Whenever Emily’s letters stopped flowing, Eliot became agitated. Was she preoccupied with acting? To judge by the succession of plays in which she performed, it can’t have been her career that brought her low. It could have been worry over money. She was not paid for performances in non-commercial theatre, so if she were living on savings her freedom to pursue acting was probably coming to an end and she had to think of supporting herself once more. This, alongside Eliot’s insistence that their relationship must continue to be ‘abnormal’. Three times during 1931 she broke it to him that she was in ‘despair’–an unlikely word from a reserved woman.
Eliot did not discuss the content of her despair. He regarded despair as a sin on the part of a person who presumes to think she deserves better and traced despair to egotism. To Emily, this came as a ‘blast’.
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