27 November
27 November
27 November 1920
Villa Isola Bella, Menton, France
Its still freezing cold. Oh, I do feel the cold most cruelly. I cannot keep warm. Blankets over my knees, two pairs of everything that one has two of, a fire, soup - nothing saves me. I frissonne and fade & curl up. And as soon as the sun so much as shakes his fiery head I feel better. Bogey, when I leave here it will be to go further South.
My good Marie is ill with rheumatisme dans les reins & a fierce cold. Jinnie is laid low; Connie too. As to L.M. we have just had a fearful fight on the subject of MEN and I think she must be frozen. She always talks of "a man is a man", "thats a man all over", "clearing up after men". This is so extremely offensive to me - so repellent that I could bear it no longer. Why are people so coarse. Its unthinkable. [. . .]
I confess since Ive been away this time my need or my wish for peo¬ple has absolutely fled. I don't know what it is to be lonely and I love to be solitary.
Bogey, if my book is to be reviewed in the paper who is to do it? May I have a say? Of course you cant and I dont want V.W. to, because I don't like her work at all at all at all. It wasn't for nothing that she got so excited by a mark on the wall, my Jo! that was a revelation. Id pre¬fer to have it done by someone who'll - oh, I don't know - Santayana I prefer. Now Im not being serious. I mean of course darling thats only my wicked preference. But his idea of friendship & mine is alike - that is beaucoup - isn't it.
Your very cold but loving Wig [To J. M. Murry in Collected Letters 1920]