10 May

10 May 1920

2 Portland Villas, Hampstead - London

Last week here I hadn't time to write a word; this week is already covered under manuscripts to be read, poems, essays to choose ‘finally', novels to review, schemes to draft, an article to write on why we intend to publish short stories and then there's a special smashing review to be written for the Nation . . . I shall get these things into order presently; I'll find their each his separate place. Last week, really, it was like having Murry a wistful shepherd leading his troop of sheep into the room and I was ill and in dreadful pain, physical and mental pain, that could not be spo¬ken of.
But Work, real work - the longing and the desire to work is all that matters. Why does one rebel so at isolation. It must be. Why can't one accept it once and for all, and put all that other side of oneself into work - all the desire to love, to share, to be someone's first thought, to have someone who talks to you endlessly and to whom you talk endlessly, to give - to receive - tenderness, and all that quick, ardent interchange. I should like all this and work. I should like to live in this atmosphere - sympathy, happiness abounding, every moment lived, and then shut the door and sit down at the table and write. But here's a woman who has been ill for over two years, who instead of ‘looking after' the other has made demands upon a man who confesses he has very little vitality to spare and doesn't ultimately care for people except as symbols. Who finds that after all, he doesn't in the least desire her kind of Life, but wants to be a scholar and live quietly, remotely, writing poetic drama, growing learned, and feeling - that she is by and sympathetic but does not interfere . . . [To Sydney and Violet Schiff in Collected Letters]