The Agony Letter

Vera Brittain

I had just got into bed on May Morning and was drifting I into sleep, when the cable came from Edward to say that Geoffrey was dead.

 When I had read it I got up and went down to the shore in my dressing-gown and pyjamas. All day I sat on the rocks by the sea with the cable in my hand. I hardly noticed how the beautiful morning, golden and calm as an August in Devon, turned slowly into gorgeous afternoon, but I remembered afterwards that the rocks were covered with tiny cobalt-blue irises, about the size of an English wood violet.

 For hours I remained in that state of suspended physical animation when neither heat nor cold, hunger nor thirst, fatigue nor pain, appear to have any power over the body, but the mind seems exceptionally logical and clear. My emotions, however, in so far as they existed, were not logical at all, for they led me to a conviction that Geoffrey's presence was somewhere with me on the rocks. I even felt that if 1 turned my head quickly I might see him behind me, standing there with his deep-set grey-blue eyes, his finely chiselled lips and the thick light-brown hair that waved a little over his high, candid forehead.

And all at once, as I gazed out to sea, the words of the " Agony Column " advertisement, that I had cut out and sent to Roland nearly two years before, struggled back into my mind.

" Lady, fiance killed, will gladly marry officer totally blinded or otherwise incapacitated by the War."

 I even remembered vaguely the letter in which I had commented on this notice at the time.

"At first sight it is a little startling. Afterwards the tragedy of it dawns on you. The lady (probably more than a girl or she would have called herself 'young lady'; they always do) doubtless has no particular gift or qualification, and does not want to face the dreariness of an unoccupied and unattached old-maidenhood. But the only person she loved is dead; all men are alike to her and it is a matter of indifference whom she marries, so she thinks she may as well marry someone who really needs her. The man, she thinks, being blind or maimed for life, will not have much opportunity of falling in love with anyone, and even if he does will not be able to say so. But he will need a perpetual nurse, and she if married to him can do more for him than an ordinary nurse and will perhaps find relief for her sorrow in devoting her life to him. Hence the advertisement; I wonder if anyone will answer it? It is purely a business arrangement, with an element of self-sacrifice which redeems it from utter sordidness. Quite an idea, isn't it ? "

I was still, I reflected, a girl and not yet a " lady," and I had certainly never meant to go through life with " no particular gift or qualification." But-" quite an idea, isn't it ? " Was it, Geoffrey ? Wasn't it ? There was nothing left in life now but Edward and the wreckage of Victor-Victor who had stood by me so often in my blackest hours. If he wanted me, surely I could stand by him in his.

From:  Vera Brittain, Testament of Youth (London: Virago Press, 1986), pp.343-44.  Originally published 1933 by Victory Gollancz Limited.