19 December 1917 Edith to Stuart - Letter #54

Edith to Stuart
19.12.17
My Belovéd,
Your note last night was just lovely, and thank you ever so much for it. I was particularly glad to read what you said about “all in all”, because several times I have been afraid that I did not come up to Harold’s picture. I don’t now believe that I do really, but I am glad you think I do, and I am trying the best I can.
I must go on with this in pencil, so please excuse it, for I cannot help it.
I was glad to read, too, that you liked the idea of polished floors, I was afraid that, perhaps, your great ambition, like my Dad’s, was to have a mice, thick carpet on your floor. I know Dad has wanted one for a long time, and I hope he is satisfied now that he has it. But I know that polished floors are the cleanest you can possibly have, and I should think they are cheaper than linoleum or carpet. I am only afraid that perhaps there is some difficulty in keeping them nice, as so few people go in for them. But they did not seem to be any trouble at school. At any rate, we can try, can’t we, Belovéd, and if our plans don’t answer well when carried out, we must just alter them till we find The Best Way. So much for the floors in our Home Beautiful. Next come the walls, and I will tell you what has always been my greatest ambition in that way, although I should think it is not often practicable except in one’s very own house. I should like, best of all, to have nice, clean, distempered, walls that can be washed. Failing this, I would have plain wall-papers, or papers with only very small patterns on them. I don’t know whether you have ever worried out problems in geometry on the wall-paper while you have been lying in bed. I have, and sometimes it is worse than nightmare. So – no large patterned papers in our Home Beautiful.
I hope, Dearest, I don’t frighten you when I write like this, you know, Mother says I shall want £1,000 a year, or something like it, to keep up my home. I expect I should, if it were really my Ideal Home. But I hope I am sensible enough to realise that I can not have all I want, nor, in fact, a great deal that I want. I don’t see that there is any harm in dreaming of these things, providing one can be content without them, and I think I can be, provided I have – you.
So, Dearest, I shall go on dreaming, and building up and Ideal Home in my imagination, just as a sort of picture which I shall do my best to copy. I will show you as much as I can of my picture, and you must show me as much as you can of yours, and then we must combine the two and – build.
Now I must say Goodnight and Goodbye. What you tell me about your supper, and the supper-thing and everything, makes me long more and more for our “Someday”. Still, I know you make the best of it, but I wish I could help you, so that the best might be a good deal better. “Carry on” for a little while, and then we shall be together, always.
Goodnight, Belovéd, Goodnight.


The Little Poem of Life

I:-
Thou:-
We:-
They:-
Small words, but mighty.
In their span
Are bound the life and hopes of man.

For first, his thoughts of his own self are full;
Until another comes, his heart to rule.
For them, life’s best is centred round their love;
Till younger lives come, all their love to prove.

(c) DearestBeloved 2009