12 April
12 April
12 April 1920
Went to the fish museum at Monaco. Must remember the bubbles as the man plunged the rod into the tanks. The young girl. How naice! Young girls make me feel 40. well one certainly doesn't want to look 21. the woman with her three little children at Monte . . . [KM Notebooks]
The sun is pure gold and a great swag of crimson roses outside my window fills the room with a sweet smell. Oh, how I have come to love this S. of France and to dislike the French. The french here don't count; they are just cultivateurs au bord de la mer but its the voice of la France officielle which I loathe so. You should have read L'Eclaireur on this last crise; it was a very pretty little eye-opener. But Bogey I do so long for you to know this country in the spring. Its like the Middle Ages, somehow. I feel its Elizabethan spring - earlier - far - oh, I don't know when. But driving up those valleys & seeing the great shower of flowers & seeing the dark silver olives & the people working in the bean fields - one feels as though one were part of the tradition of spring - Outside my window there live two lizards. Sometimes they come in & look at me & their throats pant in a funny way. I wish I could bring them home.
Oh my dearest I love the sun. I made a fuss about it at San Remo but that was because I was ill - but I love it. To WORK and to play in our garden - in woods & fields and on mountains and pebbly shores -with You. And to sometimes draw on thin suede gloves & go into cities & look at pictures and hear music and sit at a cafe with a long drink watching the passing show (you with a large parcel of books on the chair by you.) Thats the life for me - To live like artists, always free and warmhearted - and always learning. [To J. M. Murry in Collected Letters]