Feb 22 Baghdad Darling Father. You will get this letter quicker than all others because Sir Percy carries it. He is coming home on a hasty mission and will probably only be in England a few days, but I have asked him to communicate with you on his arrival because I feel sure you will want to see him. Also he will discuss with you my plans for the summer. The state of Persia grows worse and worse and it seems unlikely that I could in any case go there with any comfort. I should like to come home for a month if it can be managed. Sir Percy will be able to judge what the journey is like and will report to you, and to me when he returns. He will be given special facilities which I should not have, but I've no doubt I should be helped as much as may be. Anyhow he will be able to tell you what it's all like and if I can get home without quite unreasonable delay I think I'll probably come. If I can't, I could always go to kind Mr Dobbs in Baluchistan, but you and he between you must try to decide what's the best thing to do. Heaven knows how much longer the war may go on. If we are to make anything of a victory, I fear it can't end soon for we are by no means pleasantly situated nor does the future promise well.
I've written all this first, but what I chiefly think of is Springy's death. I enclose a letter to Florence; will you please send it to her. I don't know whether she will risk the journey from Canada with the children. My dear Springy! I think of him as part of so many happy things that have vanished. Oh Father dearest, do you know that tonight it's just 3 years since Dick and I parted. I can't think why the recurring date should bring back all memories so strongly, but it is so, and I've lived again through the four days of 3 years ago almost minute by minute. Dearest you know I love you but this sorrow at the back of everything deadens me in a way to all else, to whether I go home or whether I stay here in the East, or what happens. And yet in a curious way, it quickens the inner life and makes one live more on thought and memory, so that whether I'm with you or away from you, you're just as real a comfort to me always. - Springy's death is just another piece of the old life gone, a life which I can't in imagination carry on into the future. But my poor Florence! what she must have gone through. And the children whom he worshipped and who will never have him to help them as I'd had you.

Well now, I'll finish by writing you an ordinary letter of my doings. I rode last Sunday with Mr Bullard through the gardens S. of Baghdad, and there we saw almond trees just come into flower and rejoiced in them. For the beauty of the world is the one eternal solace and one never wearies of it. We went in to tea at the Convalescent hospital on our way home, where the kind doctor and matron made us welcome. The matron is under 30 I should say and intelligent and charming, a dear little thing. She came just as I left the hospital last year. On Monday afternoon I had a funny, charming expedition. I borrowed a motor and took my old friend and landlord, Musa Chalabi, with his wife and daughter to their garden outside Baghdad, 5 or 6 miles away. Musa's brother, Shakir, lives there and looks after the farming. It was a ramshackle place, with a couple of big, single storeyed, mud-built houses, refuse heaps scattered ingenuously around and even inside the courtyard and a dirty, smelly Arab village, half tent half reed-hut, under their walls; but the sun shone on the river bank, and the growing things and the palm trees, and there were 3 most darling solemn little children of Shakir's to show me the hens and the puppies and the other wonders. We had a large tea with Musa's old sister who lives in one of the houses, and I talked to Shakir's wife, a very handsome woman who doesn't appreciate the blessings of the country, and then we motored home. Musa and his ladies were in the 7th heaven, never I think, having motored before, and I liked it all myself because it was so friendly and simple, and liked it more because they were so much pleased. Musa Chalabi has always been very good and obliging. Not only have I taken his town garden to live in - I don't think he minds that much - but we've turned him out of his fine town house on the river and he has had to go and live in a stuffy little rented house which he doesn't like at all. He has a son in the Turkish army and has no idea what's happened to him - the boy was obliged to take service and would have thought it shame to desert. His parents were praying all through last summer that he might be taken prisoner.

Since that day it has been grey and windy and rainy. I was to have ridden with Gen. Stuart Wortley one afternoon but it was too muddy and showery. I dined one night with the general of the 13th Div., Cayley by name. He is Colin Davidson's chief and they were all passing through Baghdad in a trip to Babylon and Najaf [Najaf, An], he and Colin D. and another general called Andrus. They were all very nice and as they hadn't had a woman to dine with them for over a year, it was quite interesting for them, and they made it very pleasant for me. Another general turned up during the week and introduced himself as a nephew - by marriage - of Amy Strachy. O'Dowd[?] is his name. I took him shopping one afternoon but we didn't find much to buy.

Sir Percy will give you more news of me. Goodbye all my dearest family. Gertrude

You know Sir Percy has been an angel of kindness to me always, but he absurdly exaggerates the value of anything I've done here.

I knew I had another story to tell - today there came in to see me one of my travelling companions of 1914, an Arab of the Dulaim tribe who rode with me for 4 days when I was going back to Damascus [Dimashq (Esh Sham, Damas)]. I liked him very much, he was a good guide, most agreeable and cheerful, and I was glad to see his pleasant face again - as glad as one can be when one of these ghosts of an independent past rises up before one. He set me longing for the desert. The grass is springing there and the black tents flowing with milk and man and beast prosper.