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Saturday afternoon

March 27, 1915

I SHALL write you my letter to-day in this café Biard, whither I've come for shelter out of a terrific storm—rain and thunder. I'm soaked and my bones are in dismay already. It is the most absurd rot to have to think like an old pusson every time the rain falls. This is rheumatiz for a dead spit for me. But I am not sad, I am only surprised at God.

I am writing my book. Ça marche, ça va, ça se dessine. It's good.

Last night I woke to hear torrential rain. I got up with a candle and made the shutters firm, and that awful line of Geo. Meredith's sang in my head: “And Welcome Waterspouts that Bring Fresh Rain.” Then I dreamed that I went to stay with the sisters Brontë who kept a boarding house called the Brontë Institut—painfully far from the station, and all the way there through heather. It was a sober place with linoleum on the stairs. Charlotte met me at the door and said, “Emily is lying down.” K. I found was also there, taking supper. He broke an orange into a bowl of bread and milk. “Russian fashion,” said he. “Try it. It's very good.” But I refrained.

Then the bell tinkled and the concierge gave me your letter…. How can all these people afford cabs? Even girls in pinafores without hats are jumping into fiacres. I cannot afford even the principle.

I found a photograph of Willy to-day. He looked like Edward VII. in spirits of wine—an awful fathead. Of course, he has got something, but he's terribly small beer, I'm afraid. And a snob and heartless. So I feel. Frank Harris is writing pro-Germanics in The Continental Times. He is roaring down England and roaring up Germany. I feel very disgusted. “And you?” (as they are always singing in Wagner's operas for a kick-off).

There goes Eve Balfour. Yes, it is. No, it isn't. Yes, it is. No, it isn't. Alas, another case of mistaken identity, like the darkey who was asked why he stole the old lady's parrot and said, “A-aw Boss, Ah took it for a lark.”

“Tig, what a fool you are to-day.”

“But it won't stop raining, and I'm stuck, and wondering if the waiter will flick me away next time he comes.”