31st January 1936
You Dearest of dears,
I am sitting here feeling too tired to do anything but the nicest thing I can think of. My throat is very wearing. I have got two bottles of medicine on my desk for it - damn, my pen has given out - one to drink and the other to gargle, so you'll have to nurse me this weekend. The doctor whom I saw yesterday said I ought to spend Saturday, Sunday and Monday in bed, but I have too much to do.
Renny has been round and will come down this weekend with pleasure. Have you invited Bodil yet?
Joan has written and said that she can come to the Courtauld Institute Ball. I shall have to let her know about the postponement.
I was thinking last night all about our getting married. It struck me that thought I don't get a trousseau, if the old folk gave Eileen £120 for hers, they ought to stump up about £50 for their firstborn son and heir. That would put us on a good sound footing.
Did you see King Carol's masseur in the funeral procession in a ordinary jacket, a trilby hat, a long sweater and white flannel trousers? Apparently he had to accompany Carol in his car to the starting place, treating him as he didn't feel well; and then he got mixed up in the procession and was in it nearly all the way.
__________________________
Interval to talk to you. If you don't say this letter is a surprise I shan't believe you. I nearly started off by saying "Oh, I'm just writing to you".
Can you read this letter? I can't write in pencil.
Today I won half-a-crown from Digby who bet me at the end of last November that the fascists would be in power in France at the end of this month. That comes of reading the Daily Mail. I spent most of it on beer with him.
If you get an Evening Standard with a Low cartoon will you keep it for me. I think that he and Will Dyson of the Herald are very clever.
Mummy says that charging Lord Wharton five bob an hour is my communistic plan of nobbling the aristocracy! Apparently she has seen adverts in "The Times" for lessons at 2/- each. They must be class lessons.
Did I tell you that the post has been reaching Wensley on horseback? They have been snowed up.
Yesterday an article in the paper gave me a wonderful idea for a short story. I mapped out the plot and wrote about three pages. Most of it depends on the style, which is difficult. It is a love story with a setting in Poland about a hundred and fifty years ago.
Rutland said he thought you looked very attractive. I said: yes, I had noticed that you were. It doesn't seem a bit as if I had seen you twice this week. In some ways I seem to feel more that I have been with you after a weekend at Dunally. Here you and I are more one. It is the likeness between our own common humanity, that is accentuated; in the society of other people it is our differences, or rather the separateness of our being, that makes the chief impression on one. Here you are too close, physically and mentally for me to feel I am with someone else; at Dunally you stand at a decorous distance, physically and mentally, and I can realise that you are a separate person whose mind and body more independently of mine. That is even more exciting sometimes than being fused in one by the current of passion that is set up by our close contact.
Watching you among other people gives me too a curious feeling of looking at myself and seeing how people react to me. Chiefly because I know that your thoughts are always partially my thoughts and that I am therefor half you - and you half me - but also because other people know that you are my choice and are therefore to be treated in a way as they would me - and vice versa. When you come into the room I feel, and I feel that other people are thinking: Ah, here comes the rest of Terrick.
I won't bring the motor of the projector down tomorrow. It makes it so heavy; but I'll bring the cutting things and we can do some splicing together.
I forgot to go to my story writing class yesterday. I wonder if Andy went.
Last night, I went to bed early and read from "Great Short Novels of the World". The one I picked, "Doctor Music's Dream", was the most horrible story I have ever read. It made me jumpy and I was afraid to go to sleep in case I dreamt about it. I'll read another tonight.
Goodnight, dear. I won't say that I love you very much, because I begin to wonder if there are degrees in real love. I see that what I feel for you is not more than I have ever felt for anyone else, but a totally different and more wonderful feeling. On is either alive or not; so one is either in love or not; and I am!
I love you.
Terrick
X X X
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