The reason why I have not replied before to your letter and book has been that I have been strictly in bed for days, nearly weeks, with my left water-wing (alias my lung) entirely out of action for the time and strapped up in plaster which gives off waves of smell like new varnish on an inside cabin wall. Dry Pleurisy, ma chère, an old complaint of mine! It has been most hellishly annoying, as you know my views on the subject of ill health. Picture me, lying very close to the wall, with my darling Japanese doll for an innocent bed companion, dressed in a pair of pyjamas which look as though they ought to take off and on with a spoon, they are so like a glace napolitaine, with one immense faux nichon, i.e., the one that the strapping goes over and that is therefore mounted in cotton wool, and upon which the eyes of my visitors are immediately rivetted.

However, the worst is over and I am up to-day, feeling as light and airy as what dear Bates used to call a gash balloon, and still quite unable to grasp the fact that life really has given me such a cuff and a kiss as this old attack. For the doctor says I must never stay in England for another winter but must leave in September and not come back until April, and at present as soon as I am well enough he has given me a medical certificate for the South of France, and I hope to be able to leave in January.

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This must sound like an absolute plant to you. It did to me. When I heard the medicine man say: “You ought to go to some place like Teneriffe or Madeira, but as you can't go there, Spain or the South of France will do,” I would not have swopped my lung with any man alive. If I stay in England he says I may become consumptive. Alors, je m'en vais! But I can't really believe that this will happen and I won't, until I see a pink house with two cedars in front of it. It is too good luck. But talk about the knock-out blow—I've had it! Why can't you come too? I mean to find a little house somewhere down there with a good garden and really make it a pied à terre so that my rare darling friends can camp in it too and always feel that it is there if they want to come. I shall beat along the coast slowly this spring if if if I ever do get there…

London has been just lately like a big brimming bowl of the very best pea soup. One looks up at the studio window at a kind of green, thick mixture with the tree outside swimming in it like a bunch of dry herbs. There has not been a breath of wind, but if you put your head out of bed a cold whistling draught from nowhere blows it back again. Through it the rag and bone man has cried up and down the road with quite peculiar relish, and just when the fog was at its brightest and best some carol singers started:

“Christians! Awake! Salute the Happy Morn…”

Quel pays! when you are living “as you might say three hundred and sixty-four days under an umberellar like any dratted mushroom. “Since the raid the gas supply is almost cut off, and the gasman informed me yesterday that if these raids go on there will be no knowing whether London will have any gas at all. So nice, plus the coal shortage.

Looe sounds a real find. I am thankful you are there and out of this.

A thousand thanks for Nounette. My God, after a visit from well-meaning relatives and friends who assailed me with:

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“Don't you think Lloyd George is too splendid?”

“I do think the King has behaved splendidly during the war. Don't you? It must be too splendid to be a man at a time like this, don't you think?”—

I have simply lain in bed gasping and fanned myself with ce livre charmant. It breathes of France. I shall be here until about the second week in January. I'd simply love a poulet and it's very sweet of you to think of sending me one. I wanted to send you some candies but they are not to be had so I shall send dates instead. Quelquechose de bien sucrè.

Forgive a dull dog of a letter. My mind feels so bald and my faithful L. M. who has all the intentions of an angel has almost made me an imbecile with this sort of thing:

She: Which would you rather have, hot milk or Oxo?

Me: Oxo, please.

She: Oh, don't you think you'd rather have hot milk?

Me: No, thanks, Oxo please.

She: But don't you think hot milk is more nourishing?

Me: Oxo, please.

She: I wish you would have hot milk, just to please me.

Me: Oxo, please.

She: Very well, dear. But what about having Oxo in the hot milk? isn't that a good idea?

Me: Plain Oxo, please.

She (from the kitchen).: Oh Katya, dear, I find there isn't any Oxo left. Will you have milk?

Me: !!!!!!!!!