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23 August 1922
6 Pond Street, Hampstead, London
My dear Elizabeth
Its so strange to be writing to you from London! I feel half here, half in one of those green chairs in the Belle Vue garden, overlooking the valley. Yet events seem to have moved at lightning speed since I saw you and your lovely crocus, columbine, hyacinth, lilac hat - early Italian wild violet hat, too.
John's little grand tour died at Sierre while he was telling me the name of his hotel in Verona. "Why shouldn't I come to London with you? (Pause) Dash it all I will come. (Pause) Ill toss for it. Heads London tails Italy. (Pause) Its tails. That settles it. I go to London tomorrow." But his journey is only postponed. I have decided to stay here for the next three months. There is a man who understands the Manoukhin treatment and is willing to take me. So I shant have to go back to odious Paris and hotel dusters. I have ‘taken' Brett's first floor; and John has arranged to live in a small flat next door. Brett has swept away her other lodgers, who must regard me as the cuckoo in the sparrow's nest. But its fun to think of three months in London and oh, such a relief to be private, not to be a number. John's small flat is extremely romantic but so high that I shall never be able to go to tea. He will dine here in the evenings. It seems to me a much better arrangement than setting up house together. [To Elizabeth, Countess Russell, 23 August 1922.]