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12 February 1920
Vienna, IX. Berggasse 19
Dear Jones,
So your father had not to hold out until he got devoured piecemeal by his cancer as poor Freund was.1 What a happy chance! Yet you will soon
find out, what it means to you. I was about your age when my father died (43)2 and it revolutioned my soul.
Can you remember a time so full of death as this present one? Cpt. Daly arrived here Monday, he corresponds very well to your descriptions. When I handed him a wire waiting for him since the day before, he started and put it back into my hands. It contained the news, that his mother and grandmother had both died “yesterday” and urged him to return as soon as possible. Yet he resolved to stay and begin analysis, ordering a sister-in law (of the Darwin family) to see and help his sister as his substitute. He seems somewhat “mixed up”. If he succeeds in remaining here you will hear more of him.
(I will telegraph to the other man that I am ready to take him 12th April, the week after Easter)
Last week I took a good man of our own country a former Baron, who had waited for a long time. He had absented himself for this day only, but in the morning he telephoned to me he must miss some hours more as his mother had suddenly died, a woman of under fifty. Perhaps it is only a sample of the well known accumulation of similar facts, but “Media vita in morte sumus”.3
Tell your dear wife, her condolence was one of the most sympathetic among the many we got, and we thank her affectionately. She is right to remember the case of poor Minna Herzl; there is even another coincidence between the two, which I need not name.
Work is going on so very slowly with us, we are handicapped on all sides. Paper is beginning to fail. The packets from Teschen (Prochaska)4 are going three months, Rank seems to be ill just now (I hope nothing serious), and so on.
Cpt. Daly brought me two books, one by Havelock Ellis, known to you I am sure, “The Philosophy of Conflict”,5 second series, containing an essay o