I am beginning my Sunday letter. I can't resist the hour. It's 6.30, just on sunset—the sea a deep hyacinth blue, silver clouds floating by like sails and the air smells of the pine and the bay and of charcoal fires. Divine evening! Heavenly fair place! The great Rain has brought a thousand green spears up in every corner of the garden. Oh, you'll be met by such Flowers on Parade at Christmas time. There's a winey smell at the corner of the terrace where a huge fig tree drops its great purple fruits. At the other the magnolia flashes leaves; it has great buds brushed over with pink. Marie has just brought in my chaise longue and the green chair which is yours to escape l'humidité du soir… Do these details page 46 bore you in London? Oh, I could go on for ever. But I do think this place, villa, climate, maid, all are as perfect as can be. Marie's cooking infuriates me. Why don't I help you to her escaloppe aux tomates—with real purée de p. de terre—deux feuilles de salade and des œufs en neige. And her Black Coffee!!

Sharing her return from market tho' is my delight. I go into the kitchen and am given my glass of milk and then she suddenly rushes into the scullery, comes back with the laden basket and (privately exulting over her purchases). “Ah cet-te vie, cet-te vie. Comme tout ça est chère, Madame! Avant la guerre notre jolie France, c'était un jardin de Paradis et maintenant c'est que le Président même n'a pas la tête sur les épaules. Allez! allez! Douze sous pour les haricots! C'est vrai qu'ils sont frais—qu'ils sont jolis, qu'ils sont enfin—enfin—des haricots pour un petit Prince—maiz douze sous, douze sous! …” etc., etc. This at a great pace of course. Does it come over? Does it seem to you the way a cook ought to talk? There's a mouse in the cupboard. When she brought my bregchick this morning … “le p'tit Monsieur nous a visité pendant la nuit, Madame. Il a mangé presque toute une serviette. Mais pensez-vous— quelles dents. Allez-allez! c'est un maître!!” I don't know. I won't bore you with any more of her—but it seems to me that this is the way that people like her ought to talk.

I heard again from Methuen to-day. They now say they'd like 2 books for next spring. I think there must have been some trunk work, some back stair work in this on your part. But I'll see what I can do without promising in my fatal way what I can't perform. I wish I could begin real creative work. I haven't yet. It's the atmosphere, the … tone which is hard to get. And without it nothing is worth doing. I have such a horror of triviality … a great part of my Constable book is trivial. It's not good enough. You see it's too late to beat about the bush any longer. They are cutting down the cherry page 47 trees; the orchard is sold—that is really the atmosphere I want. Yes, the dancing and the dawn and the Englishman in the train who said “jump!”—all these, with the background.

Speaking of something else, which is nevertheless connected—it is an awful temptation, in face of all these novels to cry “woe—woe!” I cannot conceive how writers who have lived through our times can drop these last ten years and revert to why Edward didn't understand, Vi's reluctance to be seduced or why a dinner of twelve courses needs remodelling. If I did not review novels I'd never read them. The writers (practically all of them) seem to have no idea of what one means by continuity. It is a difficult thing to explain. Take the old Tartar waiter in Anna who serves Levin and Stepan—Now, Tolstoy only has to touch him and he gives out a note and this note is somehow important, persists, is a part of the whole book. But all these other men—they introduce their cooks, aunts, strange gentlemen, and so on, and once the pen is off them they are gone—dropped down a hole. Can one explain this by what you might call—a covering atmosphere—Isn't that a bit too vague? Come down O Youth from yonder Mountain height and give your Worm a staff of reason to assist her. What it boils down to is … “either the man can make his people live and keep'em alive or he can't.” But criticks better that…