7 March 1928«FN1.××Jones had written "Feb. 7," the "Feb" being doubly underlined.  "March" and  "1928" were pencilled in later.»

«FL»Dear Professor,

«IP4,0»Your very kind telegram moved me greatly.«FN1.××Freud likely responded to a telegram or short note from Jones.  Both are missing.

»  Although I know that, to my deep regret, I have not found much favour in your eyes of late years, it showed that you retained some affection for me.

When you lost Sophie you wrote to me that you wished you could die too.  At the time I only partly understood this, but now I do so fully.  I am finding it hard, and as yet impossible, to discover enough motive to go on living and to endure the present and future suffering that this blow has brought.  My dear wife feels this even more so.  Our boy is happy and sunny and certainly does not need us.  It is strange how little consolation he is in spite of our love for him.  The politics and personalities of | / work have brought more pain than pleasure in the last years, and what else is there?

I thought I had tasted ten years ago all that the suffering of grief could bring,«FN1.××Death of Jones's previous wife Morfydd Owen, see letter 221.

» but life always knows some trump card with which to destroy such illusions.  To lose one's first‑born, one's only daughter, when one is nearly fifty and cannot begin again, is in itself a fearful blow, but two other features have here combined to make it a crushing one.

The child had the rarest qualities that wound deeply round our hearts.  With a wonderful sweetness and vitality she had the poignancy that, as you once told me 16 years ago, is only developed in its highest and most touching degree as a reaction to a neurotic character.  A magnificent fidelity and tenderness, with a rare courage and fortitude.  A deep suspicion of the cruelty of life, but a strong love of life.  Physically she was very healthy and strong and last Christmas at Andermatt astonished the Swiss by a feat of endurance on skis in the High Alps in a snowstorm.  But she was what the Scotch call "fey"«FN1.××Fated to die, doomed to death.

» ‑‑ not for this world, and we always felt this.  Two years ago she startled us by saying she would die when she was seven, as she did.

The illness lasted 18 days.  After five days of influenza with excessively high fever, she developed double broncho‑pneumonia and this showed no signs of resolving till the 13th day, the day she died.  For nine days she breathed at 7O to the minute, which is rarely possible for more than two days, and this went with an incessant hacking diaphragmatic cough that wore her out.  For ten days she had no sleep, an active and most distressing insomnia that no drugs could influence.  We had seven doctors and on three occasions they gave her only a few hours to live, but her vitality survived crisis after crisis.  Transfusion of blood was tried twice, and venesection when her heart began to fail.  At the end she was unconscious for two hours and the respiratory centre gave out.  I cannot picture to you the agonies of alternating fear, despair and painful hope we experienced, but it left us little able to bear the final blow.

My writing at such length to you tells you how I feel towards you.  A word from you might help us.

I know your wife will be grieved.  She loves children so, and always was interested to hear of ours.

Your broken  Ernest Jones