6 Dec 1921

6 December 1921

Chalet des Sapins, Montana-sur-Sierre, Switzerland

I am writing to you before breakfast. Its just sunrise and the sky is a hedge sparrow egg blue, the fir trees are quivering with light. This is simply a marvellous climate for sun. We have far more sun than at the South of France, and while it shines it is warmer. On the other hand - out of it - one might be in the Arctic Zone - and it freezes so hard at night that one dare not let the chauffage down, even. It is queer to be in the sun and to look down at the clouds. We are above them here. But yesterday for instance it was like the old original flood. Just Montana bobbed above the huge lakes of pale water. There wasn't a thing to be seen but cloud below. When are the photographs of your paintings to come? Send them soon! Are you working? Or resting after your last. Are people gay in London this winter? These awful fogs - I feel I should have to fly to something to get over them, and yet - if one is well • perhaps they dont matter so much and even have their beauty, too.
   Oh dear! I am sure by now you are gasping at the dullness of this letter. To tell you the truth - I am terribly unsettled for the moment. It will pass. But while it is here I seem to have no mind except for what is worrying me. I am making another effort to throw off my chains - i.e. to be well. And I am waiting for the answer to a letter - I'm half here - half away - its a bad business.  [To Dorothy Brett, 5 December 1921.]

Let us drink champagne when we meet again. Where will that be. When? That glimpse of London in your letters - just that lift of the curtain showing lights, big gay rooms, Dorothy Ireland's mouth, the Ballet, a strain heard from afar, and people round the table and the sound of the bell . . . You took me there for the moment and I turned away from my mountains.
  I see from Eliots grave letter in the Lit. Sup. that he is in Lausanne. It seemed to me very fitting that Lausanne should be his address. What did you think of Lawrence in The Dial? This last month isn't anything like so good; in fact when he gets on to the subject of maleness I lose all patience. What nonsense it all is - and he must know it is. His style changes; he can no longer write. He begs the question. I cant forgive him for that - its a sin. Santyana on Dickens was a revelation to me - of Santyana. It showed how little he is really attached to Life. He has the ideas of a child of ten. Its absurd to pretend at this time of day that we do not know more than children. Anatole France doesn't tell half enough either in his Vie en Fleur. Oh, how I hate Pound - Ezra Pound. I always did and always shall - with his new "lumps" or "chunks" of Proust and all his chinese tub thumping. He is a vulgar fellow. All the same I do think The Dial is by far the most interesting magazine going today. [Continuation of letter to Sydney Schiff from 3 December 1921.]