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The Irish clergyman who shares my cabin comes fully up to expectations. In answer to a remark about the amount of food they give us, he answered ‘Yes, keep your stomach full, and then, if you are sea-sick you’ll be quite all right!’ When he was at a University (Manchester, I believe he said) De Valera took him in mathematics. Nothing evil can be said of De V. for ‘he is a devout man, a good layman.’²

Father Roach comes from the South, from Tipperary and, though he has no desire for a republic, is very indignant at the idea of the Northern Parliament.

Altogether there’s an amusing ship load and, of course, there was an invasion of French people at Cherbourg. I had never dreamed of such a wonderful harbour as C. We got quite far in, so that we could see a lot of the forts.

Tomorrow we get to Vigo, and hope to go ashore for a few hours. But it’s rather uncertain, as we have not got a Spanish visa on our passports. We also pass close into Corunna, and will probably be able to land at Leixoes.

It will seem funny coming back as we will be quite a large party, six in fact.

Aunt Eva sends her love to all,

love from
Graham

Graham and his aunt visited the grave of General Sir John Moore (1761–1809), a distant relative and a hero of the Napoleonic wars. He was killed in the retreat to La Coruña and buried, according to the poet Charles Wolfe, ‘darkly at dead of night, the sods with our bayonets turning’.

Graham revisited the grave sixty years later when he was planning Monsignor Quixote.³

TO MARION GREENE

Here, Graham describes a service at Westminster Abbey on 17 October 1921, during which the American Chief-of-Staff General John Pershing (1860–1948) laid the Congressional Medal of Honor on the tomb of the unknown warrior. The ceremony was attended by Prime Minister Lloyd George (1863–1945), Winston Churchill (1874–1965), then Colonial Secretary, and Earl Haig (1861–1928), who had commanded the British Expeditionary Force.

Tuesday [18 October 1921] | At 15 Devonshire Terrace W.2

Dear Mumma,

Thanks very much for the foolscap, and letter. I’m afraid the story is no use for a magazine. It’s much too short. I’ve sent it in for the school competition. Yesterday Aunt Eva came to see Mr Richmond about Ave;⁴to-day in the distance, while reading in the gardens, I saw Raymond’s friend Crompton,⁵and two other people, doing experiments of some kind.

Yesterday I went to the American ceremony. I got into the Abbey for the service, but as far as the actual service went, I should have preferred being outside, as I was too far away to see anything, but a glimpse of Winston Churchill’s head, and to hear anything but a monotonous drone. I had a dreadful man next me, who expatiated to me the whole time on the League of Nations and insisted on reading a long poem on its ideals, written by a friend of his. But it was worth being bored by the service because of the waiting period beforehand. The Abbey itself lighted up brilliantly, but outside the door nothing but a great bank of mist, with now and again a vague steel helmeted figure appearing, only to disappear again. The whole time the most glorious music from the organ, with the American band outside, clashing in at intervals. Then the feeling of expectancy through the whole people, the minds of everyone on tip-toe. It got back the whole atmosphere of the war, of the endless memorial services; I’d never realised before how we had got away from the death feeling.

But when Pershing and the rest arrived, there was a ghastly anticlimax, people standing up on the seats, and peering over other people’s shoulders, the whole dramatic effect lost, and the service did nothing to restore it. I rushed out afterwards and managed to get a good view of the inspection, Pershing and Haig and a lot of other generals whom I didn’t recognise. I’d never realised what a militarist face Haig had got before. As bad as Hindenburg. Lloyd George, before the inspection, drove off amidst very feeble cheers, and a great deal of laughter and chaff. I got another good view of the others driving off, Pershing amidst great enthusiasm, but Haig in practically silence. Altogether it was quite worth seeing.

Love to all,
Graham

TO MARION GREENE

15 Devonshire Terrace | W.2. | Tuesday [25 October 1921]

Dear Mumma,

I hear you are going to stay a week-end with Aunt N.,⁶but I suppose you won’t have room for any books. If you should have room to spare could you bring my Warner and Martin? (History) If Mrs O’Grady would ask Guest,⁷he’d get it from my locker in the library. But don’t trouble about finding room, if it’s at all difficult, because it’s not necessary. It is so to speak a ‘luxury’. Tell Hugh, if he would like to send me our stamp swops, I’d try and exchange them for a few we haven’t got at Stanley Gibbons.⁸Of course, as most of them are very common, we’d only get a few for them. It’s just as he likes.⁹If he wants to, he must also send me Stanley Gibbons’ address. I expect you’d have room for them, as they are only in a small sort of notebook, which would take up no room at all. But again, if it’s any bother don’t.

I hope to see Walter de la Mare¹⁰soon. Mrs. Richmond has promised to ask him to tea, before I go. I hope soon to blossom into the Saturday Westminster. ‘The Creation of Beauty. A study in sublimation,’ by H. Graham Greene. Ahem! Ahem! Mr. Richmond is going to thrust it before the Editor’s eyes, and thinks he’ll accept it. The cold weather at last! It is a gloriously sharp, raw day today.

Love to all,
Graham

P.S. Hugh will find S. G.’s address on the stamp catalogues. I remember passing the shop a day or two ago, but I forget where.

TO MARION GREENE

Graham went up to Balliol College, Oxford, in the autumn of 1922. He had an appetite for pranks and helped to launch a candidate for the general election on 15 November.

Oxford Union Society [c. 12 November 1922]

Dear Mumma,

There’ve been great excitements here lately. Armistice night was on the whole a rather wet show after the first exhilaration had worn off. There was football with tin trays down the High, & with a bucket up St. Giles’s, where I cut my ankle on it, getting it wedged in the bucket & tripping up on it. Last night was a much better organised show. There was a bogus candidate, Jorrocks, up, & a bogus committee room, from which he made speeches in a mask. The townees imagined that he was a real candidate, & there were several scrimmages as a consequence, with the Liberal element in the crowd. I enclose a Jorrocks pamphlet…

The campaign pamphlet proclaimed: ‘Old Wine in Old Bottles! A Plague on Promises! Personality Pays! … Ask the Returning Officer where to put your X for Jorrocks The Independent Independent! Only Triangular Candidate for Oxford.’

TO ELISABETH GREENE

Balliol College | Oxford [March 1923?]

Dear Elisabeth,

I hope you haven’t got this. You hadn’t last holidays. It’s not as good as Peacock Pie,¹¹but some of them are quite good. Are you having a birthday party? Is Hugh still spotty? Have you & Katherine acted any more plays? I think you might act one of Kipling’s Just So stories, & let Hugh take part in ‘How the Leopard got his Spots,’ or write a modern musical comedy & call it ‘Spot & Carry One,’ or an ancient play of the brave & wicked ‘Hugh the Rash,’ or a puzzle play called ‘Spot the’ no, that’s quite enough plays.

Love from
Graham

TO ELISABETH GREENE

Balliol College, | Oxford [March 1924]

Dear Elisabeth,

Here is a little memento of this auspicious, nay, may I say epoch making, occasion. For the first time you leave the single state (no, not to enter into matrimony, but into double figures). Double figures! What a thought is there! To think of the time that must elapse before you leave them. To be exact, if my mathematics does not fail me, ninety years. Did I say ninety years? Yes, ninety years. Though there’s always a trick about these numbers somewhere. For instance, the other day I was adding up the number of days between the first of March & the fourth. One from four, I said to myself, leaves three. Why, I learned that on my mother’s lap, I added (to myself). It was the first thing that my baby lips learned to lisp, I continued. But, would you believe it, I was wrong! There are not three days between. In the same way I have an awful suspicion that in some queer way you will only remain in double figures for eighty-nine years. Think of that! As the Americans say, it won’t be no freight train. Only eighty-nine years!

Have you ever noticed how useful numbers are in filling up a letter? Take the tip the next time you write to anyone. If you can’t think of anything to say just write something like this, ‘I hope you are in the best of health, myself I am somewhat

¹²

You can go on like this for a long time. Then they may think you are very deep, or they may think you are mad, & then they won’t write to you again, or else they’ll try & work it out, & then I am quite sure you’ll never have to write to them for a second time.

Of course, it may not look as if this little lecture has anything to do with your birthday, but it has really. Only it’s very subtle, & very, oh so very, deep. You’ll probably not understand it till you get into treble years, though of course if it’s only a question of eighty-nine – I wish you’d consult a mathematician about it, or ‘teacher’ or somebody & set my mind at rest. As Mr Leslie Henson¹³sang

‘O I’m so very n-n-n-n-nervous,

I’m not myself to-day.’

O, the last line doesn’t mean that at all. Don’t be ridiculous. You are very rude. Even if you are in double figures, you needn’t say that kind of thing.

What’s that? You didn’t. Then that thin & tenuous whisper that seemed just now to float mockingly round my head, tickling the back of my nose into a sneeze, cannot have been you at all. If it was Hugh, sock him one on the point of the jaw.

The enclosed letter is for Mumma, the book for you. Don’t muddle the two up, & keep the letter yourself & give the book to Mumma.

Love & happy returns

from Graham

TO HUGH GREENE

On 22 January 1925, Graham, along with other young poets from Oxford, Harold Acton, Brian Howard, Joseph Macleod, Patrick Monkhouse and A. L. Rowse, read poems on the BBC.

Balliol College, | Oxford [23 January 1925]

Dear Hugh,

Many thanks for the P.O.¹⁴You may as well throw the other books away. Congratulations on being moved up. Don’t work too hard!!

I went & had tea at Aunt N’s yesterday. I enjoyed the broadcasting very much, though I felt extremely nervous. People in Oxford seem to have heard very clearly, did you? I read a thing, which has just been accepted by the Weekly Westminster. I’m rather glad, as their rate of pay has gone up. We sat in a kind of sumptuous drawing room, with beautiful armchairs & sofas, & each in turn had to get up & recite in front of a beautiful blue draped box on a table. I felt like Harold swearing on the saint’s bones. Now I’ve got to set to work & snatch a guinea from the Oxford Chronicle for a humorous account of it,¹⁵but I don’t know how to be humorous. Here’s a cig-card for Elisabeth.

Love,
Graham

P.S. The B.B.C. got very nervous, when Bryan Howard started on his naked lady. They say they have to be very careful indeed.

TO— —

This letter appears in the papers at the Huntington Library of Patrick Balfour (Lord Kinross), a gossip writer and friend of Evelyn Waugh. The addressee is unidentified.

Balliol College, | Oxford [1925?]

Dear — —,

Perhaps it would be best to let out any ill-feeling there may be in a properly arranged fight in some agreed place, now that you are cooler. Not pokers of course. All lethal weapons must be excluded, as I should be so sorry if my young life (or even yours) came to an untimely end.

Yours affectionately,
Graham Greene

TO VIVIENNE DAYRELL-BROWNING (LATER VIVIEN GREENE)

In an issue of Oxford Outlook, Graham referred slightingly to ‘worship’ of the Virgin Mary. He received a letter from Vivienne Dayrell-Browning (later she altered the spelling of her first name), a Catholic convert who was Basil Blackwell’s private secretary, telling him that Mary was not worshipped but venerated, the technical term being ‘hyperdulia’.¹⁶According to her recently discovered birth certificate, Dayrell-Browning was born in 1904 (not 1905) in Rhodesia; she died in 2003 at the age of ninety-nine. Her childhood was excruciating. Her father had an affair; her mother left him and required her at the age of fifteen to write a letter, ending their relationship.¹⁷By the time Graham encountered her, Vivien had developed into a brilliant, complex and slightly eccentric young woman, ruled by a bitter mother. Doubtful about men and marriage, she hesitated as Graham flirted. Their courtship ought to have demonstrated that they were not suited to each other; nonetheless, they were married on 15 October 1927.

Junior Common Room | Balliol College | Oxford [March 1925]

Dear Miss Dayrell,

I most sincerely apologise. I’m afraid any excuses will sound very lame. But I wrote the article in a frightful hurry, & without preconceiving it, as the paper was already in press. At the same time I was feeling intensely fed up with things, & wanted to be as offensive all round as I could. One forgets that The Outlook is read by other than undergraduates, whose thick hides challenge attacks of every description.

I really am very sorry. Will you forgive me, & come & have tea with me as a sign of forgiveness?

Yours sincerely,
Graham Greene

TO AMY LOWELL

Along with Ezra Pound, with whom she fell out, Amy Lowell (1874–1925) was a leading Imagist poet. She planned a reading tour of England to follow the publication of her biography of Keats in February 1925. Graham’s interest in her work was probably matched by a mischievous desire to bring a cigar-smoking lesbian to the university.

Balliol College, | Oxford. [c. 1 March 1925]

Dear Miss Lowell,

I am writing on behalf of The Ordinary, the University Literary Club, to ask whether you could possibly be so good as to pay us a visit, when you are in England. If you would be so kind, perhaps you would let me know a date that would be convenient for you?

Yours sincerely,
Graham Greene
(Sec.)

Lowell accepted for 29 April, but cancelled because of illness. She died of a stroke on 12 May.

TO VIVIENNE DAYRELL-BROWNING (LATER VIVIEN GREENE)

29 Museum Road [n.d.]

Dear Miss Dayrell,

Splendid. Do you mind keeping me company in disreputability? Respectability I have left behind at my Summertown digs, & I dare not fetch it, since my land lady believes I am at home, & would be horribly annoyed to find I’d merely changed my digs.

The cinema with me has reached mania. I average four times a week. Every now & then I catch myself talking of live wires & the game kid, who could overdraw two dollars out of a Wisconsin County Bank, & was as quick as a Kentucky sausage.

Will seven o’clock at the George suit you?

I will pray for Skyscrapers & Sixshooters, for Black Jake of Dead Man’s Gulch, & the Man with the Broken Finger Nail.

Yours,
Graham Greene

TO VIVIENNE DAYRELL-BROWNING (LATER VIVIEN GREENE)

Balliol College| Oxford | Tues. 26 May | 11.10 p.m.

It must be rather fun collecting Souls, Vivienne. Like postage stamps. Last addition to collection Undergraduate Versifier, a common kind. Fair specimen, but badly sentimentalised. Colouring rather faded. Will exchange for Empire Exhibition Special Stamp, or ninepence in cash.

I wish you weren’t so futilely far off. I don’t mean the mile & a half between Magdalen Street & Thorncliffe Rd. Or I wish I weren’t in love with you. I’ve always enjoyed it before, even when I thought I was being miserable. So I could stand outside & write jangly verse & say to myself ‘That’s a good idea. That’s how I feel.’ But I don’t know how I feel now. I enjoyed this evening marvellously, but now I’ve got back I feel you are just as far away as ever, & that it’s just as hopeless that you will ever be more than mildly interested in that blasted non-existent soul of mine. This letter will help you to analyse the specimen won’t it?

What it all comes to, I suppose, is that I’ve never really been in love before, only suggested myself into a state of mild excitement in which I could draw fifteen bob out of the Westminster for a piece of verse. I can’t do that now though. I can’t think nearly clear enough to fit anything into a metre. You wouldn’t expect me to write verse when I was blind drunk would you? All this is ‘absurd.’ Of course it is to you. You can’t sympathise I suppose, any more than I can with the excitement & scurry of ants. Though how you can expect to know anyone’s mind or soul or anything, when you are so far off, I don’t know.

I don’t know why I’m being so heavy & horrid, when really I’m frightfully grateful to you for to-night. If you ask me to, I won’t say a single serious thing, when I next see you. I won’t even talk about you, if you ask me not to. It’s wonderful what you put up with. With love (which you won’t understand¹⁸).
Graham

The blot is not carefully arranged to show desperation, but my thumb slipped.

Do send me the snapshot you half said you would. Nine days! If you do, I’ll even discuss the Budget or the latest books with you. G.

TO A. D. PETERS

On 1 May 1925, Basil Blackwell published Graham’s first book, a collection of poems. He had also finished a novel called ‘Anthony Sant’. Although Blackwell rejected it, the literary agent A. D. Peters liked it and tried, unsuccessfully, to find a publisher. In his last term at Oxford, Graham accepted a position in China with the British American Tobacco Company but resigned after a period of training.

The School House | Berkhamsted [c. June 1925]

Dear Mr. Peters,

I must confess to a horrid crime. Being rather bored & not knowing how long I shall remain in England, as I am running for a post in China, I sent the volume of verse altered & revised, under the title of Babbling April, to Blackwell, who published it last month. Alas! I went & contracted for first refusal of my next two books, & sent the revised A.S. to him. I wrote yesterday asking him to come to a decision, & will write again today enclosing your letter, & asking him to let me know within a week. In any case, I shall be free of my contract I think by August, as I shall have a long poem ready for him by then. I have just started on a new novel, which I think will [illeg.] than the A.S. If I may, I will send it you, when finished.

Yours sincerely,
Graham Greene

TO WALTER DE LA MARE

29. Thorncliffe Rd. | Oxford [1925]

Dear Mr. de la Mare,

I hope it will not be presumptuous of me to send you this, my first book. I expect you’ve forgotten who I am, unless you remember our strawberry tea at Berkhamsted.

Yours sincerely,
Graham Greene

TO VIVIENNE DAYRELL-BROWNING (LATER VIVIEN GREENE)

Vivien had written, ‘Do you know you’ve had a letter every day this week? I shall appoint myself chairman of a Committee empowered to look into the matter & draw up a report.’

[2 June 1925]

On behalf of the shareholders of this Company I should like to state that we are fully satisfied with the management of the Chairman & Board, & would like the business of the Company carried on in the future on the same lines, which have proved so eminently satisfactory in the past. I should like to move a vote of very sincere thanks to, & confidence in, the Chairman & Directors of this Company.

I can’t say this in the Board Room, but the Chairman is the most wonderful person in the world.

You darling!

TO VIVIENNE DAYRELL-BROWNING (LATER VIVIEN GREENE)

On Friday, 20 June 1925, Graham and Vivien said a ‘final goodbye’ by the river at Wolvercote. However, the courtship resumed shortly after.

The School House | Berkhamsted | 10 a.m. Mon. [22 June 1925]

I haven’t written before. I haven’t had much time, except in nearly four hours of ghastly train journey, & anyway I hoped I might be able to write a bit cheerfuller this morning. I’m sorry if I can’t. Your letter was lovely.

You were quite right about saying goodbye outside Oxford. I couldn’t have stood the bus journey back. And it is of value to have been the first person you’ve kissed. But it doesn’t make me feel a bit pleased with myself. It only makes me wonder how somebody like you can exist, who’s willing to do something you don’t want to do, just because a friend of yours is so mundane that he can’t do without it. And even if I can’t say as much, I can say that I’ve never kissed anyone I’ve wanted to really badly before, or held off for so long, for fear of offence. You are so precious that I’m afraid of doing or saying any thing which might prevent me seeing you.

Now I’m writing a horrid depressing sort of letter, which will come just when you’ve got nice & cheerful again, & giving a free lift to your shoulders & saying ‘Well at last, he’s over.’ You see, our depressions are so different. You feel melancholy, because you think you may not see a friend again. I’m depressed, because I love you so frightfully, & even though I do see you again several times, I shan’t be able to feel that you are there, living in the same place, & that I can always ring you up at any moment & hear your voice, even if it’s an angry or a bored voice. It’s all so silly that I should love someone, whom I should want to marry, whatever conditions she might choose to make, but just the someone who wouldn’t marry me on any conditions. It’s bad luck at the least. […]

TO A. D. PETERS

Graham completed ‘Anthony Sant’ by November 1924, but revised it for submission to publishers. Of this novel he wrote: ‘The subject, like so many first novels, was childhood and unhappiness…. By a mistaken application of the Mendelian theory I told the story of a black child born of white parents – a throwback to some remote ancestor…. There followed in my novel a hushed-up childhood and a lonely colour-barred life at school, but to me even then the end seemed badly botched, and I can see that it was strangely optimistic for one of my temperament. I made the young man find a kind of content by joining a ship at Cardiff as a Negro deckhand, so escaping from the middle class and his sense of being an outsider.’¹⁹

Balliol College | Oxford [c.

June 1925] Dear Mr. Peters,

Many thanks for your letter. I’ve been at work on ‘Anthony Sant’. I found a lot of small things I wanted to alter in the first chapter, mostly in the way of terribly banal adjectives.

I’ve got Ch. IV properly sorted now, so that there’s no break in the narrative; I’ve also eliminated all the first persons.

I’m just beginning on the last chapter. Do you think the public must have Anthony settling down somewhere with a woman? My idea now is so to alter the character of the prostitute, as to make her return to the old trade not particularly unpleasant to a soft hearted reader. A. would then recover not only from his attempted suicide, but also a little of his sense of humour. The whole drift of the story hitherto has been in the difficulty of reconciling his colour with his civilised sex instincts. Now he will find a perfectly happy compromise by cutting out any idea of the ‘love instinct.’ And he’ll be left in the stoke hold of a ship, finding happiness in physical fatigue, & in mixing with a medley of nationalities, where his colour does not give him any inferiority complex, & where he is completely cut off from his family & caste. The idea would wind up with a description of the furnaces etc. conveying the feeling that this in its way is like the forest, which he has been aiming at in his dreams.²⁰

It sounds very crude put like this, but I think it could be worked out all right, & seems to me more plausible than a sexually happy ending. Do you think it might go down all right?

Then there’d be quite a number of titles one might have. What about ‘Escape’, ‘The Joyful Compromise’, or ‘Open Sea’?

Yours sincerely,
Graham Greene

P. S. I hope I may have the chance of seeing you in the vac.

TO A. D. PETERS

Following the failure of the Germans to pay war indemnities, the French attempted to set up a ‘Revolver Republic’ in the occupied Ruhr in 1922. They assembled a loose army of German separatists, thugs recruited from brothels and French prisons, to assist the collaborators. Graham persuaded the Count von Bernstorff at the German embassy to finance a trip in the spring of 1924 for himself, his cousin Edward Greene (called ‘Tooter’) and Claud Cockburn, so they could write articles on the crisis from the German perspective. While there, the three conceived a novel after the manner of John Buchan, but nothing came of it.²¹A year later, Graham made another attempt at the thriller. He returned to the subject in The Name of Action (1930).

The School House | Berkhamsted [1925]

Dear Mr. Peters,

I enclose the first 20,000 (circa) words of the ‘shocker’ in the hope that you may be able to serialise it. Is it necessary to give a synopsis of the whole plot? Once again I do not like the title, but at present I have been unable to think of anything else. There is another point also. Try as I would I could not introduce a love interest before, at the very earliest, Ch. VI. Will this militate against its being taken as a serial? I expect you will find the whole story rather derivative, though the main theme of the German Separatists has, I think, not yet been taken in this type of fiction.

Re Anthony Sant’s title. What do you think of ‘Crouching Dust’ from Blunden’s lines (I quote from memory)

‘And all my hopes shall with my body soon

Be but as crouching dust & wind-blown sand.’?²²

Yours very sincerely
Graham Greene

P.S. Let me know if you require a synopsis of the rest of this story.

TO VIVIENNE DAYRELL-BROWNING (LATER VIVIEN GREENE)

37 Smith St. |Chelsea, S.W. | Aug. 7 [1925]. 6.30 p.m.

Darling,

I got your second lovely letter when I got back from work this evening. It was lovely, but it made me feel the most utter beast that ever was, because you talked about looking forward to my letter, & I know that you’ll have got two rotten ones. I ought never to have sent them, especially the last. I tell you that I don’t want to give you pain, & then I go & write like that. But, my darling, it is true, only sometimes I can’t help whining.

Darling, it’s wonderful when the person one loves most in the world encourages one in what one loves next best (even though far less).

I’ve never met so complete a companion as you. Those winter evenings you describe seem to me the only thing worth having. It’s companionship with you that I want & just that sort of companionship. You see somehow I feel as if you’ve pushed me through a door, so that some things, as you say, do seem a bit trivial & second rate now. What I long for is a quite original marriage with you, companionship & companionship only, all that Winter evenings part, & to have someone worth fighting for. And you would go on holidays, when you liked, & see your mother when you liked, & I should share your companionship. I shouldn’t grumble if it was a less share than your mother had. You could work too if you wanted to. There’d be no domestic tying down, & you’d always keep your ideal of celibacy, & you could help me to keep the same ideal. I didn’t know six months ago that I should ever want to keep that ideal, but as I say you’ve shoved me through a door. And besides having some of the Winter evenings with me, as well as having some with your mother, we should have our own adventures together. Because sometimes, when I’d been good, you’d come for a holiday with me, & we should have that night train journey across Europe. Do you remember talking about it?

And the whole thing would be an adventure finer than the ordinary marriage, because it would be two, not merely fighting for each other, but for a shared ideal. Darling, it sounds fantastic, but the fantastic is often wildly practical, as when Columbus put out from Spain. And I remember you wrote once that you did love me, though it wasn’t in a way I understood, but, darling, it’s a way I do understand, & it’s the final because there’s no reason why it should ever end, which is very different to the other. I wish to God (& I mean that literally) that this dream could come true. You talked about how pleasant it would be to round off our friendship properly. Then you meant making a clean break, & leaving no ragged ends, but suppose God did make us come together, & the rounding off was as I’ve imagined, & that he brought us together, in order to strike out together across this new country. For it would be new country, & perhaps even the kind of promised land to which people have really been aiming, though they didn’t know it, & they’ll follow us in. This is still another thing I could not have believed six months ago, that I should write a kind of religious letter. But I can’t help it. I’ve been wanting to say this for a long time now. O my dear, if you only made it true – this ‘monastic marriage’ – then it would be goodbye to business in China, & there’d be something more than money in the future.

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