24 August

24 August 1920

2 Portland Villas, Hampstead - London

[. . .] It will be perfect joy to be 'over there' just in time to put in all the Christmas flowers - Menton is real home to me: I love the little town and the idea of pottering in it - making my Isola Bella really as pretty as I can, buying little spotted curtains for its windows and cups with lemons painted on them for its breakfast is very delightful after cold London. I shant come back here next year. Its useless. Ive lost 5lbs of very valuable flesh - stolen - nipped away - so I shall stick to furrin parts until I am really mended. Do remind me of this when I write wicked letters wailing to you about Hampstead darling.
How are you? How is everything going? Are your plans advanced? Are you happy? I wish I could pop in & find out these and many other things. I am always thinking about you - as you know.
Jack is so full of fire and health that I feel I have married a prize fighter. He plays tennis every day for hours - and even started at 7 A.M. one morning! I never seem to see him except in a white woolly sweater, clean white flannel trousers & wet hair after a cold bath. Men whose names Ive never heard of - names like Mr Funnel and Mr Nutt ring up & ask if he will be "at the Courts this morning" as though he were in a perpetual state of being taken before a magistrate. Its very good for him - I feel just like his Mother - sitting up in bed and saying "run along dear & put on your jacket if you get over heated . . ." [Letter to Charlotte Beauchamp Perkins in Collected Letters, 23 August 1920]