Thank you very much for your letter and kind inquiries after my health.
I like my new doctor very much indeed. I think he _understands me a
great deal better_ than Dr. Coombs, and he has put me on quite a
different treatment. He says I am just going through a “difficult phase”
at present, and that if only I can hold on and not let things get on top
of me for the next year or two I shall come out of it quite all right.
But I am not to have a rest-cure! It seems Dr. Coombs was all wrong
about that—of course he didn’t exactly _say_ she was wrong, it wouldn’t
be professional, but I could see that he _thought_ it! Dr. Trevor says
that rest-cures only “turn you in upon yourself,” and that makes things
worse. He says I must get right away from myself and my feelings, so as
to “sublimate” all these repressed urges and turn them into some other
sort of energy. He says it was quite all right to start with to have my
dreams and subconscious betrayals analysed, so as to know exactly what
was the matter with me, but that _now_ the time has come when I must
learn to throw all these bottled-up desires _outwards_, and give them
something to do. He explained it all _most_ clearly. I said, “I suppose
it is sex, doctor, isn’t it?” (Of course, one gets quite used to asking
things perfectly frankly, and one doesn’t mind it a bit.) And he said,
well, largely; and, of course, that was a thing most people suffered
from one way and another, and in these days one couldn’t always take the
obvious and direct way out of a condition of sex-repression, because it
would often be socially and economically inconvenient. I said that with
two million extra women in this country it didn’t seem possible,
certainly, for everybody to get married, and he smiled and said: “My
dear Miss Milsom, half my patients come to me because they are not
married—and the other half because they are!” We had quite a laugh
about it. He is very nice and rather good-looking, but he doesn’t seem
to think it necessary for all his patients to fall in love with him,
like that odd man I went to see in Wimpole Street, who suffered so
dreadfully from halitosis.
Well, anyway, he asked me what I was interested in, and I said I’d
always had an idea I should like to _write_. He said that was an awfully
good idea, and I ought to encourage it by trying my hand at a little
sketch or article every day, or by just putting down my observations of
people and things as I saw them. I’m sure I get subjects enough in this
house, as far as _matrimony_ goes, anyhow. Indeed, my dear, from what I
see of men, I’m very glad there are _other_ ways out of my troubles than
what Dr. Trevor calls the _direct_ way!! Do you mind, please, not
throwing my letters away—just stick them in one of the drawers in my
old desk when you’ve finished with them, because I think I might use
some of the funny little incidents that happen here to work up into a
novel some time. One puts these things down when they are fresh in one’s
mind, and then one forgets about them.
Well, we are jogging along here in our usual placid way—with the usual
little outbreaks, of course, when a meal goes wrong, as they will
sometimes, with all my care. Mr. Harrison is such an expert, you know,
that it is very hard for a person with only one pair of hands to keep
everything up to his high standard. And, fond though I am, and always
shall be, of dear Mrs. Harrison, I do sometimes wish that she was just a
_little_ more practical. If anything at all is left to her to do, she is
so apt to lose herself in a book or a daydream and forget all about it.
She always says she ought to have been born to ten thousand a year—but
who of us could not say that? I always feel myself that I was really
meant to “sit on a cushion and sew a fine seam”—you remember the games
we used to play about being princesses in the Arabian Nights, with a
train of a hundred black slaves, carrying alabaster bowls filled with
rubies—but alas! life is life and we have to make the best of it. And I
do sometimes feel it a little unfair that so _much_ should come upon my
shoulders. Women do want romance in their lives, and there is so little
of it about. Of course, as you know, I do feel for Mrs. Harrison—her
husband is such a dry sort of man and so lacking in sympathy. I do what
I can, but that is not the same thing and it is very worrying. I must
learn to detach myself. Dr. Trevor says it is very important to
cultivate detachment.
When I was shopping this morning I met Mr. Bell, who told me the top
maisonnette was let at last—to two young men! I said I hoped they
wouldn’t be noisy (though anything would be a relief after that awful
woman with her children), and he said they seemed quiet, gentlemanly
young fellows. One of them he thinks must be some kind of artist,
because they were so interested in the top back room which has a big
window with a north light—you know, the one Mr. Harrison always covets
so much. Though, of course, it is not nearly so convenient a house as
ours in other ways.
I have started on Tom’s stockings. They are going to be _very_ smart. I
have worked out an original design for the turnover—a sort of swirly
pattern in fawn, brown and black, taken from the coat of the kitchen
cat—tabby, you know. Mr. Perry saw it the other day when he called. He
thinks I have quite a talent for that kind of thing.
Give my love to Ronnie and Joan. I hope you are taking care of yourself.
Your loving sister,
AGGIE