Resources » KM Today Blog » 3 January 1923
3 January 1923
La Prieuré, Fontainebleau, Avon
Dearest Elizabeth,
Here is the £100 you lent me. I am sending it, as you see, at the last last moment while the old year is in the very act of turning up his toes.
I wish I could explain why I have not written to you for so long. It is not for lack of love. But such a black fit came on me in Paris when I realised that X-ray treatment wasn't going to do any more than it had done beyond upsetting my heart still more that I gave up everything and decided to try a new life altogether. But this decision was immensely complicated with ‘personal' reasons too. When I came to London from Switzerland I did (Sydney [Waterlow] was right so far) go through what books and undergraduates call a spiritual crisis, I suppose. For the first time in my life everything bored me. Everything and worse everybody seemed a compromise, and so flat, so dull, so mechanical. If I had been well I should have rushed off to darkest Africe or the Andes or the Ganges or wherever it is one rushes at those times, to try for a change of heart (one can't change one's heart in public) and to gain new impressions. For it seems to me we live on new impressions - really new ones. [To Elizabeth, Countess Russell, 31 December 1922.]