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[Page 57]
only time I have to make good and it would be suicidal to ask for leave now and spoil all. As you see, my time for collecting data is comparatively short and I must use it to the limit. so as to substantiate any claim I may put in for post-bellum preference. I cannot see, unless some person elects to back me, that I can do better than try for something that should give me a living after the war. Actually I don't altogether look forward with intense delight to the prospect, for it will mean, if I succeed, painting things I don't enthuse over; but it may prove to be a living.
I believe that with private support to work as I would like, and the practise it would afford, I could turn out work that would give me a standing before long, and I feel I have something to say and with the requisite freedom from shrivelling worry about existence, I could say it; but that's only a fond dream and the naked and somewhat angular Truth must be looked at. I prefer her rounded and rosy and young, but she never was anything but an old maid and bony at that. It isn't a case of likes and dislikes but one of glum and snarling necessity and I know of no Maecenas or Endymion Porter who is dead keen to give me a chance to make a name for myself. I think that, if I could do it, I'd rather go to America and paint some of those places I've seen, but the question of finance ever crops up. Those Colorado mesas have never dimmed: in my memory and I am as enthusiastic for the American point of view as most of those born there and as capable of enthusiasm for her natural beauties. Then again with a mother, wife and children born there, and a sister married there, I am very strongly drawn. That's how one gets one's feelings torn. The rain here is enough to give you the Joe Morgans - everything drenched and dripping and damp and all I can do is to hang around and wait for it to clear. Things on the front seem to be going well, but the "Justicia" was a nasty knock.
France, 27/7/18
There has been no let-up in the weather, and from a dead and grey sky, occasionally varied by a sickly glare, which shows