Hotel Minerva
LUGANO

Aug. 17

Dear Viola,

I don't know if I have sent you one or both of these cards. I have a list but it gets rather muddled. Thank you so much for your letter and the enclosed cutting - but especially for the charming picture of the little Linda. Your letter has

just come and I am putting the E.P. Magnum Opus in my
little hand-pocket-bag to read over dinner, later. Glancing at the
article, it seems a fairly intilligent and sympathetic write-up.
I am telling Bryher about NAXOS, she will be interested. It is a

good of you to be interested in my BY AVON RIVER book of the
long essay and the poems ; I don't remember what I wrote you but
Macmillan seem pleased with it, only I don't know when they
think of publishing, I will get them to send you a copy, if I have
a chance to send them round. Yes, I saw Richard Mansefield in

several plays, with E., I saw Peer Gynt, as I remember. I saw him in
a sort of pseudo-Spanish thing, called Don Carlos, I think, or
something of that sort. I can't remember what else, but I was
a great "fan" ( is that word still used ? ) of him. The play
you speak of is Cymbeline, I think, with Imogene and Fidele. I think I
am right. I have an idea I saw it myself, remember her anyway, in
sort of boy-shepherd clothes. Yes, I did see Julius C. as well;
I do remember how impressed I was. Indeed ... we were
matinee-girls at about the same time, it seems. I am in the
throes of trying to get the second book that Macmil. ask for, into some
shape.

shape.

So will you forgive this, just to thank you,
and I will send on any news, if any. I have been very quiet here and
terribly busy but quite a crowd is due do..., in early September.
all my best to you all there and special to the Lady LL Linda,

September 9.

Minerva Hotel

LUGANO

Switzerland.

Dear Viola,

Thank you so much for your two letters and the cards; the water-lily is lovely; I always feel that should be our national flower.

The kittens are always funny and bring me good-luck, I am sure, to judge from the effect last year's cards have had on me - I am so well and happy here, and now this week, Bryher joined me and a friend from London and two old Austrian friends, so we have been very gay. I shall get to work again, when they go back. I hope to stay on here until the place closes in Nov., but Villa Kenwin always reaches me, when in doubt.

What views you open up with your mention of Mrs. Parrot. I spent winters, mostly in Suisse, in those days, back in the late 20ies, was it? and usually wrote my last, to return if he would, when I got back in the summer. I gave Mrs. P. some of my then child's outgrown clothes for her girl - wrote her that I had some clothes if she would come for them, but she never wrote back, so I think they must have moved from London, as she was very keen always on the little-girl frocks and underclothes I passed on to her. I never heard word of her or her whereabouts. I am sorry. Bryher is having packages sent to a number of people from South Africa. I am sorry to hear that those you sent to Italy have not arrived, but we had trouble too. Many things are taken, but those you sent may yet turn up.

Thank you so much for the glimps of the happy family. I am sending back the photograph with two ordinary cards, in the envelope you enclosed. This will reach you first, by air.

You ask of old frineds. I hear that T.S. Eliot had a great success.

A friend writes: "He gave a reading at Yale which was a success of the century. He has been built up into such

a classic by his devotees among the faculty that I swear if Christ himself had come in person there would not have been so much interest in seeing him, and certainly there would not have been so many people who had read his works."

I love to hear of your garden. I will try to find some proper cactus cards for you; there is quite a collection of them in the public gardens, but small and they keep them in little pots and set them around under a monkey-puzzle tree, a little exotic garden by itself. There is a wonderful tree here called Davidia, do you know it? It is very rare, called white-handkerchief-tree, from China, Tibet - anyhow, it is supposed to be the Tree under which Buddha sat at the moment of divine inspiration- a most odd tree, but a friend in England identified it for me, as they apparently have one or two rare ones in Kew gardens there. It is covered with WHITE LEAVES, which are really the drooping leaf-shaped petals of the flowers. There are these white petals or leaves and the green ones, of the same shape, at the same time, so you get an effect as of a ghost-tree merging with a green one. Do you know this tree?

No, that pillared porch is on the slope of Castagnola, that is the grand or "rick" villa section. There is the rather ordinary cheaper or tourist end, and then here I am in the middle, in the old town, proper!

I like to hear about all those games. Do people play charades any more? And parties out of doors ... we had our dinners on the porch here, or in the garden, they call the open space before a house, the "terrace", but with us, as I remember, a terrace was up or down hill. But now we have dinner indoors at night, but windows always wide-open and oddly no pests, flies or mosquitoes of any kind ... and crickets going full tilt, with small silent lizards in the garden and many butterflies.

I am writing in space, not my usual, and paper crinkles anyway, so not much is gained. But do write again.

Nov. 19

H. ALDINGTON

HÔTEL DE LA PAIX
LAUSANNE
(SUISSE)

Dear Viola,

I thought of you all yesterday; I believe yesterday was T. Day. It
was so good of you to ask P. out there, and I will be sure to hear
from her of what fun she had with you all. She said in the
excitement of "meeting Con" last time, she forgot the little duck
bag that she said she would take to you, from me. I have not
been able to get at the tapestry as the suit-case is stored
in Bryher's attic or cellar and she has been in the throes of
moving over from her un-heatable villa to the tiny house near here,
at Pully, white she shares with a friend in the winter. It is the
most charming but TINY place. It is only about a half-hour by tram
from here and she comes in almost every day and has tea with me at one
of those marvelous places I wrote you about.

Thank you so much for the Sitwell cuttings. I find some of them amazing, but I am so glad to find out the reactions over there. Edith is a charming person but rather strikes people sometimes as rather "in costume", with beautiful barbaric or quatrocento jems and built-up turbans or toques, usually of vivid velvet, turquoise or maroon or Nile-green. She needs a setting and usually has one; at heart, she is extremely kind and sympathetic, but I do feel there is as you say, a good bit of "brother-sister act" about some of this.

P. will have told you of her. She hurt her back on the boat, shifting her bags and has been rather helpless and I suspect, not too happy.

However, she has had a social whirl and triumph!

There are translations and photographs of Eliot in our main book-shnp;
a whole window to him but they did that last year with the French Nobel,
André Gide whom I knew slightly, so evidently it is "done."

Your embroidery sounds great and great fun. I have been so busy going over a
attack of old note-books that I haven't dared to get out my "pieces". I
look forward to it later; I have about 20 terribly written pencil

I look forward to it later; I have about 20 terribly written pencil
notes, all back through the 1930 period. Fortunately, during the

I wrote you lately, or fairly lately, by air, to thank you for having P. there. She did enjoy the first visit, so much.

I want a good long gossip, but I have my "overseas" to finish - but this comes with so much love to you all there