Something I doubtless did put in, somewhere, is that I once knew a great deal about many painters.

Well, I knew a great deal about many painters for the same reason that Menelaus must surely have known a great deal about Paris, say.

Even if I seem to have skipped Rogier van der Weyden and Jan Steen.

Somehow I would also appear to know that Bach had eleven children, however.

Or perhaps it was twenty children.

Then again it may have been Vermeer who had eleven children.

Though possibly what I have in mind is that Vermeer left only twenty paintings.

Leonardo left fewer than that, perhaps only fifteen.

Not one of these figures may be correct.

Fifteen paintings do not seem like very many, especially when several of them are not even finished.

Or are deteriorating.

Then again it is perhaps quite a lot if one is Leonardo.

Actually Vermeer left forty paintings.

Brahms had no children at all, although he was known for carrying candy in his pocket to give to the children of other people, when he visited people who had children.

And at least we have finally solved the question as to which life of Brahms it was that I read.

Surely a history of music written for children, and printed in extraordinarily large type, would place emphasis on the fact that somebody being written about in that very book was known for carrying candy in his pocket to give to children when he visited people who had children.

Even if Brahms had not done this very often, surely it would have been emphasized there.

In fact it is not even impossible that Brahms hardly ever carried candy in his pocket to give to children.

Very possibly Brahms did not even do this more than once in his life, and the entire legend was based on that single incident.

Helen ran off with a lover only once in her life herself, and for three thousand years nobody would ever let her forget it.

Here is some candy, children, Brahms doubtless said, once.

Brahms gave candy to children, somebody wrote.

The latter statement is in no way untrue. Any more than it is untrue that Helen was unfaithful.

Although when one comes right down to it, who is to say that Brahms may even have not liked children?

Or even disliked them, to the extreme?

As a matter of fact quite possibly the only reason Brahms ever gave candy to any of them, even the once, may have been so they would go away altogether.

Actually, Leonardo did not have children either, although nothing appears to have been said about candy either way, in his instance.

Still, so much for your basic legend.

So much for solving the question as to which life of Brahms it was that I read, as well, since what I have also now just remembered is the affair that Brahms perhaps had with Clara Schumann.

I say perhaps, since it would appear that nobody has ever quite solved this, either.

Assuredly there would have been no hint of it in the history of music written for children, however.

Doubtless what Van Gogh wished was to reform Sien, when he invited her to live with him.

This was before he cut off his ear, I believe.

Often, in reading about Van Gogh, one gets the impression he must have been the first person to say hello to Dostoievski, in St. Petersburg.

Actually, it strikes me as quite agreeable to think of Brahms having had an affair with Clara Schumann.

Once, when I was a girl, I saw a film about music in Vienna, called Song of Love.

All I can remember about the film is that everybody took turns playing the piano.

But also that Katharine Hepburn had the part of Clara Schumann.

So perhaps it is the notion of Brahms having had an affair with somebody like Katharine Hepburn which strikes me as so agreeable.

Especially if his affair with Jane Avril did not last.

And even if I have no idea what I have been saying that has now reminded me that Bach was almost blind, before he died.

This was from copying too many scores late at night, if I remember.

Homer was blind too, of course.

Although possibly this was only something that was said, insofar as Homer was concerned.

I believe I have already mentioned that there were no pencils, then.

Which is to say that when people said Homer was blind, it was because what they really did not wish to say was that Homer did not know how to write.

Emily Brontë was one more person who did not have children.

Well, doubtless it would have been extraordinarily interesting if Emily Brontë did, what with the considerable likelihood that she never even once had a lover.

Still, I would perhaps find it difficult to think of anybody I would rather be descended from than Emily Brontë.

Unless Sappho, of course.

Well, or Helen.

To tell the truth, I may even have made believe that I was Helen, once.

At Hisarlik, this would have been. Looking out across the plains that once were Troy, and dreaming for a while that the Greek ships were beached there still.

Or that one could even see the evening's watchfires, being lighted along the shore.

Well, it would have been a harmless enough thing to make believe.

Even if Troy itself was disappointingly small. Like little more than your ordinary city block and a few stories in height, practically.

Although now that I remember, everything in William Shakespeare's house at Stratford-on-Avon was astonishingly tiny, too. As if only imaginary people had lived there then.

Or perhaps it is only the past itself, which is always smaller than one had believed.

I do wish that that last sentence had some meaning, since it certainly came close to impressing me for a moment.

There is a great deal of sadness in the Iliad in either case, incidentally.

Well, all that death. Wrist deep in that, and in loss, so many of them so often being.

But too, with all of it so long ago, and forever gone.

On the way to certain of his own conquests, Alexander the Great once stopped at Troy himself, to lay a wreath at Achilles's grave.

That older war seeming so much closer to then than to now, of course.

Still, even by the time of Alexander, it was almost a thousand years.

I can almost not conceive of that, come to think about it.

Julius Caesar laid a wreath at Achilles's grave, as well. Although that was only about three hundred years after Alexander.

When I say only, what I imagine I mean is that it was practically as close as between Shakespeare and today, for instance.

In which case I have unquestionably now lost track of what I was trying to conceive of altogether.

Bertrand Russell was born fifteen years before Rupert Brooke, and was still alive more than fifty years after Brooke had died on Scyros, if that is perhaps connected to anything?

If I have not mentioned having been at Stratford-on-Avon before, by the way, this is only because I assume it is taken for granted that everybody who goes to London will sooner or later also go to Stratford-on-Avon.

London and Stratford-on-Avon always remaining equidistant from each other too, as it happens.

Whatever the people who wrote the instructions in Japanese about situating phonograph speakers may have believed.

And in the meantime I would appear to have let still another day pass without putting that one in, either.

As a matter of fact I did not sit here at all, yesterday.

For some reason, what I felt like doing yesterday was dismantling.

Although after that I went for a ride in the pickup truck, as far as to the garbage disposal area.

The tires on the pickup truck are getting a little soft.

Have I said that on certain mornings, when the leaves are dewy, some of them are like jewels where the earliest sunlight glistens?

It is what I sometimes have instead of a rosy-fingered dawn, possibly.