18 Aug 1921

18 August 1921

Chalet des Sapins, Montana-sur-Sierre, Switzerland

My dear Sylvia Lynd,
  Forgive me. I hardly dare to say why I havent written. Its so dreadfully the same old reason. And I waited until I was ‘free' again because I wanted to send you more than a little note.
  I was so happy to see your handwriting again. But your news was sorrowful, dear woman. That must have been terribly hard to bear. But one can say nothing to help. Id like you to feel though how I appreciate your lovely courage, how I wish with all my heart that you are ‘well again'.
  I often think of you here. Its such a perfect place - ever so much nicer than the South of France. There are no casinos, not motorcars, no rich-an'-great. Instead there are mountain tops & forests & little hoarse streams & small flowery lawns, & troops of white goats, and innocent rainbows. Would it be impossible for you and your husband to come & stay with us next summer? It isn't a hard place to find either. One takes the train direct from Paris to Sierre - the valley town - & then one winds up the mountain like a spider eating its web. As to the flowers - they are so many and so fair that J.M.M. and I have both ‘taken' to botany. He does all the hunting though which is unfair. If only the Lord would leave off loving me - ‘chastening' love is a horrid kind!

[To Sylvia Lynd, Collected Letters, early September 1921.]