16 Jul 1921

16 July 1921

Chalet des Sapins, Montana-sur-Sierre, Switzerland

We have taken a small not very small chalet here for two years. It is quite remote - in a forest clearing. The windows look over treetops across a valley to snowy peaks the other side. The air feels wonderful but smells more wonderful still. I have never lived in a forest before. One steps out of the house & in a moment one is hidden among the trees. And there are little glades and groves full of flowers, with small ice-cold streams twinkling through. It is my joy to sit there on a tree trunk; if only one could make some small grasshoppery sound of praise to someone - thanks to someone. But who?
  M. and I live like two small timetables. We work all the morning & from tea to supper. After supper we read aloud and smoke; in the afternoon he goes walking & I crawling. The days seem to go by faster and faster. One beaming servant who wears peasant ‘bodies' & full skirts striped with velvet looks after everything. & though the chalet is so arcadian it has got a bathroom with hot water & central heating for the winter & a piano & thick carpets & sun blinds. I am too old not to rejoice in these creature comforts as well.
[To Ottoline Morrell in Collected Letters, 24 July, 1921.]