Dorothy Thompson to Josef Baird: 29 December 1926
“Between us, Josef, you have piled such mountains of insecurities and lies that I see no way of ever bridging them into that friendship which you pretend to want from me. That is why I have not written – why I have not sent the scores of letters which I have written – because I find, in the end, I have nothing to say. My life, my emotions, my self, have become somehow entangled in a web not of my spinning, whose beginnings and whose ends I do not know. There is myself as you see me when we are face to face alone, and myself as you picture me to Eileen, and myself as you paint me to [Viennese Expressionist Paint Oskar] Kokoschka, and myself [implicit?] and degraded in your letters to Dorothy Burlingham. And there is yourself in relation to all these and countless other people; and never yourself alone but always me with you, somehow. So that what you have done to me, Josef, is not at its worst that you have made me mentally and spiritually ill, but that you have disintegrated my whole personality. I no longer exist, and not existing have nothing to offer you – neither joy of life, nor trust, nor courage, nor straightforwardness. Nothing that you say to me means anything, and I think the reason for that is that nothing you have ever said or thought in any human relationship has had any firm relation to the reality of conduct. When you say that you love me, as you repeatedly say, even now, you only express the appreciation that I am loveable, or a temporary emotional state which is never born into any deed or sacrifice or loyalty. When you say that you want my affection you express a vague yearning to be admired, accepting no responsibilty that you will not exploit that affection to the point where not only you, but I, too, will be degraded by it. When you ask for friendship, you ask for loyalty, but only the loyal know to use loyalty, and to be loyal, is more than to wish to be” (114-115).
Thompson, Dorothy extracted from Hell Hath No Fury: Women’s Letters From the End of the Affair. Anna Holmes, ed. New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers, 2002.