26 Jul 1921

26 July 1921

Chalet des Sapins, Montana-sur-Sierre, Switzerland

Dearest Brett,
I tremendously enjoyed that long letter. I had been out with M. down the road a little way & then across a stream & into the forest. There are small glades & lawns among the trees filled with flowers. I sat under a big fir & he went gathering. It was a dazzling-bright day, big silvery clouds pressing hard on the mountain tops - not even the cotton grass moving. Lying on the moss I found minute strawberry plants and violets and baby fir cones - all looked faery - & M. moved near and far - calling out when he found anything special . . . Then he disappeared down into a valley & I got up & explored the little fir parlours and sat on tree stumps & watched ants & wondered where that apricot stone had come from. These forests are marvellous: one feels as though one were on a desert island somehow. There is a blissful feeling of remoteness. As to the butterflies & golden and green dragonflies and big tawny bumblebees they are a whole population. M. came back with a huge bunch of treasures & I walked home & found your letter in the hall. So I sat down on the bottom step of the stairs with the flowers in a wet hanky beside me & read it. Don't you think the stairs are a good place for reading letters? I do. One is somehow suspended. One is on neutral ground - not in ones own world nor in a strange one. They are an almost perfect meeting place. Oh Heavens! How stairs do fascinate me when I think of it. Waiting for people - sitting on strange stairs - hearing steps far above, watching the light playing by itself - hearing - far below a door, looking down into a kind of dim brightness, watching someone come up. But I could go on forever. Must put them in a story though! People come out of themselves on stairs - they issue forth, unprotected. And then the window on a landing. Why is it so different to all other windows? I must stop this . . .

[To Dorothy Brett in Collected Letters, 29 July, 1921.]