Letter from Wilfred Bion to Francesca, February 12, 1959. The Other Side of Genius: Family Letters

My darling,

It was lovely to have you by my side this afternoon. In a way I felt I hardly wanted to talk but was quite contented just to sit there and hold your hand and look at you and hear you talk …

Elliott came in this evening for a short time and I asked him about the M.K. Trust meeting. He told me of the progress of the scheme to publish M.K.'s book.1 But though I was glad to hear negotiations were proceeding successfully I was in fact more concerned to hear about this hare-brained scheme of £70 a year for the support of high-grade candidates. He seemed to think it was unlikely to come to much and

ended up by suggesting it might just be a matter of having an ad hoc whip round of a limited kind for some special occasion. He also favoured in any case having a standard so high that virtually no one would get a grant …

February 13. Another morning, my darling, after a good night's rest. I sometimes feel I ought to have been a recluse, some kind of Oxford don, only then we should not have enough money – we don't have enough apparently anyway, but that is a detail which afflicts anyone who would like to go on Hellenic tours or read good books or go to Glyndebourne. But the serious and disturbing thing is the awful sense of frustration I get because I feel I have something I must write but cannot get at it because of the pressure of the stark need to live at all. I can see from my stay here, where it is obvious that sheer force of circumstances makes it impossible to do anything but write and read the appropriate books, how absolutely uninterested I am in anything else except to see and be near you and the family. After that, but really mixed up with the reading and writing, is my work with the patients which I want to do for its own sake. I know I can't shuffle off all these damned financial worries and responsibilities but I certainly feel they are killing my capacity for work – d