All My Sins Remembered

Another Part of a Life & The Other Side of Genius: Family Letters

Wilfred R. Bion

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• eBook ISBN: 9780429910692
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: History & Theory in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

All My Sins Remembered is the continuation of Wilfred Bion's autobiography, The Long Week-end. Although it is by no means a full account of his thirty years following the First World War - and he wrote no more - his memories of that period contrast vividly with the impression we gain of the following thirty years of his life through his letters. The Other Side of Genius gives us a glimpse of this remarkable man as his family knew him: those who met him only through his professional work will find here the same characteristic threads of humour, concern for truth, and flashes of insight that were the hallmark of his work in psycho-analysis.OXFORD: 'Thus opened for me a period of unparalleled opportunities to which I remained obstinately blind. I was overwhelmed before I started by the aura of intellectual brilliance with which Oxford was surrounded'.

The Other Side of Genius
I

Letters To Francesca

1951

The Homestead, Iver Heath

March 22

Francesca dear,

This does not seem to be a very sensible time in the morning to start writing you a letter but then I feel I cannot wait till tomorrow. Besides this is not really a letter but just a note and tomorrow I shall write a letter.

I walked back with a great wind blowing hazy clouds across a moon which was never visible but made all the trees stand out a deep grey against the silvery meadows and water. And all the time I could see you, and still see you, looking more ravishingly beautiful, as you did all the evening when I was with you, than any one could believe possible. You were kind to be like that.

And here I shall have to stop for my thoughts will not flow freely when I feel that all I would say cannot be written—or certainly not when I keep thinking of mundane things such as whether I shall be in time to catch a morning post with this, or even whether there is a morning post on a Good Friday.

So, goodbye dear Francesca till tomorrow when I shall be writing you a letter. Remember me, please, to your Mother and give her my best Easter wishes.

Dear Francesca, bless you.

With love from

Wilfred

March 23

Francesca dear,

… My mind is so filled with last night and next Tuesday that I don’t find I concentrate very well on the present. Not that today has been exactly the sort of day that insists on being noticed; the morning was pleasant enough but since then it has come down in buckets. I am rather lucky because I love weather—all sorts of weather. I think there is a lot to be said for being born, as I was, in India. To me, rain was of course the great event, the monsoon, and I can even now, though I left India when I was eight, recapture the thrill of the smell of parched land rain-soaked—something of an effort these last two months …

Saturday morning. I felt so tired that I dropped off to sleep thinking I would wake half an hour later and write some more. Instead, though it was only 10.30 when I went to sleep, I found when I awoke it was ten this morning. This always happens when holiday breaks come. I don’t remember that I must be tired, because I don’t usually feel tired, discover I can do no work, and then have a deep sleep and feel better. I am now trying to write this, alone in the house with Parthenope, to a continuous stream of interruptions from P. who wants to know everything from, What shall I do now? to, How do you spell oranges? I think one should learn to develop a split mind for doing two things at once and talking about another one, all at the same time.

I have just seen a notice in the paper about ‘The Consul’¹ from Alan Dent in which he is most urgent that everyone should see it. It has only a week to go and I wondered if it was so good that you would care to see it again and would have the time to come with me if I could get seats. I could ring up for seats on Tuesday, I expect, because I doubt whether Alan Dent’s notice will have the effect of filling it up.

It looks a pretty gusty sort of day for the boat race. I shall watch it on television (or rather I shall have my eyes firmly fixed on the launches in the vague but unlikely hope that I shall see you) but I don’t think there is any doubt that Cambridge will walk away with it. If it blows clear, and there seems some sign of it, you may have a very enjoyable time; there is something very fascinating to me about the preliminary excitements. Even when I was taking part I rather used to enjoy ‘having the needle’.

Parthenope has stopped asking questions and is now telling herself fairy stories, “so you can’t hear”, and the silence is almost as devastating as the interruptions …

March 24

Francesca dear,

… We duly saw Oxford sink on the television and I hoped you weren’t there. Even a launch would have been an uncomfortable experience on such a day, not to mention the disappointment of ‘no race’. It is astonishing how clear the television pictures are, even expressions are visible.

It is a marvellous moonlit night with the wind sighing gently in the pine trees. There is a line of Flecker’s which goes:

For pines are gossip pines the wide world through.¹ It has always stuck in my mind since I first came across it when I was at Oxford. Arthur Bryant² and I used to learn quite a lot of verse when we were up. But I think I learnt most during the first world war. My biggest feat was in 1918 I think when our battalion had no tanks left and I and a dozen of my men had to fill a gap in the line with our machine guns. Our last night before relief I was with a colonel of the Royal Scots and it became clear as we were talking that a German night attack was starting. As everything that could be done had been done he said, Let’s talk about something decent. Have you read the de Coverly essays? I told him I had, so we talked about Sir Roger de Coverly and Will Wimple and the rest while the Boche in his little way shelled our waterlogged line of shell-holes and earthworks to bits. The colonel got killed a little later, and I, still having nothing to do, learned off ‘L’Allegro’ and I1 Pensoroso’ from a Golden Treasury I had with me. As it turned out we were only on the flank of the attack and were relieved a little before dawn. I don’t think I remember much of either now though funnily enough I can still repeat a good deal of Virgil that I learnt at, though not ‘in’, school. I hated Latin lessons but used to like the sound of Virgil so I used to learn bits. We never ‘did’ the Georgies which I think the best of the lot.

Easter Sunday. I want to add more to this before I go to catch the Sunday post which goes at tea-time. It is still a lovely afternoon and has all the promise of Spring about it. Many birds are singing and for the first time I have seen in this garden what I think was probably the lesser spotted woodpecker; the green woodpecker that makes the lovely laughing call is quite common and often lands on the lawn, despite our cat.

I shall try this afternoon to finish off corrections of a first draft I have of a contribution³ to a book edited by Roger Money-Kyrle.⁴ The sky has become rather grey so I daresay there will be more rain tonight. Poor bank holiday people!—they have had a wretched Easter so far …

Dear Francesca, goodbye: I did not know four days could ever pass so slowly.

March 26

Francesca dear,

There does not seem the least chance that I shall be able to write a letter any more than I can do anything else but I want to send something by post before it goes. I cannot correct my draft or do anything sensible …

I took Parthenope for a walk this morning in a slight drizzle of rain. Despite the fact that this is nothing but a country slum, the worst kind of slum of all I think, it was very pleasant as it was warm and the birds were singing. But the hedgerows are surprisingly backward. I usually reckon on a green blush in the hedges by Lady Day¹

but although it has not been cold there is nothing. It looks almost as if they did not like the rain.

I stop every now and then to think about tomorrow and indeed there is nothing else whatever in my head and I can’t just go on writing to you saying, I wonder if you will have a blue bow in your hair, or the yellow one, or the mauve one (if ‘bow’ is the right term) and whether you will have one at all and—this you will think strange—what you really look like. I almost have to try to remember by the photographs you showed me! And I am frightened I shall just be struck dumb like a blithering idiot; even now it makes me catch my breath when I see you in my mind’s eye.

I have taken so long over this worthless epistle that I must now seal it up and take it to the post. Be patient with me dear Francesca.

March 28

Francesca my darling,

This is only a note to say I love you. What a pity it would be so dull if I only filled the page up with those three words because they are the only ones that seem to go through my head. How wonderful to be John Donne and able to write you ‘The Extasy’. How enviable to pour out ‘La ci darem’ la mano’ instead of remaining chained in inarticulateness.

Well, there it is; so I shall have to say instead that I had a long wait at Baker Street, did not bother waiting, perhaps fruitlessly, for a taxi at Uxbridge, and so walked home without being smothered in rain or swallowed up in a snow drift. Parthenope was crying out just as I came in, presumably with a nightmare. How people can think of childhood as ‘happy’ I do not know. A horrible bogey-ridden, demon-haunted time it was to me and then one has not the fortitude, or callosities perhaps, with which to deal with it.

I am finding it very difficult even to take any notice of the daily life around me but look forward yearningly to our next meeting. I am going on writing this in the morning as my eyes were too heavy with sleep last night. It takes me an enormous time to write these letters because I stop at every other word to think about you, or I should say to dream about you.

On second thoughts I don’t think I want to be Donne or Mozart (perhaps in the event it is just as well). I don’t think even they can have found it very satisfactory: really all I want is to be able to be with you. I feel quite worried that I can think of nothing else because I do not want to become a terrible bore. I am very glad you don’t want to be Vicereine: not only because it would mean having to reconquer India. Even in my insignificant life there are so many demands on my time that I feel I have no private life and you must have so many friends who will certainly not let you go, as well as your work, that I shall have to learn how to remain cool, calm and collected in face of great frustration.

Francesca my darling love I worship and adore you. These are the words that you must understand are disguised in the volume of poems I gave you last night.¹ People can think it is just a date. I hope my life, our life, my life that now belongs to you, will be of such a kind that the whole world around us, but more particularly you yourself, will know that they must be true. Francesca darling, does this sound very solemn—too solemn? I feel it all. I don’t feel a bit like what I expected to feel and yet I thought I knew …

March 29

Francesca, my darling love,

To-night I had the good luck to get a lift in a taxi that was just moving off with a fare to Iver Heath so I had no wait at all and no walk through a dismal drizzle of rain. What a wonderful evening it has been. ‘The Consul’ was an immensely moving experience and what added to the depth of my happiness was the knowledge that but for you I would not have had it. Your presence pours a soft radiance of joy over my life …

I was just settling down to go on with this after lunch when Ken Rice phoned through. I find it hard to say why I felt so tongue-tied when he spoke to me but I just suddenly felt, when I knew you had told him, that what he was saying was about something so terribly important in my life that I could hardly keep a tremble out of my voice any more than I could keep it out of my hands as I held a wobbling receiver to my ear. Similarly I feel very nervous about ringing anyone up myself although I have now told Mary Hall, the wife of a very old friend of mine who is the medical officer for Bucks; I was best man at his wedding before the last war.

Everything seems to have gone out of my mind but the thought of seeing you again tomorrow. In my heart I hear the proud love of Handel’s music to—

Where’er you walk cool gales shall fan the glade;

Trees, where you sit, shall crowd into a shade;

Where’er you tread the blushing flowers shall rise,

And all things flourish where’er you turn your eyes.

To me it means one thing and one thing only, for now and for ever, my darling Francesca.

It has been a lovely day, cold but sunny and clear with maybe a promise of something good for tomorrow.

I have just discovered that it is nearly time for the last post so I had better seal this up and post it. My letters to you have no ending—no sooner have I posted one that I start writing my next one. But for the present I shall say goodbye. My darling sweetheart Francesca I love you; I love you.

April 1

Francesca darling,

It is very doubtful if I shall manage to write anything at all as I have by my side Parthenope painting, sworn to vows of silence, absolute and eternal, till released by me. But the Trappist vows are, I find, not absolute but relative when it comes to practice, so do not be surprised if this letter is disjointed and has a harrassed and worried tone. I can’t stop writing even for a moment as it is the signal for an outburst of requests, questions and so on. The silences are of much the same duration as the ‘bright intervals’ we hear about these days.

I woke up at what I thought was five minutes to nine but only to discover, on closer inspection, that it was a quarter to eleven, having slept like a log from the moment I dropped my head on the pillow. Pretty late it is true. I tried to ring up Sutherland before lunch but found he was out—at least the phone remained unanswered. But I did get Trist, complaining bitterly of overwork, who was very pleased at the news.

Bless you my dearest sweetheart for all you are. How much you mean to me I cannot say: I want to feel that I shall be able to go on trying to find ways of saying it through the years.

I wonder if I shall be able to get on the track of a ring at all tomorrow. I want to find a ring which does not show all its secrets to the stranger. It would be wonderful if we could find one with a deep richness that made you feel it had a fire glowing within it to warm your heart and make you feel: The man that gave me this loves me for myself alone and forever.

Parthenope’s silence has been a tour de force but if you are at the receiving end of it it is not conducive to c...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• FOREWORD
• FOREWORD TO THE LONG WEEK-END
• ALL MY SINS REMEMBERED: Another Part of a Life
• THE OTHER SIDE OF GENIUS I: Letters To Francesca
• THE OTHER SIDE OF GENIUS II: Letters To Parthenope, Julian and Nicola
• ENVOI