Barbara Pym -- 27 maart 1940

• Barbara Pym (1913-1980) was een Engelse schrijfster. Dagboekfragmenten van haar zijn opgenomen in A very private eye. An autobiography in diaries and letters.

March
But I remember, I remember.... I was never more happy in my life than with him [Jay] in the spring of 1938. I am sure that I truly loved him and do still. I put this in writing so that in the years to come I may look back on it and reflect about it (as poor Friedbert would say) and smile and say, 'No, no, it was only a passing infatuation,' or 'Yes, yes, you did love him...'
Oh how absurd and delicious it is to be in love with somebody younger than yourself! Everybody should try it - no life can be complete without it. 'When we have before us such objects as excite love and complacency...' Love and complacency - and children should be flattered! So I will leave this notebook to Jay in my will.

27 March [on holiday in Wales]. Pwllheli looked lovely - the sea calm and sparkling, the cardboard hills clear in the distance.
Today was my darling Jay's twenty-first birthday and I was able to drink his health in Burgundy (not Empire). I wish I knew where he was. As it was there was a beautifully religious effect in my room at night - a single candle before his photograph, lighting up his lovely, sparkling Russian eyes. Like an ikon - he would have appreciated it. One day I must remember to tell him. But I will not tell him that the reason why I had the candle there was because I had no reading lamp and wanted to read in bed. Children must still be flattered - even when they are twenty-one.