4 Mar
4 Mar
4 March 1920
My dear Jones
I want to tell you a secret but I cannot when we are face to face. I feel you know what it is. But the fact is all I can tell you now. Later on, Ill laugh about it and talk about it and you can make fun of me but just at present Jones Im so sensitive that I couldn't even bear to hear you say you had got this letter. I tremble with shyness - that is dead true, my dear. Later on, I promise it won't be so, but for the present will you forgive me if I ask you not to even breathe a word of it to me.
This afternoon when we were lying on the hills (Ill tell you all about it one day) I knew there was a God. There you are.
One day (before I go back to England I hope) I mean to be received into the Church. I am going to become a Catholic. Once I believe in a god, the rest is so easy. I can accept it all MY OWN WAY - not ‘literally' but symbolically: its all quite easy and beautiful. But unless one really believed in a god even thought it is tempting to have that great inward gate opened - it is no good.
I mean to make Life wonderful if I can. Queer, Jones, Ive always a longing to heal people and make them whole, enrich them: thats what writing means to me - to enrich - to give. I want to do it in Life too. [To Ida Baker in Collected Letters]