Katherine Mansfield, The Woman Behind The Books (Including Letters, Journals, Essays & Articles). Katherine Mansfield
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“We pay 7s. 6d. each for those. One a day is £2 5s. a week; two a day is £4 10s. Get them in every morning by the first post. I’ll take what I can.”
Murry stammered his thanks, and prepared to leave. Evidently Fox and Spender had something more important to talk about.”Just a moment,” said Spender, and sat down at his desk. He wrote a cheque for £5.”That’s in advance,”he said.
“It will be taken from your first earnings.”It never was.
Murry moved to London the next day, intending to stay at home for a week or two until he could find and furnish a room.
On the stroke of his appointment he knocked at the door of Katherine’s flat; on the stroke of his knock she opened the door. She was ready : dressed in a tailored coat and skirt of dark blue serge, with a small cream-coloured straw hat trimmed with a tiny bunch of gay flowers, with grey gloves — there was something almost boyish about her. Perhaps it came from the little tailored coat which hung straight from the shoulders. But no : it was deeper, more essential than that. She was not, somehow, primarily a woman. He was not conscious of her as a woman. She was a perfectly simple, perfectly exquisite human being, whose naturalness made him natural. With her there was no need to pretend.
“I’ve got a job,”he said.
Her brown eyes sparkled.”Not really?” she said incredulously. He nodded. It was hard to prevent his face from beaming with a stupid smile.”Really and truly…. Let me show you.”
She led the way into her writing-room. He took Spender’s cheque out of his pocket-book and laid it before her.”That’s in advance — for work,”he said.
She seemed to be quite as blissfully astonished by it as himself. She clasped her hands together and said,”I am glad.”And he knew she meant it. He began to explain how it had happened.”No. don’t tell me now,” she said.”Let’s go and have tea.”
As she was closing the door she paused, as though remembering something.”You haven’t seen my flat,” she said, and led the way in.”You haven’t seen the kitchen.”It had a gas-stove, a table and two chairs, and a big window, which she opened.”That is my view,”she said. It looked out over a vast forest of chimney-pots, with here and there in the distance a tall grey church spire, almost silvery in the sunlight. No street could be seen. The noise of the London traffic sank to a low hum — no more, it seemed, than the natural murmur of the forest; making the quiet intense.
“Do you like my view?”she asked.
“It’s very beautiful.”
She showed him her second sitting-room. Like the first, its walls were covered with plain brown paper and the floor was matting. There was a grand piano and a divan. The fireplace was filled with lavender, and on the floor was a big pawa shell, and a flat oval bowl of water with a green-bronze lizard within.
She showed him her bathroom and her little bedroom — almost a cubicle — with room for a camp-bed and chair; and then she had shown him everything.
“Do you like the place I live in?”
“Very much,”he said.
“It’s a good place for work, and it’s not dear. £52 a year. It’s better, don’t you think, to spend the money on the rooms and go short on the other things? Better be hungry than sordid.”
They went to the ground floor of the Isola Bella, and sat with their backs to the street window. There was no one there except themselves, and the proprietress who served them. Then Murry told his story. She listened. Half-way through,”I like your Fox,” she said. At the end :”Let me look at that cheque again.”He produced it. She studied it.
“I don’t think I’ve ever liked the look of a cheque so much.”
“Do you know,” said Murry.”I think you are in some way responsible for this?”
“Me?”
“Yes. You see, I think you clinched it in my mind. If it hadn’t been for that talk of ours — if it hadn’t been for your telling me not to go back — I might never have tackled Fox.”
She seemed to ponder this. Her beautiful hand, cupped like a shell, moved slowly on the table.”I wonder … I would like to think so,”she said.
Then he broached his plan. It was that they should edit Rhythm together. As far as he then knew — his knowledge was very superficial — the magazine was paying its way. He would send her all the manuscripts submitted; and once a week they would meet and compare notes. She would write a story every month. But perhaps the more excellent part of the plan, in his eyes, was the weekly meeting.
She seemed delighted by the idea.”I’m not getting on very well with The New Age,”she confessed.”They have a conviction that I can only write satire. And I’m not a very satirical person — really.”
It was amazing to him, at that moment, that anyone should have supposed she was a satirical person at all.
“I believe in something,” she went on.”Let’s call it truth. It’s a very big thing. It’s inside us and outside us. We have to discover it. That’s what the artist is for — to become true by discovering truth. Or perhaps it’s the other way about. Truth is so important that when you discover a tiny bit of it, that you forget all about everything else — and all about yourself.”
“Perhaps,” said Murry,”that is what Keats meant when he said that ‘ Beauty is Truth, Truth Beauty.”’
“I would like to know … The only reason for satire — and I think it’s a real reason — is that it attacks those who deny the truth. It’s defending truth; but it isn’t truth. But one can’t attack the false without knowing — or feeling — the true. It would be horrible if we did — somehow, corrupt.”
They went to meet Goodyear. To him the story had to be told once again. He, too, seemed pleased.
“Whatever you do, don’t live at home. Living at home has been the ruin of me,” he added ruefully. Then he laughed.”I have a parent,”he explained to Katherine,”who will not kick me out. Why, he’s glad when I drift back home again, and sponge on him. And so of course, I do. The duty of a parent is to kick his offspring out, and if he fails, then the duty of the offspring is to kick himself out. That’s the law of life — which whoso offendeth, it were better for him to wear a sky-blue suit and be an advertising agent — as I am about to be.”
They were incredulous.
“It’s true. I am already. I have in my care the advertising of the Stepney Furnishing Company. You two are artists; you are effete. You do not know, and you will not believe, that I am the man of the future. In me the great twin streams of the Zeitgeist converge — advertising and hire purchase. The man who is the advertising agent for a hire-purchase company is the New Machiavelli. Wells has missed the ‘bus this time. Ecce homo!”
Katherine enjoyed Frederick Goodyear. He belonged to a tribe she knew. He was a born Pa Man. After this evening they became great friends.
The three stood on the pavement of the fountain in Piccadilly Circus. It was a lovely spring night. Nobody wanted to go home. They were happy together.
So they walked round and round.
“I’m going to begin hunting for a room to-morrow — not more than ten shillings a week,”said Murry.
Goodyear approved. Then silence fell again. It was easy to be silent in that evening and that happiness.
“I have a suggestion to make,”said Katherine airily.”Why not have a room in my flat. There’s the music-room. I hardly ever use it, and I certainly don’t need it. We could move the piano. You can have the use of the kitchen and the bathroom. And I won’t charge you ten shillings, because I shall have two rooms and you only one. Would seven and six be too much? I think it will suit you better