[No surviving envelope]
I do not know how long or how full this letter will be: fortravels, trips and plansTSE's scheduled December 1947 visit to Marseilles and Rome;g2dreaded;a7 at the moment my mind is distracted from much more important matters (and this is the most important matter of all) by this so long dreaded visit to France and Rome – with the strain of frequent public speaking, meeting innumerable people, being polite and diplomatic, and having to talk French (and lecture in French too); and at the moment, the strain of not even knowing whether the trains will be running. Were it an ordinary lecture engagement, I should have put it off for better times and a more clement season; but I feel that an invitation to take an honorary degree (however little one wants it!) should not be missed except under force majeure. IBritish Council;b5 cannot help hoping that by Wednesday morning it will be impossible to leave – though even then, I should probably fulfil the Rome part of the tour, by getting the British Council to send me by aeroplane. I don’t think I should go to Marseilles, if I had to go alone, because of being allowed so very little pocket money; butFluchère, Henri;a7 if there should be any delay en route, Henri Fluchère ought to be able to take care of that.
IHale, Emilyrelationship with TSE;w9since TSE discounted marriage;g5 have undergone many torments of mind in these last five months – to have reported to you each state of mind as it occurred would have given you no clue, but merely imposed a more constant strain upon both of us – and each state of mind had to be interpreted to myself in terms of the next. I only want you to understand that this ‘problem’ (for the word ‘problem’ itself is absurd, as it suggests that it was merely a matter of thinking out, instead of living out) has been the main theme in relation to which every thought, every occupation, every incident however trivial has been considered, for any possible light it might reveal. There have been periods of greater agony, periods of comparative, but conscious numbness, and periods in which I seemed to view everything with detachment – each ‘period’ varying from hours to days. I don’t think that either these experiences, or the decisions to which they lead, can be rationally accounted for: or rather, for everything there are at least two, and perhaps more, equally tenable explanations. I may be right for myself, I may be right for both of us, I may be merely egotistic, or I may be merely stupid and timid. It will appear to be any one of these; and any conclusion, from which one analyses the past, will make something in that past appear to be misguided and culpable. At no moment have I been without the feeling that I was losing, or throwing away, something most valuable; at no moment have I been sure that the loss was not on a deeper level than that. But the further one tries to get to the bottom of these matters, the further one gets from the world in which feelings can be put into words; and when one reverts to a verbal formulation, the words express a matter of fact, utilitarian formulation which is a travesty of the truth. PuttingHale, Emilyrelationship with TSE;w9TSE's reasons against marrying;c5 it on that, superficial level, I can say that I believe that the rest of my life can now only be a kind of completion (at best) of the kind of life I have lived; that I am aware that I am incapable of the kind of adaptation and pliancy necessary in order to live with another human being; that I feel that two human beings can only belong together by growing together; that growing together must begin while they are both capable of an indefinite degree of change of direction. I don’t think that either you or I are now capable of such change: and if we cannot change, we should be likely, instead of adapting ourselves to each other naturally and involuntarily, merely to accommodate by suppressing that in ourselves which was alien to the other. IfHale, Emilyrelationship with TSE;w9had TSE behaved differently in 1914;g6 things had happened differently (and if either of us had been more mature, or perhaps had help, or if I for my part had been then more unified in what I wanted, or if I had not happened to be the queer kind of person with the misfortune of a kind of destiny or doom quite separate from my will) thirty-three years ago, we should both be very different people now from what we are. But it would be a very superficial (and not only superficial but erroneous) view which would put it in terms of your not being the person whom I could completely share my life with. It is always you or nobody: and I see that if I can’t live with you I can’t live with anybody – though the question never arose in my mind – all that I could give to anybody so clearly belongs to you, that no alternatives have ever been possible. No alternative either permanent or casual. Whatever else may be said (either by others or by myself) to my discredit, I don’t think that anyone has ever been more monogamous than I – and on so deep a level that there is no question of any moral merit in being so, for it has been much deeper than the will.
ThereHale, EmilyTSE's love for;x2as expressed in 1914 on Chestnut Hill;f2 is one allusion in your letter which I do not understand – that to my first declaration of love in Chestnut Hill in 1914. If I said no more than I did, it was because (1) of humility in believing that nothing was less likely than that I could expect love in return (2) the practical conscience which told me that I had no right to ask any woman to pledge herself to marry me, until I was sure of a position in which I could support myself and a wife.
Your friends are probably right: I doubt whether I could make any woman happy now – apart from the fact that I am sure I should be more unhappy with anyone else than with yourself. I have a probably superstitious, and possibly self-pityingly lachrymose, feeling that I have not many years, that there is something important I ought to do with them, and that I probably shall have postponed doing it ‘leaving disordered papers in a dusty room’1 which is exactly the state my room is in at present.
As for writing, and the intervals: anyway, I shall probably write again after I get back, before Christmas. AndPerkinses, the;m4 the Perkins’s are always on my mind. IBrocklebank, Charlotte Carissima ('Cara');a8 heard from Mrs. Brocklebank the other day; and she will I hope be writing them.2
1.‘Animula’, l. 30.
2.TSE responded to Cara Brocklebank on 28 Nov. 1947: ‘I am afraid that the Carroll Perkins’ have been having a difficult time. Dr. Perkins is now pretty feeble and can go out but very little. And Mrs. Perkins during the last year has become very nearly blind. She also cannot go out of doors without a companion, and of course is quite unable to read. I know that their health has been a source of great anxiety to Miss Hale who is living in the village of Concord not far from Boston and of course she is constantly with them.’
2.CharlotteBrocklebank, Charlotte Carissima ('Cara') Carissima (‘Cara’) Brocklebank (1885–1948), only surviving daughter of Gen. Sir Bindon and Lady Blood, married in 1910 Lt.-Col. Richard Hugh Royds Brocklebank, DSO (1881–1965). They lived at 18 Hyde Park Square, London W.2, and at Alveston House, Stratford-on-Avon, Warwickshire: see Biographical Register.