This is an archived copy of the KMS website from April 2021. To view the current website, click here.


30 July 1922

Hotel Chateau Belle Vue, Sierre, Switzerland

D.B.
   We could not phone you last thing, when this letter came, because of the Festa. Will you decide what you would like to do & phone Ida here. She will then get through to Zurich.
   I am glad its nice where you are. We had a quite wonderful time here in the garden before the rain fell. (Huge great drops like ½ d buns.) But the garden was lighted by lanterns & a faraway band played & there were Bengal lights, golden rain, rockets. Marvellous! There was a special dinner, too, with a whole great salmon lying on a bed of roses with little crayfish adoring.
   I am v glad the ladies are nice. Isn't it pleasant to sit in friendly tumpany again?
   Yes, Somerset Maugham lays it on too thick. Its too downright good a story - don't you think? Too oily! And there is not enough rain in it. The rain keeps stopping. The whole story ought to have been soaked through & through - or steamed with the after the rain feeling. And it isn't & doesn't.
   What about Northanger Abbey? Is it possible? And the New Statesman?
   I like you awfully
                       Y.W. [To J. M. Murry, late July 1922.]