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Francesca my darling,
This is only a note to say I love you. What a pity it would be so dull if I only filled the page up with those three words because they are the only ones that seem to go through my head. How wonderful to be John Donne and able to write you ‘The Extasy’. How enviable
to pour out ‘La ci darem’ la mano' instead of remaining chained in inarticulateness.
Well, there it is; so I shall have to say instead that I had a long wait at Baker Street, did not bother waiting, perhaps fruitlessly, for a taxi at Uxbridge, and so walked home without being smothered in rain or swallowed up in a snow drift. Parthenope was crying out just as I came in, presumably with a nightmare. How people can think of childhood as ‘happy’ I do not know. A horrible bogey-ridden, demon-haunted time it was to me and then one has not the fortitude, or callosities perhaps, with which to deal with it.
I am finding it very difficult even to take any notice of the daily life around me but look forward yearningly to our next meeting. I am going on writing this in the morning as my eyes were too heavy with sleep last night. It takes me an enormous time to write these letters because I stop at every other word to think about you, or I should say to dream about you.
On second thoughts I don't think I want to be Donne or Mozart (perhaps in the event it is just as well). I don't think even they can have found it very satisfactory: really all I want is to be able to be with you. I feel quite worried that I can think of nothing else because I do not want to become a terrible bore. I am very glad you don't want to be Vicereine: not only because it would mean having to reconquer India. Even in my insignificant life there are so many demands on my time that I feel I have no private life and you must have so many friends who will certainly not let you go, as well as your work, that I shall have to learn how to remain cool, calm and collected in face of great frustration.
Francesca my darling love I wo