and then—the British public!

[breathedout]

Ah! There are so many difficulties! So many difficulties! I want to write a novel about a Lord Chancellor and his naughty son, but I can’t for the life of me think of anything like the shadow of a plot, and then—the British public! Oh dear, let’s all go off to the Faroe Islands, and forget the existence of Robin Mayor and Mrs Humphrey Ward, and drink rum punch of an evening, and live happily ever after! It’s really monstrous that we shouldn’t be able to. Vanessa would cook for us. Why not?

—Lytton Strachey to Virginia Stephen (not yet Woolf), 27 September 1908

I’m just saying: I’ve read less convincing five-months-before-a-marriage-proposal letters.