WCP3316

[1]

The Cottage,

Raheny¹

Sunday, Sept. 15th

Dear Dr. Wallace,

It was very kind of you to write to me about my stories, and it gives me encouragement to find that you like some of them. I have felt especial concern about 'a wedding gown', partly because, it being the last thing I have written, I am all the more alive to its shortcomings. Its conclusion is I know much too abrupt; but the fact is that I had to write it in the spring, immediately after finishing my novel,² and I was so[2] tired that I could hardly get though it at all. Though I am very glad that you liked the descriptions of the house and garden, I still think that I am not observant enough, and am perhaps incapable of being so. Less with respect to landscapes, and other such stationary things, that give one repeated opportunities, than to the small passing occurences, sights and sounds, that are often so significant. Many of these are lost upon me, through my slowness and want of presence of mind, caused by a habit of doing one thing while thinking about another. I don't believe that this is invariably a bad habit, for there are some things that one can do as well, or better, in an automatic way — as I have known people who knit much more evenly[3] when they are reading at the same time — but I fear that I carry it to excess.

It will be a great pleasure to call upon you when I next visit Parkstone.³ Sometimes I have the fear of you before my eyes when I am planning a dismal story, as I am rather prone to do. I used to wonder why sensible people should wish for cheerful incidents in fiction, when they must know how common in fact are miseries worse than anybody could dare to put into a story, so that the happy ending often seems less true to life. But I have now begun to think the explanation possibly is that they feel it is truer to the life that is to be. I hope some day to get a proof of this from spiritualism. Meanwhile the keeping clear of current religions[4] is a difficulty that constantly crops up in one's way. An ecclesiastical atmosphere of any sort always makes me feel for the time being as if the spiritual world could not possibly exist — a painfully stifling sensation.

But I must not take up your time. We are all very glad to hear of the new editions.

With kind regards and many thanks,

I am yours very sincerely | Jane Barlow⁴ [signature]