1618: TO V. SACKVILLE-WEST
52 Tavistock Square, W.C.1

Feb. 3rd 1926

Heres a letter from Cairo, I mean from the shores of Greece [Crete], come this morning, a dumb letter; but I'm 
getting good at reading them. I did like it. And I wrote to you yesterday, to Baghdad, and see that I must write 
now to catch the mail, to Teheran; so theres no news—Also, you'll be so excited, happy, and all that. You'll have 
forgotten me, the room, the crane. We cut a very poor show against Teheran. Grizzle is in hospital, with mange; 
and I'm alone—oh Thank God—Morgan Forster and a wretched Frenchman, who talked without stopping, 
having this moment gone. How difficult it is to imagine any word of this reaching to you at Teheran! Have you 
got through safe and well? Are you happy? What do you see when you look over this paper? Rose pink hill, and 
little tufts of red flowers, I imagine.

I'm too dissipated to write. Morgan has been staying with old Hardy—The film company rings up and 
says "will you arrange for us to film the great novelist at work? For we hear he can't live long." Mrs Hardy came 
in to tell Morgan this, much distressed, for old Hardy hadn't been well. Then she says, "Who do you think should 
write my husbands life?" In order to feel the ground, Morgan says, "Well, Middleton Murry's a great admirer"—
Whereupon Mrs Hardy flames out (to all our joy) "No, no, Mr Forster, We should not like that at all"—in spite 
of the devotion of that worm, who took his wife to be delivered of a son, to be called Thomas, in Dorchester, 
but she was delivered, of a daughter, 50 miles away. Murry, by the way has arraigned your poor Virginia, and 
Virginia's poor Tom Eliot, and all their works, in the Adelphi, and condemned them to death.

On Friday (but this will have happened weeks ago) we go to Rodmell. Dearest, how nice to have 
you there, in a month or two. I made £20 unexpectedly yesterday, and vowed to spend it perfecting the water 
closet on your behalf. But Teheran is exciting me too much. I believe, at this moment, more in Teheran than in 
Tavistock Square. I see you, somehow in long coat and trousers, like an Abyssinian Empress, stalking over those 
barren hills. But really what I want to know is how the journey went, the 4 days through the snow, the caravan. 
Shall you write and tell me? And the affectionate letter—whens that coming?
I am back again in the thick of my novel, and things are crowding into my head: millions of things I might
put in—all sorts of incongruities, which I make up walking the streets, gazing into the gas fire. Then I 
struggle with them, from 10 to 1: then lie on the sofa, and watch the sun behind the chimneys: and think of 
more things: then set up a page of poetry in the basement, and so up to tea and Morgan Forster. I've shirked 
2 parties, and another Frenchman, and buying a hat, and going to tea with Hilda Trevelyan: for I really can't 
combine all this with keeping my imaginary people going. Not that they are people: what one imagines, in a 
novel, is a world. Then, when one has imagined this world, suddenly people come in—but I don't know why 
one does it, or why it should alleviate the misery of life, and yet not make one exactly happy; for the strain is 
too great. Oh, to have done it, and be free.

Wandering into the basement, where someone is always walking up and down talking it seems to me, 
I ran into Bob Trevelyan, who started off about you and Dotty: how he had read a poem of hers: thought you 
had a real literary gift; liked your Hops article [Nation, 10 October 1925]: and then, of course, he dwindled off 
on to his own poetry, and how to finish 3 plays and 4 epics, he must retire to Italy. Here the door opens and Mr 
[Hubert] Waley sends poems by Camilla Doyle for Mrs Woolf to read. Mrs Woolf has 2 long novels to read; 
and should be at it now, instead of scribbling to Vita, who's much too happy and excited to attend, and looking 
divinely beautiful too (I say, what do you wear—the purple dogs hair dress?) So I will end, being exacting by 
nature, and hating the sort of divided attention which is all I can get now.

But I'm faithful, and loving: and have met no one a patch on you—no one so comforting to be with.

Remember me, is that the phrase?—to Harold.

Yr VW.