The earth, instead
of being brown, was red, purple, green. "You won't believe me," she
added, "there is no colour like it in England." She adopted, indeed,
a condescending tone towards that poor island, which was now advancing
chilly crocuses and nipped violets in nooks, in copses, in cosy corners,
tended by rosy old gardeners in mufflers, who were always touching
their hats and bobbing obsequiously. She went on to deride the islanders
themselves. Rumours of London all in a ferment over a General Election
had reached them even out here. "It seems incredible," she went on,
"that people should care whether Asquith is in or Austen Chamberlin out,
and while you scream yourselves hoarse about politics you let the only
people who are trying for something good starve or simply laugh at them.
When have you ever encouraged a living artist? Or bought his best work?
Why are you all so ugly and so servile? Here the servants are human
beings. They talk to one as if they were equals. As far as I can tell
there are no aristocrats."
Perhaps it was the mention of aristocrats that reminded her of Richard
Dalloway and Rachel, for she ran on with the same penful to describe her
niece.
"It's an odd fate that has put me in charge of a girl," she wrote,
"considering that I have never got on well with women, or had much to do
with them. However, I must retract some of the things that I have
said against them.
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