I wish you were a Kangaroo

On this day in letters

Happy birthday to the following letters, all born on the fourth day of a June gone by.

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Photo by Getty

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I wish you were a Kangaroo and had a pouch for small Kangaroos to creep to.

Virginia Woolf
Letter to Violet Dickinson
4th June 1903

(From Virginia Woolf: The Complete Collection.)

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I go scarcely anywhere. Everything seems tiresome.

Fyodor Dostoevsky
Letter to Maria Issayev
4th June 1855

(From The Complete Works)

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[After a stay in Paris]

Cities are too detestable. I should never write anything if I lived in them. I feel base, and distracted. And all those dreadful parties. Oh how odious they are. How I hate the word ‘chic’. C’est plus chic, moins chic, pas chic, très chic. French women haven’t another note to sing on. And the heat! It was frightful. And the stale food. I had to give up my dentist at last until a more propitious moment. I couldn’t stand it.

Katherine Mansfield
Letter to Ida Constance Baker
4th June 1922

(From The Collected Letters of Katherine Mansfield, Vol.1)

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You are my wild companion, and I hope you will always be so. The way I care for you is like a cube root. It just multiplies in every direction.

Aline Bernstein
Letter to Thomas Wolfe
4th June 1926

(From My Other Loneliness: Letters of Thomas Wolfe and Aline Bernstein)

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Here, in this dying town [Norfolk, Virginia], the drear abomination of desolation, I spent a summer of my youth eight years ago, gaunt from hunger, and wasted for love, and I saw the ship and the men go out, the buttons, the tinsel, and the braid. But my heart has ticked out madder time; the dogs have howled too long for the men who will come no more; and a great deal of blood has gone under the bridge.

Thomas Wolfe
Letter to Aline Bernstein
4th June 1926

(From My Other Loneliness: Letters of Thomas Wolfe and Aline Bernstein)

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You have been informed of my dear Sister Anne’s death—let me now add that she died without severe struggle—resigned—trusting in God—thankful for release from a suffering life—deeply assured that a better existence lay before her—she believed—she hoped, and declared her belief and hope with her last breath.—Her quiet—Christian death did not rend my heart as Emily’s stern, simple, undemonstrative end did—I let Anne go to God and felt He had a right to her.

I could hardly let Emily go—I wanted to hold her back then—and I want her back hourly now—Anne, from her childhood seemed preparing for an early death—Emily’s spirit seemed strong enough to bear her to fulness of years—They are both gone—and so is poor Branwell—and Papa has now me only—the weakest—puniest—least promising of his six children— Consumption has taken the whole five.

Charlotte Brontë
Letter to W. S. Williams
4th June 1849

(From Selected Letters of Charlotte Brontë)

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A neighbor of mine had a sow which had 21 pigs, an almost unheard of number. I was over there when she started in having them, about eight in the evening, and I hung around till she’d had half a dozen, then I went home to bed and next morning I went back and she was still discharging pigs. Four of them were born dead and when I asked the owner what had caused that, he said: “I dunno, but there was an awful lot goin’ on all around ’em and they probly died from the excitement.”

E. B. White
Letter to H. K. Rigg
4th June 1943

(From Letters of E. B. White)

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You had me scared for a moment. I thought you might put the whammy on me by liking my latest novel The Source. You pooh-poohed South Pacific and it became a great hit. You ridiculed Hawaii and it was purchased by nearly 4,000,000 readers. You blasted Caravan and it stayed near the top of the lists for half a year.

Please spell my name right in your Best Seller box in the long months ahead.

James Michener
Letter to the editor of TIME magazine
4th June 1965

(From TIME magazine)

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So much love I send, but light, airy love, not the kind that weighs heavily on the recipient.

Janet Frame
Letter to William Theophilus Brown
4th June 1970

(From Jay to Bee: Janet Frame’s Letters to William Theophilus Brown)

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