11 November

11 November 1920

Villa Isola Bella, Menton, France

Darling Bogey
Kissing is a queer thing. I was standing under a tree just now - a tree that is shedding exquisite golden yellow leaves all over my garden path. And suddenly one leaf made the most ethereal advances to me and in another moment we were kissing each other. Through the silvery branches one can see the deep blue sky . . . lapis lazuli.
I think the time has come it really has come for us to do a little courting. Have we ever had time to stand under trees and tell our love? Or to sit down by the sea and make fragrant zones for each other? The tea roses are in flower. Do you know the peculiar exquisite scent of a tea rose? Do you know how the bud opens - so unlike other roses and how deep red the thorns are and almost purple the leaves?
I think it must be the orange flower which Marie has brought home from market. I have been arranging branches of it in jars and little slips of it in shallow glass bowls. And the house has a perfume as tho the Sultan were expecting the première visite of his youngest bride. Marie, standing over me chanted the while - almost sang a hymn to the cyclamen sauvage qu'on trouve dans les montagnes and the little violettes de mon pays which grow so thick that one trempe ses pieds dedans.
If I live here much longer I shall become a bush of daphne or you'll find no one to welcome you but a jasmine. Perhaps its the effect of receiving the Sun every morning - très intime - the lady clad only in a black paper fan. But you must come here, you must live here in the South and forget greyness. It is divine here - no less. Wig [Letter to J. M. Murry in Collected Letters,  10 November 1920]