How do we exist, save on the lips of our friends?

On this day in letters

Jun 11, 2025

Please join me in wishing a happy birthday to the following letters, all written on the eleventh day of a June gone by.

The sound of the wind is very loud in this house. The curtains fly – there are strange pointed shadows – full of meaning – and a glittering light upon the mirrors. Now it is dark – and one feels so pale – even ones hands feel pale – and now a wandering broken light is over everything. It is so exciting – so tiring, too – one is waiting for something to happen – One is not oneself at all in this weather – one is a being possessed – caught in the whirl of it – walking about very lightly – blowing about – and deeply, deeply excited. Do you feel that, too? I feel one might say anything – do anything – wreck one’s own life – wreck another’s – What does it matter. Everything is flying fast – Everything is on the wing.

Katherine Mansfield
Letter to Lady Ottoline Morrell
11th June 1919

—Collected Letters of Katherine Mansfield, Vol.2

A man who publishes his letters becomes a nudist—nothing shields him from the world’s gaze except his bare skin. A writer, writing away, can always fix things up to make himself more presentable, but a man who has written a letter is stuck with it for all time.

E. B. White
Letter to his editor, Corona Machemer
11th June 1975

—Letters of E. B. White

I don’t think much of this life. I can’t say I hate it exactly. I can’t get it into focus to direct my hate upon it. It just surrounds me like a mist of dust. I twiddle my legs off in the morning & twiddle them back again at night, but what comes between or follows after I don’t really know. I have a vague recollection of having tried hard to concentrate and squeeze something out of my brain: but what or why, I don’t know.

John Middleton Murry
Letter to Katherine Mansfield
11th June 1918

—Letters Between Katherine Mansfield and John Middleton Murray

I need you more and more, and the great world grows wider, and dear ones fewer and fewer, every day that you stay away — I miss my biggest heart; my own goes wandering round, and calls for Susie.

Emily Dickinson
Letter to Susan Huntington Gilbert
11th June 1852

—Letters of Note: Correspondence Deserving of a Wider Audience1

I can’t say how I admire you, and with what affection Leonard and I discussed you walking on the bank of a river last night when the green was so green that an old curé on a bench looked for some reason bright purple. Do you like being discussed? I do. And it’s rare at our age. Yet how do we exist, save on the lips of our friends? So last night, between 6 and 7 you were absolutely incandescent.

Virginia Woolf
Letter to Molly MacCarthy
11th June 1939

—The Letters of Virginia Woolf, Vol.6

Here, in the hills above Florence, I lead the quietest life I ever remember leading: it is sizzling hot, the hill to the nearest village is a spinebreaker, I am far too limp and lazy to go often to Florence, and I can work only in the early mornings and evenings: never my best time: I'm used to working from after lunch until pub-time, which in the country used to be about seven. Here I drink in the garden, alone or with Caitlin: we have no social life: I am a sun vegetable: I live on red wine, cheese, asparagus, artichokes, strawberries, etc. The etc. is usually more red wine. We have our own vineyard. The villa is enormous. So, probably, am I, after two months.

Dylan Thomas
Letter to John Arlott
11th June 1947

—Collected Letters of Dylan Thomas

Please take comfort from this: I had an amazing life, against the odds. I turned from a bad man to a much better one. I detest the mumbo-jumbo of organised religion, love the glory of creation and believe in some kind of triumph of that glory. Through my children and their children, I was taught to love. Jane’s loyalty and love, and her love for all of you, have been my mainstay. That she prevailed against my infidelities & bad moods, that she preserved her own integrity, that she made our marriage work through thick & thin, became the source of our happiness. Nobody could have been a better partner and friend, nobody could have helped me better to fulfil what talent I possessed, than Jane. Therefore in witness of this I would like her to choose the music that gives her most comfort at my cremation, and at my memorial service, if she decides to have one, in consultation with yourselves. It should also be her pleasure to decide what readings, speeches etc., if any, take place. And if she wants none of the above, that’s all right too.

John le Carré
Letter to his sons, to be opened after his death
11th June 2001

—A Private Spy: The Letters of John Le Carré

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Photo from Getty.

Preaching to the converted here but on the off-chance that you don’t already have a copy of the original Letters of Note book, I’m selling signed/personalised/gift-wrapped copies over here.