[22 Paradise Rd., Northampton, Mass.]
It seems a very long time since I have written; because I do not count either my last scrawl while in bed, orCriterion, Thereflections on ending;b4 my previous tirade about the Criterion, of which I am rather ashamed, and which I pray you to ignore. It is the sort of thing that one ceases to feel as soon as one has expressed it. It would be a relief to me to have you destroy it, as I feel that I was unjust to others, and I should not like to think of its ever being read by anyone else. I hope that you will not take this sort of letter too seriously, reflecting that as I say things to you that I would say to no one else, I am likely occasionally to say things that can only be taken as expressing the feeling of a moment.
I do not think that I have failed to receive any of your letters, and I will look back to see whether you did mention staying with Sylvia Knowles, as you probably did. Only, the last two letters, which arrived while I was in bed, were addressed (from Northampton) to 11, Grenville Place, and someone had pencilled on them ‘try 11, Emperor’s Gate’. (It used to be 9, Grenville Place, never 11). It is odd that you should have made this slip twice.
I have re-read several times – every few days since receiving it – your Christmas letter. About the Criterion, that is a trifle, but I see no reason now why I did not mention the decision as soon as it was made. ItHale, Emilycorrespondence with TSE;w3and TSE's diminished ardour;g6 isHale, Emilyrelationship with TSE;w9its seasonal rhythm;f4 much more important that, as you say – and you can judge of that as I cannot – my expression of feeling in correspondence is not what it is when we meet. I have not been altogether unaware of it. I think that it is due to a combination of reasons. OneHale, EmilyTSE's love for;x2over time;e3 is a kind of growth of objectivity. In earlier years my feelings were still very egotistic, I think; and egotism which normally belongs to a period of youth in which one is too carried away by the emotion to see very clearly the object of it, either as another person or as a person sharing life and emotions – an attitude which lasted longer with me than in normal lives, because it had never had its proper expression at its proper time. I have perhaps reacted from it too far: in trying to find a basis on which we could live in between, and in correspondence, one on which the essential emotions could be taken for granted. This has perhaps gone with a certain conservation of energy in the last two years, fearing (unconsciously) the consuming (rather than the at first more obviously stimulating) effect of the constant awareness of unsatisfied emotion. I know that the passage of time has only meant that the gap in my life would be only all the more appalling if you weren’t there; that every year it would be harder to reorganise again without you. For this feeling there is no adequate expression: it simply represents something which I cannot contemplate. To me it has seemed merciful that I do not live as vividly the whole year round – and the moments at which I do, in the winter, are subdued by the time I write: it would be a very different kind of vividness if we were always together. Yet I seem to have fallen into only another kind of egotism – from which I hope to be delivered.
I am quite well again: it was only a slight throat infection, but as I had interviewed, a few days before, a young man who said that he had just recovered from a bad attack of quinsy, I thought it best to take precautions. IPerkinses, thedescend on EH in Northampton;i5 am still apprehensive of the visit of the Perkins’s to Northampton being over-tiring for you, as I suppose they will be entirely dependent upon you for entertainment, and I don’t want you to have another illness in the spring. But at least I shall hope to get some kind of report from them about your general conditions.