I would have written before but the Furies have had me until to-day. Something quite new for a change—high fever, deadly sickness and weakness. I haven't been able to lift my head from the pillow. I think it has been a break-down from too much work. I have felt exhausted with all those stories lately and yet—couldn't stop. Well, there has been a stop now and I am just putting forth my horns again and thinking of climbing up the hill… How I do abominate any kind of illness! … Oh God, what page 130 it is to live in such a body! Well, it doesn't bear thinking about…

As soon as I can get well enough to go downstairs I shall engage our one original cab and go for a drive behind the old carthorse with his jingle-bells. The driver—as a great honour—throws the footmat over the back when one goes for a party of pleasure. He seems to think that is very chic! But this is such a beautiful country—Oh! it is so marvellous. Never looks the same—the air like old, still wine—sound of bells and birds and grasshoppers playing their fiddles and the wind shaking the trees. It rains and the drops on the fir trees afterwards are so flashing—bright and glowing that one feels all is enchanted. It is cloudy—we live in fine white clouds for days and then suddenly at night all is crystal clear and the moon has gold wings. They have just taken the new honey from the hives, I wish I could send you a jar. All the summer is shut up in a little pot.

But summer is on the wane—the wane. Now M. brings back autumn crocuses, and his handkerchief is full of mushrooms. I love the satiny colour of mushrooms, and their smell and the soft stalks. The Autumn crocuses push above short, mossy grass. Big red pears—monsters—jostle in Ernestine's apron. Yes, ça commence, ma chère. And I feel as I always do that Autumn is loveliest of all. There is such a sharpness with the sweetness—there is the sound of cold water running fast in the streams in the forest. M. says the squirrels are tamer already. But Heavens, Brett—Life is so marvellous—it is so rich—such a store of marvels that one can't say which one prefers… I feel with you—most deeply and truly that it's not good to be ‘permanent.’ It's the old cry: ‘Better be impermanent movables!’ Now here, for instance—we are only 4 hours from Italy—one can run into Italy for tea. M. went down to see Elizabeth last week and she had so done. She had waked with a feeling for Italy that morning and behold she was flown. And that night she sat in the opera house in Milan… That page 131 is right—I am sure. That's why I hate England. I can't help it, Miss, Downs or no Downs. There is that channel which lies like a great cold sword between you and your dear love, Adventure. And by Adventure I mean—yes—The wonderful feeling that one can lean out of heaven knows what window to-night—one can wander under heaven knows what flowery trees. Strange songs sound at the windows. The wine bottle is a new shape—a perfectly new moon shines outside… No, don't settle. Don't have a convenient little gentlewoman's residence. Hot baths in one's own bathroom are fearfully nice—but they are too dear. I prefer to bathe in a flower-pot as I go my way…

Renoir—at the last—bores me. His feeling for flesh is a kind of super-intense feeling about a lovely little cut of lamb. I am always fascinated by lovely bosoms but not without the heads and hands as well, and I want in fact the feeling that all this beauty is in the deepest sense attached to life. Real life! In fact I must confess it is the spirit which fascinates me in flesh. That does for me as far as modern painters are concerned, I suppose. But I feel bored to my last groan by all these pattern-mongers. Oh, how weary it is! I would die of it if I thought. And the writers are just the same. But they are worse than the painters because they are so many of them dirty-minded as well.

What makes Lawrence a real writer is his passion. Without passion one writes in the air or on the sand of the seashore. But L. has got it all wrong, I believe. He is right, I imagine—or how shall I put it …? It's my belief that nothing will save the world but love. But his tortured, satanic demon love I think is all wrong. The whole subject is so mysterious, tho'; one could write about it forever. But let me try to say something…

It seems to me there is a great change come over the world since people like us believed in God, God is now gone for all of us. Yet we must believe and not only that we must carry our weakness and our sin and our devilish-ness page 132 to somebody. I don't mean in a bad, abasing way. But we must feel that we are known, that our hearts are known as God knew us. Therefore love to-day between ‘lovers’ has to be not only human, but divine to-day. They love each other for everything and through everything and their love is their religion. It can't become anything less—even affection—I mean it can't become less supreme, because it is an act of faith to believe! But oh, it is no good…

I can't write it all out. I should go into pages and pages.

My stories for the Sphere are all done—thank the Lord! I have had copies with Illustrations! Oh, Brett! such fearful horrors. All my dear people looking like—well—Harrod's 29/6 crêpe de chine blouses and young tailors' gents, and my old men—stuffy old woolly sheep. It's a sad trial. I am at present embedded in a terrific story, but it still frightens me.