26 Dec 1921

26 December 1921

Chalet des Sapins, Montana-sur-Sierre, Switzerland

                      Boxing Day
Dearest Brett,
   Your parcils and your letters came today and my bed turned into a corner of Marshalls - such a lovely one. Little O-T-Kosey-San sat against the lilac wall and the hankies and ribbons lay on a very gay wooly quilt. Thank you over and over. I feel I want to wave each of the hankies separately in silent greeting and to send this letter by a carrier pigeon with the three ribbons dangling from its little red feet. Please feel how I appreciate ribbon, too, how they all added to the festa. There was one the green which is really such a heavenly colour that one can hardly believe in it, but all are delicious . . . But what a terrific pace our parcels seem to have come flying at. I had barely sent my petty over the net when back came the letter. O-T-Kosey-San will be in daily use. She is very decorative. _
   Yesterday I heard from Manouhkine. As soon as I am up again and can get into a train into a train I go. After that all is uncertain. Most likely I shall come back here having seen him until May and then strike camp seriously and make for Paris for the treatment. It takes at least four months. But first I must see him and also go to a dentist in Paris & get my teeth pulled out and in. The treatment is very expensive - thats another reason why I want to wait until May. I must make money to pay for it. It is 300 francs a time! And I shall need about 30 times - not to mention hotel bills and very good food which one has to eat all the time one is being treated. And I have to take the Mountain with me - so its always two to be paid for. This means work with a vengeance. I shall manage it, though, and if I emerge with nothing and health I shall be so rich, so awfully rich that I will treat everybody I meet to beaming smiles, at any rate.
   The snow is here at last and still falling. It is deathly cold. But I never have a closed window, dearest. I lived out of doors on my balcony when I was up.
   I must work. Goodbye for now. My mind is dressed like a ship at a regatta with little coloured hanky fiags. Thanks - thanks again dearest for being who you are.
                     Ever
                            Tig [To Dorothy Brett, 26 December 1921.]

Richard
   This letter is a very late lark indeed. It is meant to be for Christmas. Please read it before the New Year, and forgive your erring sister. Thanks most awfully for mine. The size of the pudding put heart into us. Heaven forbid Wingley should eat any for he is enormous already. We weighed him the other day. He was over 12 lbs. You should have seen him sitting in the scales, with a very smug cat -in-a-bastick expression . . .
   Well, Richard, how are you, I wonder? How is the world? Space? Universe? It begins to seem long since I was in England. Perhaps you are quite changed, with moustaches and a collar I have never seen before. We are the same except that our heads are always in the air - little Johnnies head in air - looking for the snow. Which won't fall and won't fall. Ice - we can "do' you as much ice as you like e thick and clear, Sir. But ice is only half the fun. However, everybody says it must fall soon so I suppose we haven't long to wait.
   It has been shockingly cold here. There are days when one is in the clouds for hours and that damp, heavy strange cold is like nothing on earth. Then just Montana clears at night and looking out of my window on to the milk white valley is like looking out of the Ark when it rested on Mount Lebanon (wasnt it?). I feel like a daughter of Noah, but not one of the Daily News ones. [To Richard Murry, 26 December 1921.]

I have chosen today to write because Manoukhine has come a great deal nearer. He has told me that if I go to Paris he will treat me by his new method and there is the word guerison shining in his letter. I believe every word of it; I believe in him implicitly. As soon as I am out of bed (the cold has been too cold) Jones will pack the boxes and I shall go to see him and arrange to return to him in May. I want to spend the winter here. But in May I shall go to Paris for the course of treatment which takes 15 weeks. (Manoukhine is not only a doctor. He is a whole new stage on the journey. I hardly know why.) His treatment consists of applications of the Rayons X.
   One word I must say about Joyce. Having reread the Portrait it seems to me on the whole awfully good. We are going to buy ‘Ulysses'. But Joyce is (if only Pound didn't think so, too) immensely important. Some time ago I found something so repellant in his work that it was difficult to read it. It shocks me to come upon words, expressions and so on that Id shrink from in life. But now it seems to me the new novel, the seeking after Truth is so by far and away the most important thing that one must conquer all minor aversions. They are unworthy.
   Christmas - in cold blood - is not an attractive fête. And the English papers bulging with turkeys are disgusting. Its an awful offence to our intelligence to be served with these pages and pages about Father Christmas and "Pulling a Cracker with my Kind Daddy". To Sydney Schiff, 25 December 1921.]