Saturday 5 April 2014

5th April 1934 - Mary to Terrick

Sitting in the sun on the steps by the river

Thursday 10.45 am


Jill - Flip - Andrew - and I are keeping house this morning, and everything flows smoothly.

I've finished everything there is to do and am now sitting at sublime ease - perfect, save for a potent smell of pigs effervescing over the wall at me!

Thank you for your letter - I have just read it through for the second time.  I can't get over your making copies of your long F.W. letters! - Of course, they were excellent - and I'm not saying that they don't account for 50% of the results - but, gosh!, fancy troubling to copy them over twice!  You must have been inordinately proud of your style!  But, I must say, it's only reading them through at one sitting that I noticed the difference.

It's only natural that the letters we write after we've seen each other, fall a bit short of ones with hundreds of miles between us.

A really good letter must always contain a certain adventurous element - putting a feeling foot forward on uncharted land where there is always the hope of retaliation.

But when you really get to know a person too well and intimately - when most of the uncharted land has been explored and mapped out - then mere "blue-black" becomes superfluous - and - as you say - you save everything up until it can be delivered verbally - because it's become a real, live thing with a cause and effect instead of something invented in one's own head for self-satisfaction and the hope of effect.

There is something to be instilled in "love letters" though - because I've read some of Daddy's - but we're a bit too new.  We're in the stage when our "sub-human" and "human" have developed amazingly - and are proving reliable and engrossing (hence letters being inadequate) - But the greatest side of all - the "super-human" is naturally a very embryo of embryos.  Here I feel horribly handicapped by ignorance - but I've always had my own special "belief" - that all these hundreds and hundreds of people who make a hash of things - all the unsuitable nagging little couples who started with such high hopes and just the good intentions I've got - set sail for the greatest thing in life before making sure they'd got a complete cargo.  They didn't mean to - because they didn't know enough about the "high seas" to realize all the cargo they would ultimately need - they'd made a careful list of food and clothing - and friends - and perambulators - but were relying for always on a fair wind and had missed out the "petrol" which would have just been there - however far down in the bottom of the ship - in case of accidents and for when everything else failed.  I feel that we, - me and the person I love - must set out and find our own petrol (however far a garage is) while we're still on terra firma - and build up the rest of our cargo all round it.  So that a perfect peace of mind and fathomless understanding could always be ours whatever happened to the food - friends and perambulators.

This allegory won't bear with much probing but the surface work rings true - my idea of "petrol" at the moment is a divine cord connecting the minds, wills and lives of two people - and raising them above this human world into some spiritual unity - greater and cleaner and immeasurably finer than they could possibly be as humans.

But I don't think one can set out in a bee-line for it.  The super-human is the only one of the three that can't consciously be developed.  It has to be born and grow practically unconsciously and when it reaches perfection (without worry, or littleness or striving) it's just there for ever and ever - and is the absolute, final, and noblest gift ever given to man - because, in essence it is divine - and therefore immortal.

- But what worries me is, that if so many people never find it at all - shall we?  I suppose determination and belief will help - but I'm so overflowing with sins that I get seized with most dreadful pangs of conscience!

*       *        *       *  

 Whiskey has just fallen clean into the river - his front paws on land and his back ones in the boat and he just divided!  Consequently I am saturated as he has shaken himself all over me - but he's quite recovered after a rub down in front of the fire.  He was terrified when I fished him out.

I love your idea of the first step towards making money! - Knowing what to do with it when you've got it - and how easy is it going to be?

Flip's just caught a fish and thrown it back - but I'm afraid it'll die because he threw it back so hard.

The sun is simply boiling on my back - I've rolled my sleeves up and feel like going to sleep.  Oh, this time last week! - and that wonderful perfect weekend.

Thank heaven I shall see you on Saturday - and I'm sorry that I appear so "fussy" about you - but you'll allow me that it's a natural feeling - won't you?  However _ I'll curb it when I remember - I suppose it must be rather embarrassing!

The "achey" feeling is wearing off, through lack of stimulant - but I'm still rather unsafe in the "self-control" line.

If possible, I should come down from Waterloo on Saturday (to Richmond) and get a cheap day return.  Because we'll go up to the Old Vic by train after tea.  There won't be enough room in the car to come back in afterwards - so I said we'd come down by train as long as they all contribute to the fare!

I must stop this letter now - I feel quite "last-summerish" going on and on.  I don't know if it's all sense - but it's all "me" anyway (without a copy!)

We're going to see "Jack Ahoy" this evening - it'll make me think of the last time I saw it - and therefore I shall feel a bit incomplete.

Be extra specially kind to me, old thing,

love

Mary P


P.S. If I ever give you the feeling that my affection is on the wane - just take no notice of me - be severely indifferent for a specified time - and you can be sure of good results.

P.P.S. - I thought you might find this old reference list of yours useful - to tick off as I improve.

"QUALITIES I WOULD REQUIRE IN A WOMAN"  T.V.H. FitzHugh.

1)   Idealistic                                    
2)   Understanding                       
3)   Cheerful                                  
4)   Sympathetically critical        
5)   Brave
6)   Active (calmly not restlessly)
7)   Good taste
8)   Clean and neat 
9)   Interested in the important things beyond her own personal sphere
10) Love of country-life
11) Plenty of general knowledge
12) Sense of Humour
13) As much money as I have

MPO

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