Yours, Anne
Thursday, 11 May, 1944
Dear Kitty, I’m frightfully busy at the moment, and although it sounds mad, I haven’t time to get through my pile of work. Shall I tell you briefly what I have got to do? Well, then, by tomorrow I must finish reading the first part of Galileo’s biography , as it has to be returned to the library. I only started it yesterday, but I shall manage it.
Next week I have got to read Palestine at the Crossroads and the second part of Galileo’s biography. I also finished reading the first part of the biography of The Emperor Charles V yesterday, and it’s essential that I work out all the diagrams and family trees that I have collected from it.
After that I have three pages of foreign words gathered from various books, which have all got to be recited, written down, and learned. Number four is that my film stars are all mixed up together and are simply gasping to be tidied up; however, as such a clearance would take several days, and since Professor Anne, as she’s already said, is choked with work, the chaos will have to remain a chaos.
Next, Theseus, Oedipus, Peleus, Orpheus, Jason, and Hercules are awaiting their turn to be arranged, as their different deeds lie crisscross in my mind like fancy threads in a dress; it’s also high time Myron and Phidias had some treatment, if they wish to remain at all coherent. Likewise with the Seven and Nine years’ war, I’m mixing everything up together at this rate. Yes, but what can one do with such a memory! Think how forgetful I shall be when I’m eighty!
Oh, something else, the Bible; how long is it still going to take before I meet the bathing Suzanna? And what do they mean by the guilt of Sodom and Gomorrah? Oh, there is still such a terrible lot to find out and to learn.
