This is an archived copy of the KMS website from April 2021. To view the current website, click here.


10 November 1922

La Prieuré, Fontainebleau, Avon

But I am giving the impression that we all live together in brotherly love & blissful happiness. Not at all. One suffers terribly. If you have been ill for 5 years you cant expect to be well in five weeks. If you have been ill for 20 years & according to Mr Gurdjieff we all of us have our ‘illness' it takes very severe measures to put one right. But the point is there is hope. One can & does believe that one will escape from living in circles & will live a CONSCIOUS life. One can, through work, escape from falsity & be true to ones own self - not to what anyone else on earth thinks one is.
I wish you could meet some of the men here. You would like them very very much, especially a Mr Salzmann, who speaks very little. I must stop this letter. Is it a rigmarole?
I don't know what you mean darling by seeing me as an angel with a sword. I don't feel at all like one. There is another thing. You can't really be happy in my happiness. No one ever is. That phrase is only a kind of buffer - don't you think? Its like people living through their children. Well, they may do it. But its not life. Neither can I ever teach you how to live. How is it possible? You are you. I am I. We can only lead our own lives together. [To J. M. Murry, 10 November 1922.]