I have a new plan

A mixed mailbag

Once again I’ve amassed a pile of random snippets to fling through your postbox, with no theme to speak of. Please excuse the mess.

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Portrait of Dostoevsky by Vasily Perov (Wikimedia)

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I have a new plan: to go mad.

Fyodor Dostoevsky
Letter to his brother
9th August 1838

—Letters of Fyodor Dostoevsky to His Family and Friends

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Do write back. I’d love more news of Chelsea Victoria—what a marvellous name! How did you come by it? Was she conceived in Victoria Station, or Chelsea?

Jessica Mitford
Letter to Hillary Clinton¹
10th May 1980

—Decca: The Letters of Jessica Mitford

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TWO MONTHS LATER…

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I’m so sorry to be so long in responding to your letters, but in addition to work and travel and Bill’s activities, I find motherhood incredibly absorbing. I never imagined I’d be as captivated as I am. Chelsea Victoria looks distressingly like Winston Churchill which at least diverts inquiries as to why we named her after the London Subway. We didn’t really, just loved the sound and feel of the words and a lovely 1960’s song called “Chelsea Morning.” In any event, she’ll be free to call herself South Kensington if she likes.

Hillary Clinton
Letter to Jessica Mitford
12th July 1980

—Jessica Mitford Collection, Rare Books and Manuscripts Division, Ohio State University Libraries, Columbus, Ohio (via The New York Sun)

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Did I live with you in a past life? Was I your lifelong partner? Is that why the idea of losing you torments me so much? How long have I been without you?

Gabriela Mistral
Letter to Doris Dana
8th January 1950

—Gabriela Mistral’s Letters to Doris Dana

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There isn’t anything one can say which is of the slightest use. At last, though, a skin does grow over the wound. One never thinks that it would or could, but it does. First of all, one feels it is almost an unfaithfulness to one’s friendship, to believe that that could ever happen. But it isn’t so. It is just healthy growth. One never ceases to be fond of one’s friend, and one always feels them beside one for, I am sure, the rest of one’s life. I do believe that when one returns to that growth of life which is cut off for a time by sorrow, one is, in a way, giving the person who has gone a part of one’s life, just by the very fact of living fully. Meanwhile, until then, it is dreadful for one. 

Edith Sitwell
Letter to John Lehmann, about the death of a mutual friend
21st March 1944

—Selected Letters of Edith Sitwell

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Frida Kahlo. Photo by Getty

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Frankly, I don’t have the least ambition to be anybody. I don’t care for people’s pretentiousness, and I am in no way interested in becoming a “big shit.”

Frida Kahlo
Letter to Dr. Leo Eloesser
15th March 1941

—Frida Kahlo & Diego Rivera

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The thought of you is like a great lighthouse, visible through all the thousand miles of fog between us; and, as happens with lighthouses, one’s eyes keep wandering over to the beam.

Ethel Smyth
Letter to Emmeline Pankhurst
29th December 1913

—Beecham and Pharaoh

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If you do not want to write, at least spit on a piece of paper, put it in an envelope, and send it to me. You are not taking any notice of me at all. God forgive you—all I wanted was a few words from you.

Pyotr Ilych Tchaikovsky
Letter to his nephew/lover
11 February 1893

—Tchaikovsky: Letters to His Family

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An old woman of seventy-one has fallen in love with me. It is at once hideous and horrid and melancholy-sad. It is like being caught by a giant crab. She has just wired to ask me to meet her. Please let me have your advice.

Virginia Woolf
Letter to Quentin Bell
14th May 1930

—The Letters of Virginia Woolf, Volume 4

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Aside from the simple satisfaction which most parents derive from seeing a new person created more or less in one’s own image, I seem to enjoy a warm glow at the idea of helping to people the earth—this despite the tricks earth knows how to play on its people, despite even some of the people themselves. Also, to a writer, a child is an alibi. If I should never in all my years write anything worth reading, I can always explain that by pointing to my child. I was concerned with larger affairs than literature: I was peopling the earth.

E. B. White
Letter to Gustave S. Lobrano
December 1930

—Letters of E. B. White

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‘Trees and Undergrowth’ by Vincent van Gogh, 1887

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It is something to be deep in the snow in winter, to be deep in the yellow leaves in the autumn, to be deep in the ripe wheat in the summer, to be deep in the grass in the spring. It is something to always be with the mowers and the peasant girls, in summer with the big sky above, in the winter by the black fireplace. And to feel—this has always been so and always will be.

Vincent van Gogh
Letter to his brother
22nd June 1885

—Van Gogh Museum

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I remind myself of my grandfather, who used to say: I shall write to the man & say: Dear Sir. And after he died they found his desk full of stacks of writing-paper, dated, and beginning in his flowing hand—Dear Sir—and nothing more.

Sylvia Townsend Warner
Letter to William Maxwell
22nd November 1914

—The Element of Lavishness: Letters of William Maxwell and Sylvia Townsend Warner

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I could not sit seriously down to write a serious romance under any other motive than to save my life; and if it were indispensable for me to keep it up and never relax into laughing at myself or other people, I am sure I should be hung before I had finished the first chapter.

Jane Austen
Letter to James Stanier Clark²
1st April 1816

—Jane Austen’s Letters

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[Virginia Woolf] is sitting opposite, embroidering a rose, a black lace fan, a box of matches, and four playing cards, on a mauve canvas background, from a design by her sister, and from time to time she says, “You have written enough, let us now talk about copulation,” so if this letter is disjointed it is her fault and not mine.

Vita Sackville-West
Letter to her husband, Harold
13th June 1926

—Vita and Harold: Letters of Vita Sackville-West and Harold Nicholson

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How marvellous life is—if only one gives oneself up to it! It seems to me that the secret of life is to accept life. Question it as much as you like after but first accept it. People today stand on the outskirts of the city wondering if they are for or against Life—is Life worth living—dare they risk it—what is Life—do they hate or love it—but these cursed questions keep them on the outskirts of the city for ever. Its only by risking losing yourself—giving yourself up to Life—that you can ever find out the answer. Don’t think I’m sentimental. You know and I know how much evil there is but all the same LET’S LIVE to the very uttermost. Let’s live all our lives. People today are simply cursed by what I call the personal. What is happening to ME. Look at ME. This is what has been done to ME. It’s as though you tried to run and all the while an enormous black serpent fastened on to you.

Katherine Mansfield
Letter to Richard Murry
25th January 1920

—The Letters Of Katherine Mansfield, Volume II

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1. Jessica Mitford’s husband, Bob Treuhaft, ran the law firm at which Clinton had worked as an intern in 1971, hence the unlikely connection.

2. Clarke had suggested that Austen write a romantic novel.