FROM VIRGINIA TO VITA: "YOU ARE A MIRACLE OF DISCRETION ...

November 19, 1926

You are a miracle of discretion: one letter within another. I never saw the same thing. I will answer you when we meet, I mean the invitation. Oh, dear, Sibyl has given me a tremendous headache. It's a pain to not be able to write, except you. I am lying on a chair. It is not so bad: but I tell you to win your sympathy: to become protective: to implore you to draw up a plan to stop the continuous decay caused by people: Sibyl, Sir Arthur, Dadie, adding the ones the others. Why do I tell you? I suppose it is some psychological necessity: one of those intimate things that we allow ourselves by pure instinct in a relationship. I am rather a coward to face that burden: you would do it as a hero ...

Don't you realize, West Mon, that you're going to get tired of me any day (I'm much older than you)? That's why I have to take some precautions. That is why I put the emphasis on "taking note" and not feeling. But the West monkey knows that he has torn down more walls than anyone else. And is there also something unclear about you? There is something about you that does not vibrate. Maybe you do it on purpose: you don't let that flow. I see it with other people and I see it with me: something reserved, mute, God knows what ... It is also in your writing, by the way. What I call central transparency sometimes you lack. [...]

BERG

FROM VIRGINIA TO VITA: "MY VERY DEAR CREATURE ..."

October 7, 1928

My very dear Creature: What a beautiful letter you wrote to me in the light of the stars, at midnight. You should always write at that time, because your heart requires the moonlight to liquefy. Mine is fried in the light of the gas: it's nine o'clock, and I have to go to bed at eleven. So I won't say anything: not a word about the balm for my anguish - I'm always distressed - that you are for me. How I thought of you! How I felt - now - what all this has been! I have seen somewhere a small ball bubbling up and down in the stream of a fountain: the source is you; The ball, me. Only you give me that feeling. It is physically stimulating, and at the same time relaxing. [...]

BERG

FROM VIRGINIA TO VITA: "YOU MADE ME VERY HAPPY ..."

August 30, 1940

I just stopped talking to you. I find it so weird ... Everything is quiet. They are bowling. I just put flowers in your room. And you are sitting there with the bombs falling around you. What can I say. Only that I love you and that I have to live in the middle of this strange and quiet afternoon thinking of you sitting there alone. Honey, send me some lines ... You've made me very happy ...

BERG

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