2110-4-10-3

Schloss Tollet Grieskirchen Ober Österreich

Aug 8th 1926

Dear John.

How good of you to send me the "Dancing Floor" - I do appreciate your having thought of us all out here - I can only tell you we have been driven one after the other into complete & excited silence by it - & Reggie, who is our authority on all books of that nature says it

without doubt is the best. I certainly thought it supreme & you'd have liked to see each of them throwing away "Beau Sabreur" as they finished it with grunts of disgust - saying "One can't enjoy that after the "Dancing Floor".

I don't think, in fact I'm sure, I've never felt so transported by a book of adventure - it was

impossible to come back off the road past the Causeway & Creek & the edges of the Dancing Floor to order & eat meals & make plans in Austria. So with the excuse of a cough & a tummy ache I went to bed & read it there & just lived in it with Coré & Leithen & Maris & Janni on that ma[g]ic island. The bit about the old Priest & the journey carrying the figure of Christ on the bier through the empty village was a most wonderful part &

such a masterstroke of design, over against the quaking terrors of the crowd under the moon.

What I think I most admire about you is your dual capacity 1 to write these books & 2) not to dawdle in your bath. I feel if I had such a books on the stocks I'd never never never get out of my bath & should never be in time for any meals. How do you manage to be so imaginative & so punctual? I rather forget the clock. But still I don't understand how you command your actions in two worlds so completely & distinctly as you do - & have time to be the best Pal in the world besides. How are you all &

where - I wonder. I wish you were all here, to swell the ranks of us as we troop out walking, to meals, to tennis etc. But I expect you are at serious work on the hill somewhere with John, & is that duck Alice declaiming Shakspeare to ever increasing & appreciative audiences? Do tell her how thrilled we were to see about her elocution prize in "the Times". & give her a bear's hug from me about it

Our stream of visitors begins next week & my heart fails as I look out at the sheets of rain which are falling. But youth keeps itself going by its own gabblings & they are all young, except a heavy couple in the middle. Violet Wortley & Agnes Anstruther who have just proposed themselves. I don't want them much & I do want you all terribly. But that is the way of the world.

Good bye dear John & thank you again & again for your thrilling & fascinating book.

yrs ever Hilda Grenfell.