Katherine Mansfield, The Woman Behind The Books (Including Letters, Journals, Essays & Articles). Katherine Mansfield
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letter from you to-day. I am sending you the Banks drawings this evening. Enough string came with my parcel from Ida to make it possible. If you want any meat (and if—oh, well no—not necessarily) bring some down with you, please dear. Meat and tea. That is all we want. It is a very grey day again, here, half raining—and a loud roaring noise in the trees. This morning a robin flew into my room. I caught it. It did not seem at all frightened but lay still and very warm. I carried it to the window and I cannot tell you what a strange joyful feeling—when the little bird flew out of my hands. I am sorry you did not write to me. I count on your letters in the morning and always wake up early and listen for the postman. Without them the day is very silent.
Summer 1913
Summer 1913
THANK you for the money: I'm going to start again keeping a strict account of every penny I spend and then we can see where the screw is loose or the shoe pinches—or whatever it is.
Last night as I got into bed the bed refused to have me and down I flew with my feet up in the air. I was terrified but I couldn't help laughing—and once started I kept on. It seemed no end of a joke to be all alone in what R. C. would call the “profound stillness of the June night” and to be served that age-old trick!
“Mrs. Walter” is here to-day and we're having clean pinnies from head to foot. Such relief that I've written my reviews again and started my Epilogue. I went in to see Baby G. this morning. He was sucking. Such a pretty sight as a rule. But Mrs. G.'s sharp wan face above him somehow filled me with horror.
Things have straightened out in my mind and I'm rather ashamed that I told you—what I did yesterday. It sings in my ears rather like the wail of the little girl left behind on the fence—more anger than anything else.
In November 1913, we went to live in Paris, in a flat at 31 rue de Tournon, not 32, as printed by mistake in the Journal.
Paris: 31 rue de Tournon — February 1914 —
Paris: 31 rue de Tournon
February 1914
To J. M. Murry
LESLEY writes me, the weather is beastly—and here it is so warm and sunny that I have sat with my window open yesterday and to-day. (Yes, dear, mentioned ‘with intent.’) I wish you would buy a pair of shoes as well as the pepper and salt trousers. Try to. You want them so badly and I've no faith in those cheap Boulevard beauties.
Everything, here, too ‘is just the same.’ The femme de ménage is singing in the kitchen—a most improbable song. It runs along, very blithe and nice—for about five notes and then it drops—any distance you like, but a little deeper each time. If the ‘aspects’ were not good that song would frighten me no end … pro-vi-ded that I was in a little house on the edge of the steppes with a mushroom shaped cloud over it and no smoke coming out of the chimney, etc., etc. But things being what they are, my romantic mind imagines it a kind of fifteenth century French Provincial Ride-a-Cock-Horse—you know the business … dashing off on someone's knee to get a pound of butter and being suddenly “tumbled into the gutter.” Which, after all, is a very pleasant place to fall. I wonder if Queens played this Disturbing Game with their youngest pages.
My door has been mended. I am told that a workman came at nine, wrenched out the remains of the old panel, tapped the wood with an iron hammer, clapped in a new panel, clattered over the hall—but I did not hear a sound. I slept until a quarter to ten.
February 1914
February 1914
YOU are good to me! Two letters this morning and a telegram yesterday afternoon. I wished that I might have sent you one in return but I thought you would not expect it so I … guarded the money. It would be a great relief to talk over everything, but by the time you get this letter it will be Friday morning and unless your plans have changed you will have no time to reply to me except ‘in person.’ I talked over ‘the business’ with you yesterday as much as I could by letter and without you. Depend upon us—we're quite strong enough now to find a way out of our difficulties and we will and be happy, too, and do our work. (By being happy I mean happy together in the ‘odd times,’ you know.) And if I can get a room in London that hasn't another opening out of it and isn't the logical end of a passage I can work there as well as anywhere—supposing we arrange to leave here at once.
After a miserable winter (1914–15) in a damp and draughty cottage near Great Missenden ( Journal, pp. 15–23) during part of which K. M. was crippled by arthritis, and was unable to write, she went to Paris in February, returning to Missenden at the end of the month, but only to escape again to Paris in March and again in May.
Monday — Rose Tree Cottage — The Lee, Great Missenden — March 1, 1915 —
Monday
Rose Tree Cottage
The Lee, Great Missenden
March 1, 1915
To S. S. Koteliansky
I HOPE you are not waiting for me to-day—for I am unable to come to London. My rheumatism still makes walking an impossibility—and I suffer very much. However I am in hopes it will leave me suddenly and then I shall come. We are going to shut up this house and live in London until the Summer. Jack has seen some rooms (rather, they were my idea) in Fitzroy Street and as soon as I am able to move I am going to see them. So we shall be in London quite soon and more or less permanently. This cottage is too cold and too depressing.
When we are settled in London we must have some good times together. Make up a little basket of dreams—will you—and I will, too, and we shall be ready, then. I feel about 800, Koteliansky, for I can hardly walk at all—nor turn in my bed without crying out against my bones.
Monday — March 8, 1915
Monday
March 8, 1915
I HAVE wanted to write to you; you have been in my mind several days. I am in bed. I am not at all well. Some mysterious pains seem to like me so well that they will not leave me…. All the same I am grateful to your Ancestral Grandfathers—for, for some reason I can work. I am writing quite quickly—and it's good. Send me a little letter when you have the time. It is very cold here. It is winter and the sky from my window looks like ashes. I hear my little maid go thumping about in the kitchen and when she is quiet I listen to the wind. My God, what poverty! So I write about hot weather and happy love and broad bands of sunlight and cafés—all the things that make life to me. Yes, you are quite right. I am wicked. Would it be very rude if I asked you to send me a few cigarettes? If it would—do not send them.
To-day I had a most lovely postcard sent me from my concierge in Paris—hand painted roses as big as cabbages—and so many of them they simply fall out of the vase!
Wednesday, late afternoon — March 11
Wednesday, late afternoon
March 11,
YOUR