The Nightingale

By D. H. Lawrence

 

Tuscany is full of nightingales, and in spring and summer they sing all the time, save in the middle of the night and the middle of the day. In the little leafy woods that hang on the steep of the hill toward the streamlet, as maidenhair hangs on a rock, you hear them piping up in the wanness of dawn, about four o'clock in the morning: Hello! Hello! Hello! It is the brightest sound, perhaps, of all sounds in the world: a nightingale piping up. Every time you hear it, you feel a wonder and, it must be confessed, a thrill, because the sound is so bright, so glittering, and it has such power behind it.

 'There goes the nightingale!' you say to yourself: and it is as if the stars were darting up from the little thicket and leaping away into the vast vagueness of the sky, to be hidden and gone. And every single time you hear the nightingale afresh, your second thought is: 'Now why do they say he is a sad bird?'

He is the noisiest, most inconsiderate, most obstreperous and jaunty bird in the whole kingdom of birds. How John Keats managed to begin his 'Ode to a Nightingale' with 'My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains my senses IL.' — well, I for one don't know. You can hear the nightingale silverily shouting: 'What? What? What, John? Heart aches and a drowsy numbness pains? — tra-la-la!-tri-li-lilly-lilyly!'

And why the Greeks said he - or she — was sobbing in a bush for a lost lover, again I don't know. Jug-jug-jug! say the medieval writers, to represent the rolling of the little balls of lightning in the nightingale's throat. A wild rich sound, richer than the eyes in a peacock's tail. 'And the bright brown nightingale, amorous, Is half assuaged for Itylus - ' They say, with that jug! jug! jug! that she is sobbing. It really is mysterious, what people hear. You'd think they had their ears on upside down. Anyone who ever heard the nightingale 'sobbing' must have quite a different hearing-faculty from the one I've got.

Anyhow, it's a male sound, a most intensely and undilutedly male sound. And pure assertion. There is not a hint nor shadow of echo and hollow recall. Nothing at all like a hollow low bell. Nothing in the world so unforlorn.

Perhaps that is what made Keats straightway feel forlorn.

Forlorn! the very word is like a bell To toll me back from thee to my sole self!

Perhaps that is the reason of it: why they all hear sobs in the bush, where any really normal listening mortal hears the silver ringing shouts of cherubim. Perhaps because of the discrepancy.

Because, as a matter of fact, the nightingale sings with a ringing, punching vividness and a pristine assertiveness that makes a mere man sit down and consider. It is the kind of brilliant calling and interweaving of glittering exclamation which must have been heard on the first day of creation, when the angels suddenly found themselves created in brightness, and found themselves able to shout aloud. Then there must have been a nightingaleish to-do! Hello! Hello! Behold! Behold! Behold! It is I! It is I! What a mar-mar-marvellous occurrence! What?

For the pure splendid splendidness of vocal assertion: Lo! It is I! you have to listen to the nightingale. Perhaps for the visual perfection of the same assertion, you have to look at a peacock shaking all his eyes. Among all creatures created in positive splendour, these two are perhaps the most perfect: the one in invisible, triumphing sound, the other in voiceless visibility. The nightingale is a quite undistinguished grey-brown bird, if you do see him: although he's got that tender hopping mystery about him, of a thing that is rich alive inside. Just as the peacock, when he does make himself heard, is awful, but still impressive: such a fearful shout from out of the menacing jungle. You can actually see him, in Ceylon, yell from a high bough, then stream away past the monkeys, into the impenetrable jungle that seethes and is dark.

And, perhaps, for this reason - the reason, that is, of pure angel-keen self-assertion - the nightingale makes a man feel sad, and the peacock so often makes him feel angry. Because they are so triumphantly positive in their created selves, eternally new from the hand of the rich bright God, and perfect. The nightingale simply ripples with his own perfection. And the peacock arches all his bronze and purple eyes with assuredness.

This, this rippling assertion of perfection, this emerald shimmer of a perfect self, makes men angry or melancholy, according as it assails the eye or the ear. The ear is much less cunning than the eye. You can say to somebody: I like you awfully: you look so beautiful this morning! and they'll believe it utterly, though your voice may really be vibrating with mortal hatred. The ear is so stupid, it will accept any amount of false money in words. But let one tiny gleam of the mortal hatred come into your eye, or across your face, and it will be detected instantly. The eye is so shrewd and rapid.

For this reason, we see the peacock at once, in his showy Hale self-assertion: and we say, rather sneeringly: Fine feathers make fine birds! But when we hear the nightingale, we don't know what we hear, we only know we feel sad-forlorn! And so we say it is the nightingale that is sad.

The nightingale, let us repeat, is the most unsad thing in the world: even more unsad than the peacock full of gleam. The nightingale has nothing to be sad about. He feels perfect with life. It isn't conceit. He just feels life perfect, and he trills it out, shouts, jugs, gurgles, calls, declares, asserts, and triumphs, but never reflects. It is pure music, in so far as you could never put words to it. But there are words for the feelings aroused in us by the song. No! even that is not true. There are no words to tell what one really feels, hearing the nightingale. It is something so much more pure than words. But it is some sort of feeling of triumph in one's own life perfection. Keats feels this all, through his ode.

'Tis not through envy of thy happy lot, But being too happy in thy happiness, - That thou, light-wingèd Dryad of the trees, In some melodious plot Of beechen green, and shadows numberless, Singest of summer in full-throated ease...

It is beautiful poetry, of a truthful poet. And Keats keeps it up, in the next stanza, wanting to drink the blushful Hippocrene and fade away with the nightingale into the forest dim.

Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget What thou among the leaves hast never known, The weariness, the fever, and the fret...

It is such lovely poetry! But the next line is a bit ridiculous, so I won't quote it. Yes, I will:

Here, where men sit and hear each other groan; Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last grey hairs... etc.

This is Keats, not the nightingale. - But Keats still tries to break away, and get over into the nightingale world.

 

Away! away! for I will fly to thee,

Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards,

But on the viewless wings of Poesy...

 

He doesn't succeed, however. The viewless wings of Poesy carry him only into the bushes, not into the nightingale world. He is still outside.

 

Darkling I listen; and for many a time

I have been half in love with easeful Death...

 

I am sure the sound of the nightingale never made any man in love with easeful death - except by contrast. The contrast between the bright flame of positive pure self-perfection, in the bird, and the uneasy flame of waning selflessness, for ever reaching out to be something not himself, in the poet!

 

To cease upon the midnight with no pain,

While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad

In such an ecstasy!

Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain -

To thy high requiem become a sod.

 

How astonished the nightingale would be if he could be made to realize what sort of answer the poet was answering to his song! He would fall off the bough with amazement.

Because a nightingale, when you answer him back, only shouts and sings louder. Suppose a few other nightingales pipe up in the neighbouring bushes - as they always do - then the blue-white sparks of sound go dazzling up to heaven. And suppose you, mere mortal, happen to be sitting on the shady bank having an altercation with the mistress of your heart, hammer and tongs, then the chief nightingale swells and goes it like Caruso in the third act, simply a brilliant, bursting frenzy of music, singing you down: till you simply can't hear yourself speak to quarrel, and you have to laugh.

There was, in fact, something very like a nightingale in Caruso, that bird-like bursting miraculous energy of song and self-utterance, and self-luxuriance.

 

Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird!

No hungry generations tread thee down...

 

Not yet in Tuscany, anyhow. They are twenty to the dozen. And the cuckoo seems remote and low-voiced, calling low, half-secretive, even as he flies past. - Perhaps really it is different in England.

 

The voice I heard this passing night was heard

In ancient days by emperor and clown:

Perhaps the self-same song that found a path

Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home,

She stood in tears amid the alien corn.

 

I wonder what sort of answer they all made! Diocletian, for instance! And Aesop! And Mademoiselle Ruth! I strongly suspect the last young lady of giving the nightingale occasion to sing, like the nice damsel in the Boccaccio story, who went to sleep with the nightingale in her hand: 'tua figliuola é stata si vaga dell'usignuolo, che ella I'ha preso e tienlosi in mano.'

And I wonder what the hen nightingale thinks of it all, as she mildly sits upon the eggs and hears milord giving himself forth? Probably she likes it, for she goes on breeding him true to type. Probably she likes it better than if, like the poet, he humbly warbled:

 

Now more than ever seems it rich to die,

To cease upon the midnight with no pain...

 

One sympathizes with Keats's Fanny, and understands why she wasn't having any. Much she'd have got out of such a midnight! Perhaps, when all's said and done, the female of the species prefers it when the male of the species is full of his own bright life, and warbles her into the spell of himself. In the end, she gets more out of it that way.

Because, of course, though the nightingale is utterly unconscious of the little dim hen while he sings, she knows well enough that the song is half her; just as the eggs are half his. And just as she doesn't want him coming and putting a heavy foot down on her little bunch of eggs, he doesn't want her to go nestling down on his song and smothering it, or muffling it. Every man to his trade, and every woman to hers.

 

Adieu! adieu! thy plaintive anthem fades...

 

It never was a plaintive anthem, it was Caruso at his best. But don't argue with a poet.

 

Villa Mirenda Scandicci Firenze 26 March 1926

My dear Else:

The Schweigermutter wrote from Baden that you aren't well, and had a little operation. That's bad luck! I do hope you're better.

It isn't a good year, anyhow. Here it has rained and rained, till the country is turning yellow with wetness. But these last two days are sunny and warm: but not hot, as it should be.

We took the top half of this old villa, out on one of the little hills of Tuscany, about seven miles from Florence. We are two kilometres from the tram, which takes us in to the Duomo in half an hour. The country around is pretty - all poderi and pinewoods, and no walls at all. I hope in the autumn, really, you'll come and stay a while: unless everything goes muddled again. For myself, I struggle to get back into a good humour, but don't succeed very well. - We've got the villa for a year, anyhow, so there should be time.

Myself, I am labouring at the moment to type Frieda's MS. of the play 'David. ' It's a slow business, I'm no typist. But it is just as well for me to go through the MS. myself and it is good for me to lean some German, I suppose.

Frieda's daughter Else typed the first twenty-six pages and then are a fair number of alterations. But I shall send you the typescript as soon as it is finished: within a month, pray God! - I am interested, really, to see the play go into German, so much simpler and more direct than in English. English is really very complicated in its meanings. Perhaps the simpler a language becomes in its grammar and syntax, the more subtle and complex it becomes in its suggestions Anyhow, this play seems to me much more direct and dramatic in German, much less poetic and suggestive than in English. I shall be interested to know what you think of it.

I said to myself I would write perhaps a book about the Etruscans: nothing pretentious, but a sort of book for people who will actually be going to Florence and Cortona and Perugia and Volterra and those places, to look at the Etruscan things. They have a great attraction for me: there are lovely things in the Etruscan Museum here, which no doubt you've seen. But I hope you'll come in the autumn and look at them again with me. Mommsen hated everything Etruscan, said the germ of all degeneracy was in the race. But the bronzes and terracottas are fascinating, so live with physical life, with a powerful physicality which surely is as great, or sacred, ultimately, as the ideal of the Greeks and Germans. Anyhow, the real strength of Italy seems to me in this physicality, which is not at all Roman. - I haven't yet seen any of the painted tombs at...!

 

Grand Hotel Chexbres-sur-Vevey Sunday Morning Had your p.c. this morning - glad you found Nusch there. I guess you 'Il schwàtzen schwàtzen all the day. Today is better here - am sitting on my little balcony to write this - Achsah has already sent Earl down with a cup of Ovaltine - and it is sunny in snatches. I worked over my Isis story a bit - am going to try it on Earl. Last night we sang songs, Twankydillo, etc., up in Achsah's attic. Everything very quiet and domestic.

Had a few letters forwarded from Florence this morning: enclose the Curtis Brown. Ask Else what she thinks about a complete break in November with Insel Verlag. Of course it is insolence on their part that they won't tell my agents what they are doing with my books. They should of course write Miss Watson about the proposed book of short stories. Ask Else about it - what they are really doing. And ask her if she kept that short biography of me which she did for the 'Frankfurter Zeitung' man. If she did, you might look it over and send it to Miss Watson, in English, for this Kra man. I simply can't write biographies about myself. Damn them all.

A sort of lamentable letter from Cath Carswell - no money, etc. - and still fussing about what Yvonne Franchetti said about that typing. Then a letter from the irrepressible Durham miner man - wanting 'Lady C. ' very much - nothing else - no word from Orioli though it's his handwriting on the envelopes. Nothing from Huxleys either, save their telegram. Madame will have a double room for them. Wish they'd bring their car, we could look at places a bit higher. I told you they arrive next Tuesday or Wednesday. There is nothing forwarded from that St-Nizier place.

I think of you in the Schwiegermutter's room with Nusch there. Has die Anna got any flowers? Buy her a nice pot from me. And buy something for Nusch for twenty marks. I want her to have something for a quid. Only not Schnecken or foie gras. I now smell Braten of some sort. Perhaps we shall go to Vevey this afternoon. We want to go to Gruyère when you come back - also to Le Pont, which is M. Stucke's other hotel about three thousand feet up, with three little lakes. Might go there. But he leases it in summer to another hotelier. What are Nusch's plans? Love to you all - the goddesses three.

D. H. L.

 

 

At Bailathadan Newtonmore Inverness 20 August 1926

Dear Else:

Frieda sent me on your letter from Irschenhausen. I am glad you I like being there, but am surprised it is so cold. Here the weather is j mild, mixed rainy and sunny. The heather is out on the moors: the day lasts till nine o'clock: yet there is that dim, twilight feeling of the North. We made an excursion to the west, to Fort William and Mallaig, and sailed up from Mallaig to the Isle of Skye. I liked it very much. It rains and rains, and the white wet clouds blot over the mountains. But we had one perfect day, blue and iridescent, with the bare northern hills sloping green and sad and velvety to the silky blue sea. There is still something of an Odyssey up there, in among the islands and the silent lochs: like the twilight morning of the world, j the herons fishing undisturbed by the water, and the sea running far in, for miles, between the wet, trickling hills, where the cottages are low and almost invisible, built into the earth. It is still out of the world, and like the very beginning of Europe: though, of course, in August there are many tourists and motorcars. But the country is almost uninhabited.

I am going south tomorrow, to stay with my sisters in Lincolnshire for a little while, by the sea. Then really I should like to come to Bavaria, if only for a fortnight. I have a feeling that I want to come again to Bavaria. I hope I shan't have to stay in England for that play. I would much rather come to Germany at the end of August. And Frieda, I know, has had enough, more than enough, of London. Perhaps after all we can come to Irschenhausen for the first part of September, and let that inhalation wait a while. - I am much better since I am here in Scotland: it suits me here: and probably the altitude of Irschenhausen would suit me too. Anyhow we could go back to Baden to do a bit of inhaling. There is no hurry to get to Italy. - If only I need not stay in London for that play.

I find it most refreshing to get outside the made world, if only for a day - like to Skye. It restores the old Adam in one. The made world is too deadening - and too dead.

So I am still hoping to see you all - Friedel will be there? - in __ Bayern, quite soon. Why should one be put off, from what one wants to do.

Auf Wiedersehen.

D. H. L.

 

Duneville Trusthorpe Rd. Sutton-on-Sea, Lincs. 7 September,1926

My dear Else:

I had your letter today. I'm very disappointed not to be able to come to Irschenhausen. Those fools are still delaying beginning the play. We go to London on Saturday - I'm not sure of the address - and I shall see what I can do. But I am annoyed and bored beforehand.

But I doubt if we could get to Bavaria before the end of the month. Too late! I shall have to wait till spring, and go straight to Irschenhausen from Italy, if I may.

I expect we shall be in Baden, at least a day or two - travel over Paris. So we shall see you. I do hope you are feeling better. What makes you so knocked up?

It's dull weather here - a grey sky, a grey sea. My thoughts are turning south. The swifts are already going, and the swallows are gathering to go. Nothing to stay for.

Auf Wiedersehen.

 

VILLA Mirenda Scandicci Florence 12 October, 1926

Dear Else:

I have just had the enclosed letter from my agent. My agreement with him is such, that the contracts for all the things I publish must be made through him, and all payments must be made to him. He deducts ten per cent for himself, and deposits the rest to my account.

Will you please tell me what contract you made with the Insel Verlagfor 'Der Fuchs': and what were the payments, apart from the translator's fee? I know it was not much. But of course I owe Curtis Brown ten per cent on it.

And in future will you see that everything goes through the agent's hands, or I shall be in trouble, as I am legally bound to him: he is quite good to me. It's my fault, I know, for not remembering sooner.

We have been back here just a week, and I am very glad to sit still in the peace of these quiet rooms. I am getting really tired of moving about, and cast round in my mind for a place which I shall keep as a permanency. Perhaps it will be in England.

It is warm here, almost hot still. The vendemmia finished last week, and we are all festooned with grapes. But the Schwiegermutter toys that you too were in Venice. Venice is lovely in autumn, if it's not too crowded. Do you feel content now, for the winter?

They are producing the 'David' play in December. I saw the producer and the people concerned, and I promised to go to England to hip them at the end of November. I am not very sure if I shall do so, though. But if we do, we must come through Baden. I daren't say anything, because I know the Schwiegermutter was cross with us for Putting off again this time. But we had moved so much, we were both feeling stupefied.

I wonder how the translation of the 'Serpent' is going. You will find it a long job: I hope not too tedious. Myself, I am not working anything particular; don't feel inclined.

I hope you are feeling well. Are the children all busy again, Friedel in Berlin? Here it seems so sleepy - the world is all vague.

Love,

Villa Mirenda Scandicci Firenze 18 October, 1926 Dear Else:

Kippenberg behaves as if he were the great Chan of Tartary: whereas he's only a tiresome old buffer. I have told him that once personally, I don't care for Franzius's pompous and heavy translation: I'll tell him again, and to hell with him. Pity we can't change over to the people who did 'Jack in Bushland. ' They are more up to date and go-ahead.

But anyhow Kip has no right over magazine productions: so if you could get 'The Woman Who Rode Away' into a Monatsheft, you couldn 't be interfered with, by him at least. I get awfully bored, between publishers and agents, and one state and another.

So now you'll be off to Vienna! Everybody seems to have been to Vienna, or to be going. Glad I needn't go, anyhow just now.

I'll tell Curtis Brown what you say about 'Fox. '

Sunny autumn here, still and nice: but an epidemic of typhoid in the neighbourhood: must look out.

I feel I'll never write another novel: that damned old Franzius turning 'The Plumed Serpent' into a ponderous boa constrictor! 0 Germania! It really is time you bobbed your philosophic hair!

Wiedersehen, D. H. L.

 

Villa Mirenda Scandicci Florence 10 January,1927

Dear Else:

That was a nice letter you wrote - and a very nice little purse you sent me for Christmas. I ought to have thanked you before - but something has happened to me about letters - in fact all writing. I seem to be losing my will-to-write altogether: in spite of the fact that I am working at an English novel - but so differently from the way I have written before!

I spend much more time painting - have already done three, nearly four, fairly large pictures. I wonder what you 'll say to them when you'll see them. Painting is more fun than writing, much more of a game, and costs the soul far, far less.

I enclose a cross letter from Curtis Brown's foreign clerk. I have answered that I don't believe you have made any legal agreement whatsoever with Insel Verlag. Have you? Do let me know. It is rather a bore, the high-handed way old Kippenberg behaves, as if he were the great Chan of publishers. I should like to get a bit of a slap at him.

It's very nice that Alfred is being feasted and rejoiced over. Congratulate him for me. It is nice to have a bit of grateful recognition, whatever one may say.

I am going to make another effort to get the two downstairs rooms with the big terrace, so you could have them as a little apartment when you come. They would be so nice.

They keep deferring the production of 'David' - no doubt they are frightened of it. I believe they hated “The Widowing of Mrs Holroyd. ' Now they say 'David' will probably be April, but I don't mind, because I'd much rather stay here till the sun warms up a bit in the north... One gets sick of winter... though it is a lovely day today.

Auf Wiedersehen then,

VILLA MIRENDA FLORENCE

WEDNESDAY EVENING

Dear Mother-in-Law:

Frieda and I arrived at the same moment at the station in Milan, the two trains at the same time, and the two porters brought us together in two minutes. Wasn't that clever?

We have just entered the Villa Mirenda, all good and lovely here! friends with flowers, and the peasants all there to welcome us, very nice and friendly. Now we have eaten and sit by the fire for an hour, then to bed.

Frieda is happy to be back, goes about and looks at everything. Nice is the tie. I must look at the colour in the daytime. I'm so glad you're well. I'm coming in the spring and we'll eat strawberries and cream, shan't we?

Such lovely primulas and violets on the table under the lamp. Good night then.

D. H. L.

Friends are going to Florence tomorrow and will put this letter in the post. I want you to know that we arrived safely.

(Translated from the German)

Villa Mirenda Scandicci Florence 14 April, 1927

My dear Mother-in-Law:

I am home again - I returned Monday evening from Volterra. I had a very beautiful week with Brewster. We went to Cerveteri, Tarquinia, and Vulci, Grosseto and Volterra, not far from the sea, north of Rome. The Etruscan tombs are very interesting and so nice; and lovable. They were a living, fresh, jolly people, lived their own lives without wanting to dominate the lives of others. I am fond of my Etruscans - they had life in themselves, so they had no need to govern others. I want to write some sketches of these Etruscan places, not scientifically, but only as they are now and the impression they make.

I found Frieda with a cold and a little depressed, but she is well again and herself once more. Barby came Tuesday with Mrs Seaman - she is nice, older than last year, not so beautiful, tall as a telegraph pole, quieter, not much life in her. That is London over one. She will stay here three weeks. She works well in her school and really i wants to be free, but it will take another year and a half at least. But it is better that she works. If she had much money and were quite free, (it would be worse. Oh, liberty, liberty, what have you done for poor woman! But they must go on to spread their bread of life with that poison, poison of liberty.

The weather, thank God, is always lovely. There are still tulips in the corn and apple and peach blossoms. The peasants are faithful and nice. The house is still. It is good to be here. Frieda has gone to ndicci - Barby and Mrs Seaman to Florence - so I am alone. I am wearing the socks you knitted me, they are beautiful and exactly the colour of my trousers, very elegant. And the ties are beautiful - I tried the speckled one at once. I am glad you are so well and your Stift is always made more beautiful. The world goes forward, surely.

Later on, we will make plans for the summer, when and how to come. I don't want to think of travel, it is enough. Greet Else when you see her. Frieda has come home from Alassio with the love for her sister all new and shiny again. Good! Greet the ladies, my friends. When I come, we will eat Blaufelchen. There is no fish as good in Italy.

Then farewell, D. H. L.

(Translated from the German)

 

Villa Mirenda Scandicci Florence 1 June, 1927

My dear Else:

Could you get me a copy of F. Weege's 'Etruskische Malerei'- costs about twenty marks - at least, in England twenty. If the book-seller can get me a copy, and send it me here by registered post - else they'll steal it - Drucksache, I shall be very glad, and will send you the money at once, when y ou let me know how much it was. It is a nice book - very - I saw it at a friend's house - and should like to have it. I heard when I was in Tarquinia that Weege was in Florence - but not doing any more Etruscan books. F It is very hot here, too hot - to sit in the sun for breakfast, even before seven in the morning. One gets up early, then has a siesta in the afternoon. Frieda is still peacefully slumbering - I have wakened up early from mine - and not a soul is alive on all the poderi - peasants sleeping too. The Arno valley lies hot and still, in the sun, but there is a little breeze, so I shall go down and sit on the grass in a deck chair under the nespole tree. The nespole are just ripe - I shall climb up and get the first today - warm - they are good like that. The big cherries also are ripe - Giulia brings them in - very good. It seems to me always very pleasant when it is full of summer and one ceases to bother about anything, goes drowsy, like an insect.

We heard from friends that the performance of 'David' went off very well, and the play was well received. But the notices in the newspapers are very contrary. They say the play was very dull, that it was like a cinema with too much talking, that it was boring and no drama in it, and that it was a very great mistake for a clever man like me to offer such a thing for the actual stage. A clever man like me doesn't fret over what they say. If the producers made a bad film of it, that's the producers' fault. And if the dramatic critics can only listen to snappy talk about divorces and money, that's their fault too. They should pray to the Lord - 'Lend thou the listening ear' and not blame me. Anyhow, io ne mifrego! Frieda, however, was very disappointed and downcast about it and almost refused to be comforted. We shall hear more later.

Unless it gets sizzling hot, I suppose we shall stay here till towards the end of July. We may do a little giro to Cortona and Arezzo and Chiusi and Orvieto, coming back by Assisi and Perugia: if it's not too hot. Then for August we can go to Baden to the Schwiegermutter - that hot and tiresome month, when everybody in the whole world is somewhere where they shouldn't be. Did you say you were going to the Haute Savoie? That'll be very nice - I have got some friends gone there just now. If it weren't the wrong time of year, a bit too warm for you - I should suggest you bring the children here and make use of this flat while we are away, and the young ones could explore Florence and all this countryside, which is very nice. They'd like it - but you would probably rather be cooler and quite free from housekeeping.

The Brett has gone back to the ranch, and is frantic because we don't go too. Mabel also writes urgingly. She has built two or three more houses and keeps one for us. But this summer anyhow we shan't go. I should like to see Bavaria again: and September should be lovely. If we went there any earlier, we would stay at that inn in Beurberg, where we began our career, at the end of May, fifteen years ago. I liked Beurberg so much. But now in summer I suppose the inn is crammed full.

I had notice from Curtis Brown today they had received ten pounds for 'The Woman Who Rode Away. ' As soon as it appears, in the 'Dial' or the 'London Mercury, ' either in the June number or the July, I forget - I'll send you 'The Man Who Loved Islands. ' I believe you'd like that, and it might amuse you to translate.

Well, it's not often I write such a long letter, nowadays. The days go by, and we hardly see anybody - which is what I prefer. Frieda grumbles sometimes, but when people come she doesn't want them. She has an idea she is a social soul who loves her fellowmen to distraction I don't see it quite. But I suppose one idea of one's self is as good as another.

I Remember me to the children, and to Alfred-and tante belle cose.

D. H. L.

 

Villa Mirenda Scandicci Florence 11 July, 1927

My dear Mother-in-Law:

Your son-in-law is a poor wretch and is in bed again with bronchitis and hemorrhage. We have the best doctor in Florence, Giglioli - he gives me coagulin but I am still in the corner. It is not dangerous, but...

And you, how are you? You are not taking any sea-baths? The doctor says my hemorrhage comes from sea-bathing that I took in Forte.

And does it amuse you, your Konstanz? We were there at the Walthaus Jakob for supper, the time Mountsier was with us, do you remember? It was lovely. But aren't you a little lost and homeless there? Or are you always getting younger and are you shingling your hair and cutting your skirt short? You can never know what a woman will do in her green seventy-sixthyear.

Friends are very good. Every day somebody comes from Florence. I've been only five days in bed and in a fortnight I can go away to that Wortersee, but we don't know where it is yet - Emil should write. The doctor says I ought to go into the pines - eight hundred metres, no higher.

If only once I were well again!

I send you only two pounds for your birthday, since I am to bring the rest myself when we come for the feast. Else must write to us. Many thanks to her for her letters. I borrowed the book in London. But the Etruscan and all work can sleep with the devil, if only I get well again. I will enjoy myself andforget everything. You, be content, and take the joys of this earth peacefully.

We are coming soon and will eat the Baden sausages together.

(Translated from the German)

 

IRSCHENHAUSEN POST EBENHAUSEN MUNICH

12 SEPTEMBER, 1927

My dear Mother-in-Law:

We had the little parcel today. But why did you spend so much money? You ought not to do it. The handkerchiefs are really charming. I like them very much, and the pralines are for princes, we've only eaten two rows. Good there was also a little sausage - bread is the staff of life but with a little sausage it also becomes an umbrella.

You are lonely, I know it, quite forlorn, with three daughters running all over the world. But now you'll be content again, Nusch is with you.

Else went this morning to sleep in Augsburg - God knows why-but we were very happy together, what with 'patience' and embroidery and walks -what a pity she is gone!

The weather is cold and it rains - Nusch's barometer still makes a bad, grinning foreboding face in the room. But in the Isartal still hangs a gay-coloured rag of rainbow, the Lord still keeps his promise.

We haven't heard from Barby - I think she will come here direct, perhaps Saturday. Emil writes so nicely and sends me thirty bottles of malt-beer. Think what drunkards we shall become, arriving in Baden with red noses and watery eyes.

It is really a pity we can't stay together longer, with Nusch and Else and you. Always this stupid going away. But soon we shall see you, so farewell.

D. H. L.

It is evening, the clouds are gold, the mountains stand there with slow white pillows of steam.

(Translated from the German)

 

Saturday MORNING Dear Else:

So nice of you to send all those toilet things, and the money - but why didn't you keep the money to pay for them? Let me know how much they cost.

The 'Jugend' man came - a nice little soul after all - but they'll do him in - he'll never stand the modern mill. And the Kahlers came - both very nice - but like all people of that class nowadays, they have lost their raison d'etre, and there seems no reason whatever why they should exist-they haven't even, like the Nachbarin, the spoignancy of woes. ) A rainy morning and a cold wind.

f Barby arrives in Munchen at 10:40 tonight - so Frieda will go in by a late train, and they'll come out tomorrow morning. We've omised to go to the Kahlers' tomorrow to tea. Did you get the book I sent? - The 'Jugend' man wants only a hort-short story-four Schreibmaschineseiten: that's about two usand words. No stories are as short as that - usually jive usand. I must try and hunt something up. Hope all is well in Heidelberg. Greet everybody.

D. H. L.

This swanky paper comes from Fr Hàuselmaier - or however she is lied.

 

Irschenhausen Isartal Wednesday 29 September, 1927

My dear Mother-in-Law:

Else writes Nusch is still there. Na, Johanna, you Easter-lamb, don't you sacrifice yourself yet on the altar of marriage. Wait then till Tuesday, when we are coming. We take the twelve o'clock train and arrive at seven in Baden, is that right, mother-in-law? And we go to the Augustabad, where the Blaufelchen is so good. It has turned much colder tonight - we've both had colds. Sunday was a horror of darkness and rain but we went out and got wet. But we are better. Anna is here and looks after us well. Barby is already in London. I can hardly believe she has been here. I've nearly drunk all the beer Emil sent, a record for Munich, no? Yesterday we went to see Frau Leitner, so nice and small, but what chatter. She sends you all her greetings.

The beeches begin to turn yellow and today we gathered some violets under the balcony - they smell sweet like spring and the flowers are still wonderful. Kahlers come tomorrow and Max Mohr, the dramatist, is to come from Tegernsee. Then, you, mother-in-law, and I hope you too, Nusch - will meet us on Tuesday and everything can be told then.

D. H. L.

(Translated from the German)

Irschenhausen Sunday

My dear Else:

Many thanks for the pen, which I am so glad to have in my fingers again - it's an old friend: it wrote 'Boy in the Bush' and 'St Mawr' and 'Princess' and 'Woman Who Rode Away' and 'Plumed Serpent' and all the stories in between: not bad, even if it is a nasty orangy brown colour. But I've got even to like this colour. They seem to have mended it all right, it goes well.

This is the horridest day of all, after tea and still pouring with rain: and I would like to go out! If only I had strong boots and a rain-proof. I would of course if we were staying. - Yesterday was lovely and sunny till teatime.

I This weekend we are alone - Anna is coming tomorrow. Then I suppose the Meyers will come and the Kahlers - and I've promised to go to Schoenberner's, and to meet Hans Carossa there. I heard from England that a man who writes plays and thinks I am the greatest living novelist (quote) and who lives in Tegernsee, may come and see me: Max Mohr: do you know anything about him? I don't.

I began the little bag - with green grass waves and dandelion seed-stones -you know, the fluffy balls - and it's going to have bees. But today is so dark and the stuff is so black! But it will be rather a small bag.

I suppose we shall stay here till Monday week - is that December 2nd? I don't feel a bit anxious to return to Italy - but I think Frieda does. I don't mind, for the time being, if it rains and is dark. - By the way, you should see how pretty your garden looks, with the gold, and the mauve of the Michaelmas daisies, and the big autumn daisy, and the pink phlox: it looks really gay, on a sunny day - We have gathered the apples - so bright and red - and the last two hazel-nuts, I'm afraid either squirrels or children had fetched the others. The foods are simply populated with mushrooms, all sorts, in weird camps everywhere - really like strange inhabitants come in. We eat the little yellow ones, and keep picking Steinpilze and throwing them away again. The cows come every afternoon on to our grass, with a terrific tintinnabulation, like a host of tinkling Sundays. There is a Jersey who is pining to come to tea in the porch - and a white calf that suddenly goes round the moon. Frieda reads Goethe, and I play patience - today I have finished my 'Cavalleria Rusticana ' translation: now I've only to do the introduction: if that fool of a young postman hasn't lost my bookful of MS. that I sent to England. Frieda told him loudly registered: he says he sent it unregistered - and Drucksache. I shall curse him if I have to do it all over again.

It's nightfall - I think I shall go out, spite of rain, for a few minutes.

Wiedersehen!

D. H. L.

 

 

HOTEL EDEN

BADEN-BADEN

FRIDAY

 

My dear Else:

You also have a birthday, but it seems to me one must be four or eighty to have important birthdays. Of the number we won't speak.

I had your letter. Yes, we saw Hans Carossa, a nice man, mild like mashed potatoes. He listened to my lung passages, he could not hear my lungs, thinks they must be healed, only the bronchi, and doctors are not interested in bronchi. But he says not to take more inhalations with hot air: it might bring the hemmorhage back. The journey was vile, many people, much dust, and I had a cold. But it is better. We are very grand here, two rooms, a bath, and the food very good.

Yesterday it was goose, Michaelmas goose; I can eat better but they bring so much, wagonloads of potatoes, and cutlets big as carpets, and how the people feed! It takes my shy appetite away a bit.

The mother-in-law grows younger and younger. We must go back like this on her next birthday: 66 next time, then 55 years. It is thus with old age, the only real youth without trouble, after seventy.

Max Mohr came in a car from Tegemsee, where he has a pleasant house - with wife and child - a man thirty-six years old or so.

He wants to be a child of nature but we were disappointed in the nature. But he is good and interesting, but a last man who has arrived at the last end of the road, who can no longer go ahead in the wilderness nor take a step into the unknown. So he is very unhappy, is a doctor, prisoner of war in England, and his psychology a little like Hadu's. We have his plays, we send them to you.

When are you coming? Come this weekend. We stay till the seventeenth. We are very fortunate here, but the world seems dark to me again. That scares me and I want to go south.

I send you the story - too long for 'fugend'- but you might sell it somewhere else. Would not 'Tickets Please' and 'England, My England' be just right for 'Jugend'? Have you got them? The piece about the dog I can't find. But come and we can talk it all over Are Friedel and Marianne there? Greet Alfred and them.

D. H. L.

(Translated from the German)

 

Villa Mirenda Scandicci Firenze 14 November, 1927

Dear Else:

Many thanks for the Beethoven letters - arrived today - not a literary man - and always in love with somebody - or thought he was - and in the flesh wasn't. But how German! - I mean the way he really wasn't.

Frau Katherina Kippenberg wrote they want to publish one of my books next year, and asks which I would suggest. I think I shall suggest, 'Woman Who Rode Away,' and 'The Princess' (from the English 'St Mawr') and a third story you haven't yet seen, '. None of That. ' They'd make a smallish volume. Or would you suggest one of the novels? 'The Last Girl'or 'Aaron's Rod.' I don't care. Only we'll keep back 'The Plumed Serpent, ' and offer it ready translated to another firm, for 1929. Do you think that's wise?

It has rained a bit here, but is sunny again - we're just going out for a walk - the country is full of colour, vines yellow, olives blue, pines very green. It is Monday, so the fusillade of cacciatori shooting little birds is quieter - it makes me so mad - I am really quite a lot better - cough much less, especially in the morning - but haven't yet been to Firenze - think we'll go Thursday. There's a queer sort of unease in the air - as if the wrong sort of spirits were flying abroad in the unseen ether - but it may be my imagination. Frieda strums away °n her piano, and I have to listen for when she hits a wrong note. - I am dabbing at poems, getting them ready for the 'Collected Poems. '

Alfred wrote very nicely from Ascona. I hope we'll see you here in the early spring: if we are here: Ifeel sort of uncertain and unstuck. I hope you're having more conferences and so on, if they amuse you. As f°r nie, I play 'patience' - and it hardly ever comes out. Love!

D. H. L.

 

VILLA MIRENDA SCANDICCI FLORENCE 16 NOVEMBER, 1927

My dear Mother-in-Law:

This time I want you to do something for me: our neighbour at the ranch, Rachel Hawk, wants toys for the children. She wants two boxes - a farmyard and a village, not too small, to cost five marks. The people in the shop can send it direct: Mrs Rachel Hawk, Del Monte Ranch, Questa, New Mexico. And in the shop buy also animals and trees and men, as small as possible, also chickens, and little houses and carts and so forth for my niece Joan and my nephew Bertie, for about ten marks. They can be sent straight from the shop to my sister Emily.

I send you two pounds, that will be enough. You like doing it, yes? In the shop on the Augustplatz, where the large autos stand.

How are you? We are well. It has turned cold, but sun all day today. I was on the top of the hill, I saw Florence, lying there in the sunshine, so light and clear, the lilytown.

Tomorrow we are going for lunch with Reggie; the first time I shall go to town since we came back. If it is fine like today I'll go with pleasure.

We are both busy -1 am writing stories and am typing all my poems, they are to be collected in one volume. Frieda has finished her jacket, very pretty, from the violet velvet Nusch gave her. It is really pretty, a short jacket with silver buttons, quite Florentine Renaissance.

In the evening we have a fire in the stove. The day is warm, the sun streams into the room. But the evenings are cold.

Max Mohr writes always very nicely and will come to see us i" January. Perhaps we shall go to Cortina, we are not going to Egypt-But if we both keep well, we shall stay in our own house.

I always have a 'patience' in the evening and I think the mother-in-law has a game at this same hour. Yours comes better than Else's. If your little one is called the demon, then Else's ought to be called 'devil.'

Else sent me Beethoven's letters. But what a cut-off man! He could not come near to anybody: and his house, what untidyness, what a mad show! The poor, great man! Thank the Lord, I am still small enough to mend my socks and wash my cup.

Frieda has written to you: the letter lies about these last two days, half finished. You will get it finally, when it arrives.

I greet you, mère étemelle! A pity we can't send you our roses, they are so lovely.

D. H. L. (Translated from the German)

 

Villa Mirenda Scandicci Firenze 12 December, 1927 Dear Else:

I can't help laughing at the end of Frau Katherina's letter - gets quite snappy. However, that's that. I suppose by 'Holy Ghosts' (imagine daring to pluralize it!) she means 'Glad Ghosts. ' I sent you a copy last year - didn't I? - little yellow book. I don't mind what they put in a volume. - I suggested 'Woman Who Rode Away' and 'Princess' and 'None of That' - all more or less Mexican. But let her put in 'Glad Ghosts' if she likes. Anyhow we have got her hipped. Don't suddenly go and say you don't want to translate the things - or haven't time, or something - just when I've got it into order. It would be just like you.

Very grey and misty and unsatisfactory here. I am in bed, as the best place out of it all. But I'm all right - cough a nuisance still, but nothing extra. I'd get up if the sun would shine. Anyhow I'll get up this afternoon.

I'm writing my 'Lady Chatterley' novel over again. It's very 'shocking' - the Schwiegermutter must never see it. - I think I shall publish it privately here in Florence.

We are staying here for Christmas and making a tree for the peasants. This year there'll be at least thirty of them. Dreadful thought. But Frieda wants it.

And we aren't sending out any Christmas presents - so please, Else, don't send us anything. The post is so tiresome here, and altogether one feels so unchristmassy. I'm sick ofJesus, and don't see at all why he should go on being born every year. We might have somebody else born, for a change. Toujours perdrix!

The Huxleys will be in Florence for Christmas, then going to Diablerets. I don't want to go there, another San Moritz, where Michael Arlen has gone. I'd have liked to go to Egypt, but the fates seem to say no. So it's just San Polo!

The Schwiegermutter says you are having festas in Heidelberg, so I suppose you are wearing your best clothes and going it. Nothing like learning, for setting people on the hop. Anyhow I hope you're having a good time, and the children too. Love from both.

 

Villa Mirenda Scandicci Florence Sunday

My dear Mother-in-Law:

Christmas is here again. I say, the poor chap has been bom nearly two thousand times, it is enough. He might really have peace now, and leave us in peace, without Christmas and stomach-aches. But we sit still and only make the tree for the peasant children and they think it is a miracle, that it really grows here in the salon, and has silver apples and golden birds: for them it is only a fairytale, nothing Christian. You've heard how Frieda wanted to act Sancta Sanctissima, she's really St Frieda, butter doesn't melt in her mouth: because, of course, she has taken a Bandelli child to the hospital. But, thank the Lord, the child makes trouble and Saint Frieda begins to be bored and is becoming all-too-human again.

The Wilkinsons, our neighbours, have just been here, he with a flute and an overcoat. Tomorrow they go to Rome for a fortnight-Thank goodness I'm not going: there is an ice-cold wind these last two days and Rome is an ice-cold town.

I sit here in the corner by the stove that sings quite amiably and the world can go to blazes as far as I am concerned.

Else wrote that she will take you to Heidelberg over the holidays. But don 'tyou go, remain safely there, and let the mistletoe berries fall on those that want them.

The Wilkinsons have brought me a Christmas pudding: it smells good; I'll enjoy it. I send you a pound, you can buy such a one -yes, o. real English pudding. (Don't!)

Then farewell. Don't drink too much and dance too much and flirt too much, or you'll have a real moral 'morning-after,' and I shan't weep with you. Farewell, O Germania under the tree.

D. H. L.

(Translated from the German)

 

 

Villa Mirenda Scandicci Wednesday

My dear Mother-in-Law:

Lo, everything is nearly normal again. The tree is still standing - we want to relight it when the Wilkes return from Rome, perhaps Monday. And we have the remains of the plum pudding from yesterday. Otherwise, as I say, we are nearly normal. Frieda has forgotten her holiness for the moment. The boy flew away from the hospital, his padrone took him back again and promised him a bicycle. So, the operation is done, Frieda is going to visit him tomorrow. But now she is no longer the one and only saint. The padrone promised Dino a bicycle and Dante, the elder brother, says: 'If somebody promises me a bicycle I'll also go and be operated on. ' But, poor boy, he has no rupture.

The weather is abominable - rain and little sun - evening is the best time, with fire and lamp and peace. Frieda is making herself an apron all covered with roses and birds.

The tie is a great success. I wore it on Christmas day in Florence - very nice, it's much nicer on than off. The Baden calendar ties faithfully here, ready to carry us through another year, with all the pictures. The last sheet of the old one hangs over the piano, a black and white scene in the Black Forest.

Oh, dear mother-in-law, live well for another year and have a jolly, happy 1928. Greet Else, I am writing to her.

Your, D. H. L.

The book from Friedel is pretty, really pretty.

(Translated from the German)

 

Villa MIRENDA scandicci Florence Wednesday

My dear Mother-in-Law:

I haven't said 'thank you'yet for the beautiful tie that I like so much. I'm a brute. But now the pen has become a difficulty to me. I have written so much in my life, I would like to be silent. But you understand.

We are well on in January and I haven't had a cold yet this winter. I thank the Lord and pray it may go on so with me. You are also well, aren't you?

We are sitting still and work much, and that's healthy. People make you tired and bring sickness. Frieda is sewing much, makes herself some dresses and jackets and a coat, and says she is better than Paquin. All right! Her hats grow higher and higher, like the tower of Babel, which was so high. In the spring you'll see a daughter such as you've never seen before in all your life.

Now they write to me from London that 'David' won't be produced until April. I prefer it, I would rather go to England or Germany when the winter is past and the flowers greet you. Wait a little, mother-in-law, have a little patience, summer is the best time. We are having bad weather, not rain but cold fog that is quite unnatural in this country. But beautiful days in between: like Monday, when I went to the Villa Curonia, Mabel's villa on the Poggio Imperiale for the first time. Oh dear, a big, beautiful villa, somewhat noble, but sad, sad as death. She wants to pull out some books and send them to Taos. Farewell, mother-in-law, till we meet.

D. H. L. (Translated from the German)

 

Villa Mirenda Scandicci Florence Sunday

My dear Mother-in-Law:

I have the ties, they are beautiful as Rhinegold, but why for rainy days'? Today I am wearing the blue and red, do you remember? I believe it is only cotton, but you ought to see how gay and manly it looks. We are still waiting for my novel, 'Lady Chatterley's Lover.' Only half has been printed - all goes slowly. But I hope in a fortnight it will be ready - at least printed.

It's just as well we aren't in Switzerland yet, the wind comes cold and the snow lies deep on the hills opposite. Today was a wonderful day but no warmer than a sunny winter's day. I don't want to be in the snow again, as at Diablerets. We are looking for an inn in Switzerland. In the hotels sit thousands of English spinsters and they bore me. In an inn, life is more natural. Barby writes there is a good inn at Talloire, near Annecy where Nusch was, but it is in Switzerland. Ask Nusch about it. Frieda can go to Baden when she likes, but I think it would be stupid for only five or six days and then off again. What a pity we can't both come while Nusch is there! But for me everybody says: 'Switzerland! Switzerland!' - so I, poor beast, have to go. But later in the summer I'm coming to Baden.

Frieda is still sewing clothes. The two girls, Giulia and Teresina, come in the evenings and the three sew and talk together in the diningroom, but I sit alone here in the salotto, too many females for me.

The spring vegetables are here already - asparagus, sweet young peas, broad beans, and during the last three weeks new potatoes and many artichokes. It is always a good moment in Italy when the vegetables come. For fruit we have nespole, the yellow Japanese misplein, and the first cherries, which are not really sweet. Everything If late this year and many, many roses but not happy ones. They fall off in a day because the undersoil is still too dry, the rain has not yet gone deep down.

You remember Zaira, the mistress of the major here, and the big white dog Titi? Well, Titi has bitten Zaira's arm badly and has had to be shot, and poor Zaira must stay at home, there in Florence, till the doctor is sure that it isn't hydrophobia. Frieda says: another of my enemies has fallen - she means Titi.

Poor A... H... - she was so nice but seemed so small and lost here in Italy. And poor Frau... really ill. I hope they are all right again in Baden. Don't you go travelling to Spain or Sweden, mother-in-law - old ladies should stay in their own home-town. Then farewell to you two - we'll meet again before long.

D. H. L.

(Translated from the German)

 

Villa Mirenda Scandicci Florence Thursday

My dear Mother-in-Law:

We had a good journey, few people, no difficulties, and I was not very tired. I never saw Switzerland so lovely: a still grey autumn day, grass so strangely green, nearly like fire: and then the fruit trees, all delicate flames, the cherry trees absolutely red like cherries, apple trees and pear trees yellow red scarlet and still as flowers: really like a fairyland. It has rained in Italy. But today there is gentle sun and clouds, warm air and a great stillness. The neighbours were at the station with the car, all so friendly. And here the peasants all ranged on the 'aia'- Giulia radiant, she is getting quite pretty; she had the fires ready and the hot water and we are here. But the house seemed foreign to me, naked and empty, and a bit uncanny, as if I had never known it, but Frieda is happy.

I don't know what it is with me, I don't feel at home in Italy, this time. In your little vase are roses and jasmine. My pictures please me - and I listen, listen to the stillness. But now we go to the neighbours. Take our small presents. Already your letter was here this morning. What a pity that distance remains distance, so absolutely. If we could come for tea to you, we would all three be happy. But we will come nearer to live, near you.

Auf Wiedersehen, be happy.

D. H. L.

(Translated from the German)

 

Villa Mirenda Scandicci Florence Monday

My dear Mother-in-Law:

I am glad you had such a beautiful trip to Herrenalp. Are you glad to come home or would you have liked to stay longer?

We arrive about the thirteenth. We leave next Monday the twelfth for Milan, and on Tuesday the thirteenth from Milan to Baden-Baden. We arrive at 6:45 in the evening. Can you find us one or two rooms in a villa or a hotel, that we can eat where we want to? And then, after a few days, we can go again to Herrenalp with you, or stay in Baden or somewhere in the neighbourhood. We promised to be in England all the month of August. But that leaves us about twenty days in Germany. It will be lovely.

I am always fond of Baden and the Black Forest, and always feel well there. It will be splendid summer, and the strawberries and cherries won't be over yet.

We can eat at the Wald Kaffee, drink tea there, and visit Excellenz Stotzer in her wooden house and make excursions. Yes, it will be lovely. Frieda also is happy to come, really. Don't be sad.

It is wonderful here, so warm and still. The fruit is already ripe: figs, peaches, apricots, plums, all big and fine, because it rained so much - the apricots are marvellous, really as big as peaches, and the first little pears are so sweet and pale yellow. Yes, it is full summer.

My sisters write sadly because of the strike: there is no end to it and both are losing much money. One must not make one's life out of money, if money disappears the life is broken. With or without money I have had my life for myself and am not swindled.

 

Friedel wrote nicely from Berlin but I think he has had enough of a big town and wants to go home.

Else tells me how she likes the play.

They are already translating 'The Plumed Serpent' into Swedish but I only get six hundred marks.

I send you a little money for your birthday, that you may buy what you like.

We won't bring you any presents, they are such a nuisance. Then, mother-in-law, soon we'll meet.

D. H. L. (Translated from the German)

 

 

Villa Mirenda Scandicci Florence Sunday

My dear Mother-in-Law:

This is already another Sunday, and the third that we are here. The weather is always like summer, so warm and clear, the windows are open all day and we don't dream of having a fire: the evenings also are quite warm. The roses are in bloom, but there are few flowers, all is still too dry, little water even in the wells. Also Baden will be lovely just now. On Sundays I must always think of the music in the 'Kurpark' and of the 'Malzbier' in your room. Here there is no music, the stupid hunters shoot the sparrows and nightingales in the woods behind, you always hear it go 'pop' - Malzbier there isn't either, and your room is not just five minutes from here. But you will be going for a walk at this moment and you will be meeting all the ladies from the Stift in their Sunday clothes returning from Mass.! Nusch has written - says she sees many people, and goes out a lot. She wants to come here in March. Alfred also has written from Ascona - quite charmed by the paradisial days there: a charming letter. Frieda has a piano again, now she wants to play Handel, the 'Messiah', but she hasn't arrived at the Alleluia! I am painting a picture, not very big, of a tiger who springs on a man: such a grinning tiger. Tomorrow we are going to Florence with friends. I haven't been to town yet. We play cards with the neighbours, solo-whist and Pope John and also 'patience.' You know, your little 'patience'- the one-two-three - the one that is called the demon, may well be called so, with me it never comes right.

Greet Frau Kugler, also the Halms. I hope that Frau Oberin is better. You keep jolly; you must ask the cards if in January we are going to Cortina. '0 dear cards, tell me truly...'

 

 

Les Diablerets Thursday morning [To Frieda]

No letter from you this morning - only one letter from Curtis Brown, asking for the 'Lady C.' MS. - But I am still waiting for the final two chapters from that woman.

A warm morning, with warm dimmish sun. Our maid got the grippe, so her sister is here.

I'm just going down to the station with Aldous. Diablerets coming to an end for us. I do hope we shan't get gripped going down to the valley. - How do you feel it?

Love to die Alte.

D. H. L.

 

 

Chalet Beau Site Les Diablerets Vaud Tuesday Dear Else:

We'll just go ahead with 'Rex' without bothering about Curtis Brown. I'll just mention it to him when I write, and tell him I fixed things up myself. I think M. 180 is quite a good price for 'Jugend' to pay: and the usual arrangement is one third to the translator, two thirds to the author - so you get M. 60. Business, caramia, business!

1 wrote Seeker direct and asked him to send you and to Frau Katherina both, copies of the 'Princess' (in 'St Mawr') and proofs of the volume of short stories 'The Woman Who Rode Away. ' I hope you will get these directly. In the stories, the end of 'The Border Line' is missing -printer lost two or three pages: so I'm having to write it in. But you'll understand the story is unfinished. It's 'None of That' I want you to consider.

i; We had hot sunshine, and the snow was melting: but now today it is snowing again, a fine and crumbling snow. I must say, I don't like it. I am no snow-bird, I hate the stark and shroudy whiteness, white and black. It offends the painter in one - it is so uniform - only sometimes lovely contours, and pale blue gleams. But against life.

I've been busy doing my poems - have at last got all the early ! poems together and complete. What a sweat! But I shall publish the others, 'Look!' and 'Birds and Beasts' as they stand. Then I'll have to go through the novel, which I'm having typed in London. How glad I'll be when all this work is behind me, and I needn't give a damn any more. I'm sick to death of literature.

I think this place is a good tonic, but snow isn't good for bronchials: it just isn't: it scrapes inside.

I dreamt of Frau v. Kahler last night. Are they all right? That was such a good p.c. of Irschenhausen. F. waiting to take the letter - so Wiedersehen!

D. H. L.

 

Firenze 16 April 28 Saturday [To Else]

Had your note from Alassio - glad you like it there. I wonder if you are setting off today for Germany. I stayed the night in Florence at Orioli's, but came back to Mirenda this afternoon. There is an atmosphere of departure and departure, which is a bit écœurant. I wish we were safely away, with no good-byes to say. - We shall meet some time during the summer somewhere nice and free and forgetful. Italy has too many memories, not enough spunk.

I shall send your Fullfeder, which I just discovered.

D. H. L.

 

Villa Mirenda Scandicci Florence 4 May 1928

Dear Else:

I simply can't write biographical facts about myself Will you answer this Bulow man, if you feel like it: and if you think it is worth while. I have never heard of him. I must ask Curtis Brown if they have arranged with him about 'Islands. '

You have heard by now that we are keeping on the Mirenda. I took down the pictures and we began to pack: but Frieda became so gloomy that I hung the pictures up again and paid six months' rent. Not worth while getting into a state about. So here we are, just the same. And probably we shall stay till the end of the month, as the proofs of the novel are still only half done. I wish the printer would hurry up.

I am asking people if they know of a nice Gasthaus in Switzerland, for me. I hate hotel-pensions, after a few days. I always want to kill the old women - usually English - that come into meals like cats. We just had a very handsome Louis XV sort of a one to tea - but American this time - and of course I'm bristling in every hair.

It's more or less summer too - the Kastanien in full flower - is yours too? The Bandelli peasants just brought us the first baccelli - Saubohnen - which are tiny, and they eat them raw, and think them wonderful. I like them because il baccello is one of the improper words. We also eat green almonds boiled in sugar and water, like plums - and they taste like gooseberries. We went to see an old Englishwoman - not so very old - who has a very elegant flat on the Lungarno and was a cocotte - the expensive sort - but a real one. I must say, I find her very restful and smooth, after some of the others.

Au revoir - tante cosa!

 

Villa Mirenda Scandicci Firenze Friday Dear Else:

I will send this to Baden – perhaps you will still be there. You will have had a lovely sunny week: here the sun is too hot, makes one tired, and feels like earthquakes. Still, it is beautiful.

We got home safely with all the spoil - there are roses in the Wolfratshauser glass you gave me, here on the table - and we drank the Kirsch from the little yellow glasses when the Wilkinsons were here yesterday. I am much better, I eat more joyfully, and take the Brustthee. Imagine, one must let it boil slowly for hours. I do believe it is good, better than all the medicines. I am already doing a story, and dabbing at my picture of five Negresses - called 'The Finding of Moses, ' or, if the Schwiegermutter had to name it, 'ein fùrchterliches Schauerstùck. ' A la bonne heure.

I had a letter from Curtis Brown, saying that next year, in November, our contract with Kippenberg comes to an end, and then we can leave him and go to a different publisher. Also that he, Kip, said in a letter of 1923 that he would gladly agree that you should do the translations. Curtis Brown's have the letter. Now I have aritten Kippenberg to ask him what exactly he intends to do next year, with regard to my work. We'll see if we can't have our own way in this matter, and you shall translate 'The Plumed Serpent, ' if you wish, trotz Anton, trotz Katherina. Vogue la galère!

Dark falling. We haven't made any fire in the stove yet - it is so Warm. Hope you are feeling well and easy. Love to the Schwiegermutter - the Schlips came today - but I shan't wear it yet. Say thanks for me.

Love, Villa Mirenda Scandicci Firenze Montag Liebe Else:

You wrote me so nicely from Constance. - I'm glad you had a good time with the Schwiegermutter. I can so well understand she didn't want to see her old home. It's too upsetting: the past is so far off I am better - getting up again, and going about the house - but feeling feeble. I went downstairs and out of doors a few yards yesterday - but it's too hot to go out till sundown. However, this day week - or tomorrow week - I hope we can leave for Villach. I shall feel better a little higher. It's lovely weather here, sunny, and not too hot at all if one keeps quiet. But it's much too hot to walk in the sun. If I was well, I should enjoy it. Frieda for the first time really likes the heat. But now I feel I should like to see the world green, and hear the waters running: and to taste good northern food.

I almost wish we'd arranged to rent Irschenhausen for August too, and gone straight there. But it will be nice to see Nusch too - and as you say, if one can really be amused, that is the chief thing. My illnesses I know come from chagrin - chagrin that goes deep in and comes afterwards in haemorrhage or what not. When one learns, also, not to be chagrined, then one can become like your Burger-meister? -fat and lustig, to the age of eighty. Anyhow I'd be glad to be fat and lustig once before I die: even a bit versoffen, if that's a way of not having a sore chest.

I wonder if the 'revolution' in Vienna, which the papers report, amounts to anything? Probably not. I think if we didn't go to Austria we'd go to Bavaria, or somewhere high in Baden.

We shall see you then in September. It is good of you to let us have the Irschenhausen house - but I must pay you a rent.

Wiedersehen!

D. H. L.

I sent you a 'Dial' with a story in it - don't know if you'll like it.

 

 

Kesselmatte Gsteig b Gstaad Schweiz 11 September 1928

My dear Mother-in-Law:

I have your letter and the tie, a nice one. Yes, we're coming soon. Else comes here Saturday the fifteenth and stays till Sunday.

It's wonderfully still here since my sister and niece went. They left Friday. They were jolly here but my sister is a little sad - the husband is nothing.

We have had summer days but today is autumn. The clouds turn round and round the tops of the mountains, still and grey and low, so still it is frightening. In these mountains one needs the sun. It will be nice in Baden, when the Brewsters are also there and we can go to concerts and theatres together.

We eat pounds of grapes. Frieda makes a diet of grapes, juniper berries, and God knows what. Do you hear nothing from Nusch? Farewell and soon, Auf Wiedersehen, D. H. L. (Translated from the German)

 

 

La Vigie Ile de Port-Cros Var Saturday Dear Else:

Your letter today, saying the Schwiegermutter is in bed. I'm awfully sorry and do hope it's not much. I thought in Lichtental she wasn't well. Of course, she is a heavy woman, and her legs are sure to suffer. Let us know how she goes on - and I hope she'll soon be up and about.

We are here settled in. But Frieda arrived in Lavandou with that fatal Italian grippe, and of course I took it. I felt ill all last week, and have been in bed all this, with a very raked chest. Sickening! - The others are very nice and very kind. The Vigie isn't a castle at all - just a low thick defence-wall with loop-holes, enclosing the top of the hill - about as big as the Leopoldplatz - and the inside all I wild, grown with lavender and arbutus and little pine trees, and with a few rooms built against the inside of the wall. It's quite pleasant, and comfortable, and we have big fires of pine logs in the open fires. Giuseppe is a strong fellow of twenty-eight, Sicilian. He fetches and carries and washes all dishes and makes fires. The women only cook, and they do it in turns. Joseph brings the food from the boat on a small donkey, Jasper - and we get abundance. The ship comes nearly every day - but the post only three times a week. The climate is very warm - warm and moist. I am afraid that doesn 't suit me very well. I don't know how long we shall stay. I have promised, till December 15 or 20. But if the warm-moist is bad for my cough, we shall leave soon. The others are really very nice and kind, it will be a pity if we have to leave them. And where shall we go?

The Brewsters are back in Capri. Inevitable.

I ordered the poems to Heidelberg. They look very nice.

We are on top of the island, and look down on green pine-tops, down to the blue sea, and the other islands and the mainland. Since I came I have not been down to the sea again - and Frieda has bathed only once. But it is very pretty. And at night the lights flash at Toulon and Hyeres and Lavandou. - But I really don't like islands, I would never stay long on one. Frieda wants to go back to Lago di Garda. Vediamo! I am in abeyance.

Write and tell us how the Schwiegermutter is. Frieda says she feels worried - but it seems to me there is no danger, only it is painful and depressing. No peace on this earth.

Love from both.

D. H. L.

I hope this letter will leave the island before next Tuesday - the next mail.

 

 

Port-Cros Friday Such storms, such winds, such torrents of rain! And the Vigie, although quite hygienic, is not very comfortable. So we are all leaving next week - Tuesday or Thursday, as the sea permits. I think Frieda and I will stay in Bandol, on the big railway.

Am so glad the Schwiegermutter is better.

Will write next week.

D. H. L.

 

 

Ile de Port-Cros Var Wednesday

My dear Mother-in-Law:

I am glad you are better. You have been too brave. You know, you are heavy on your feet now, you are no longer a young, light thing. You must not walk so far. I remember with grief the 'Fisch Kultur, ' a mad excursion and you insisted doing it. No, no, you must go gently and wisely. To force things is not for you.

Tomorrow we leave here. Thank the Lord, the weather is good, blue sky, blue quiet sea, and so warm. But I have enough. I would never like to stay more than a month on a little island. But as an experience it was nice. I think we will only go as far as Bandol, a little place on the coast, half an hour from Toulon. But there we are on the main line, and only an hour from Marseille. And we can think where we really want a house - neither of us knows what we want.

They write from Florence it rains and rains; awful. Thank God, we aren't there. My book of stories came with the Inselalmanach and Moricke. You know I have not broken with Insel? They pay me fifty pounds instead of thirty-five and Else can translate when she wants to. That's good.

I send you five pounds, if you want more tell me. It is my money and I give it with pleasure, but please pay the ten marks for Frieda's dress.

The Brewsters are in Capri again. They say it is the best place in the world. Good, when you know it!

Keep still and quiet inside yourself, then your legs will go without pain.

D. H. L.

(Translated from the German)

 

 

Hôtel Beau Rivage Bandol, Var 19 December, 1928

My dear Mother-in-Law:

This evening the ties and the calendar came. The friendly calendar, we know it so well, it makes me homesick. We must really find a house, if it is only to hang it on the wall. But we still don't know where we want to live. It is very nice here, so sunny and friendly. Now we wait till Xmas is past.

Perhaps Else and Barby are coming. Tomorrow we shall know. But Else is working till the end of February, so she can only stay a week. She says she wants to come before she gets married; because really she wants to get married at last. Barby is not very well. Perhaps she will stay some weeks with us.

! We have a friend here, a young writer, quite nice and faithful. First Frieda did not like him because he's not beautiful - but now she inks him quite good-looking and she likes him. We also had a young Australian here for two days, this afternoon he left for Nice. He makes those expensive books that people collect nowadays - he says he will make a book next year of my paintings - of all my paintings, with a foreword by me, to be sold at ten guineas each. It seems madness to me, but it's his money and he will pay me well if he does it. But how mad people are - there is quite a large vogue in éditions de luxe that cost two or five or even twenty-five pounds. I hate it. Rhys Davies, the friend who is here, is Welsh and his grandfather was also a miner.

Max Mohr writes a little sadly from his 'Wolfgrube, ' he says he must always fight with his editors and has little money. There in Bavaria the snow is deep.

I am glad that you are better. I also feel better, but hot sun and cold wind find my bronchi, that feel a bit raw. It is always so in weather like this.

Else will be there, with you - she will give you Jive pounds from me, from 'Jugend, ' and keeps the rest. You will have a quiet, good, happy Xmas, only keep still inside yourself.

Greet them all from me. And Nusch? She won't be there any more. I will write her and Emil. I hope we shall see them this spring, here on the Mediterranean, where the sun is so bright, and the sea so blue, and the small boats so white and dancing. Very friendly I find also the Frenchmen, they leave you alone and don't hang on so heavily. But Frieda is always longing for Italy, I think.

So farewell, mother-in-law, Merry Xmas. What flowers have you? Here are many narcissi in the fields. Merry Xmas! Merry Xmas!

D. H. L.

(Translated from the German)

 

 

Hôtel Principe Alfonso Palma de Mallorca Spain 12 June 1929 Dear Else:

We want to leave here next Tuesday - eighteenth - by the boat to Marseille. Frieda sprained her ankle, bathing, but I think it will be better by then - it's not bad. I want her to go and see after my pictures, as the show is supposed to open this week. And the book is ready today - I have a set of the coloured plates - twenty-six - rather good, although only done in three-colour process. I hear they have already orders for about three hundred copies at ten guineas, and ten vellum copies at fifty guineas are all ordered. World of crazes! But I ought to make about five hundred pounds out of the book - not bad. I shan't send you a copy - I know you don't care especially about it - and in these things you belong to the opposite direction, so of course you don't see much value in work of this sort. You say satanisch. Perhaps you are right; Lucifer is brighter now than tarnished Michael or shabby Gabriel. All things fall in their turn, now Michael goes down, and whispering Gabriel, and the Son of the Morning will laugh at them all. Yes, I am all for Lucifer, who is really the Morning Star. The real principle of Evil is not anti-Christ or anti-Jehovah, but anti-life. I agree with you in a sense, that I am with the anti-Christ. Only I am not anti-life.

If Frieda comes to England from Marseille, I shall probably go to North Italy, the Garda, where it won't be too hot. This year I don't want to come very far north; I feel I am better south of the Alps - really. Probably, Frieda will come to Baden on her way back from England.

This island is a queer place - so dry - but at last it has rained. We "light possibly come back next winter.

I expect the Schwiegermutter will have gone back to the Stift. I was glad she was well enough to come to Heidelberg. It must be summer with you, leafy and lovely. Here it is all dried up, only the bushes of wild thyme in flower on the waste places, and the bougainvillteas in the gardens.

I wonder where you will go for the summer holiday? Anyhow we will meet somewhere, if not in Baden.

Greet everybody from me.

D. H. L.

 

6 Lungarno Corsini Florence Sunday 7  July [To Frieda]

Maria drove me to Pisa yesterday afternoon - very sirocco and overcast, but not hot, not at all uncomfortable. Unfortunately my inside is upset - either I must have eaten something or it came from drinking ice-water very cold on Thursday when it was very hot. Anyhow my lower man hurts and it makes my chest sore - which is a pity, because I was so well. Now I'm rather limp. But I've kept still all day in Pino's flat, and he looks after me well-so I hope by tomorrow or Tuesday it will be all right. Luigino Franchetti said he'd got ptomaine poisoning, on Friday at Forte - but I think it was an upset too, nothing serious. I think mine is going off. Pino's flat gets a bit hot just at evening, but in the night and the most part of the day it is pleasant and cool - it's not really a hot year. Carletto has gone off for a day's tramp in the hills beyond Fiesole. Pino and I will have a cup of tea now, then perhaps take a carriage-drive for an hour.

I had your mother's letter this morning - she says you are all going up to Plàssig or somewhere on the thirteenth - which is next; Saturday. What is it like there? Probably I shall arrive in Baden by then - it depends a bit on the innards. I wanted to look at the Lake of; Como to see if we'd like a house there - but I am not sure if I shall want to make the effort. And I was so well before.

X... Y... is staying on in Forte, thank God - till about fifteenth. She must be in Paris by twenty-third - sails on twenty-seventh - thank heaven. She is a mixture of the worst side of A...- turns up her eyes in that awful indecent fashion - and of L... M... - humble, cringing, yet impudent, with an eternal and ceaseless self-preoccupation, tangled up in her own ego till it's shameful - thinking all and only of herself. Ugh, she's awful. At the same time, she's a poor pathetic thing. She has sent you a feather thing that she says is for a little cape - pretty - but I shall leave it behind in the trunk. I am leaving this trunk here also - the money they cost in transport and facchinaggio is awful, pure waste - and the bother.

Well, I've not had a coherent or sensible letter from you since you left Paris - so I suppose you were gone overhead - and then it's no use saying anything. However, emerge quickly - and we'll see if we can settle the problem of a house.

Had a letter from Barby - but it wasn't somehow very nice - same cattiveria as M..., underneath - or so it seemed. I suppose you didn't go and see my sisters. Hope Else is better. Aldous was very well, I've never seen him so well. Am seeing nobody here. No sound from Brett about MSS. or ranch. Think I shall come by night to Milano - but hate sharing a berth with some stranger. Hope you are nice and peaceful in Baden.

L.

 

I really think Italy is not good for my health - the country is much slacker, all going deflated - and lots of poverty again, so they say. But everybody is very nice, much softer once more, and sort of subdued.

 

FLORENCE MONDAY NIGHT

[TO Frieda]

The pains were a chill - have been in bed all day today - damn! Pino very nice, but oh the noise of traffic. I'm a lot better. I want to get up tomorrow, and leave if possible on Wednesday night for Milan. I might arrive Baden on Thursday night - otherwise Friday - all being well. Hot internal cold I've got, real Italian. I hate this country like poison, sure it would kill me.

I should rather like an apartment for six weeks or so - Ebersteinburg, Baden - anywhere - where I can lie in bed all day if I want to - and where I needn't see people. But don't at all know what you feel like, since you have not written lately.

Rained a bit today - quite cool. Pino and Carletto gone out into town.

D.H.L.

 

Shall wire - suppose you had all my letters addressed to the Kingsley.

 

Hotel Lôwen Lichtental 13 August 1929

Dear Else:

Hans says it rains in Bavaria, and Max Mohr says it rains in Bavaria, so I suppose it does. Only now I hope it has left off. Here it is quite decent, sunny mornings, cloudy afternoons, and quite pleasant. The Schwiegermutter is here, but says she will go back to the Stift on Thursday. On Friday her 'heissgeliebte Anita' is due to arrive with the not so heissgeliebter-aber dochgeliebter Hinke: they will stay a while here in the Lôwen. I have never met the Hinke, so I have a joy in store.

We had the 50n Geburtstagsfeier on Sunday evening, very noble, Bowie, trout, ducks, and nine people - three Halms, two Schweikhards, one Kugler - and they all seemed very happy and we all kept it up very bravely. But alas, next day Frieda was in one of the worst moods I have ever seen her in! - a Seelenkater, or however you spell it.

You hear the pictures are to be returned to me on condition that they are never shown again in England, but sent away to me on the Continent, that they may never pollute that island of lily-livered angels again. What hypocrisy and poltroonery, and how I detest and despise my England. I had rather be a German or anything than belong to such a nation of craven, cowardly hypocrites. My curse on them! They will burn my four picture books, will they? So it is decreed. But they shall burn through the thread of their own existence as a nation, at the same time. Delenda est Cartago! - but she will destroy herself, amply. Che nuoia!

Your mother says we are to stay here till the middle of September. I hope not. We have been here a month on Thursday, and when the heissgeliebte Annie is here we shall surely be a superfluity. I should like to move in another week or ten days. Shall we come to Bavaria, to Rottach, do you think? or best go south to Lugano?

I wonder if Hans is setting off across the mountains?

We are going to tea with some Taormina friends, Americans, who are staying in the Stephanie. Your mother says: Du wirst was Schones sehen, das Stephanie! - It is all I can do not to make a really rude remark. I am so sick of all those old lies. It is terrible to be old, one becomes a bottle of old, but never mellow lies - lies, lies, lies! everything. Weisheit der Alten! - nineteenth century lies.

Well, I hope it's pleasant in Irschenhausen. Only today I threw away the flowers I gathered when you were here - and the toadflax (wilde Lowenmàule) were still fresh.

D. H. L.

Remember me to Alfred, and Hans - and is Marianne better?

 

 

 

Lôwen Lichtental Baden-Baden 21 August 1929

Dear Else:

Frieda says she wants to stay till Sunday, to have her bath and her masseuse once more. She is still troubled about the foot, though it is much better. - So I suppose we shall arrive in Munchen on Sunday evening. - Max Mohr says he will meet us at Rottach station with a Wagen - and he knows of a nice little house for us. So it sounds quite good, if only it will not rain.

Your mother is going back into the Stift today - very sad - and Annie is going to her tomorrow. I am very fed up with here, and shall be glad to be gone too.

So - we shall see you one of these days in Bavaria!

D. H. L.

 

 

Hotel Lôwen Monday Dear Else:

fust a line to say we expect to leave here for Munchen next Saturday. - I have written to Max Mohr to say we shall arrive in Rottach either on Sunday or Monday. I suppose we shall stay one night in Munchen. What is the name of the hotel where we stayed last time? at the station?

Marianne sounded quite sad in her letter to Frieda. I'm so sorry, and do hope she's feeling belter.

The Hinkes arrived on Saturday, both very nice. They are staying in the Lôwen here -your mother too - she would not go back to the Stift. But Hinke returns to Volklingen today, and Annie and your mother return to the Stift on Thursday - so we want to depart on Saturday. I want to go - I get really depressed here - and you know it isn't usual for me to get depressed. But here I get spells of hopeless feeling, heavy, and I hate it. What is it? I never have them in other countries. Is it Germany? or your mother, who is now so afraid of death? Anyhow I hate it, and want to go away. So I expect we shall see you in Bavaria - perhaps even in: Munchen. I'm so glad you are having a good time. - I can just see the „ yellow Pfifferlinge in the woods.

Regards to Alfred and to Marianne. - It has begun to rain again I here!

 

 

Villa Beau Soleil Bandol, Var France 4 October 1929

 

 

Dear Else:

Here we are already in a house of our own, a nice little bungalow villa right on the sea - and with bathroom and all conveniences - and a nice woman to cook and clean. It is very easy and I like it. I still love the Mediterranean, it still seems young as Odysseus, in the morning. And Frieda is happy. The only trouble is my health, which is not very good. For some reason, which I don't understand, I lost a lot of strength in Germany. I believe Germany would kill me, if I had to stay long in it. Now it has killed Stresemann - whom will it not kill? - everybody except the Hindenburgs and the old women in the Stifts. Those ancient ones are the terrible fungi, parasites of the younger life.

It is very lovely, the wind, the clouds, the running sea that bursts up like blossom on the island opposite. If only I was well, and had my strength back!

But I am so weak. And something inside me weeps black tears. I wish it would go away.

Max Mohr is quite near in the Goélands Hotel - always very nice and willing to do everything he can to help. But also his voice says the same thing over and over again: Ailes ist nichts? Why must everybody say it? - when it is only they who are nothing, and perhaps not even they. When the morning comes, and the sea runs silvery and the distant islands are delicate and clear, then I feel again, only man is vile. But man, at the moment, is very vile.

Perhaps a woman, Francesca Ewald, whose husband is brother of the Salem Ewald woman, will write to you about translating some short story of mine. Do advise her all you can.

The Huxleys say they want to come, and take a house here. I rather hope they won't. The Brews ters also may come for the winter - their girl is in school in England.

I do hope Marianne is well from her Ischias, and that everything goes pleasantly. Frieda's foot is nearly better - still a little stiffness.

Ever D. H. L.

 

 

Beau Soleil Bandol, Var France 14 December 1929

 

Dear Else:

I got a copy of 'Plumed Serpent' and tried to translate a hymn - but you might as well ask me to translate into Hottentot - I can't even begin. So that's that. I think Tal of Vienna is going to do 'Lady C. ' - and the translator Herbert E. Herlitschka, Wiedner Gurtel 6, Wien IV, has written me several times. He seems a competent and experienced translator - and his criticism of the translation of 'Women in Love' made my blood feel chill. He says he would be glad to help you with 'Plumed Serpent, ' if there is any difficulty, or to go over the manuscript if you could send him a carbon copy. You must please yourself about it.

You are coming to see us in the New Year. I wish you would send an approximate date, as my sister Ada also wants to come, and Barby. There's only one little extra bedroom.

We've had lovely sunny weather all week-today is a most beautiful day, still and sunny. The narcissus are in full flower in the tiny field next to us. So yellow.

My health has been a great nuisance - not so good as last winter - and it wearies me. Then I don't want to do anything.

The Brewsters are still in the hotel - and Mr and Mrs Di Chiara from Capri (she is American) and Ida Rauh (Mrs Max Eastman - the socialist's wife) from Santa Fe-and they all come trooping along, so we are by no means alone. Frieda loves her little house - though it's very commonplace - but it is sunny and warm and easy, so one doesn't grumble. Her foot still troubles her a bit.

Have you seen Dr Osborne's translation of 'Fantasia'? - quite good, in my opinion.

D. H. L.

 

I shall write again directly.

Love.

 

 

Beau Soleil Bandol, Var 30 January 1930

 

Dear Else:

So you got back safely - at least as far as Strassburg. Here all is the same - I lay out today in the mouth of the garage, because the mistral is blowing - a sunny, brilliant day with blue sea and sharp white foam.

Barby helps Frieda to look after me, and all goes very well. Yesterday the bronchitis was much better, but today it is tiresome again - probably the wind.

The doctor sent word about the nursing home at Vence - it is not much of a place - like a little hotel or convalescent home. If I make good progress here, I shall not go to Vence - but if I don't get better, I will. But truly, I am already much stronger for this rest.

It was very kind of you to come all that long way to give us a helping hand - it did Frieda a lot of good, to share the responsibility with you, and I was glad to see you.

I have asked for a copy of 'The Escaped Cock' for you. Barby is still in an unhappy state, inside herself. Oh dear!

Remember me to Friedel.

D. H. L.