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 dee
p 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.
Complete Works of D.H. Lawrence Page 1112