Dolly Wilde

Natalie dearest, Natalie darling
I’m going to spend the day in the country—take lunch at a farm house & drink the ‘unquenchable milky streams’ of Madame Mardrus’ Arcadian cows!

The house is quiet,—books lie all around me and I am once more that very serious, puzzled, earnest Miss Wilde that is my true self

Does one fall into one delight after another? Does this midsummer madness never cease?

you have become such a spirit that there is no slipping a hand into your tender palm, no pressing of sister lips.

Free from pain I have stretched luxuriously & savoured quiet thoughts in my charming room. You walk down the avenues of my mind, peacefully, wonderfully

Don’t, don’t slip away from me—don’t short-circuit your magic.

Darling—(how I wish the pencil blushed its leaden heart red whenever one wanted that tired old word “darling” to mean something for once!)

I think of you at the new villa and am comforted in being able to vizualize your surroundings—surely a ghostly presence took possession of you every now and again?

I want to thank you for the bouquet, the pleasure is indescribable—like all enchantment & there is something sad about being unable to tell the secret of pleasure.

The last two days I have had a bad cold & a temperature—but I am paying for not allowing my pleasures to be interrupted & to-day am in bed—my death bed I feel.

How you inhabit my thoughts—how easily you take possession of my mind, subjugating me.

You don't know how you have changed me—(everyone notices it).

Charming Barbara
You dispelled my boredom this afternoon and at the back of my mind is still a pleasant sense of excitement—no, that's too strong a word! Anyway, you're still in my thoughts, & I'm wondering what you're really like.

I like to be distracted from all anguish of life and human relationship

You seem, amongst a world of strangers, so part of me that feeling you slipping away is like saying goodbye to oneself

Fancy Esther being with you . . . Does she sleep in my bed? I don’t like that. Have you made listless love to her—out of charitable curiosity? Tell me if you have.

When do you return to Paris? Please, please come back. Seriously I pen this request. I shudder to think of Paris without you—and such ghosts would meet me at every turn. YOU MUST COME BACK.

you have become such a spirit that there is no slipping a hand into your tender palm, no pressing of sister lips.

a new moon cools the hot night outside . . . but I forbore from wishing tonight, as you have taught me not to weight those silver horns with anything as heavy as a wish!

My secret excitement is becoming a definite hunger now, & less pleasant in consequence.

Poetry—like music—breaks too sweetly on one's sensibilities and memories.

in a week or two this paralysis of the mind will pass: and then I’ll come to you (if you will have me darling) and we’ll spend a happy spring together and forget all this sort of horror

Do you love me? I wonder. Not that it matters at all. Perhaps I shan’t even mind when you leave me—only there would could be no love-making—impossible thought

Borenius says that life is seeing one amusing person all day and every day—and not going to the theatre or to dances or to dinners or to lunches. I think he is right, don't you?

What a dull letter you wrote me—ni l’amour ni de la littérature—il me faut ou l’un ou l’autre!

I should think you’d be finished with me: but please don’t forsake me, ever

Darling, my love & thoughts, & be brave.
D.

your tenderness seems my very security now

Night succeeded night, her magnetism crystallizing slowly—I was confused, my mind enthralled, my senses subordinated to my vision.

How is Romaine? Please remember me to her—she is always an exciting thought in one’s head!