30 November

30 November 1920

Villa Isola Bella, Menton, France

Dear Richard
Just two lines to thank you for your letters. I wish it wasn't such a JOB to write to me. Bother it. Why don't you just send me anything. But I want you to know that Im holding thumbs about your new idear. All success to it, my dear old boy. I await the portraits. I bet you'll do them. What an awful pull you have over us aged flowers at being such a little short of spring yourself. You're no older than a jonquil for all your big overcoats & Im a kind of late - late - lets see - Ill say marigold because I love them. Thats unblushing; I didn't mean it to be.
Bretts advice to her grandson amused me. If she does give you eggs to suck they might be fresh eggs. But she means well. Shes pathetic, really. Ill never see her as a painter - only as a reflector.
Well - Ive got a chill which Ill sell for a handkerchief. My temperature is sitting on a top branch & it wont come down. Its work: Ive done a bit too much. Oh, Richard - dear Richard cant you cut poor little K. a new pair of lungs out of strong untearable impermeable paper and send them over. If you knew what it was to be getting always knocked over. And Im so full of stories that if I was strong they'd come flying out like doves from a tower.
Did you ‘note' my praise of your FIRM just because my little brother-in-law was in it? I expected you to commend me for that.
I must climb up the stairs & under the eiderdown.
Goodnight. This isn't a letter. Its just a note under the door - or a pebble flung at your window. Yes, come to the S. of France one day and we'll tame lizards & paint & write and be happy.
Love for ever from
Katherine [Letter to Richard Murry in Collected Letters, 1920]