4 Aug 1921

4 August 1921

Chalet des Sapins, Montana-sur-Sierre, Switzerland

What is your picture - the one you thought of in your bath? Yes, I find hot baths very inspiring, so does my cousin Elizabeth. She reads Shakespeare in hers. No, she wasn't the Von Hutton. She was Von Arnheim - and now she's Countess Russell, Bertie's sister-in-law. Her love of flowers is really her greatest charm. Not that she says very much, but every word tells. A man wouldn't discover it in her - he wouldn't realise how deep it is. For no man loves flowers as women can. Elizabeth looks cooly at the exquisite petunias and says in a small faraway voice: "They have a very perfect scent." And I feel I can hear oceans of love breaking in her heart for petunias and nasturiums and snapdragons. I believe you have been painting petunias - your purple velvety ones. Were they? Oh, we have the most wonderful ones here - SUCH colours. If I were an artist I could never resist them. But they must be difficult, because in spite of the weight of colour there's a transparent light shining through look in them. The look one imagines the fruits had in Aladdin's orchard . . .

[To Dorothy Brett in Collected Letters, 4 August, 1921.]