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If I have not written before it is not my fault, really not my fault—it is this confounded weather which puts me so out of tune I hate to send such a jangle—Here I sit, staring at the writing-table like some sea-sick traveller who dares not lift his eyes to the waves outside but he will be quite undone. If I do—there is the grey cloud chasing the black cloud and the trees in their dark, ugly green tossing their branches like old crones at a weak-tea party telling how that Autumn has come back—unexpected and has turned Summer into the street and Summer has gone off dear knows where without even her flowery shawl poor lamb, and Autumn has wired to Winter to curtail his journey and start for home—home. This desperate news makes one's flesh creep again. I heard a coalman pass this morning and was half inclined to put a black cross on our door.

Do not think I am not grateful for the exquisite, sweet-scented basket. All my flowers this year have come from you. I never shall forget them. It's so strange I feel I have spent almost a whole summer at Garsington: each of these flowers is a remembrance. I love your garden. I often walk in it invisible. How long is it since we have really walked there together? Why does it seem so long? My heart aches at the thought.

These preparations for Festivity are too odious. In addition to my money complex I have a food complex. When I read of the preparations that are being made in all the workhouses throughout the land—when I think of all those toothless old jaws guzzling for the day—and then of all that beautiful youth feeding the fields of France—Life is almost too ignoble to be borne. Truly one must hate humankind in the mass, hate them as passionately as one loves the few, the very few. Ticklers, squirts, portraits eight times as large as life of Lloyd George and Beatty blazing against the sky—and drunkenness and brawling and destruction. I keep seeing all these horrors, bathing in page 220 them again and again (God knows I don't want to) and then my mind fills with the wretched little picture I have of my brother's grave. What is the meaning of it all?

One ought to harden one's heart until it is all over. But Oh—Life might be so wonderful—There's the unforgetable rub! And we've only one life and I cannot believe in immortality. I wish I could. To arrive at the gates of Heaven, to hear some grim old angel cry, “Consumptives to the right—up the airy mountain, past the flower field and the boronia trees—sufferers from gravel, stone and fatty degeneration to the left to the Eternal Restaurant smelling of Beef Eternal.” How one would skip through! But I see nothing but black men, black boxes, black holes, and poor darling M. splitting a very expensive black kid glove his Mama had made him buy…. One must get out of this country.

Did you read about Mrs. Atherton? It was a strange peep through the windows. I wanted very much to write to the Earl of March and thank him for his evidence—How queer it all was! There were touches positively Shakespearian. When she said to her maid: “This is the last time you will brush my hair” and “please hold my hand a little,” it was like Desdemona and Emilia at 47 Curzon Street.