Of course, I remember old Grundy. It was Goodyear's laugh I heard when I read his name—a kind of snorting laugh, ending in a chuckle and then a sudden terrific frown and he got very red. Do you remember? And you remember the stick he brought from Bombay? He was very pleased with that stick. Your mention of G. gave me Goodyear again—living, young, a bit careless and worried, but enjoying the worry, in the years before the war, when a pale moon shone above Piccadilly Circus and we three stood at the corner and didn't want to separate or to go home…¹

I went out yesterday in a Swiss kerridge to see M. The page 107 Swiss kerridge was a rare old bumper, and the driver who weighed about eighteen stone leaped into the air and then crashed back on to the seat. It was raining. A massive hood was down. I could just put forth a quivering horn from beneath it. Montreux is very ugly and quite empty. But in the shops the people are awfully nice. They are simple, frank, honest beyond words and kind in the German way. The thing about Switzerland is that there is absolutely no de luxe. That makes an enormous difference. It's simply not understood. And one is not expected to be rich. One isn't expected to spend. This is very pleasant indeed. I suppose there is a sort of surface scum of what the Daily Mail calls the “Jazzing World,” but it doesn't touch the place. To put it into a gnut shell, there simply is no fever—no fret. The children are really beautiful. I saw a baby boy yesterday who took my breath away. He was a little grub in a blue tunic with a fistful of flowers—but his eyes! his colour! his health! You want to lie in the grass here and have picnics. Monte Carlo is not in the same world. It's another planet almost.