China and the West

Bell, Julian. Letters from China.
1935
Letter from Julian Bell to Marie Mauron ;1935.
Really, I am falling a bit in love with China – also, platonically, yes, I assure you (for particular reasons, social and so on) with a Chinese woman [Ling Shuhua]. She is charming – the wife of the dean [Chen Yuan] of the Faculty of Letters, a highly intelligent and amiable man, one of Goldie's [G. Lowes Dickinson] students. She's the dauthter of a mandarin, a painter and short story writer, one of the most famous in China. She's sensitive and delicate, intelligent, cultivated, a little malicious, loving those gossipy stories, etc., that are true about everyone, very gay – in short, one of the nicest and most remarkable women I know.

Letter from Julian Bell to Virginia Woolf ; Fall 1935.
It's lovely country and the Chinese are charming ; lecturing on the moderns, 1890-1914 ; 1914-36. I have to read the writers ; what is one to do : we all write too much ; I shall make the Lighthouse I think, a set book.

Letter from Julian Bell to Vanessa Bell ; 23 Oct., 1935.
Hsu Hwa [Ling Shuhua] is an intelligent and sensitive angel. Can you imagine someone quite unaffected, very sensitive, extremely good and kind, with a sense of humour and firm hands with life ; she's darling. She comes to my Shakespeare and Modern lectures, which has the good effect of making me lecture my best : when I'm with the students I sometimes don'trouble, or treat them as schoolboys.

Letter from Julian Bell to Vanessa Bell ; 22 Nov. 1935.
Oh Nessa dear, you will have to meet her [Ling Shuhua] one of these days. She's the most charming creature I've met, and the only woman I know whou would be a possible daughter-in-law to you (she isn't, being married with a charming child and ten years too old) that she is really in our world and one of the most gifted, the nicest, most sensitive and intelligent people in it. I don't know what will happen. I think when I'm cured I shall probably get her involved : at present I'm not physically disturbed – less by her than others – but I know myself well enough to know that the parade follows the fla, etc.

Letter from Julian Bell to Vanessa Bell ; 18 Dec. 1935.
She's [Ling Shuhua] a desperately serious person, with great reserves of unhappiness : she says she's lost faith in everything, and is now working to find love, something to believe in. She's subtle, sensitive, very complicated – also torn between an introspective – analytic part and a very fragile easily-damaged sensibility. And sensible and intelligent. And also very romantic at heart. And, I should imagine, nervously and ecstatically passionate. She wouldn't let me make love to her to any extent at all last night. And she looks lovely… And inexperienced in love.

Letter from Julian Bell to Eddy Playfair ; 27 Dec. 1935.
She's [Ling Shuhua] very shy, verbally and physically. It's my oddest affair to date. She's as intense and passionate as your old enemy Helen [Soutar] is also a selftorturer and pessimist asking reassurance. And both jealous and not wanting to lose face. On the other hand, intelligent, charming ,sensitive, passionate and a malicious storyteller. And a perfect adviser on social situations : she's saved me gaffes innumerable.

Letter from Julian Bell to Vanessa Bell ; 1 Febr. 1936.
Our day in the Western Hills spent lookg at temples. Some of them are very lovely, beautifully proportioned courts of white marble : lots of bas-relief that seems to me decent decoration, and some good statues. There's a colossal sleeping Bhudda in a sort of copper-gold who I fancy distinguished statesmen sen him presents of colossal slippers. Then, as you'll see from the photos, we climbed a small mountain. I really lost my heart to the Western Hills… I really could live very happily in Peking. But I think I prefer Charleston.

Letter from Julian Bell to Eddy Playfair ; Febr. 1936.
In Sichuan there's no real culture – even faintly foreign society. And the Chinese are, I fell very different, if one wants intimacy of intellectual conversation. At least these rather stiff and provincial academics are. Peiping is utterly different ; these are genuine flexible Chinese, come intelligent foreigners mix with them.

Letter from Julian Bell to Virginia Woolf ; Fall 1936.
China's leading woman writer, my Dean's wife with whom I'm platonically in love is a passionate admirer of your work.