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If you knew how I love hearing from you and how honoured I am by your confidences! Treat me as a person you have the right to ask things of. Look here—if you want anything and you haven't the dibs—come to me bang off and if I have the money you're welcome to it—without a single hesitation.

Why I am saying all this is (I see your eyes rolling and your hair rising in festoons of amazement and I don't care!) well, why I am saying it is that we ‘artists’ are not like ordinary people and there are times when to know we have a fellow workman who's ready to do all in his power, because he loves you and believes in you, is a nice comfortable feeling. I adore Life, but my experience of the world is that it's pretty terrible. I hope yours will be a very different one, but just in case … you'd like to shout Katherine at any moment—here she is—See?

Having got that off my chest (which is at this moment more like a chest of super-sharp edged cutlery) let me say how I appreciate all you feel about craft. Yes, I think you're absolutely right. I see your approach to painting as very individual. Emotion for you seems to grow out of deliberation—looking long at a thing. Am I getting at anything right? In the way a thing is made—it may be a tree or a woman or a gazelle or a dish of fruit. You get your inspiration. This sounds a bit too simple when it is written down and rather like “Professor Leonard The Indian Palmist.” I mean something, though. It's a very queer thing how craft comes into writing. I mean down to details. Par exemple. In Miss Brill I choose not only the length of every sentence, but even the sound of every sentence. I choose the rise and fall of every paragraph to fit her, and to fit her on that day at that very moment. After I'd written it I read it aloud—numbers of times—just as one would play over a musical composition—trying to get it nearer and nearer to the expression of Miss Brill—until it fitted her.

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Don't think I'm vain about the little sketch. It's only the method I wanted to explain. I often wonder whether other writers do the same—If a thing has really come off it seems to me there mustn't be one single word out of place, or one word that could be taken out. That's how I Aim at writing. It will take some time to get anywhere near there.

But you know, Richard, I was only thinking last night people have hardly begun to write yet. Put poetry out of it for a moment and leave out Shakespeare—now I mean prose. Take the very best of it. Aren't they still cutting up sections rather than tackling the whole of a mind? I had a moment of absolute terror in the night. I suddenly thought of a living mind—a whole mind—with absolutely nothing left out. With all that one knows how much does one not know? I used to fancy one knew all but some kind of mysterious core (or one could). But now I believe just the opposite. The unknown is far, far greater than the known. The known is only a mere shadow. This is a fearful thing and terribly hard to face. But it must be faced.