2110-5-2-2

Clinique Miremont Leysin Switzerland

Jan 31. 1928.

Dear John. I've just finished "Witch Wood" & I can't stay my hand from writing to tell you how really great I feel it. You gave it me long ago, but it was devoured by my family & taken away from Tollet & only restored to me to bring out here to read under very ideal conditions. I somehow feel that Walter Scott must be reaching out over the blue bar of Heaven longing to talk to you & tell you how he enjoyed it too. For it has his force in it as in "Heart of Midlothian" - I mean that the conflicts of soul & the great ultimate issues in it are so great - & then your landscapes & your delight in your Scotch language too (Lola tried to read Witch Wood & put it wearily aside & said "Its too

Scotch - I shall never be able to bear it any more than I could bear to read Burns"!) How can you weave so much of it out of yourself, you, whose feet are set in Paternoster Row Westminster & Oxford. Montrose must take you by the hand by night & in all intervals & have you with him in his own century & his one [sc. 'own'] countryside I suppose. But David Sempill is your own self. Never did I feel an author more inside one of his own characters - tho' I've seen you behave so like Mark Kerr I'm not sure I couldn't see you more readily inside his coat. I'm here with Dorothy Palmer for a few days. I brought Reggie out to Lausanne to have his blood searchingly tested by Jeanneret a doctor who has done a lot for Mabel Grey, the Bishop of Bombay, & Sybil Graham! His theory is that one's blood is the mirror of one's health & he takes lots of it at intervals & analyses it & tells one the result, at the end of 5 days, after submitting it to various

tests. I only hope he'll arrive at why Reggie is as unmuscular as a baby & as stoopy as Bob Cecil & as greeny grey in colour as a bit of turtle floating in the soup. He was properly shocked at Reggie's appearance & said that whereas his heart, lungs & various organs seemed quite sound his whole muscular system was very ill indeed of something & he feels sure of finding out what it was through these blood tests. So while we wait for his verdict, we came up here to be with Dorothy. Poor little dear she is starting on the 3rd year on her back & as yet not one of her X ray photographs has shewn any improvement (It is a tubercular hip). But she has only been here 3 months & the last one, taken this week, shews "No change" which to her is a relief but a bitter blow to Luly. She is an angel of courage & cheerfulness & interest in life & full of hope for the future in spite of all defeats in the past. It is a wonderful place, the Dent du Midi shewing in its full height with a valley with the Rhone flowing through it at its base, making the chief view & none of the other peaks are too near or oppressive. It is marvellous[ly]

sunny - but oh! the bright hard shining hygiene of the place. No house that isn't a clinique & no window that isn't balconied & with a bed outside on it. We turn home tomorrow via Paris for a day or two where I expect to find Arthur - stacking up his Chrome business. We've only been a week away from home, but I shall feel it a blessed week if only it puts Reg on the road to good health & I have loved the chance the journey gave me of reading "Witch Wood."

Bless you all.

Yrs.

"Bösekind" [ST: nickname for Mrs Arthur Grenfell first cousin to Susan Tweedsmuir]