BR TO GERALD BRENAN, 28 JAN. 1946
BRACERS 58218. ALS(X). Lynda Pranger
Proofread by K. Blackwell

28 Jan. ’46

My dear Gerald

Peter has had your letter and replied to it, but I am afraid you will not feel her reply satisfactory. Please don’t take her letters just now too seriously — she had flu, got up too soon, and is suffering from post-flu depression, which makes her suicidally miserable and causes her to see everything distorted — the more so as she has some obscure digestion trouble which has made her unable to eat anything but medicinal slops for a fortnight. What she needs is rest — she has been for years doing more than her body could stand. At the moment she is in a nursing home, and when she comes out the doctors insist that she must go right away for a time. I am sure they are right. When she is rested I hope she will be open to advice, but the advice she needs is not to work so hard and not to aim at too much self-denial, which makes her difficult, and in the end more demanding than if she had been frankly selfish.

I am sorry you and Gamel have been bothered by this imbroglio. In her desperate mood she needed something to complain of, and it was a fluke that this matter happened to come up. She is beginning to recover, and I think a time in Wales will soon restore her. Love to you both.

Yrs ever
B.R.