07 September
07 September
7 September 1920
Travelling to Menton, France
It grew hot - everywhere the light quivered green-gold. The white soft road unrolled with plane trees casting a trembling shade. There were fields of pumpkins & gourds - outside the house the tomatoes were spread in the sun. Blue flowers & red flowers & tufts of deep purple flared on the roadside edges. A young boy carrying a branch stumbled across a yellow field followed by a brown high-stepping little goat. We bought figs for breakfast, immense thin-skinned ones. They broke in one's fingers & they tasted of wine and honey. Why is the northern fig such a chaste fair-haired virgin - such a soprano. The melting contraltos sing through the ages.
The great difference. England so rich - with the green bowers of the hops & gay women & children with their arms lifted pausing to watch the train. A flock of yellow hens led by a red rooster streamed across the edge of the field. But France - an old man in a white blouse was cutting a field of small clover with an oldfashioned half-wooden scythe. The tops of the flowers were burnt. The stooks (are they stooks) were like small heaps of half burned tobacco. The pale [. . .] sun[?] swam on a grey lake like some lone sere-breasted bird. [KM Notebooks, undated]