THE HOME FROM HOME 77

the next fifty years; she described it in mundane
detail. "I have always wanted to see Jerusalem." She
showed me her volumes of manuscript, prophecies
taken down by Joanna's servant, sometimes in
doggerel verse. "Impostors can copy the prose," she
said, "but not the poetry. People go away and think
they can write like that too. Gentlemen send me the
strangest sensual verses." She spent a long time look-
ing for someone to publish her life of Joanna. She
made her way down Paternoster Row and saw a pub-
lisher's office called Sion House; it really looked, she
said, as if inspiration had brought her to the right
place. She told a man behind a counter that she had
brought the manuscript of Joanna's life and he went
away and never came back. "It's the worst snub I've
ever received," she said, but nothing could deter her.
She was so innocent and in a way she was so worldly;
she printed the life at her own expense; she founded
a press to do it. Maori followers of Joanna sent her
a motor-car, but she couldn't learn to drive it; it lay
in a garage in the village. A pity; it would have been
useful, for since the Lindbergh Baby Case (she kept
her old clear horn-rimmed eyes sharply on the world)
she had made the discovery that even babies could
be "sealed" for Joanna. Her companion was in the
north at the time sealing babies. "Isn't it beautiful?"
she said, turning over the Radio Times. Before I left
she sold me a pound of tea "from my plantations";
she meant she had some shares in the company;
she thought I would like it; the blend was very sooth-
ing. It was hot in the small shut rooms and the mice
were restless. I climbed down the terraces to the road,
past the monkey-puzzle tree, and she watched me