1Dear Havelock this cutting bears out what your Indian friend wrote you
2about sex relations between Indians & white women.
3
4Its been raining here this all week so I hope it will be fine next: &
5its been very cold. My gums & face are 100 times worse than before my
6teeth were drawn. I would give anything to have them back again. My
7strong hard teeth with which I could crack the hardest nuts. Take a
8lesson & never have sound strong teeth drawn. The pain in my face &
9head is part of the pain in every part of ones body. not a cause, but
10an affect. I can’t think why I was so silly as to let them be drawn.
11Its the fashion now. The moment a doctor sees your case & complex & he
12doesn’t understand it he says “Draw your teeth.” I am feeling very ill
13again though the pure air & the good food here bucks one up.
14
15No, a young man’s love is not so selfish as that of an old married man.
16 The old man (I don’t mean an old man who’d always been perfectly
17celibate like a Catholic priest who had never ^even^ kissed a woman; I
18mean the average middleaged man) makes love,^ or^ plays at being
19fascinated by a girl or younger woman & then forgets her in a few
20weeks or months entirely. She’s not a person to him, she’s a object on
21which his passions can play & who flatters his vanity by being or
22pretending to be, in love with him. When I was just 15 a young man of
23about 21 was very much in love with me & asked me to marry him. I
24wasn’t the smallest bit attracted to him, & didn’t treat him very
25sympathyecally; yet 30 years after when I was married & he was married;
26 we were travelling in the same train on a long journey. My Husband &
27he often met & talked but he & I never spoke: till the train was
28delayed somewhere in the veld & the passengers to pass the time got
29out & walked about. On the railway track were some tiny little flowers
30growing. He picked them & came to the window at which I was sitting &
31put them in. He said “You used to like wild flowers once!” & turned
32away ^with out another word or look.^
33
34That was the
35
36No elderly man who made love to a woman would keep as much feeling for
37her even for 12 or 14 years! Its the absolute evanescence of an
38elderly man’s philandering that prevents one from sympathizing with
39them. ^& makes them repulsive^ It is the same with the fashionable
40middleaged made-up London women who spend their time attacting young
41men. – but the better type of elderly woman because of her strong
42tendency to maternal feeling often does really unselfishly love a
43young man as that fat woman in the scarlet letter ^Dark Planet^ did.
44
45^Give my love to Edith. I shall never forget how kind she was to me in
46London, the darling. I’ve No thanks I don’t want a book about Shelley
47or anyone. If you’ve read & loved a writer no one else can tell you
48anything about them.^
49
50Olive
51