Letter, E. Vale to the stewardship

To the stewardship —

You have asked whether the house books should be gathered and kept centrally. I have no useful view on the shelving and a tiresome one on everything else, so here it is.

An institution goes wrong about its papers in two directions and it cannot see either of them from the inside. The first is that it becomes protective of itself, and calls this discretion, and after some years a member who asks a plain question is given a kind answer that is not an answer. The second is that it becomes possessive of other people's lives, and calls this history, and keeps a woman's worst fortnight on a shelf for sixty years because it was written down at the time.

I have watched both happen elsewhere. I do not think we are cleverer than the people they happened to.

You will want to know which is worse and I decline. The two errors are not opposites; they are the same habit, which is the habit of deciding on someone else's behalf in a room they are not in.

The only counsel I have is procedural and dull. Write down what you did and why, at the time, in language the person concerned could read without wincing. If you cannot write it in that language you have not yet decided; you have only agreed.

— E.V.