to tell upon her; she was 45 and as she walked in the road she seemed to interpret gross looks and gestures from men and boys on her account. She muttered insults under her breath and strode faster into the impenetrability of her own isolation.

One aim only seemed clear to her, she must achieve strength of body and calm of mind sufficient to finish the book which she and Henri had so often discussed. It was a book about her own life, and would form a lasting monument to Gaudier's fame.

To wish to have Gaudier recognised as the genius he was became, from now on, her one idea, and absorbed her every thought. Though she was poor she refused to part with his better sculpture and drawings; she wished to keep them together, hoping as in the end they did, that the nation might acquire them. She was anxious to have an Exhibition of his work, but it was not until 1918 that this was arranged at the Leicester Galleries, and it is due to her indefatigable energy and drive that this Exhibition was so comprehensive. Mr. Pound had written a book about Gaudier, 'mostly about himself' Miss Brzeska thought, but it served as a note from which enquiry might spring. It was now impossible that Gaudier's name should be lost to history, and Miss Brzeska retired to the country.

For the last year she had been much beset by the fear of madness, and every month she was mercilessly the victim of illness. From her room she used to observe a farmer tilling his fields. He was fat and repulsive, yet in the derangement of her mind she conceived a passion for him: she craved that she might press herself to him, and she became held by the desire to feel the weight of his belly against hers, and with that pressure fling him from her. Always she felt an utter contempt for him, yet side by side with this she followed his every movement until she began to believe that he tilled the fields in front of her window, only to exhibit himself to her. Soon, in her distorted thought, he had pledged himself to her, and when it reached her that he had become engaged to some girl in the village, she felt she had been personally slighted. She used to buy butter and eggs from this farmer's mother and would make cutting remarks about him, remarks which no one understood or heeded. They felt her a queer woman, humoured her and got out of her path. Once by chance, she met the farmer, it was their first actual meeting, and in a voice, which was to her pregnant with meaning, but to him a mere commonplace, she congratulated him on his engagement. He twisted his hat in his hands, and shyly said he must get off to the fields. This meeting added fuel to her already raging fire; he must be anxious to lie with her, he would deceive his fiancée on the slightest encouragement, and so on, without end. Thus did her loneliness and her madness press in upon her, torturing her and goading her: for all the time she realised that it was an unreason­ed need, and all the time she tried to drown it by her own work, by books and walks in the country. She loved the fields; nature and its unfolding, but ever with her was this haunting lust. Later on she fled before it and went into Gloucestershire, to Wotton-under-Edge.

Here she lived in one of a row of tiny houses. She had a little strip of garden which led onto a back lane. Miss Nina Hamnett once visited her here and Mr. Sydney Schiff wrote to her, sent her books, a lamp, port and sherry, but even so she sank into a completer loneliness, a sharper isolation. The war was just over, but still anyone the least bit queer was hounded as a German spy, and Miss Brzeska was very queer; her short hair, her long curiously shaped dresses and blouses, and her bare legs and feet, were cause for endless remarks and gathering together of following children, often encouraged by their parents who would cry after her in the country lanes. Sometimes at the edge of her endurance Miss Brzeska would pick up a stone and throw it at them, would run at them hurling torrents of obscene language and shaking her fists; thus she would gain an hour's peace and would sit under a hedge, write a poem or read the latest fiend literature. Mr. Schiff had sent her two volumes of Proust and she was outraged by the style.

In her row of cottages she was tormented by the noise of her neighbours; she believed that all their noise was made only to irritate her. To a certain extent this was true, but also they had some excuse. Miss Brzeska kept strange hours; she worked at night, going to bed at three in the morning after cooking herself some supper. At these hours she would get silence, broken only by the snores of neighbours, except when she herself made some noise by which they awoke. Then they would bang on the walls and curse her through the boarding, and she, to drown their voices, would sing her poems at the top of her voice.

Sometimes in winter, to obtain release from persecution, she would leave her house carrying a suitcase and dressed as though to go on a journey. The neighbours would spy her from their windows. She would then sit out in a field all day, or shelter in a barn and towards tea time, when the light had gone she would slink home and creep into her house as though she would burgle it. Then there was blissful silence; for hours she sat and wrote and never a stirring to right or to left. Towards two o'clock in the morning she would steal downstairs to cook herself some supper, and as she moved she trod upon a walnut which she had dropped on the floor; scrunch, crash, such a noise in all the darkness. Her heart beat and she scarce dared breathe. Downstairs in her agitation the saucepan fell from her hand with a resounding rattle into the sink, and the water taps made a screech in the pipes. The neighbours awoke 'she's back' and after that no more peace. She wrote an 'ode to the poker' to commemorate her neighbour, who, she thought was always poking the fire, making an unearthly din for no purpose but to annoy her. When she wished to rest in the afternoon, 'Little Willie' next door was set to play on the stairs close to her bed. 'You make as much noise as you can my boy' she would hear him told. For three nights she sang loudly when Willie went to bed, keeping him from sleep, hoping thus to tire him for the day time.

And here, already as I write, I feel myself becoming obsessed by the persecuted side of Miss Brzeska's life; it is true it occupied more and more of her consciousness, but concurrently with it she was reconstructing her past life with Gaudier, keeping herself up to date with modern thought in writing, painting and music; revising her memory in the classics, in Shakespeare, in Goethe, in Racine and Corneille. This went on until 1922. In August of that year she was cleaning herself some salad, she had added a little soda to the water for special cleanliness; she looked from time to time into her garden. Sitting out in the lane on a chair was a middle aged man asleep under his newspaper. Miss Brzeska took this opportunity to go and empty her slops into the drain by his chair.

With his anger her writing cease.