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Joseph E. Evans letters, 1935-1954
1943-12-06 Joseph Evans to Mary Evans Page 2
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across the border into Juarez - but they couldn't tell us how much time we had and so we didn't dare risk it. Of course I've seen Rosalind - yesterday (Sunday) afternoon. Ha! She is being married the end of this month to Richard de Mille (Cecil's nephew) - that was about all I needed; the one relationship that would have worked for me. I don't blame her - God knows she waited long enough for me, but I am sure kicking myself for not having married her four years ago, or even before that; and indeed, yesterday, she asked why didn't you? And I didn't because I was afraid - of economic insecurity; deluded, somehow, by the evil preachments of a vicious materialism: how ironic it seems now, when I wouldn't hesitate a moment on such a score! As so I have lost what was infinitely important to me, that which nothing can replace, as is so amply attested to by the failure of every relationship I have entered into since. This may sound to you like so much romantic guff: believe me, there is nothing romantic in my thoughts this night; it is just that I know how bitter loneliness tastes: the more bitter in the company of someone with whom one is not completely en rapport. I will perhaps marry someone sometime - but how makeshift it will be, when I could have had the perfect marriage! Even the very thought of marrying anyone else is repellent to me. I am a peculiarly intricate piece of work, and more than a little mad, and no one except her knows just what does go on inside me, and no one else ever will, for there is no one else like her. The tragic part - what makes it so especially hard to bear - is that she loves me as she always has and always will and knows that her marriage too will be a compromise and by comparison an empty thing. But it is too late. This has not crushed me; I am not going through any mild agonies, no orgies or emotionalism. It has just inexpressibly saddened me, in a
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across the border into Juarez - but they couldn't tell us how much time we had and so we didn't dare risk it. Of course I've seen Rosalind - yesterday (Sunday) afternoon. Ha! She is being married the end of this month to Richard de Mille (Cecil's nephew) - that was about all I needed; the one relationship that would have worked for me. I don't blame her - God knows she waited long enough for me, but I am sure kicking myself for not having married her four years ago, or even before that; and indeed, yesterday, she asked why didn't you? And I didn't because I was afraid - of economic insecurity; deluded, somehow, by the evil preachments of a vicious materialism: how ironic it seems now, when I wouldn't hesitate a moment on such a score! As so I have lost what was infinitely important to me, that which nothing can replace, as is so amply attested to by the failure of every relationship I have entered into since. This may sound to you like so much romantic guff: believe me, there is nothing romantic in my thoughts this night; it is just that I know how bitter loneliness tastes: the more bitter in the company of someone with whom one is not completely en rapport. I will perhaps marry someone sometime - but how makeshift it will be, when I could have had the perfect marriage! Even the very thought of marrying anyone else is repellent to me. I am a peculiarly intricate piece of work, and more than a little mad, and no one except her knows just what does go on inside me, and no one else ever will, for there is no one else like her. The tragic part - what makes it so especially hard to bear - is that she loves me as she always has and always will and knows that her marriage too will be a compromise and by comparison an empty thing. But it is too late. This has not crushed me; I am not going through any mild agonies, no orgies or emotionalism. It has just inexpressibly saddened me, in a
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