Violet to Vita- Letter No. 3

(Undated) 1918

My beautiful,
Because there’s no getting away from the fact that you are beautiful. I become inarticulate when I look at you- at the splendid ivory column of your neck, of your eyes like smouldering jewels, at your mouth with its voluptuously chiseled lips, palely red, like some fading wine stain.
I may be writing rubbish, but then I am drunk. Drunk with the beauty of my Mitya! All today I was incoherent. I tell you, there is a barbaric splendour about you that conquered not only me, but everyone who saw you. You are made to conquer, Mitya, not to be conquered. You were superb. You could have the world at your feet. Even my mother, who is not easily impressed, shared my opinion. You have also changed, it appears? They said, this evening after you had gone, that you were like a dazzling Gypsy. My sister’s words, not mine. A Gypsy potentate, a sovereign- what you will, but still a Gypsy.
They also said they noticed a new exuberance in you, something akin to sheer animal spirits- that never was there before. You may love me, Mitya, but anyone would be proud to be loved by you, even if they were to be thrown aside and forgotten- for somebody new.
Everyone is vulgar, petty, “mesquin,”1 beyond all words, in comparison with you. It would be an unpardonable impudence to limit you to one life, one love, one interest. Yours are all lives, all loves, all interests! Beloved, my beautiful, I have shown myself naked to you, mentally, physically and morally.
Good God alive! No one in this earth has as much claim to you as I have. No one in this world.

Yours, Lushka

1. Paltry

Violet to Vita- Letter No. 2

Dambatenne, Ceylon
January 2, 1911

I am in a strange mood today, Vita mia, I cannot make up my mind whether I am freak in every possible respect, or just simply- an unnatural child. Enlighten me by your wisdom and tell me my future, oh phythoness!
I have had every conceivable thing in the way of adventures this last two years. Shall I disclose some of the more thrilling for your benefit? You ask nothing better, do you? And it’s exactly because I comprehend your curiosity- quite natural really- that I’m determined not to tell.
I have more memories than if I were a thousand years old. A great chest whose drawers are crammed with balanced sheets, verses, love letters, with law suits, novels, with locks of hair rolled up amid the receipts- hides fewer memories than my sad brain. It’s a pyramid, an immense vault containing more dead than common grave. I am a cemetery detested by the moon where, as with remorse, drag out long verses, which fasten themselves to my most sacred deaths.
--- et patati patat, I could go on reciting for half an hour if this would help to solace my spleen.
Your last missive told me much about your present state. Shall I admit it, not hiding anything, that I’ve been given much cord to twist again. What a bitch you are! Excuse my language. I employ it on certain occasions to bury my feelings which are apt to prove too much for me at times.
Well here’s something which I think will make you laugh: imagine, chere amie, that I’ve brought back an alligator from my jungle expedition- an enormous one such as no longer exists in our times, enormous as the step of a staircase!
This takes your breath away really for once. (I see your scandalized face from here: “What a vulgar outburst!”)
I killed it with my little rifle and if you are very good (as you would say), you shall have a purse made out of it for your birthday present!
Do you know that you have ceased to be a reality for me? You are so far away that it seems to me you have never existed outside of my dreams. You are a mirage which recedes to the degree that one approaches to it. Speaking about mirages, I saw a very beautiful one in the Sues Canal at the mouth of the Red Sea. I was gazing with distracted eye at the desert which stretches out to infinity, the intense implacable sun gleaming as a furnace, a camel marching with great unequal steps towards the south- when suddenly I recall letting out a loud cry: “See over there, the trees, the water?”
One looks: it seems then that a lake encircled by date trees and leafy shrubs, incredibly blue and seductive, had passed unobserved. Immediately we rush to the maps, snatch up the spectacles, then all together to the Captain, who, high up in his cabin is stretched out in a sultry posture. “What is that lake which glitters in the distance, so blue, so solitary?”
The Captain descends, grumbling, directs his telescope towards the Egyptian shore: “That, ladies, that is quite simple a mirage!” and he returns to his quarters, still shaking with his habitual healthy and vulgar laughter.
Myself, I remain for a long time leaning on the balustrade with dreaming eyes. I seemed to see so many things in this reality which, after all, was only a mirage.

Violet to Vita- Letter No. 1

Colombo, Ceylon
December 1910

To my incomparable sister
Of the velvet eyes,
The mother-of-pearl skin,
The ebony hair,

The pomegranate lips,
The clove like breath,
By the inspiration of Dawn,
Greetings and Prosperity.

I write to you beneath a bewildering swaying of gigantic bamboo trees, at the far end of a garden which ought to belong to the Thousand and One Nights, or, if you prefer, this resembles El Dorado.
Do you like orchids? I adore them.
You would have the same feelings if you could see them as I do at this moment: meaning, in clusters, purpled, narcotic, with here and there some shameful misalliance as is suitable for plebian orchids.
Haven’t I a talent for descriptions, darling? But I think you will not expect anything better when I tell you that it is 90 degrees in the shade and my poor aching body is in a complete state of collapse, both moral and physical.
Would that I were the daughter of a sea-wolf, to go roving with only sleepers on my feet, a necklace, and that’s all!!!
I am becoming incoherent; I’d better stop.
Beneath a blazing tropical midday sky, the road to Maradane is reduced to powder: … on each side arises the unexpected; foliage in turn somber, sparkling, or brilliant. The heat is such that the slightest movement is exhausting. At a distance in a cloud of dust, one perceives the great weary oxen with their bloodshot eyes and backs slashed by blows. Alongside, gleaming black, the ox drivers.
Everywhere reflections, everywhere light, and then, from time to time, a coconut falls, slowly, with a dull sound, on the brown earth.
A land of absolute repose, of an absolute beauty, a rich land, an unbelievable land, bursting forth with all fruits and spices- the purity of a vermilion hand, enamoured of light, drunk by sunshine.
POSTSCRIPT: What do you say about my oriental style? As for me, I am stunned by it! I flatter myself I am the possessor of one of the most adaptable natures in existence.

Dambatenne at 5000 feet,
200 feet from the sun.
4 December 1910.

I am giddy, the dizziness of heights.
I feel tiny, so tiny … you have no idea … from one moment to the next it seems that I should be swallowed up. All the surrounding mountains conspire to cruch me with their weight. Immense shaggy rocks are heaped up pell-mell around the house. The view is superb. 2000 feet below us smiling hills with delicate sylvan slopes can be perceived.
You see it, the stump of Adam’s Peak in the distant haze. Nearby it’s the jungle, then, the sea. Here and there the lagoons-girded by banana trees, pomegranate cactus, camphor trees, eucalyptus, and nutmeg trees- smoke in the sun like enormous tubs.
Unnecessary to tell you that I am of a sovereign laziness and that nothing less than a monsoon would make me abandon my divan. All of this is understood.
How far away is England! Vita mia!
How is it possible that you are not here?
It occurred to me several times during my sojourn, to ask myself, in effect, why you don’t make any effort to come here, in spite of everything, in spite of everything??? I shouldn’t wish to be in your place for an empire! This is not so bad, it seems to me, for a person who is double-faced.
Now for the little matter-of-fact information you love: we will be going perhaps to spend several days towards the end of this month at Nuwara Eliya, but you can write to me here and it will be forwarded.
I had all sorts of adventures on the steamer that I should like to be able to tell you about in person. Among others, one very amusing with a Spanish lady and other with – ma non importa. It will keep. Enough to tell you that the lady Violetta amused herself madly at the expense of others. Which is perhaps not altogether a good thing, but one pardons youth for many things, especially at 16 ½. These are what you call puerilities. I call them simply imprudences- which amounts to about the same thing.
Do try not to get married before I return.

Dambatenne
12 December 1910

In vain one looks for some coherence, some telltale blade of grass in the inextricable labyrinth which is your last letter- a labyrinth, alas, which lacks an Ariadne to provide the conducting thread.
But after a brief attempt, I give up guessing! It’s too hot to persist. Unless you have become suddenly enamoured of some happy mortal, I confess myself incapable of reading between your lines. Oh well, this will arrange itself.
In attentively rereading suddenly a sort of heavy anguish which I can only qualify as apprehension has just made my heart beat rapidly and makes my hand tremble as I write to you …
It’s trembling and it’s sad.
For the first time your extra two years seem to me very real, arrogant, sinister.
But don’t believe that I haven’t foreseen this moment: often I have imagined myself at this turning.
Oh, for pity sake, tell me that I am wrong, that it is my devilish imagination which overpowers me.
After all, I’m only a girl. I ought to have foreseen that perhaps at your age a masculine liaison would come about. I would be wise to accept this. I feel that I’m about to say improper things. You won’t laugh, promise that you won’t laugh. For a long time I’ve asked nothing of you, so grant me this. It would hurt so.
Tomorrow we’re going to Nuwara Eliya. We plan to spend most of this week in the jungle where these gentlemen-hunters are going to hunt alligators.
I hope terribly that they won’t force me to participate. These enormous beasts all bleeding- pouah! It makes one shudder. Then we will go to see the buried cities, beginning with Anuradhapura. The jungle makes me tremble. I pray to return intact.

Violetta