Seskovik
23 November
My dear Gertrude.

So you arrived at Beirut the day before yesterday. Tomorrow probably you will be going up to Damascus – and then begins the real adventures – I wish I had a map. I would like to follow your plans which seemed to me as I read your letter splendid and sweeping – I can follow you by memory fairly well, but I lose your point with the Beni Sabbi a little south of Maan & from there to Hail is surely a colossal trek – Good luck go with you if you try it! but I know it is a very big thing – For your palaces your road your Baghdad your Persia your O’Connor & your Fars (not – not including Fars) I don’t not feel so nervous – but Hail from Maan – Mashallah – Still even by the lesser rates there so much of the unknown that your soul will drink its fill of delight & adventure & tremble and fatigue and danger even – Yes, you are a rolling stone – so are all people worth having – if not in bodyt then in mind – for after all it is the mind that matters –

I agree with you that Carruthers is not very likely to get for far from Yemen – still he might - & its a pleasing thing – So is your beloved Wadi Dawasir –

Yes – of course I’ll go & see your mother and hear all the news of you - & wish you were there – and I will wire when we leave Albania –

Many congratulations on the finishment of the book – and I’ll love to have it, though as you know archaeology is over my ignorant head.

The news for me that my frontier line has been accepted by Sir E. Grey and proposed by him to the Powers as a basis of settlement – It is now up to me to get my colleagues on to it – they diverge – there are many strings – but it may happen if it is written - & then there will be a frontier of S. Albania – But that is only the beginning. Who is going to keep Greeks here – for how long – in what places in strength – who is to replace them? By troops or gendarmerie & how many – what are the civil offices to do – especially with the Greeks still here (for I am sure they must be here) Who is going to deal with the sacred legions and the Bektachi dervishes - & the Cretan patriot & Macedonian comitadfi – who is going to draw a commercial treaty with Greece – who is going to keep friends with the Pharnai and every priest - & yet hold them politics & fanaticism? Who is going to keep roads open when they lie in Greece? I could go on for a week – and make some sort of plans – Roughly the Greeks must stay – they won’t want to – the master key to make them is the Dodecanese & certain other lesser things – but they must stay as friends – to make money among other things - & the Italians & Austrians must be recruited with them – They must stay till the Albanian gendarmerie is born and made, say April – but here in the meantime must come European officers delegates of Albania (commission of control) who will sit & look at Greek govt & learn the A.B.C. of what they have to do – it may be the drunken Helot – it may be just improving on another mans plans. There must be a commercial treaty with Greece for the roads run through Greece – Then in the end there must be a sending of a small body of troops, say part of those now in Scutari = the partial disarmament of the people because it will never really be done. The finding of local officials – hundreds of things –

But I don’t do them, though I shall help with the plans – All must be announced & shown as ready when the frontier is announced – and the F.O. has to be persuaded of this.

In the end I shall become thoroughly unpopular with that institution & retire to private life – though they have at the last moment suddenly adopted my line they seem by no means contented with my efforts – at least Crowe sends me a long telegram saying he can’t understand what I wanted – or only with such difficulty that he has still a headache – or something like that. I don’t know Crowe, but it seems to me his head aches easily.

So I am a philosopher you say – Sometimes I think you are right and that all philosophers are fools – but sometimes I don’t - & so the show is spoilt – mostly I don’t – And of course you want to live, my dear – you do live – I never know anybody more alive – And yet you touch philosophy too –

Its late - & I’m all alone – and thinking of those things – of philosophy of love and life – and an evening at Rounton – and what it all meant – I told you then I was a man of the earth earthy – if there is philosophy it has been painfully acquired – it is only a way of looking over the fence with some pretence of dignity – Well – but what did it mean? You are in the desert – I am in the mountains, and in those places much could be said under the clouds – Did it mean that the fence was folly and that we might have been man and woman as God made us & been happy - Yes – I know – what you feel, you would do = and why not – but still and after all you don’t know – that way lies a great & splendid thing, but for you all sorts of dangers and difficulties and dislikes – we do not live in deserts nor in mountains – Perhaps one goes there, as I think tonight, to be tempted of the devil – to be told be him, or one’s own heart for they are all one, what a fool one was – that things lost are lost - & nothing comes again – not with the first fine careless rapture –

But I myself answer to myself that it’s a lie – If I had been your man to you, in the bodies we live in, - would it change us – surely not – we could not be together long - & there’s the afterwards sometimes to be afraid of.

Did you mean this? Do you even think like this? I don’t know – probably not – as I told you I am a man of the earth –

And still it is a great and splendid thing – the birthright of every one – for woman as for man – only so many of them don’t understand the divine simplicity of it –

And I always have maintained that this curious powerful sex attraction is a thing right natural and to be gratified – and still – only when both are equal in knowledge and risk and power to weigh it, power to take it boldly carelessly as one takes any form of life or death –

And if it is not gratified – what then – are we any the worse – my devil of the mountain says yes – and I don’t know . But anyway he made me write all this, though now I’ve choked him – burn his ashes – and forget him –

And be my friend
Dick