Letters of Note was born in 2009 with the launch of lettersofnote.com, a website celebrating old-fashioned correspondence that has since been visited over 100 million times. The first Letters of Note volume was published in October 2013, followed later that year by the first Letters Live, an event at which world-class performers delivered remarkable letters to a live audience.

Since then, these two siblings have grown side by side, with Letters of Note becoming an international phenomenon, and Letters Live shows being staged at iconic venues around the world, from London’s Royal Albert Hall to the theatre at the Ace Hotel in Los Angeles.

You can find out more at lettersofnote.com and letterslive.com. And now you can also listen to the audio editions of the new series of Letters of Note, read by an extraordinary cast drawn from the wealth of talent that regularly takes part in the acclaimed Letters Live shows.

For all who have lost

First published in Great Britain in 2021

by Canongate Books Ltd,

14 High Street, Edinburgh EH1 1TE

canongate.co.uk

This digital edition first published in 2021 by Canongate Books

Copyright © Shaun Usher, 2021

The right of Shaun Usher to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

For permission credits, please see here

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available on

request from the British Library

ISBN 978 1 78689 536 3

eISBN 978 1 78689 537 0

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

01 SORROW MUST BE SORROW

George Eliot to Lady Lytton

02 GRIEF IS NON-NEGOTIABLE

Nick Cave to Cynthia

03 A GREAT DESERT LIES AHEAD OF ME

Edith Wharton to John Hugh Smith

04 I HAVE FELT THIS LOSS WITH ALL MY HEART

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe to Anna Margaretha Textor

05 YOUR TRUE SELF HAS NO LIFE, NO DEATH

Sheldon and Seungsahn Haengwon

06 IT’S SO CURIOUS

Colette to Marguerite Moreno

07 A MAN IS NOT COMPLETELY BORN UNTIL HE BE DEAD

Benjamin Franklin to Elizabeth Hubbart

08 WHAT A WORLD

Ken Kesey to his friends

09 I LOVED HER SO MUCH

Audre Lorde to Martha Dunham

10 MAKE IT YOUR AMBITION TO TAKE HEART

Rainer Maria Rilke to Sidonie Nádherná von Borutín

11 I WILL BE THERE IN THE TREES

Kathleen Keyes to the Irish Times 46

12 YOU MUST LET ME CRY MY CRY FOR HIM

Robert Frost to Helen Thomas

13 HOW COULD YOU GO AHEAD OF ME?

A widow to Eung-Tae Lee

14 IT WAS SUPPOSED TO BE ME

An unknown soldier believed to have been Basil Rathbone to Edgar Rathbone

15 THE MISTS OF GRIEF

Helen Keller to Takeo and Keo Iwahashi

16 WHAT IS IT THAT YOU MOURN IN A FRIEND’S DEATH?

Marsilio Ficino to Bernardo Bembo

17 THE HEAVY HAND OF DEATH

Kahlil Gibran to Mary Haskell

18 HOW ARE YOU FEELING?

Jessica Mitford to Eva and Bill Maas

19 NO ONE YOU LOVE IS EVER DEAD

Ernest Hemingway to Gerald and Sara Murphy

20 LET ME BEG OF YOU NOT TO INDULGE IN USELESS GRIEF

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu to Mary Stuart, Countess of Bute

21 THE EVERLASTING NEST

‘Abdu’l-Bahá to bereaved parents

22 HOW IT SEIZES UPON ONE

Virginia Woolf to Dora Carrington

23 YOU WILL NOT HAVE MY HATRED

Antoine Leiris to his wife’s killers

24 FOR SHE WAS MORTAL BORN

Servius Sulpicius Rufus and Marcus Tullius Cicero

25 LIKE A TREE IN FULL BEARING STRUCK AT THE ROOT

Charlotte Brontë to W. S. Williams

26 THE SPRINGTIME SUN BRINGS FORTH NEW LIFE

Albert Einstein to Queen Elisabeth of Belgium

27 WE FEEL DOUBLY BEREFT

Ethel Bedsow to Jacqueline Kennedy

28 THE BUSINESS OF LIFE SUMMONS US AWAY FROM USELESS GRIEF

Samuel Johnson to James Elphinston

29 SORROW COMES TO ALL

Abraham Lincoln to Fanny McCullough

30 THE GREAT WALL

Thomas Wolfe and Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings to Maxwell E. Perkins

31 NOW HER SOUL IS FREE

Ram Dass to Steve and Anita Isser

PERMISSION CREDITS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

A letter is a time bomb, a message in a bottle, a spell, a cry for help, a story, an expression of concern, a ladle of love, a way to connect through words. This simple and brilliantly democratic art form remains a potent means of communication and, regardless of whatever technological revolution we are in the middle of, the letter lives and, like literature, it always will.

INTRODUCTION

The book you now hold is a carefully curated collection of thirty-one letters, the earliest written in 45 BC, the most recent in 2019, from the pens and typewriters of novelists, spiritual leaders, activists, musicians, politicians, poets and everyday folk, sent from addresses in all corners of the globe.

Tying them all together is grief, an emotional process we are all destined to experience as we stumble blindly through life – for grief is our natural reaction to loss. It is the pit that forms in our stomach as a loved one walks away, or the paralysing wave of darkness that arrives just as someone dies. Grief can cause pain and tears, bring strange consolation or overwhelm. It can sometimes do all at once. We can grieve the loss of anyone or anything, be it a person, an animal, a job or a dream, and it is important to remind ourselves that there is no correct way to do so, for although grief is universal, it manifests differently for all. By its very nature, the grieving process is often lonely. Some people grieve in silence, either through choice or circumstance; others need to find a way to put their grief into words, to make sense somehow of the experience and translate it into a recognisable form. Maybe, just maybe, if it can be articulated, it can help us, in some way.

Over the years I have compiled many different collections of letters, on subjects ranging from Love to Art, from Music to Sex, from War to Dogs. It is no exaggeration to say that researching this particular volume, Grief, has been, all at once, the most heartbreaking, enlightening, fulfilling and rewarding of them all. To be able to read the words of those who have lost so much, and the words of those attempting to console, even a little, those who are grieving is something of an honour.

It is my hope that Letters of Note: Grief may act as another tool with which those of you who are suffering loss can ease your pain, by reminding you that you are not alone in your suffering, that there have been others out there and will be others again. Similar paths have been walked.

Shaun Usher

2020

The Letters

LETTER 01

SORROW MUST BE SORROW

George Eliot to Lady Lytton

8 July 1870

To most people, Mary Ann Evans is better known as George Eliot, a pen name which adorns the covers of her seven novels – including, most notably, Middlemarch, A Study of Provincial Life, which is considered to be her masterpiece. It was in July of 1870, a year before that novel’s publication, that Eliot wrote this letter. Her friend, Lady Lytton, was dealing with the recent loss of her uncle, George Villiers, 4th Earl of Clarendon, who for all intents and purposes had for many years acted as her father.

THE LETTER

Harrogate

I did not like to write to you until Mr. Lytton sent word that I might do so, because I had not the intimate knowledge that would have enabled me to measure your trouble; and one dreads, of all things, to speak or write a wrong or unseasonable word when words are the only signs of interest and sympathy that one has to give. I know now, from what your dear husband has told us, that your loss is very keenly felt by you, that it has first made you acquainted with acute grief, and this makes me think of you very much. For learning to love any one is like an increase of property—it increases care, and brings many new fears lest precious things should come to harm. I find myself often thinking of you with that sort of proprietor’s anxiety, wanting you to have gentle weather all through your life, so that your face may never look worn and storm-beaten, and wanting your husband to be and do the very best, lest anything short of that should be disappointment to you. At present the thought of you is all the more with me because your trouble has been brought by death; and for nearly a year death seems to me my most intimate daily companion. I mingle the thought of it with every other, not sadly, but as one mingles the thought of some one who is nearest in love and duty with all one’s motives. I try to delight in the sunshine that will be when I shall never see it any more. And I think it is possible for this sort of impersonal life to attain great intensity—possible for us to gain much more independence than is usually believed of the small bundle of facts that make our own personality. I don’t know why I should say this to you, except that my pen is chatting as my tongue would if you were here. We women are always in danger of living too exclusively in the affections, and though our affections are, perhaps, the best gifts we have, we ought also to have our share of the more independent life—some joy in things for their own sake. It is piteous to see the helplessness of some sweet women when their affections are disappointed; because all their teaching has been that they can only delight in study of any kind for the sake of a personal love. They have never contemplated an independent delight in ideas as an experience which they could confess without being laughed at. Yet surely women need this sort of defence against passionate affliction even more than men. Just under the pressure of grief, I do not believe there is any consolation. The word seems to me to be drapery for falsities. Sorrow must be sorrow, ill must be ill, till duty and love towards all who remain recover their rightful predominance. Your life is so full of those claims that you will not have time for brooding over the unchangeable. Do not spend any of your valuable time now in writing to me, but be satisfied with sending me news of you through Mr. Lytton when he has occasion to write to Mr. Lewes.

I have lately finished reading aloud Mendelssohn’s “Letters”, which we had often resolved and failed to read before. They have been quite cheering to us from the sense they give of communion with an eminently pure, refined nature, with the most rigorous conscience in art. In the evening we have always a concert to listen to—a concert of modest pretensions, but well conducted enough to be agreeable.

I hope this letter of chit-chat will not reach you at a wrong moment. In any case, forgive all mistakes on the part of one who is always yours sincerely and affectionately.

LETTER 02

GRIEF IS NON-NEGOTIABLE

Nick Cave – Letter to Cynthia

The Red Hand Files, October 2018

Nick Cave was born in 1957 in the Australian town of Warracknabeal, to Dawn and Colin Cave. The formation of his first band at Caulfield Grammar School in a suburb of Melbourne ignited a decades-long career. Over the years, he has produced acclaimed music, both as a solo artist and with his band, Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds, acted on stage and screen, and written film scores and screenplays. Throughout, Cave has taken time to connect with his fans, and in 2018 he launched ‘The Red Hand Files’, an online platform through which they are able to ask questions of him directly, his answers published for all to see. In 2018, a letter arrived from someone named Cynthia, which read:

I have experienced the death of my father, my sister, and my first love in the past few years and feel that I have some communication with them, mostly through dreams. They are helping me. Are you and Susie feeling that your son Arthur is with you and communicating in some way?

Arthur was Nick Cave’s late son. He died in 2015 aged fifteen.

This letter was Cave’s reply.

THE LETTER

Dear Cynthia,

This is a very beautiful question and I am grateful that you have asked it. It seems to me, that if we love, we grieve. That’s the deal. That’s the pact. Grief and love are forever intertwined. Grief is the terrible reminder of the depths of our love and, like love, grief is non-negotiable. There is a vastness to grief that overwhelms our minuscule selves. We are tiny, trembling clusters of atoms subsumed within grief’s awesome presence. It occupies the core of our being and extends through our fingers to the limits of the universe. Within that whirling gyre all manner of madnesses exist: ghosts and spirits and dream visitations, and everything else that we, in our anguish, will into existence. These are precious gifts that are as valid and as real as we need them to be. They are the spirit guides that lead us out of the darkness.

I feel the presence of my son, all around, but he may not be there. I hear him talk to me, parent me, guide me, though he may not be there. He visits Susie in her sleep regularly, speaks to her, comforts her, but he may not be there. Dread grief trails bright phantoms in its wake. These spirits are ideas, essentially. They are our stunned imaginations reawakening after the calamity. Like ideas, these spirits speak of possibility. Follow your ideas, because on the other side of the idea is change and growth and redemption. Create your spirits. Call to them. Will them alive. Speak to them. It is their impossible and ghostly hands that draw us back to the world from which we were jettisoned; better now and unimaginably changed.

With love,

Nick

‘IF WE LOVE, WE

GRIEVE, THAT’S THE

DEAL.’

– Nick Cave

LETTER 03

A GREAT DESERT LIES AHEAD OF ME

Edith Wharton to John Hugh Smith

15 October 1927

Edith Wharton’s lifelong relationship with Walter Van Rensselaer Berry began in 1883, as both holidayed in Bar Harbor, Maine. Their connection was instant and natural. Two years later, she wed another man, Edward, thus beginning an unfulfilling marriage that lasted eighteen years – most of which were unhappy – and ended in divorce. She would later write her most celebrated novel, The Age of Innocence (1920), for which she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Literature: she was, in fact, the first woman to receive the accolade. Six years later, Walter Berry died following a long illness, the final stretch of which saw Wharton take care of him. Shortly after Berry passed away, Wharton wrote this letter to her friend, John Hugh Smith. She would later call Berry ‘the great love of all my life’.

THE LETTER

Pavillon Colombe

St. Brice

October 15, 1927

My dearest John— All my friends have sent me words of sympathy, but only you have said just what I wanted, what I needed. Thank you, dear.

Yes, I am glad indeed that it is over, but I perceive now that I, who thought I loved solitude, was never for one moment alone—& a great desert lies ahead of me.

The sense of desolation (though of thankfulness too, of course) is unspeakably increased by those last days together, when he wanted me so close, & held me so fast, that all the old flame & glory came back, in the cold shadow of death & parting. Oh, my dear, I sometimes feel I am too old to live through such hours, & take up the daily round again.

But I remember what you say, & I am proud of having kept such a perfect friendship after the great days were over, & always to have felt that, through all the coming & going of things in his eager ambitious life, I was there, in the place he put me in so many years ago, the place of perfect understanding.

I don’t think I ever bothered him but once—& when he felt that the busy brilliant days were over, he liked to have me with him, because he knew I wouldn’t fuss & sentimentalize, or try to divert his eyes from the end we both knew they were fixed on. He hated humbug—so do I.—And now I’m so grateful to all my friends for understanding what I feel—& you most, dear John.

Edith

Robert is staying with me, & won’t leave till after the funeral. He has been kindness itself.

LETTER 04

I HAVE FELT THIS LOSS WITH ALL MY HEART

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe to Anna Margaretha Textor

February 1771

In 1768, seventy-four-year-old lawyer and then mayor of Frankfurt Johann Wolfgang Textor suffered a stroke from which he would never truly recover. His efforts to continue working proved futile and a year later he withdrew from public office. In February of 1771, he died, leaving behind his wife, Anna, and five children. Shortly after Textor’s death, his widow received this letter from one of their grandsons, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. This was written three years before publication of Goethe’s wildly successful debut novel, Die Leiden des jungen Werther (The Sorrows of Young Werther), which instantly set him on the path to becoming one of the most important figures in the history of literature.

THE LETTER

Strasbourg

February 1771

Dearest Grandmama,

The death of our dear father, already dreaded from day to day for so long a time, has yet come upon me unprepared. I have felt this loss with all my heart; and what to us is the world around us, when we lose what we love?

To console myself, and not you, I write to you, you who are now the head of our family to beg you for your love, and assure you of my tenderest devotion. You have lived longer in the world than I, and must find in your own heart more comfort than I know of. You have endured more misfortune than I; you must feel far more vividly than I can say it that the most sorrowful occurrence often, through the hand of Providence, takes the most favorable turn for our happiness; that the succession of fortune and misfortune in life is intertwined like sleep and waking, neither without the other, and one for the sake of the other; that all happiness in the world is only lent.

You have seen children and grandchildren die before you, ceasing their work in the morning of their life; and now your tears accompany a husband to the everlasting Sabbath rest – a man who has honestly earned his wage. He has it now; and yet the good God, whilst he took thought for him has also taken thought for you – for us. He has taken from us not the merry friendly, happy old man who carried on the affairs of the age with the vivacity of a youth, who stood out amongst his fellow-citizens and was the joy of his family. He has now taken from us a man whose life we have seen for some years hanging by a silken thread. His energetic spirit must have felt with painful heaviness the oppressive weight of his sickly body; must have wished himself free, as a prisoner yearns to escape from his cell.

Now he is free, and our tears bid him

God-speed; and our sorrow gathers us around you, dear Mama, to console ourselves with you, hearts simply full of love. You have lost much, but much remains to you. Look at us, love us, and be happy. May you enjoy for a long time yet the temporal reward which you have so richly earned of our invalid father, who has gone hence to report it at the place of requital and who has left us behind as tokens of his love, tokens of the past time of sorrowful yet pleasing recollection.

And so may your love for us remain as it was; and where much love is, there is much happiness.

I am, with a truly warm heart, your loving grandchild,

J. W. Goethe

‘LOOK AT US, LOVE US,

AND BE HAPPY.’

– J.W. Goethe

LETTER 05

YOUR TRUE SELF HAS NO LIFE, NO DEATH

Sheldon and Seungsahn Haengwon

18 August 1977

Korean Zen master Seungsahn Haengwon was born in 1927 in Suncheon, Pyeongannam-do, North Korea. Aged twenty, fresh from university, he decided to become a Buddhist monk. Decades later, in 1972, having opened temples across Asia, he moved to the United States and founded the Kwan Um School of Zen, a now global network of Zen centres through which his teachings can be learned. Over the years, until his death in 2004, Seungsahn received countless letters from students the world over in which his advice was sought on a range of issues. It is said that he responded personally to each and every one, and that a selection of these letters is read aloud by the centres’ Dharma teachers as a way to enlighten their students. This particular exchange occurred in 1977, prompted by the death of a student’s father.

THE LETTERS

Boulder, Colorado

August 12, 1977

Dear Soen Sa Nim,

Your letter, newsletter, and picture made me cry— and I am so grateful. I understand: straightforward mind, straightforward heart, straightforward speech, straightforward body.

My father died yesterday. I built a small altar in my room and sat, and I told him to recognize that all things are in his own mind—his original brightness. Too late, I was finally able to say, “I love you.” I am thankful to have your picture on the altar.

Thank you for your great kindness.

Yours,

Sheldon

* * *

August 18, 1977

Dear Sheldon,

Thank you for your letter. How are you?

In your letter, you told me that your father died. I grieve for you.

Long ago in China when the great Zen Master Nam Cheon died, his students and all those who knew him were very sad. The custom at that time was to go to the dead person’s house and cry, “Aigo! Aigo! Aigo!” But when the Zen master’s best student, a layman named Bu Dae Sa, heard of his teacher’s death, he went to Nam Cheon’s temple, opened the door, stood in front of the coffin, and laughed, “HA HA HA HA!!”—great laughter.

The many people who were assembled to mourn Nam Cheon’s death were surprised at this laughter. The temple Housemaster said, “You were our teacher’s best student. Our teacher has died, and everyone is sad. Why are you laughing?”

Bu Dae Sa said, “You say our master has died. Where did he go?” The Housemaster was silent. He could not answer.

Then Bu Dae Sa said, “You don’t understand where our teacher went, so I am very sad. Aigo! Aigo! Aigo!”

You must understand this. What does this mean? If you have no answer, I grieve for you.

Zen is the great work of life and death. What is life? What is death? When you attain this, then everything is clear, everything is complete, and everything is freedom.

Let’s say we have a glass of water. Now its temperature is about 60 degrees. If you reduce the temperature to 20 degrees, it becomes ice. If you raise the temperature above 212 degrees, it will become steam. As the temperature changes, H₂O in the form of water appears and disappears, but H₂O does not appear and does not disappear. Ice, water, and steam are only its form. Name and form change, but H₂O does not change. If you understand the temperature, then you understand the form. Your true self is like this.

But what is your true self? Your body has life and death. But your true self has no life, no death. You think, “My body is me.” This is not correct. This is crazy. You must wake up!

Steam, ice, and water are all H₂O; but if you are attached to water, and the water becomes ice, then you say the water disappeared. So it is dead! Raise the temperature; the water is born again! Raise the temperature again; the water disappears and becomes steam, and the water is again dead!

On the Zen Circle this is the area from 0 degrees to 90 degrees. If you are attached to something and it disappears, you suffer. If you are attached to only doing what you like, you suffer. Don’t be attached to water, OK? Being attached to water is being attached to name and form. Name and form are always changing, changing, changing, nonstop. So name and form are emptiness. Another way to say this is that form is emptiness, emptiness is form. This understanding is 90 degrees on the Zen Circle.

But name and form are made by thinking. Water does not say, “I am water.” Steam does not say, “I am steam.” If you cut off all thinking, are you and the water the same or different? Same and different are made by your thinking. How can you answer? There is no form, no emptiness—no words. Attaining this is 180 degrees on the Zen Circle. If you open your mouth, you have already made a mistake.

If you cut off all thinking, you will see everything just as it is. Without thinking, water is water; ice is ice; steam is steam. No ideas hinder you. Then your correct relationship to H₂O in any form appears by itself. We call this “just-like-this.” This is 360 degrees on the Zen Circle. Just-like-this mind is clear mind. Clear mind has no I-my-me. Without I-my-me you can perceive your correct relationship to H₂O and use it freely without desire for yourself. You will not suffer when water disappears and becomes ice or steam.

Your father’s original face has no death and no life. His body appears and disappears but his Dharma body does not appear and does not disappear. You must recognize that all things are in your own mind. Just this is finding your true self. Great love, great compassion, and the great bodhisattva way come from this attainment. But don’t simply believe my speech. You must actually attain this.

I hope you go only straight—don’t know, try, try, try, soon find your father’s original face, get enlightenment, and save all beings from suffering

Yours in the Dharma,

S.S.

LETTER 06

IT’S SO CURIOUS

Colette to Marguerite Moreno

10 April 1923

Born to Jules-Joseph Colette and Adèle-Eugenie Sidonie in Burgundy in 1873, Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette – known simply as Colette to her many fans – was a leading French writer responsible for dozens of bestselling novels and short stories, and, as a journalist, numerous essays and articles. She also lectured, wrote plays, danced and acted. In 1948, she was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature. In 1912, her mother, Sido, died of cancer. Just as Sido had refused to wear mourning clothes following the death of Colette’s father, so too did Colette when her mother passed away. She also chose not to attend her funeral. But for many years she continued to grieve. Eleven years after the death of her mother, Colette wrote this letter to French actress Marguerite Moreno.

THE LETTER

Paris, April 10, 1923

Hello, my dear creature,

As I think you will get this letter in the morning, how did you sleep, and for how long?

I’ve just come back and can’t shake the memory of your departure from this house, from which you left shrouded and crying like an exile.

Guess what, I arrived home – to lunch on my own – and I opened the drawer of my little desk to get some money – and a single letter fell out: it was a letter from my mother, one of her last, written in pencil with unfinished words and already suffused with her departure.

How strange: one can successfully resist tears and “hold” oneself very well in the hardest hours. But then, someone makes a friendly gesture behind a window, one notices a blossom which was just a bud yesterday, – or a letter slips from a drawer – and everything falls apart.

I’ll pick up some green paper for you this afternoon. How good you were, how kind. I admire you, I’m so used to the feeling. See you soon. You’re coming the day after tomorrow? Will I see you? I kiss you from the bottom of my heart. Don’t forget me amongst your friends, they are equally mine because they love you, and I’m only jealous of the good they do for you.

Your

Colette

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