I feel myself dragging my feet to delay the end of this project since it’s giving me so much joy. And yet here I am at the end of 1935 already, finishing a volume of letters and a volume of the diary at the same time, the first coinciding.
During these years, Ethel Smyth remained her most-frequently corresponded with friend, although Vita still lingers on the outskirts. Glimpses of VW’s life are best seen through the letters interspersed with her diaries. Below are just bits I dogeared for later:
- She encourages Elizabeth Bowen to start a LoudLatinLaughing of sorts – “I hope you will carry out your idea of a diary of books… I mean not tea parties but Milton and so on”
- She continues to dodge the spotlight: “limelight is bad for me: the light in which I work best is twilight.”
- “When one is writing a letter, the whole point is to rush ahead…”
- “Sometimes I think heaven must be one continuous unexhausted reading.”
Her 23 Jan 1935 letter to Ethel Smyth has lots of good quotes:
“I have 3½ mins: before settling down to read the Bible. Why did you never tell me what a magnificent book it is! And the Testament? and the Psalms!… Oh I’ve been in such a howling duststorm—to sit alone and read the Bible is like drawing into a sunny submarine hollow between deep waves.”
“I agree with you entirely about death from Cancer: I forget how you said it: something about having a chance to die standing up.”