La Cabane, Villefranche-sur-Mer. August 22d.

our dear Mary,

thanks for the long magic-lantern letter. I read
it on Jean's bed, since it came to the Welcome, and ex-
pounded its contents to him at once. For we are no longer
"in residence". From Aix-les-Bains I went to Provence to
meet Francs Robbins & Bernadine who had motored over
the Pyrennees from St-Jean-de-Luz of unhappy reputation,
and to go to the sea -- Montpellier & Palavas-les-Flots,
its street-fair Lido -- with Jean Bourgoint. Monroe came
here directly, and when I arrived, he had prodigiously
established us in a home: a little garden of gravel &
fig-trees and cactus, a maid named Ida, a compact con-
venience like that of a suite on a steamer -- on the hill
between the harbor and Nice. Fancy my astonishment --
dinner on the table, my books on shelves...

I am much more contented, and working well at my
snail's pace. Just at the moment there is a race between
the snail -- of course it was a turtle -- and Time the
hare, since I want to send a great package of MS back
with Lloyd M., and I've got to find x time for a little
extra work to cover the initial expenses of our change of
way of life. I am so happy to be out of hotels, even
out of the hotel. Here I am as autocratic about the ex-
penditure of my time and energy as I've always intended
to be, and no one even notices. The climates of intimacy

2.

give me fever, not of the blood, but of the disposition.

The hotel, that is, the Welcome, I am sure, would have seemed to me slightly deplorable if I'd had to live in it lately. Dick de Berthier, the charmer, the reprobate, has been there, as well as the de Maleissyes, et choses et autres -- and too much champagne, (that gas which inflates not only as a balloon is inflated but as currency is inflated) and several too many songs and stupours. Before that Jean B. had his vacation, bathing, gorging, beaming, and sulking, in a rapid succession which somehow always seems to be the same activity, the same verb mysteriously conjugated. The infinitely great and merely practically awful Isadora has been about. I've spent a long week-end at Juan plage, which is prettier than the coasts of Utopia, and shall spend others... Lloyd is in better health, and cursing our native land to which he's got to return.

I am sorry you're not happy in your Mme de la Fayette landscape. You deserve and could use such a lot more happiness, or at any rate contentedness. I know that an emptyish purse and a baby with a strong character are hindrances to every sort of caprice and embarassments to a number of fixed purposes... But they are such a difficult and so near universal difficulties that I can scarcely every thing of improving anybody's situation by way of them. As you know, for me, "the scum of the earth" and even "the world's greatest fools" are the results of social mismanage-

3.

ment, of the wrong kind of tenderness and hardness at a
disadvantage or merely too late... You know that a life
which would please you a lot at a good moment and please
you a little even at the worst, would drive me mad; but
what I've wished most about it -- apart from wanting to
be able to withdraw from it myself, as from a place where
I was inevitably maladroit and where the big, bizarre,
glamorous, foreign cards were always stacked against me --
what I've wished most was that you'd be much more
pleased with the life you can't help choosing to live.

I do not believe that the Kingdom of Heaven is
within ourselves, but perhaps Hell is... Hell being in-
decision and regret. Hellish American doctrine, you'll
say -- won't you?

As for Tony... You know he came back to Aix for
another week, pretending to be on his way to Geneva or
Persia or some such place. He'll not, I believe, be much
good to you consecutively. Quite simply because he is
never resentful toward you except at the moment when you've
made him be nice to you in the way you want him to be.
So you'll never get a good action without a bad reaction,
or vice versa. I say this because I think hope is at
least as dangerous as regret.

Above all, I'm happy that the book is going well.
That at any rate is always all to the good -- I mean
always always life everlasting amen. As for getting some-

4.

where where one may be happy -- you wouldn't be happy here
at all just now. Neither should I, for that matter, in
spite of the heat, the sea, the scents, the hidden swimmers,
if I didn't happen at the moment to be alone on the hill,
and fairly patient about being lonesome, and fairly mild
and tenacious about what I hate and what I love, whether
or not -- just whether or not...

Write to me again. Love from us both,

Glenway