To have gone down to you and inflicted the noise of it on you would have simply made you nervous, while the risk to myself would have been very great indeed.

Still, I have waited and waited, feeling it scarcely possible to write to you to say, 'I am not coming this year.' Ah, I am so very sorry and disappointed! I hoped against hope for a break in the weather, and an improvement in myself; now we must go, and there is no hope.

For about a fortnight I have been a prisoner in the house.

This climate won't let me live, there's the truth.

So we are going on Monday.