09 November

9 November 1920

Villa Isola Bella, Menton, France

My landscape is terribly exciting at present. I never knew it contained such features or such fauna (they are animals various, aren't they?) But I do want a gentleman prepared to pay his own exss to join me in my expedition. Oh, wont you come? No one else will do. But when you do its a bit sickening - all my wild beasts get a bit funny looking they don't look such serious monsters any more. Instead of lions & tigers its apt to turn into an affair of
"The turkey ran pas' with a flag in his mas'
An' cried out: Whats the mattah?"
NOT that I think for one minute, my precious that you don't treat me au GRAND serieux or would dare to question my intelligence. Of course not. All the same - there you are. Alone Im no end of a fillaseafer but once you join me in the middle of my seriousness - my deadly serious¬ness I see the piece of pink wool I have put on your hair (& that you don't know is there).
Queer isn't it! Now explain that for me. Do I intrigue you? I wonder. But don't misunderstand me & think I think you can afford to laugh at me because of your great mind & my little one. The laugh is a mutual affair, really.
"Oh, Wig these subtleties are too much for me."
I am sorry, sweetheart; I am just going. Farewell. Let thy garments be always white & thy head lack not ointment.'
Your own
Wig. It came over me sudden. In having your passport renewed wouldn't it be worth it to remember your O.B.E. These things are sometimes use¬ful in foreign parts. If we wished to smuggle, steal, flay alive. If we have no money & only our poor faces for our fortunes your O.B.E. would go miles further than my - nose, say. An O.B.E. may move a ‘blighter' to some kind of respeck.
Dont scorn
Wig. [Letter to J. M. Murry in Collected Letters,  8 November 1920]