26 November

26 November 1920

Villa Isola Bella, Menton, France

BELIEVE THIS TELEGRAM ALL MY LOVE.

YOUR WIRE CAME JUST AFTER SENT MINE ALL WELL DEAREST LOVE WRITTEN
TIG.

[Telegrams to J. M. Murry in Collected Letters, 27 November 1920]

Dearest Bogey
Dont lets speak of it again. These things are simply part of life. Why? Ones question whispers out & out into the darkness: there is no answer.
And you have got a terrific case against me which is: I am OVER sensitive - impossible - Life being what it is. Also it is not within the bounds of possibility that we should be in quite the same worlds. I have hiding places - so have you. They are very different ones. We do though emerge from them strange to each other & its only when the strangeness wears off that we are together. This must ever be so. We share something - not all. I think, by recognising that fully we shall cease hurting each other ever. What we share we prize enough to wish to share it: the rest is our own. And forgive me if I hurt you - ever. Oh, I can't bear to hurt people! Least of all my dear Bogey.
Ill write to Pinker. I have a long story here - very long which I want to get published serially. Its supremely suitable for such a purpose. And it would bring me in money. Its form is the form of The Prelude BUT written today - not then. The Prelude is a child's story. But I shall not sell it unless I am offered a good deal of money. Yes, please send The Stranger to the Mercury as soon as possible - will you?
I didn't think for one infinitesimal moment that you deliberately gave that photograph to anybody. How could I think such a vile thing? I thought you didn't think at all . . .
Just a breath of something else. Anthony Asquith has sent me a letter which makes me feel that there are young people for whom one writes! [To J. M. Murry in Collected Letters 1920]