to Mrs. Thomas Stevenson

Chalet Buol, Davos-Platz, December 26, 1881.

MY DEAR MOTHER,—Yesterday, Sunday and Christmas, we finished this eventful journey by a drive in an open sleigh—none others were to be had—seven hours on end through whole forests of Christmas trees.  The cold was beyond belief.  I have often suffered less at a dentist’s.  It was a clear, sunny day, but the sun even at noon falls, at this season, only here and there into the Prättigau.  I kept up as long as I could in an imitation of a street singer:—

Away, ye gay landscapes, ye gardens of roses, etc.

At last Lloyd remarked, a blue mouth speaking from a corpse-coloured face, ‘You seem to be the only one with any courage left?’  And, do you know, with that word my courage disappeared, and I made the rest of the stage in the same dumb wretchedness as the others.  My only terror was lest Fanny should ask for brandy, or laudanum, or something.  So awful was the idea of putting my hands out, that I half thought I would refuse.

Well, none of us are a penny the worse, Lloyd’s cold better; I, with a twinge of the rheumatic; and Fanny better than her ordinary.

General conclusion between Lloyd and me as to the journey: A prolonged visit to the dentist’s, complicated with the fear of death.

Never, O never, do you get me there again.—Ever affectionate son,

R. L. S.