ALS signed twice, “Rudyard Kipling” and “RK,” three pages on two adjoining sheets, 4.75 x 7.5, Grand Hotel and Kurenstalt letterhead, January 25, 1911. Letter to C. H. S. Taylor, in part: “John came down on the 15th with no end of a cold, fever, glands, &c. which might have been anything and under the fostering care of the local fool (Muller) probably would have been. He sailed up to the verge of 104o and got us rather a hectic time but he came down again and is now hungry, rude and in great need of amusement. When I chuck up writing I am going to be a sick-nurse. I have great gifts that way-when the wife is nearby to support me. We’d had two days of valley fog after a long stretch of fine weather and today it looks as if it might snow. There isn’t quite enough snow for the ski-ers and the monastery slopes are about as hard as road-pavement. Still, beginners go out there and wonder why skiing is such hard work and why falling never gets softer. Waddy told me last night that a hockey-team from Lucerno had challenged us. He says that he understands that they have never handled a hockey-stick more than three times and so we shall win. It strikes me I heard the same yarn before Zurich took us on...Today will be a paper-chase on skis starting at the boys jump across the valley. Minor abrasions, contusions, lesions, wrenches & sprains are reported from the bob-run, but no deaths, and the percentage of objectionable people is much lower. I do wish you & the Patons were here.” Double-matted and framed unfolded with a head-and-shoulders portrait of Kipling to an overall size of 21.75 x 15, with a window on the reverse for viewing the second page. In fine condition, with intersecting folds. Accompanied by the original mailing envelope, addressed in Kipling’s hand. Awarded the Nobel Prize four years prior, Kipling had reached the peak of his literary career by 1911. Eager to escape London’s various entrapments, he would seek refuge amid the Swiss mountains of Engelberg; a necessary annual sojourn for Kipling, who, according to biographer Lord Birkenhead, longed for ‘the snow, the wind lipping over a pass…the icicles glittering from the rock-face and the racing mountain torrent that fed the sawmills.’ An insightful letter from the zenith of the English storyteller’s career. Pre-certified PSA/DNA.
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