After 5th March - Terrick to Mary

Again, only a small part of this letter remains


Pages 9-12

What interests me is your outlook.  You would probably make a good school-mistress or mother.

Salvation versus Hedonism - there is a play in that somewhere.

Since you ask me, I'll tick you off about something else:  this craving to be out of the ordinary.  It is rather cheap, I think.  True originality comes from acting entirely on your convictions regardless of what other people think of you (origo = a beginning).  For example: to go about wearing your hair standing straight up on end because nobody else wears it like that is Pose.  To wear it so because you are convinced that it is the most healthy (or most beautiful, or most practical) way, is orginality.

You are a little poseur. 

I should like to meet Mr Bernays.  He sounds like the sound of man a clergyman should be.  Why wouldn't your conversation have been good for me?  If he is the perfect man and wouldn't think much of me I should say that his conversation would be very good for me.

He can't perform your marriage ceremony because my father, being a close relation, has a prior right to perform mine.  Still, he can put in a word here and there.

Is "simple, but interested" your own?  It sounds too good, even for you.  I am "simple but interested" too, but I get so interested that I want to try everything out.  That makes things more interesting still.

You needn't be afraid of being "final", because you "can't let me down" - except by going an doing something that isn't you.  (You won't understand this, because you don't understand what I mean by "final".  Anyway, leave it there for the moment.)

Don't say: "you can't possibly know".  Because that is just what I always used to think; and I can tell you that it is fallacious; Thank Heaven!  Fancy what life would be like if that could not be certain!

Suppose we change the subject.