17 October

17 October 1920

Villa Isola Bella Menton, France

Darling Bogey
Its 3.30, Sunday afternoon. Marie is out and L.M. has gone off to tea with some cronies & a french poodle. So I have the house to myself. Its a cloudy, windless day. There is such a great stretch of sky to be seen from my terrasse that one's always conscious of the clouds. One forgets what clouds are in London and here they are - how shall I put it - they are a changing background to the silence. Extraordinary how many planes one can see - one cloud & behind it another and then a lake and on the far side of the lake a mountain. I wonder if you would feed on the visible world as I do. I was looking at some leaves only yesterday - idly looking & suddenly I became conscious of them - of the amazing ‘freedom' with which they were ‘drawn' - of the life in each curve, but not as something outside oneself- but as part of one, as though like a magi-cian I could put forth my hand & shake a green branch into my fingers from . . .? And I felt as though one received - accepted - absorbed the beauty of the leaves even into ones physical being. Do you feel like that about things? Ah, but you would have loved the golden moth that flew in here last night. It had a head like a tiny owl, a body covered with down, wings divided into minute feathers and powdered with gold. I felt it belonged to a poem of yours.
[. . .]
Im working a great deal. Ill send another story this week. I ought to write a story a day. I would I believe if you were here & L.M. wasn't. But she is my curse, my cross that for some reason I just have to bear. Now that she has nothing on earth to do - she does - absolutely noth¬ing but make french knots in her bedroom & ask questions like: "Can you tell me a book that will explain what makes the sea that funny yellow colour so far out. What is the Authority." [Letter to J. M. Murry in Collected Letters 1920]