From Letters to Gwen John, which will be published next month by New York Review Books. The letter is dated June 16, 2019, eighty years after John, a Welsh painter, died. Paul and Lucian Freud had a child together in 1984.

Dearest Gwen,

How can I talk to you about the birth of my son and those early years of motherhood? I would like to try. I hope you won’t assume that look of distant forbearance I know so well. This familiar expression suggests to me that, even though you hear the words being spoken to you, they can’t…