What do I want for Christmas?
Letters of Noël
If you’re looking for gifts (of note), tomorrow (19th Dec) is the final, safe day for people in the UK to order a book from my Letters of Note shop—gift-wrapping is available—and have it safely delivered somewhere in time for Christmas. Sending it abroad will take longer. And should your loved ones already own the Letters of Note books, you are legally obliged to give them a copy of the book that almost killed me: Diaries of Note. Not only is it magnificent, but it’s also the perfect book to begin reading on 1st January. Thanks x
What do I want for Christmas? I want a war-escaper—a sort of ladder, I think, attached to a balloon—or a portable ivory tower or a new plush womb to escape back into. Or a lotion for invisibility.
Dylan Thomas
Letter to Vernon Watkins
13th December 1939
—Dylan Thomas: The Collected Letters
Oh an English Christmas! We are not Christians; we are not social; we have no part in the fabric of the world, but all the same, Christmas flattens us out like a steam roller; turkey, pudding, tips, waits, holly, good wishes, presents, sweets...
Virginia Woolf
Letter to Jacques Raverat
26th December 1924
—The Letters of Virginia Woolf: Volume III: 1923-1928
We aren’t sending out any Christmas presents... I’m sick of Jesus, and don’t see at all why he should go on being born every year. We might have somebody else born, for a change.
D.H. Lawrence
Letter to Else Jaffe
12th December 1927
—Collected Works of D.H. Lawrence
What an awful time of year this is! Just as one is feeling that if one can just hold on, it won’t get any worse, then all this Christmas idiocy bursts upon one like a slavering Niagara of nonsense & completely wrecks one’s entire frame. This means, in terms of my life, making a point of buying about six simple inexpensive presents when there are rather more people about than usual, and going home. No doubt in terms of yours it means seeing your house given over to hoards of mannerless middle-class brats and your good food & drink vanishing into the quacking tooth-equipped jaws of their alleged parents. Yours is the harder course, I can see. On the other hand, mine is happening to me.
Philip Larkin
Letter to Judy Egerton
17th December 1958
—Selected Letters of Philip Larkin, 1940-1985
Andrew says he insists on having the Tree either before Birdie comes or after she’s gone as she embarrasses him so much with the clergymen as she always asks them (a) why they became clergymen (b) if they wish they had been made a bishop and (c) if they enjoy sleeping with their wives. I must say I do see.
Deborah Mitford
Letter to Diana Mitford
1st December 1946
—The Mitfords: Letters Between Six Sisters
Our pudding was made in a baby’s bath, stirred by everybody & Mr Gurdjieff put in a coin. Who gets the coin gets our darling new born calf for a present. The calf—1 day old—was led into the salon to the beating of tambourines & to a special melody composed for it. It took it very quietly. But two minute baby pigs which were also brought in & allowed to play squealed & shrieked terribly.
Katherine Mansfield
Letter to Ida Constance Baker
24th December 1922
—A Portrait of Katherine Mansfield
It would be a happy thing if the miles were fewer and we could have even a little time together this Christmas Day—the first since we met. But it doesn’t matter really, for you seem very close.
Rachel Carson
Letter to Dorothy Freeman
December 1953
—Always, Rachel: The Letters of Rachel Carson and Dorothy Freeman
The little niches are hung so full of gay objects, the fabrics are so lavish... then in the evening when a single lantern across from it all burns and moves, excited as it were by the presence of everything its light engages, then Arabian Nights pass over into all that ever was anticipation, wish, and suspense within one, and Christmas is not so unthinkable at all.
Rainer Maria Rilke, from Morocco
Letter to Clara Rilke
17th December 1910
—Letters Of Rainer Maria Rilke, Vol II: 1910 1926
I came home to a Christmas of death, doom, desolation, sadness, disease, and despair: my family is showing its customary and magnificent Russian genius for futility and tragedy.
Thomas Wolfe
Letter to Aline Bernstein
December 1925
—My Other Loneliness: Letters of Thomas Wolfe and Aline Bernstein
I bet few of these writers would ever imagine these letters out worldwide. In terms of sentiment, I must say I'm glad I'm not alone.
Wonderful, Shaun. And I’ve already read Diaries of Note and recommended it to everyone I know. What a fascinating book. A real achievement.