ight, and
when I woke, as in my travelling I was accustomed to do, at dawn, I
saw from my bed through an open window--a small window, for it is in
a fortress tower--the whole great expanse to the east. Not far off,
and springing from the summit of a great ruin, where long ago a seed
had fallen, rose a great silver-birch, and the half-transparent,
drooping branches and hanging clusters of leaf broke the outline of
the grey hills beyond, for the hills were, for a wonder, grey instead
of blue. There was a mackerel sky, with the clouds dropping on the
mountain-tops till you could hardly say which was which. It was a
mackerel sky of a very bold and extraordinary kind--not a dish of
mackerel, but a world of mackerel! The mountains are certainly most
lovely. In this clear air they usually seem close at hand. It was
only this morning, with the faint glimpse of the dawn whilst the
night clouds were still unpierced by the sunlight, that I seemed to
realize their greatness. I have seen the same enlightening effect of
aerial perspective a few times before--in Colorado, in Upper India,
in Thibet, and in the uplands amongst the Andes.

There is certainly something in looking at things from above which
tends to raise one's own self-esteem. From the height, inequalities
simply disappear. This I have often felt on a big scale when
ballooning, or, better still, from an aeroplane. Even here from the
tower the outlook is somehow quite different from below. One
realizes the place and all around it, not in detail, but as a whole.
I shall certainly sleep up here occasionally, when you have come and
we have settled down to our life as it is to be. I shall live in my
own room downstairs, where I can have the intimacy of the garden.
But I shall appreciate it all the more from now and again losing the
sense of intimacy for a while, and surveying it without the sense of
one's own self-importance.

I hope you have started on that matter of the servants. For myself,
I don't care a button whether or not there are any servants at all;
but I know well that you won't come till you have made your
arrangements regarding them! Another thing, Aunt Janet. You must
not be killed with work here, and it is all so vast . . . Why can't
you get some sort of secretary who will write your letters and do all
t