2
More Than Is Good For Me
15 April 1944
Dear Bessie,
I received today your letter dated 1st March. It has taken such a long time to come and I have felt so disappointed and unsettled at its repeated failure to arrive during the last fortnight, that this may explain my dis-satisfaction as I reached the end. I am puzzled by some of the things you say. Perhaps I should amend dis-satisfaction to ‘unsatisfaction’. I hope you understand the feeling.
I will attempt to reply to your paragraphs and tell you what I cannot fathom as I go along.
You ask ‘Where shall we end, Chris?’ Well, I dunno, but I’m sure it won’t be very dreadful. It might be a great adventure for both of us. I have an idea, but I am not wearing my planning trousers.
Emphatically, I agree that most of us want to love and be loved. Tell me, please, what your reaction is to a marriage where one party is not imbued with one-hundred-per-cent enthusiasm for the other, but marries perhaps for companionship and the wish to avoid loneliness. Do you think she is playing the game?
If my brother asks me why I am getting letters from you, I shall tell him that we are engaged in an interesting correspondence about life. If he asks (and he won’t – but your questioners might) if I am proposing to court you, I shall laughingly deny it, as you (I hope) will do the same.
So I may write as I feel – would that I could! These words would burn the paper and scorch you. (If you get ashes one day when you open the envelope, you’ll know that’s what has happened!) You’ll recognise my tantrums as they occur. Trouble is that you’ll forgive me before, during and after my stupidities. It will be wise for you to commence the development of (or acquire) a critical faculty regarding me, otherwise I am going to be one big unredeemed disappointment for you.
I cannot write you daily but I do think of you hourly. You set all my senses humming, and make me sweat. I want to feel you. I want to go with you to a quiet place and tell you with my body what I can only half say in words.
Yours,
Chris
16 April 1944
Dear Bessie,
There are a couple of points in your letter which I did not reply to, and will do so now. Dictionaries – although I am what people call ‘a good speller’ I found when I came away from all my reference books that I was very shaky on some things. So when I was in Cairo I bought a small dictionary. I add to my vocabulary as I can, otherwise I should speedily relapse into baby talk. I have always investigated and made a note of unfamiliar words, and I also enjoy learning the exact shade of meaning of all words. It’s no good me telling you anything about quidnunc; you will look it up in a dictionary one day and remember it the better. Perhaps when I give my delightful new-found words an airing I ought to mark ’em with a star?
This afternoon, with great speed, I received your wonderful Letter Card of April 8th. How I long to be what you think I am, and bring you all you desire. You can tell me no more than you have already done, yet I need you to keep on telling me that I am essential to you, as you, my dear, are indispensable to me. I thrill to you. You write about my ‘powers of self-expression’ – I have none without you.
You will notice an improvement in my last two letters. It is becoming clearer to me that you are my life’s work, and that I must see that I do hold onto you, and please, please, please, do hold me tight. 18–30 are different ages, but I am happier that you loved me first when you were nearer the former age. I know that I am not the victim of a desperate, blind, unloving grasp. I shall keep on saying I want to feel you, and I want you to know that my desire is no less than yours, nor ever will be. My head is on your breasts, my hands are about you.
I love you.
Chris
18 April 1944
I WILL ALWAYS LOVE YOU
Dear Bessie,
I have just stuck down a Letter Card, and I must straightaway carry on writing to you, around the subject of yours of the 8th April.
Our association in the future depends on your ability to put up with me and my defects, not my ability to put up with yours. And that if we are spending much of our time regarding the other as a bed mate that is a very natural thing, since we are likely to be in that position before too long; I hope it doesn’t mean we are very lustful, but if it does, it doesn’t stop me wanting to tell you how I stiffen and ooze as I read your words and imagine you writing them. I am your servant and your master at once. I will command you and be commanded by you. Your breasts are mine.
I do not feel very happy at the thought of the practical difficulties in the way of setting up house after the war. Every shark in the commercial world will be up and about.
Unfortunately I used to donate most of my money to various ‘good causes’ and I did not start to save until the end of the war in Spain. I think I had about £75 when our own war started; I did not increase this until I joined the Army. At the end of last year I had (my Mother told me) a mere (for my purpose) £227. I think that I am adding to this at about £2 10s. a week. I do not know what will be required. I don’t think there’s much doubt that we will be old enough. Incidentally, I think that engagement rings are jewellers’ rackets, and that marriage is more properly transacted at an office than mumbo-jumbo’d at a church. I am sorry you don’t already know my views on this. You will have to be told sometime.
Can you see that it is gradually dawning on me that you are too good to be missed? Do you observe that I am refusing to bow to my own change-ability? Will you tell me that we may be together really one day, and you will hit me if I start wanting to go?
I am in the permanent state of hoping for letters from you, but I must have flushed my delight an hour ago, when I was handed your LC dated 1st, but postmarked the 3rd. The last three letters had come to me via my brother, and I have been annoyed. He has got an ‘idea’, I feel sure. I had to eat tiffin and delay reading you until I went to work. But now I have done so four times so far. Oh, I do desire you! Oh, I am not really alive except in you, and through you.
Certainly let us mention marriage. Consider me as the one you will be with always from this day, if you want me and will chance it. You are right about it being ‘heavenly’ – but oh hell, angel, you are a long way away! Bessie, Bessie, Bessie, I want to be with you.
I love you.
Chris
18 April 1944 [Second letter]
Dear Bessie,
I think that I will now start to tell you something of myself and family from the Year Dot to the present day. I think this is necessary because I want to (it is very difficult to write – all I want to do is tell you I LOVE YOU) marry you very soon after I return to England, and I want us to do most of the talking through the medium of our letters. There is a lot more to tell you, and I hope to do so. Deb knows much of my history as a person; I want you to know as much as anyone, if only so that you shall never be party to a conversation and be at a loss about it. You won’t remember everything, and I am not certain how I shall proceed. But I think it is desirable. Your time is much more precious than my own, but I hope that you, too, will give me an abridged ‘something’, so that when we do, wonderfully, finally meet, we shall know more about each other than could be obtained by a contemporary or current correspondence.
We have met only comparatively little in the past – and I expect I discussed the weather as much as possible! Some of the things I tell you will not be news, one of them you will need to spend a little time (at least) thinking about, and all of it I hope will be of real interest because it is about me. My ignorance of you can be judged by the fact that I don’t