Dearest Cynthia,
It is Monday evening, and I have read your letter again, feeling like a heel.
Your bright spirit is the light of my life. When I read the gracious things you would do to make me happy, my foolish limitations and fogyisms are humiliating to me.
I can only hope you’ll forgive me and know that somehow, in some other way, I shall be forthcoming and good for you.
I, too, hate it that you must be there alone. Emma assures me that men in the publishing field are good-looking, enormously successful, and invariably tall, some of them verging perhaps on nine feet or more.
She went on to suggest that if I don’t mind my p’s and q’s, I will surely lose whatever ground I have gained with you, and you’ll be swept away. I would not be surprised if this were true, but I pray it will not be so.
It was consoling to read your brave announcement of what you would not do. No, we have never discussed this, but the time, clearly, was right for you to say it. It is amazing to me that you and I share the same ideal for sexual intimacy, which, needless to say, the world finds exceedingly outdated.
Another consolation is that the world has nothing to do with us in this.
Your openness has widened the door of my own heart, somehow, and I feel a tenderness for you that is nearly overwhelming. I can’t think how I could be worth the care you take with me, the effort you expend, and the ceaseless patience you bring to our friendship.
For this alone, I must love you.
My dearest,
You would be amused if you knew how long I have sat and looked at the two words just above, words that I have never written to anyone in my life. Can it have taken more than six decades for these words to form in my spirit, and then, without warning, to appear on the paper before me, with such naturalness and ease?
Even for this alone, I must love you.
I’ve come across a letter from Robert Browning to EBB, in which he says:
“I would not exchange the sadness of being away from you for any imaginable delight in which you had no part. ”
To this sentiment, I say Selah.
I also say goodnight, my dearest love. You are ever in my prayers.
Timothy
Timothy,
I understand. I really do. I could feel the intensity behind your typed note. At one moment, your horror of this place makes me laugh. At another, I wonder what on earth I’m doing here myself!
I feel we should go on as we’re going and try to enjoy, somehow, this process of working and waiting. I know there is wisdom in that! But it keeps escaping me, like the flea I picked off Violet this morning.
Can you imagine? Forty stories up, in the dead of winter—and a flea? Certainly, she did not get it at Bergdorf’s. Which leaves only one consideration.
Palestrina!
I shudder to think what I should do when her next social invitation arrives in the letter box!
I must get something ready for the pickup service that comes at five, so I’ll dash,
with love and understanding,
Cynthia
Dearest Timothy,
When I reached into the letter box yesterday morning, I somehow missed your wonderful letter written on Monday evening. How very odd that I didn’t feel it in there yesterday, but odder still that I would have looked in there again this morning, knowing that today’s mail had not yet arrived.
I so needed your letter with Mr. Browning’s words to Elizabeth and the tender things you spoke to me from your heart. Because, though I honestly do understand your refusal to come, it made me sad that you will not.
I had hoped we could be together here, as free as children from everything familiar. Most of all, I wanted to share what I know of this strangely compelling city and take you ’round and show you off!
But you have called me your dearest. And that is worth any window-shopping at Tiffany’s or tea we might have sipped at the Plaza.
More than that—it fills me with happiness that you were able, for your own sake, to speak to me so.
It wasn’t easy for me to tell you what I shall not do—it was very hard to know when to say it! So, perhaps you can imagine how comforting it was to learn that we agree in this sacred thing—and to find that you are just as silly and old-fashioned as your neighbor.
When Elliott and I were divorced eleven years ago, the first thing my friends did was “fix me up. ”
Oh, how I hated being “fixed up!”
Practically the first man I went out with said, “Hello, blah, blah, blah, cute nose, I’m wild about your legs, let’s check into a hotel. ”
I wish I could tell you that I poured scalding coffee in his lap! But all I really did was curl up inside in a tinier knot than I’d curled up in before! I refused to go out with anyone again for nearly three years.
The secret truth, dearest, is that I cannot bear dating. I find it absolutely ghastly. I am so glad we have never ever dated and never ever will! You are just the boy next door, which I find to be the most divine providence since France was handed over to Henry the Fifth.
But please don’t think our friend Andrew Gregory was anything less than lovely. He is a prince! Yet, among a variety of other sweet incompatibilities, he is too tall. Yes! When he kissed me on the cheek, he had to practically squat down to do it, which made me laugh out loud every time! Poor Andrew. He deserves far better.
You and I, on the other hand, are the perfect size for each other. As we’re very nearly the same height, we’re just like a pair of bookends.
I close with sleepy wishes for a riveting sermon at Lord’s Chapel on Sunday. Please make a photocopy at Happy Endings and send it to me. I shall be sitting on the gospel side at the little church around the corner.
Love and prayers, Cynthia
P.S. My work is simply pouring through. I am thankful beyond telling. James writes from France that my zebras fairly leap with life.
There’s not a pair of pajamas in the lot. Pray for me, dearest, I shall be home sooner than we think. Love to Dooley. Here’s a bit of a drawing I did of him from memory.
from the office
dear bookend,
i’ll have you know i stand 5 feet 9 in my loafers, while you are a mere 5 feet 2. that leaves 7 whole inches waving around in the breeze above your head, and i’ll thank you not to forget it.
Dooley laughed at your drawing and must have liked it for he took it to school today. That someone would make a drawing of him was a marvel he did not take lightly. Puny thought it pure genius, and i promised to make her a photocopy when i copy the sermon, which, by the
way,
was less than riveting, though Miss Rose, to
my
great surprise, pronounced it stirring. she refused to wear the sling-back pumps that Uncle billy ordered out of the almanac. She put them on the mantel in the dining room, instead, as a kind of display. She was arrayed in her Christmas finery. Uncle Billy was wearing a new shirt and held himself so stiff and erect i suspect he had left the cardboard in.
Things are back on schedule on the hill and i could hear the hum and buzz of the equipment as i walked in this morning. emma wanted the week off, so i am quite alone here, half-freezing one minute and roasting the next, as the heater has developed a tic and goes on and off at odd moments.
You sounded strong yesterday, so glad Miss Addison invited you for that swell Sunday tea and that you brought home no fleas.
Again, i enjoyed your books more than i can say. i seemed to find all sorts of meaning between the lines.
Love, Timothy
p.s. Dooley says hey
thnx for telling me when you were born, though I forgot, as usual, to ask where. So there’ll be no forgetting, i have written your birth date on the wall beside my desk, my first graffiti—except of course for the legend, TOMMY NOLES LOVES PATTY FRANKLIN, that i once chalked on the cafeteria door and which nearly cost my life at the hands of the principal, not to mention Patty Frnkln.
Perhaps you entered the world in maine? or was it massachusetts? You are definitely a Yankee, no doubt about it
Here comes harold
Dearest Timothy,
I’ve been very sleepless recently. I wish I could call you now, but a ringing phone at such an hour stops the very heart. It would also set Barnabas “to barking” and Dooley “to fussing.” So I shall have to be consoled with talking to you in this way.
I’ve read something wonderful. “Deep in their roots,” Roethke said, “allflowerskeep the light. ”
My mind went at once to my tulips, frozen into the black soil of the bed you helped me dig. My imagination burrowed in like a mole and saw, in the center of a frozen bulb, a green place—quick and alive and radiant and indefatigable, the force that survives every winter blast and flies up, in spite of itself, to greet spring.
I am keeping the light, dearest. But sometimes it grows so faint; I’m frightened that I shall lose it entirely.
Why am I not doing the things I should be doing? Going to the library and the bookshops, seeing plays, hearing concerts, looking at great art?
The answer is, there’s scarcely anything left of me after bending over the drawing board for hours, and so I send out for Chinese or make the quick walk to the café and am in bed before the late
news,
only to find I cannot sleep!
I am, however, going faithfully to confirmation class at the little church around the corner, every Thursday evening—and liking it very much.
I pray for us to have long walks together, to dash out into the rain and jump into puddles! Would you jump into puddles with me? I think not, but it’s a hope I shall cherish, for it makes me smile to think of it.
Now that I’ve gotten out of bed, and located the stationery, and rounded up the pen and filled it with ink, and fluffed up the pillows, and adjusted the lamp, and told you I can’t sleep, I’m nodding off!
Life is so odd. I can’t make heads or tails of it. I’m glad you’re a parson and can.
Lovingly yours, C
My dearest C,
Have been pondering our dinner here before you vanished into the sky in that minuscule plane. I can’t seem to remember what I fed you, when or how I prepared it, nor even discussing the order with Avis. Though I was sober as a judge, I think I was in a kind of daze—the most I can recall is that we danced, I asked you the question that was so infernally difficult, and you were tender and patient and full of laughter.
This recollection should be more than enough, yet I’m astounded at such a lapse. Something was clearly going on that had little to do with either dinner or dancing and causes me to consider the wisdom of Aiken’s poem:
“Music I heard with you was more than music,
“And bread I broke with you was more than bread
...
”
So glad you called last night. It was no disturbance at all, quite the contrary. I hope it’s some comfort, however small, that you can call me anytime.
Do you hear? Anytime. Please take this to heart.
I’ve been in parishes where the phone might ring at any hour, from midnight to morning. Mitford, however, is a reserved parish, and I think the last late-hour call was from Hoppy’s wife who was in the agony of dying and wanted prayer—not for herself, but for him.
It occurs to me that I’m not only your neighbor and friend, C, but your parson, as well. All of which seems to make a tight case for your freedom to call me as your heart requires it.
With fondest love to you tonight and prayers for sleeping like an infant,
Timothy
My dear Bookend,
I’ve had a load of wood carted in and a more splendid fire you’ve never seen. All this seems to occasion a letter, though I just sent one to you yesterday morning.
A meeting was canceled, thanks be to God. Dooley is spending the night with Tommy, and Barnabas is amused with scratching himself. Wish you were here. It is another night of jollity in our frozen village.
I’ve just heard from Fr Roland in New Orleans, who complains that my letters to him have dried up like a pond in a drought. Can’t imagine why.
Am cooking a pork roast and a pot of navy beans, one more reason I wish you were here. I told Puny I needed to put my hand in again, so she did the shopping with Avis, and I’m handling the rest.
The house is fairly perfumed with a glorious smell, which causes me to remember Mother’s kitchen. She always added orange rind to a pork roast and a bit of brandy. Her strong favorite with any roast was angel biscuits, so named for their habit of floating off the plate and hovering above the platter.
I can’t help but think how my father never came to the table when called. He would sometimes wait until we were finished or the food had grown cold before sitting down without a word. I remember my mother’s disappointment and my own white fury, which often spoiled the meal she had laid.
Later, I could see it was his way of controlling the household, of being the emperor, far above the base need for eating, for loving, for feeling. I remember his refusal of anesthesia when he had an operation on his leg and again a serious abscess on his jaw.
If my mother had not been fashioned of something akin to marzipan, my father’s composition of steel would have been my very death.
But why do I waste ink telling you this? It came into the room with the fragrance from the pots and would not let me be.
Sometimes I consider not mailing a letter I’ve written to you, but you insisted that nothing should be struck through or torn up or un-mailed, so there you have it.
Someone has said again that I should work on the book of essays I’ve long considered. Perhaps when I retire, if I ever do such a thing.
Stuart says I should be making plans for retirement—but his advice mad me want to say, oh, stop being a bishop and let me stumble around and fall in a blasted ditch if that’s what it takes.
I
am homesick for your
spirit.
With love,
Timothy