4 May

4 May 1920

2 Portland Villas, Hampstead - London

Still the sun lingers. Still, one walks up and down up and down waiting, staring out of the windows - waiting for that moment - that marvellous moment - when you step out of the shadow into the embrace which is like a blessing. It is very cold; do not come back too soon.
Yesterday I drove down to the city to my Bank. It is almost terrifying to see such blank, strained faces moving in the fog. I drove to the office of the Athenaeum & thought there at least there would be men I knew who responded who - were alive and cared about life and the paper and work and - The untidiness of John's desk (laugh, Violet dear!) was my first crushing blow. There was over all the office a smell of stone and dust. Unthinkable disorder and ugliness. Old Massingham like a cat dipped in dough blinking in the doorway & asking whether the French were furious with [Lloyd] ‘George' - Huxley wavering like a candle who expected to go out with the next open door, poor silly old men with pins in their coat lapels, Tomlinson harking back to the mud in Flanders, Sullivan and E. M. Forster very vague, very frightened. I heard myself speaking of lemon trees & then I said that in one valley I knew there was a torrent. Nobody cared, nobody wanted to know. I ran downstairs back into the car with Murry (we were going to buy a coffee pot because it was the anniversary of our wedding.) He was sure the shop would be shut because I'd talked instead of coming away so he looked out of his window and I looked out of mine and I listened to that lovely swift rushing sound & remembered how blue the lavender was the day in that part of the garden.  [To Sydney and Violet Schiff in Collected Letters 1920]