A Letter

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This letter, written at Cabourg in 1912 to a young man of eighteen, originally appeared in the June 1956 edition of The London Magazine, alongside work by Theodore Roethke and Stephen Spender. It was translated from the French by Violet Schiff.

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Dear X,

I was not well yesterday, but as you had arranged to meet me on the sea-wall between six and seven, and thinking you might perhaps have hurried back from Deauville on that account, dead or alive I would have been there. Moreover knowing that a little group of attractive young people from Houlgate were at Cabourg, I artfully induced them to stay here for your amusement. Of course you did not come and did not think fit to let me know….

Afterwards while dining at the Casino restaurant, and when later I was at the Music-Hall, I had painful thoughts about you, of which I spare you the melancholy repetition. My dear X you must forgive me. I have been too spoilt by friends older than myself. I have known Alphonse Daudet, at the height of his glory, and of his suffering, when he could not write a line without crying, as he had so much pain in his whole body, to write me twice at seven o’clock when I was dining with him that evening at eight, to ask whether some insignificant detail of the meal would give me more pleasure if I sat next to a friend. I have known Anatole France postpone a visit to Versailles for eight days in succession to enable me to accompany him, and each day send a message to enquire if it would not tire me too much to go. I purposely mention only small things, though I could tell you a thousand. At that time I was in good health; outings and appointments with friends were not for me what they are now. And seeing that you live a few steps away with nothing to do, you must forgive me if in my haste I do not waste time to explain what you know so well. If this letter were not merely written to preserve our self-respect out of consideration for the deep and sincere affection I had for you, it would be aimless. For I know that you are irreclaimable. You are not even made of stone, which could be carved if you had the good fortune to meet a sculptor, (and you might meet a greater one than I am, though I would have done it with tenderness). You are made of water, a commonplace, elusive, colourless water, an everlastingly unstable fluid that vanishes as fast as it flows. People whom it amuses can watch you passing daily, without a ‘self’. One cannot do more. But I, who had such a real affection for you, feel inclined either to yawn, or to weep and sometimes to drown myself. Excuse me therefore for quitting these shores for ever. I divined your true nature the day you said so forcibly: ‘Impossible, you know it is the night of the “Foucart” party.’ But one always wants to hope and does not like to admit one has deceived oneself. And so pleasantly, too pleasantly – for, better are the lilacs of yesterday which had not yet flowered, than those that today reek of decay and are rotten – you have painted your character for me in such a different light.

You are not even capable of coming to the sea-wall at seven o’clock! And I for whom it involved so much fatigue, etc, had all the annoyance of it. I am too tired to see a friend who causes me exasperation and fatigue by not keeping appointments, etc. I need friends who spare me such things, not those who add to them. My dear friend, out of compassion for my ill-health do not yield to the temptation of seeking a reconciliation which you are incapable of sustaining even for one month. What you call ‘sorrows’ are simply your concern about things you believe to be pleasures, a dance, a game of golf, etc. One day I shall paint those characters who will never understand, even from a vulgar point of view, the elegance there is in renouncing a ball at the last moment, to keep a friend company. They think they are men of the world, but are the contrary. I have no time to write another line and I leave you once and for all. But in parting I don’t want you to think that I say all this with a light heart. I tell you because I think it will give you pleasure and gratify your vanity: I have had a great sorrow; and my heart is not one of those that can, without a bitter pang, transpose into the past that which (be it even a mere object) was as you once were, the predilection of their present and the hope of their future. Send me back this letter and let me shake your hand in friendship.

M. P.

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