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Paris: 13 Quai aux Fleurs

March 19, 1915

To J. M. Murry

I HAVE just had déjeuner—a large bowl of hot milk and a small rather inferior orange, but still not dressed or washed or at all a nice girl, I want to write to you. The sun is very warm to-day and lazy—the kind of sun that loves to make patterns out of shadows and puts freckles on sleeping babies—a pleasant creature.

I had a vile and loathsome journey. We trailed out of London in a fog that thickened all the way. A hideous little frenchwoman in a mackintosh with a little girl in a dirty face and a sailor suit filled and overflowed my carriage. The child combed its hair with a lump of brown bread, spat apple in our faces, made the ultimate impossible noises. Ugh! how vile. Only one thing rather struck me. It pointed out of the window and piped its eternal “Qu'est-ce?” “C'est de la terre, ma petite,” said the mother, indifferent as a cabbage.

Folkestone looked like a picture painted on a coffin-lid and Boulogne looked like one painted on a sardine tin. Between them rocked an oily sea. I stayed on deck and felt nothing when the destroyer signalled our ship. We were two hours late arriving and then the train to Paris did not even trot once—sauntered, meandered. Happily an old scotchman, one time captain of The California, that big ship that went down in the fog off Tory Island, sat opposite to me and we ‘got chatting.’ He was a scotchman with a pretty, soft accent; when he laughed he put his hand over his eyes and his face never changed—only his belly shook. But he was ‘extremely nice’—quite as good as 1/- worth of Conrad. At Amiens he found a tea-wagon and bought ham and fresh rolls and oranges and wine and would not be paid: so I ate hearty.

Paris looked exactly like anywhere else; it smelled faintly of lavatories. The trees appeared to have shed their buds. So I took a room (the same room) and piled up coats and shawls on my bed to ‘sleep and forget.’ It was all merely dull beyond words and stupid and meaningless.

But to-day the sun is out. I must dress and follow him….

This is a silly old letter—like eating ashes with a fish fork. But it is not meant to be. I rather wanted to tell you the truth….