I adore this place. The whole country is lovely, and full of forest and deep meadow. It is simple and healthy. If I live in Paris I may be doomed to things I don't desire. I am afraid of big towns. Here I get up at 7.30. I am happy all day. I go to bed at 10. I am frightened of Paris. I want to live here.
I have seen the "terrain." It is the best here, and the only one left. I must build a house. If I could build a châlet for 12,000 francs—£500—and live in a home of my own, how happy I would be. I must raise the money somehow. It would give me a home, quiet, retired, healthy, and near England. If I live in Egypt I know what my life would be. If I live in the south of Italy I know I should be idle and worse. I want to live here. Do think over this and send me over the architect.[18] M. Bonnet is excellent and is ready to carry out any idea. I want a little châlet of wood and plaster walls, the wooden beams showing and the white square of plaster diapering the framework—like, I regret to say—Shakespeare's house—like old English sixteenth-century farmers' houses. So your architect has me waiting for him, as he is waiting for me.
Do you think the idea absurd?
I got the Chronicle, many thanks. I see the writer on Prince—A.2.11.—does not mention my name—foolish of her—it is a woman.
I, as you, the poem of my days, are away, am forced to write. I have begun something that I think will be very good.
I breakfast to-morrow with the Stannards: what a great passionate, splendid writer John Strange Winter is! How little people understand her work! Bootle's Baby is an "oeuvre symboliste"—it is really only the style and the subject that are wrong. Pray never speak lightly of Bootle's Baby—Indeed pray never speak of it at all—I never do.
Yours,
Oscar.