14 May

14 May 1920

2 Portland Villas, Hampstead - London

I have had your note; I have had your postcard and am wondering every day if you are home. The Elliots have dined with us tonight. They are just gone - and the whole room is quivering. John has gone downstairs to see them off. Mrs E's voice rises "Oh dont commiserate Tom; he's quite happy." I know its extravagant; I know, Violet, I ought to have seen more - but I dislike her so immensely. She really repels me. She makes me shiver with apprehension . . . I don't dare to think of what she is ‘seeing'. From the moment that John dropped a spoon & she cried: "I say you are noisy tonight - whats wrong" - to the moment when she came into my room & lay on the sofa offering idly: "This room's changed since the last time I was here." To think she had been here before. I handed her the cigarettes saying to myself: "well you won't find it changed again". Isn't that extravagant. And Elliot, leaning towards her, admiring, listening, making the most of her - really minding whether she disliked the country or not . . .
I am so fond of Elliot and as he talked of you both tonight I felt a deep sympathy with him. You are in his life like you are in mine. Don't think that is impertinent. Oh, I could explain and explain that. But this teashop creature.
M. comes up after they are gone, and he defends her. He tells me of a party he gave here & how she came & was friends with him & how he drank to get over the state of nerves she had thrown him into. "I like her; I would do the same again." I feel as tho' Ive been stabbed.
Now its dead still - except for the far-off noise of the trains drumming round the hollow world. [To Sydney and Violet Schiff in Collected Letters]