[Grace Toll Hall, Scripps College, Claremont]
I had thought that I was going to write to you tonight, andMorleys, the;b7 then I remembered that I had promised to go down to the Morleys this evening for the weekend (Frank is leaving for a business visit for New York in a few days). So I must write during the daytime, which is not so satisfactory, because it is apt to be broken by interruptions, and is also against time.
Now I have brought myself to read your letter once more – and I repeat that it is a beautiful letter beautifully expressed. ButHale, Emilycorrespondence with TSE;w3TSE offers to cease;e8 a greater doubt begins to creep into my mind: whether I ought to take the initiative, for your sake, in suggesting that perhaps it might still be best to break off anything like regular correspondence, at least for a few years? I do not need, I hope, to assure you that for me this would be pure loss and no gain; but I have already on my conscience all I can bear, and in my worst states of depression my past life seems only a nightmare of things ill-done and undone;1 and I think that if I came to wake up again, I think I should be completely crushed and useless. In short, I am convinced that whatever is best for you is best, in the long run, for me; I might even for forcibleness put it this way: that you would be doing wrong to me in choosing any but what is the best and most wholesome course for you.
JustChristianitymarriage;c2;a2 as I should not want any woman to marry me because she was sorry for me, or because she knew that she could make me happier than any other woman could, or because she wanted to help me, but primarily and fundamentally just because she wanted me for herself and felt that she would be happy and fulfilled with me …
I still feel in the dark: all the mistakes I have made in the past make me more distrustful of my power to see clearly now. But this last week or so I have been down in the depths, andEliot, Vivien (TSE's first wife, née Haigh-Wood)separation from;f1general impasse;c2 also my affairs seem to have reached a deadlock, and I cannot pierce the future at all. Perhaps my vision will improve.
Good bye, My Dear.
1.See the Builder’s Song, in The Rock:
Ill done and undone,
London so fair.
We will build London
Bright in dark air …
‘Little Gidding’, II:
And last, the rending pain of re-enactment
—Of all that you have done, and been; the shame
—Of motives late revealed, and the awareness
Of things ill done and done to others’ harm
—Which once you took for exercise of virtue.
Cf. Macbeth, V. i. 63–4: ‘what’s done cannot be undone.’