Letter: to A. G. Dew-Smith
[HOTEL BELVEDERE, DAVOS, NOVEMBER 1880.]
Figure me to yourself, I pray - A man of my peculiar cut - Apart from dancing and deray, Into an Alpine valley shut;
Shut in a kind of damned Hotel, Discountenanced by God and man; The food? - Sir, you would do as well To cram your belly full of bran.
The company? Alas, the day That I should dwell with such a crew, With devil anything to say, Nor any one to say it to!
The place? Although they call it Platz, I will be bold and state my view; It’s not a place at all - and that’s The bottom verity, my Dew.
There are, as I will not deny, Innumerable inns; a road; Several Alps indifferent high; The snow’s inviolable abode;
Eleven English parsons, all Entirely inoffensive; four True human beings - what I call Human - the deuce a cipher more;
A climate of surprising worth; Innumerable dogs that bark; Some air, some weather, and some earth; A native race - God save the mark! -
A race that works, yet cannot work, Yodels, but cannot yodel right, Such as, unhelp’d, with rusty dirk, I vow that I could wholly smite.
A river that from morn to night Down all the valley plays the fool; Not once she pauses in her flight, Nor knows the comfort of a pool;
But still keeps up, by straight or bend, The selfsame pace she hath begun - Still hurry, hurry, to the end - Good God, is that the way to run?
If I a river were, I hope That I should better realise The opportunities and scope Of that romantic enterprise.
I should not ape the merely strange, But aim besides at the divine; And continuity and change I still should labour to combine.
Here should I gallop down the race, Here charge the sterling like a bull; There, as a man might wipe his face, Lie, pleased and panting, in a pool.
But what, my Dew, in idle mood, What prate I, minding not my debt? What do I talk of bad or good? The best is still a cigarette.
Me whether evil fate assault, Or smiling providences crown - Whether on high the eternal vault Be blue, or crash with thunder down -
I judge the best, whate’er befall, Is still to sit on one’s behind, And, having duly moistened all, Smoke with an unperturbed mind.
R. L. S.