Letter, E. Vale to T. Orrell

Thomas —

You want a statement of purpose and I have been putting it off for three weeks, which you may take as the statement of purpose.

Here is what we are doing, as plainly as I can manage it. We are trying to live as though our attention were worth something, as though tomorrow belonged to the same person as today, and as though other people's difficulties were partly ours. That is all. There is nothing underneath it. If someone tells you there is something underneath it, they have added it themselves, and you should ask them politely what they are getting out of it.

I am aware this will disappoint the two or three who came hoping for a system. Let them be disappointed here rather than in five years.

A practice survives only when it can be carried by ordinary people on difficult days. Everything we build should be tested against a tired person in February. Anything that requires enthusiasm to operate is decoration.

As to your other question: no, I will not sit for the photograph. I would like the thing to be about the practice and not about a face, and I am not sentimental enough to pretend that is modesty. It is strategy. Faces attract followers. Followers are worse than nothing.

Come on the 20th if the road is clear. There is a great deal of wood to move and I have promised the Hargreaves boy we would help with the barn.

— E.V.