29 Jul 1921

29 July 1921

Chalet des Sapins, Montana-sur-Sierre, Switzerland

Brett, while I remember. Have you read The Three Mulla-Mulgars by DelaMare. If you haven’t do get it and read it to any infants you know. Its about three monkeys. One seems to read a lot here. Its the kind of house in which you go into a room to comb your hair, find Gulliver’s Travels on the shelf behind the door and are immediately lost to the world. The bedroom walls are of wood; there are thick white carpets on some of the floors — outside the windows wide balconies, & thick striped cotton blinds shut out the midday glare. A great many flowers everywhere - generally apricots ripening on a balcony ledge & looking rather gruesome like little decapitated chickens. If only I can make enough money so as never to leave here for good! One never gets old here. At 65 one is as spry as a two year old & (I suppose it is the climate) all is so easy. The strain is gone. One hasn’t that feeling of dragging a great endless rope out of a dark sea. Do YOU hate London? No, I do see it has its beauty and its charm, too. But all the same one feels so like the swollen sheep that looks up & is not fed. Its so hard, to put it “stuffily" to live from ones centre of being in London.
Now it will be you who won’t be able to read all this . . . Tell me what you are doing, my dear, if you are so inclined. Dont lose any more ½ stones! For Heavens sake put the half stone back again. Look at the Sargol advertisements & be wise in time. God only loves the Fat; the thin people he sticks pins into for ever & ever.
With love to you from
Tig
[To Dorothy Brett in Collected Letters, 29 July, 1921.]