20 Jan

20 January 1920

Casetta Deerholm, Ospedaletti - Italy

Twelfth Night. Washed my hair. L.M. out nearly all day. Here alone on a perfect day. I wandered in the garden & the flowers blew in the wind. There was a ship white & solid on the water. Overcoat disappeared. The fire in my room and the double light. All was exquisitely beautiful. ‘Goodbye.' It now believes we are going and it is safe. [KM Notebooks] 

Ottoline, I adore Life. What do all the fools matter and all the stupidity. They do matter but somehow for me they cannot touch the body of Life. Life is marvellous. I want to be deeply rooted in it - to live - to expand - to breathe in it - to rejoice - to share it. To give and to be asked for Love. I know you understand this for you are thrillingly alive - but few people do. Do you realise what it was like to find oneself here - in bed day after day - going grey with misery - utterly alone and ill? Dearest - I don't want pity. But its been beyond terrible. L.M. fat and rosy, runs to the village, runs to San Remo, comes back with her ‘the woman at the laiterie told me -' and then I hear her upstairs - singing to herself.
Well, its over. I go to Menton tomorrow and I shall stay there for some months. L''Hermitage, Menton is the address.
In strictest deepest confidence the really horrible thing about all this has been that it has left me quite alone. I thought, until now even, that ‘one' understood - that superficially perhaps I was alone but that really it wasn't so. And I find out I was wrong. For nearly six years I have felt loved (you know that feeling?). Now it is gone. It was all just a dream. But one must get over that and gather up Life for oneself and get in touch with Life again. One must not mourn or cry out if the sorrow is great - one can't afford to - Mysterious Life! . . . [To Ottoline Morrell in Collected Letters]