11 Dec 1921

11 December 1921

Chalet des Sapins, Montana-sur-Sierre, Switzerland

   Forgive me if I hurt you. Please don't mind what I say. It all comes to this: I feel there is a weakness in your more ambitious painting and the cause of it is that you haven't worked long enough to overcome it yet. Dont imagine I do not realise how much work has gone into these pictures. Dear dear Brett - I do with all my heart & I respect you for it. But its useless to take that into consideration when one is considering the result - isn't it? Ill write a letter later. This is to catch the outgoing post.
Yours ever with love
                          Tig [To Dorothy Brett, 11 December 1921.]

Dearest Brett,
   Now Ill answer your letter. I have been, am so beastly ill; its because of the weather. The cold is terrifying. I don't know how to meet it. Perhaps once the real big snow has fallen it will be better. But at present I feel like a slate  pencil living on a slate and my heart does such horrid things that - - - Well, we shall see. It is very bad, though. The pictures of London reminded me of Dostoievsky. The likeness was astonishing. You meant Lytton - didn't you? The one where the head is raised & the nose like a beak & pits beneath the eyes - where he says "And since when has smoke become suspicious - may I ask?" was a very facinating photograph. But Dostoievsky - the spit of Dostoievsky to my mind. I like very much your habit of sending bits in your letters. Winston Churchills article - I suppose it wasnt so really offensive. I disliked it though. Under the humility I smelt insolence. But perhaps that is because I always intensely dislike that man. Dont you think his likeness to Clive Bell is remarkable? (Why do all my fountain pens die? I care for them as if they were babies and they absolutely refuse to live. Is there such a thing as a real pen?)  [To Dorothy Brett, 13 December 1921.]