25 July.

My dear Gertrude –

I must swear to begin with – the F. O. out of a clear sky hurled at me this evening a copy of a circular wire to Paris & Rome & Cairo, informing all the world of my struggling infant of a Tsana negotiation – Good Lord deliver us! not even a day’s warning – they’d said they wouldn’t do it – they had asked me whether the communication should be made here or by them – I said “by me” - & there & then came some silly idiot & pulled the whole thing down – Lord – how I hate fools – they might at least have let me know they were going to do this, - I could at least have had the chance to tell the Habesh myself – now Colli will do it – our political enemy & a very clever one – the Italians want the lake themselves – Can any one in his senses imagine they are going to help us to get it, for our beaux yeaux?

Well – its their job I suppose – but there isn’t a soul in the F. O. who knows Abyssinia from Afghanistan, & they might have let me know, even if they were really obliged to make such idiots of themselves.

I saw the Foreign Minister this morning – Colli will see him tomorrow morning – All he has to say is that a dam will flood Dembea, or if you give that to England you must give us an equivalent – Up will bustle France all false bonhomie & financial lust – they’ll want an equivalent too – Good Lord – I wish I’d gone to Basreh – another week might have done it – I suppose some one in the F. O. wanted to go on leave to see his girl or something and couldn’t be bothered with telegrams – they draw up steadily to that partition of Abyssinia which all sane Englishmen should avoid –

Well – for me it is a blow – my own familiar friend has stabbed me – I will go & plant out seedlings & pretend I don’t care - & Thesiger can come back and make war as soon as he likes –

Not that I shan’t fight still, but I shall be beaten – on the point –

No doubt it is good for the soul –

My dear – your letter was most interesting – your breath of the world & great men & things – And yet – there is that enclosure – my lover who went into the desert – I am like that – I am minded to answer it, for it tears at me –

Answer it – but how? They are not to be answered those things – not by words – As for you I love you and all of you – the tenderness the wisdom the deep thought I delight in and reverence – the passion I know, it warms me, it runs in my veins – When I return you say shall I find you woman to my man – or friend to my soul – why both – in a way the only way we can – God made the world & not we ourselves – but man to woman – god made that also – but these we come not – for as you say it would be maimed & crippled that you passed those bars – maimed & crippled – when I would have you free and happy – walker of the desert –

Storms, passion, life also, it all goes – Life goes, as you say – it goes – I know it - & it must go –

Then I came back, after walking the garden, to you dear Gertrude, of like passions with me, and friend of my heart – And I thought I would go on writing, but I can’t see – (My eyes are better – only a strain or something – I was using too strong glasses & working in too bad a light) - & so we’ll go out & look at the sunset together – and I’ll begin to laugh because I was so angry at the F.O., and be ridiculously happy because I have got you with me –

26.

I’m still wondering the why of the move of the F. O. Is it that they know the thing had leaked out to Rome, & that so it was better to take the bull by the horns? That I could understand, but why not tell me? Even it was so, there is no sense in strengthening Colli here where the thing is to be done or not done – Rome & London are far away – now Colli can go to the Habesh & say that the British Govt has told has told him of a thing which I told them was secret –

Can it be that by some extremity of love of other men’s dead phrases that they have done this, magnificently careless of their own losses so long as the conscience swells in the waistcoat – It just might be –

Can it be that by [?] the dead letter to their own [?], they hope to drag from France and Italy some useful information, some corresponding quixotism?

Can it be that somebody wants to show Lord K there are other things of Brentford –

Can it be that K. himself was not consulted on a matter that is [?] concerns him? Or can it be that he was not consulted because he is ill, dead, or going to India, and his mantle has fallen to another?

Well – no matter, we’ll fight – last night, thinking in the early morning, I found I had an arrow or two left – But my lake, and the miles of smiling cotton – all thrown away by some idiot in London –

Today I’ve got to go & lunch with the Frenchman – I wonder if he knows yet – But he may – so I am sharpening the first arrow. He shall pay me with news of the railway arrangements made a year ago but never communicated – with news of a loan which I know they offered – with news of a tax on commerce at Djibuti contrary to Treaty – with news of a sale of arms to Abyssinia of which I hold the proof – at least he shall do these things if he hinders me –

As for the Italian – but I’m tired of talking all the stuff –

He never said a word – may not know yet – and we eat [sic] & drank & talked of Marchand (an old friend) & the Channel Tunnel & 30,000 men - & all that sort of thing that one talks of with such people –

& now I’m back with Miles Backhouse & his troubles to listen to till port time – The time goes as life goes –

I haven’t a word to say dear queen of my soul - & yet I can’t say goodbye to you – can’t come out of my garden where dwelt serenity – and she still dwells there – just round a rosebush and we shall find her – I’m not like you in one thing – I don’t want you to feel the sword and the hunger & the thirst – I’d put you back into peace and completeness – the “dovelike confidence”- what did he say? was it not – “[?] consents not the heart that is ravaged” – But you are not wronged my dear – it is only for a time that life pulls & drags – there remains the other things and we have them, all of them – when one loses anything that one heart is set upon, or life itself, it hurts because we held it to us so fiercely – let it go and we float serene once more – shall I love you less because I shall never be your lover, never lie in your arms and forget the world? I think not. Even that shall go and we remain –

Passion is the best way the only way one thinks – or men like me think whose heart goes with it – the only way to say I love you – mixed with it tied to it by the breath we breathe – But what then of death, or age or sickness – does love go down with them so altogether – It is only music, that ecstasy of love, that sets sighing & dancing all our blood – the pied piper that we shall never follow you and I – But even than this we will be greater – if god wills.
Dick.