Dressed ! And took a little stroll in the sunshine this morning. Off chicken too & had Mutton for dinner ! Now some letters & then a siesta. That nice airy convalescent feeling. And Peter called this morning with your 21/1/44 letter, wherein the Fascist gold braid scalp had come. All very cock-a-hoop. Your letter was. As always a rare delight, and blessedly unrare. Yes we’ll like the same opera. Puccini is, of course too melodious for the purist but not for me. Yes Gigli is famed here. Tauber is not. But you’ll love my record of Caruso & Melba. – Dear Alcester-Postie-Sack. I hope he reassured his mate that the ash tray was all right. Yes the gold braid was off a magnificent blue & gold banner in the Napoli school of Art. Your scalp. So that’s your story. Genuine loot.

                        Dear Candy, the Dog that Does Not Beg – She has infinite wisdom. Dickie has great chances for having good manners & happy days by beginning in Candy’s company. Now to siesta for a while. See you later.

                        1600 hrs. A sweet sleep & up to the roof with a book. Johnny came & Jonny (The O.C). They are kind & fond all of them. Silly kind folk.

                        Olive oil. Yes. Plenty & easy to get. I will try to get a Special Bottle here, with some good packing device & send you some. It’s certainly very easy to get. A sort of national oil. If my son needs olive oil he shall have it. By the same token he shall have bat oil in ten years time. As soon as I’m out I’ll set about sending you a large bottle of olive oil.  ̶  So glad you liked the beads. Are they the flat stones with little circles in between ? If so they hung in a shop in Napoli & just told me to buy them. Maybe it’s an earlier string. At least they’ll help fill the box. You said that came safely in a postscript. It is a pretty kind of wood. Has Dickie found out how to open his money box yet ? I shan’t show anyone. Useful private knowledge for me to have.

                        I have just undergone a most disturbing experience in reading Mary Webb‘s “Gone to Earth”. With every exquisite page I needed you. If you haven’t read it don’t, until we can read together. I’ll find a lovely edition for you & we’ll share each word. It’s the same standard as Tess, as Charlotte Brontë, the very top standard. And the Divine Pitiless love of wild things, of Little birds, all the agony of love, human, animal & Natural is soul moving. There are passages I had to stop over & ache for you to read them. We will read this together. It is exquisite & profoundly lovely.

                        Good about the diary, & Italian book. A good, smallish dictionary will help. But I have the army one – Peters as I have lost my own.

                        Two very fey letters from Mother today & one prim & demure one from Peter Garbett ! But Christopher’s was exquisite.  & his lorry for Dickie ! Nothing to do with you or me ; a person whose name is Christopher Suffield is making a Thing for another person, named Richard Scott Daniell ! I want to clap my hands, softly not to disturb anything.

                        So we like our bath ! And we splash, hard. Mother writes of pictures with Dickie laughing. Good. I only call him Dickie to you. Richard to the world. That is important.

                        At times I worry about my ability to write well & effectively after my soldiering But to balance these probably inevitable periods of unhappy doubt I have compensating ones when I feel quite sure that you & your home, and growing son & our wonder at the light & colour of living will give me the power to write well & fluently. I must not be afraid to work up & away. Away from the simple quick-return style which is a bondage. We must be bold and I must be above all industrious. Throw myself into it. Away alone sometimes to the woods to sit alone and then to write all out. There must be an element of gamble -or of Faith, & then we’ll find ourselves. But I am quite sure that without you at my side I’d be lost & dumb, stricken with the dullest mediocrity. It is your sweet & multicoloured liveliness of spirit. Anything uplifting to the heart, – music, the sky, the poetry of a story of a man’s courage, all is referred by me instinctively to you. Being so generous to me in letting me love you is enough & to spare. Loving me as you do honours me beyond compare. The existence of our son, our little son, leaves me quite breathless. I can only repay by trying to give your life fulfilment, & by using the considerable over-pouring of my feelings to honour you in my work, to show love & goodliness to others, as we see it. That I shall try to do, and with honesty & integrity. Pray God I am able to do so. And for our little boy, a sunkissed childhood, with old apple trees & a swing & water meadows, & contented gazing into the heart of a homely fire, & nuts & apples & the soft furriness of a dog to play with & love, & the quiet love of two sane happy parents to entrance his childhood.