ERDINTGTON
Saturday Morning, and
a sparkling horsey one,
October 24th, 1936
My Dear Betty,
What a deadly reproach your postscript was, “I expect you will have written and our letters will cross”. I hadn’t and they didn’t and you’ll be wondering. Perhaps the postman will be swift and deliver this tonight, so that you have not to wait until Monday. I didn’t write on Thursday because I thought it a good thing to be patient and strong minded and all that, and yesterday I was with Miss Erskine here all day hammering out Dairy work and there was no time.
You ask me to say what I feel about all this. Well, that’s all very well, but how can anyone say really how they feel. Words are grand things, but so inadequate, and feelings are fluid. Once they are caught in a form of words, moderately eloquent to the writer, they often take on a different aspect to the reader.
You are vehement, aren’t you! Frighteningly so, and I’m scared, because really, we aren’t quite worth all that excitement, not if you knew us. And you can’t go about saying you have wasted half your life. You aren’t going to pop off to other lands at forty, are you?
Its no use trying to say things, I have spent so many years trying that that I know how impossible it is. And I’m not, nor shall I ever be, “cross” because you are intoxicated. Me too perhaps, though I am more bottled up and all that. And you aren’t shallow, and of course you have been dependent, and and and. No, the light touch, the delicate fantastic and slightly humorous approach is the only one possible where feelings are concerned, apart from bursting into poetry, which is a Bad Sign. Oh dear, poor you, poor me, perhaps very Lucky me, perhaps very Happy you. Have you been drunk? Its a pleasant sensation for rare occasions, though not too good as a habit. Well, that’s the feeling you’ve got now, though it comes from all the good and naturally fine elements in you, instead of being artificially engendered by fermentation of acids in a drink. Its not me, as me, that’s the cause, its old Dame nature, using poor me as a sounding board. Which makes me feel honoured, frightened, excited, and all sorts of things. Same to you. So here we go round the Mulberry Bush and in the same way that the old earth spins round, and there is the same fundamental reason.
You’re tight, I’m tight, we are both tight, and because an ordinarily and attractive friendship has been electrified by several million volts and sparks have to fly. We must, you and I, take a Firm Hold of Things, or Things won’t last. May I quote Shakespeare at you, a scurvy trick?
“His rash fierce blaze of riot cannot last,
For violent fires soon burn out themselves;
Small showers last long, but sudden storms are short,
He tires betimes that spurs too fast betimes;
With eager feeding food doth choke the feeder; . . . .”
And yet, that’s quite different, though there is, I feel, something of truth in it, like most of my Master Bill’s philosophy.
I say, don’t think I am suggesting that you doubt me. But although I am your contemporary, one thing I have is the gift of the extra years. A damnable timidity which comes when the fine trusting enthusiasm of youth fades, and a capacity, ruinous to high living, for wanting to see the past, the present and the future in one pattern. The child has only the present to live in, and wisely gets much more out of living thereby. You are in the between stage and have yet to lose the sparkle of discounting the future. While twenty demands of the present, thirty, on the road, to the sere and yellow, is frightened of the present divorced from the future, and will ask with fatuous spoil-sportiveness, “whither tending . . . .?”
Anyhow, don’t heed my carping, nor my fears. When you and I get together, life is symphonic, and right or wrong, that can’t be but good. Only is there no reaction?
My engagements for next week are still chimerical, but they are many. One evening there shall be, and I will let you know and hope that it coincides with a free evening of yours. We’ll have a symphony on.
That was a grand frock you had on, and I rarely notice what anyone of your sex is wearing. Am I an instinctive monk! I seem to be frightened of the swift joys of feminine company. Perhaps it is a complex, perhaps it is just inexperience. But all is well, Betty mio, and don’t get too frazzled up and worried, it frightens me. I’m bread and butter, not almond slice, and bread and butter is much more lasting.
If you can make head or tail of all this you are a genius. For now, bless you and au revoir for a few days. Write as often as you are able. Your . . . David