LETTERS FROM ABROAD
anything else. The fury of social engagements is on me. It is a thing on which you cannot compose an ode, like that on the West Wind. I am willing to try, if it only would allow me some time to do it. The poet Hafiz was willing to exchange the wealth of Samarkand and Bokhara for a mole on the cheek of his beloved maiden, I am willing to ‘give London away for my corner in Uttarayan. But London is not mine to dispose of;—neither was the wealth of Samarkand and Bokhara the Persian poet’s. So our extravagance does not cost us anything, nor does it bring us any help.
I am going to Oxford to-morrow. Then I shall be knocking about in different places. Just at this moment, I am starting for a tea party given in my honour, from which I cannot absent myself on any pretext, unless I can manage to be run over by a motor car in the London street. It is a matter of eternal wonder to me why this does not happen to me four times a day. You won’t believe my scarcity of time, if I run on to the end of this note-paper, So I hastily bid you farewell.
Every day I have been wishing to write you a letter —but the flesh is weak. My days have become solid like cannon balls, heavy with engagements. It is not true that I have no leisure at all, but unfortunately I cannot utilise interrupted leisure for any work
