Letters

I should prefer not to. I am not heartily sorry—au contraire—but I am heartily weary of things sexual. By Ambrose’s count (leave it to him) he had as of April’s end ejaculated into one or another of His Ladyship’s receptacles no fewer than 87 several times since the month — and the “Second Stage” of our love affair — began. More precisely, since the full Pink Moon of 2 April, when the onset of my menses so roused him that I had to take it by every detour till the main port of entry was clear (A’s analogy, tricked out with allusions to American ru

Thank God then it was Thursday, I replied, and April done, for my whole poor carcase was a-crying Mayday. The cramps were on me again, breasts tender, ankles swollen, I was cross and weepy: all signs were (he’d be glad to know) that douche and cream and pessary had withstood his “low-motile swimmers.”

As if I’d spoken by chance some magic phrase, my lover’s humour changed entirely. He removed his hand, rezipped his fly, asked me gravely, even tenderly, was I quite sure? I was, despite the irregular regularity of it: by next night’s full moon — which he told me was the Flower Moon — his overblown blossom would close her petals for a spot of much needed rest. He kissed me then like (no other way to say it) a husband, and left my office, where, not long before, our committee had delighted John Schott by proposing after all, alas, A. B. Cook for the Litt.D. (We could delay no longer. What’s more — but I shall return to this. Would you had said yes! Failing that, would it could be Ambrose!) That day, like a played-out Paolo and Francesca, we made love no more, just read books.

Yesterday too. Sweet relief! A. stopped by early; let himself through the front door of 24 L before I was up, as he sometimes does. I took for granted it was the usual A.M. quickie, as he calls it, and as I had indeed begun flowing that night like a little Niagara, I rolled over with a sigh to let him in the back door and begone. But lo, he was all gentle husband again: had only stopped to ask could he fetch me a Midol? Make tea? He jolly could, and jolly did. I was astonished, mistrustful. Some new circus trick in the offing? Or l’Abruzzesa… No, no, he chided: merely in order to have “run in a month’s glissando the whole keyboard of desire” (his trope), he hoped we might add one last, 88th co

So I blew him, whilst our Twining’s Earl Grey was a-cooling. He even tasted different: something has changed! Last evening we made sea trout au cognac together, spent the P.M. (a longie) with books and telly; then we slept together, like (quoth he, after Do

The book I’m into, and look to be for some while yet, is, per program, your Sot-Weed Factor. But how am I to bring, to the enterprise of reading it, any critical detachment, when I am busy being altogether dismayed by the Cooke-Burlingame co

No more games! You know, then, of an original “Monsieur Casteene,” Henry Burlingame, and Ebenezer Cooke: what I must know is their co

I feel a fool, sir, and I dislike that not unfamiliar feeling. It isn’t menstruation makes me cross, but being crossed and double-crossed.

Damn all of you!

By which pronoun I mean, momentarily I presume, you men. Not included in last Saturday’s roster of my former beaux was the one woman I’ve ever loved, my “Juliette Récamier”—a French New Novelist in Toronto whose meticulous unsentimentality I found refreshing after Hesse and my British lovers — and before it was revealed to be no more than increasingly perverse and sterile rigour. Yet I recall warmly our hours together and rather imagine that, had she not long since abjured the rendering of characters in fiction, she alone of my writer-friends might have got me both sympathetically and truly upon the page, with honour to both life and literature, love and art. Lesbian co

I think I pity the man or woman whose experience does not include one such as he: one to whom it is our fate and hard pleasure to surrender quite. We are not the same in our several relationships; different intimacies bring out different colours in us. With Jeffrey (and Herma

Toronto: I spent the summer and fall of 1966 there, lecturing at the university, consoling myself with “Juliette” (their novelist in residence) for the loss of my husband, and waiting in vain, with the obvious mixture of emotions, for some word from André, who I assumed had arranged my lectureship. November arrived, unbelievably, without a sign from him. On the 5th, a Saturday, unable to deal with the suspense, I drove out to Stratford with my friend to see a postseason Macbeth at the Shakespeare Festival Theatre. Between Acts III and IV as I stepped into the lobby for intermission, I was handed a sealed envelope with my name on it by one of the ushers. I was obliged to sit before I could open it. The note inside, in a handwriting I knew, read: “My darling: Di