But I'm in love--a detail you've forgotten. I can't listen to
English Essays. The wretched Agnes may be an "emissary of
Nature," but I only grinned when I read it. I may be
extraordinarily civilized, but I don't feel so; I'm in love, and
I've found a woman to love me, and I mean to have the hundred
other things as well. She wants me to have them--friends and
work, and spiritual freedom, and everything. You and your books
miss this, because your books are too sedate. Read poetry--not
only Shelley. Understand Beatrice, and Clara Middleton, and
Brunhilde in the first scene of Gotterdammerung. Understand
Goethe when he says "the eternal feminine leads us on," and don't
write another English Essay.--Yours ever affectionately,

R.E


Cambridge

Dear Rickie:

What am I to say? "Understand Xanthippe, and Mrs. Bennet, and
Elsa in the question scene of Lohengrin"? "Understand Euripides
when he says the eternal feminine leads us a pretty dance"? I
shall say nothing of the sort. The allusions in this English
Essay shall not be literary. My personal objections to Miss
Pembroke are as follows:--
(1) She is not serious.
(2) She is not truthful.