Katherine Mansfield, The Woman Behind The Books (Including Letters, Journals, Essays & Articles). Katherine Mansfield
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for the first time and downstairs and because of my hideous wickedness I had begun to cry dreadfully—that is quite true—when in walked the cigarettes—the chocolates and the thrice blessed little bottle of whiskey. So I drank some whiskey and smoked a cigarette and dried my eyes and sent you a very superior form of blessing—which I hope you caught safely.
I am glad that you liked The Little Governess3—but wait. I've written such different things lately—much, much better—and I am going on writing them. Yes, I have a special disease. Pray your Ancestors for my heart.
3 Published in The Signature (another short-lived magazine written by K. M., D. H. Lawrence and me) and republished in Bliss.
March 17, 1915
March 17, 1915
I DID not tell you all the truth last night. When you asked me if I was writing and I said ‘Yes’ it was not quite true. I cannot write my book living in these two rooms. It is impossible—and if I do not write this book I shall die. So I am going away to-morrow to finish it. Then I promise to come back shorn of all my wickedness. It is agony to go, but I must go. Write to me, will you? I will write to you often—write to me often often, for I shall be very lonely, I know. Goodbye, just for now. I press your hands tightly—Goodbye.
Paris: 13 Quai aux Fleurs — March 19, 1915 —
Paris: 13 Quai aux Fleurs
March 19, 1915
To J. M. Murry
I HAVE just had déjeuner—a large bowl of hot milk and a small rather inferior orange, but still not dressed or washed or at all a nice girl, I want to write to you. The sun is very warm to-day and lazy—the kind of sun that loves to make patterns out of shadows and puts freckles on sleeping babies—a pleasant creature.
I had a vile and loathsome journey. We trailed out of London in a fog that thickened all the way. A hideous little frenchwoman in a mackintosh with a little girl in a dirty face and a sailor suit filled and overflowed my carriage. The child combed its hair with a lump of brown bread, spat apple in our faces, made the ultimate impossible noises. Ugh! how vile. Only one thing rather struck me. It pointed out of the window and piped its eternal “Qu'est-ce?” “C'est de la terre, ma petite,” said the mother, indifferent as a cabbage.
Folkestone looked like a picture painted on a coffin-lid and Boulogne looked like one painted on a sardine tin. Between them rocked an oily sea. I stayed on deck and felt nothing when the destroyer signalled our ship. We were two hours late arriving and then the train to Paris did not even trot once—sauntered, meandered. Happily an old scotchman, one time captain of The California, that big ship that went down in the fog off Tory Island, sat opposite to me and we ‘got chatting.’ He was a scotchman with a pretty, soft accent; when he laughed he put his hand over his eyes and his face never changed—only his belly shook. But he was ‘extremely nice’—quite as good as 1/- worth of Conrad. At Amiens he found a tea-wagon and bought ham and fresh rolls and oranges and wine and would not be paid: so I ate hearty.
Paris looked exactly like anywhere else; it smelled faintly of lavatories. The trees appeared to have shed their buds. So I took a room (the same room) and piled up coats and shawls on my bed to ‘sleep and forget.’ It was all merely dull beyond words and stupid and meaningless.
But to-day the sun is out. I must dress and follow him….
This is a silly old letter—like eating ashes with a fish fork. But it is not meant to be. I rather wanted to tell you the truth….
March 19, 1915
March 19, 1915
I WENT to Chartier to lunch and had a maquereau grillé and épinards à la crême. It was very strange to be there alone. I felt that I was a tiny little girl and standing on a chair looking into an aquarium. It was not a sad feeling, only strange and a bit ‘femmeseuleish.’ As I came out it began to snow. A wind like a carving knife cut through the streets, and everybody began to run. So did I—into a café, and there I sat and drank a cup of hot black coffee. Then for the first time I felt in Paris.
It was a little café and hideous, with a black marble top to the counter, garni with lozenges of white and orange. Chauffeurs and their wives and fat men with immense photographic apparatus sat in it. And a white fox-terrier bitch, thin and eager, ran among the tables. Against the window beat a dirty French flag, fraying out on the wind and then flapping on the glass. Does black coffee make you drunk, do you think? I felt quite enivrée [The word is circled with a line and the following remark written in: “Oh, I won't do this: it's like George Moore. Don't be cross.”] and could have sat three years, smoking and sipping and thinking and watching the flakes of snow. And then you know the strange silence that falls upon your heart—the same silence that comes one minute before the curtain rises. I felt that and knew that I should write here. I wish that you would write a poem about that silence some time. It is so peculiar. It is a kind of dying before the new breath is blown into you. As I write, I can almost see the poem you will make—I see the Lord alighting upon the breast of the man and He is very fierce. (Are you laughing at me?)
So after this intense emotion I dashed out of the café, bought some oranges and a packet of rusks and went back to the hotel. Me voici! The garçon has just polished the handles of the door; they are winking and smelling somethink horrible. The sky is still full of snow, but everything is clear to see—the trees against the tall houses, so rich and so fine, and on the grey streets the shiny black hats of the cabmen are like blobs of Lawrence's paint. It's very quiet. A bird chirrups, a man in wooden shoes goes by. Now I shall start working.
Sunday, early afternoon — March 21, 1915
Sunday, early afternoon
March 21, 1915
STILL no letter—perhaps I can be certain of one tomorrow. I walked to the post this morning and then, finding neither light nor murmur there, I went to the Luxembourg gardens. About 3 of the biggest chestnut trees are really in leaf to-day—you never saw anything lovelier, with pigeons and babies adoring. I walked and walked until at last I came to a green plot with the back view of the head and shoulders of a pa-man rising out of an enormous stone urn—d'une forme de carotte. Laughing with my muff as my solitary habit is, I sped to see his face and found that it was a statue of Verlaine. What extraordinary irony! The head seemed to me to be very lovely in its way, bashed in but dignified, as I always imagine Verlaine. I stayed a long time looking at that, then sunned myself off on a prowl. Every soul carried a newspaper. L'Information came out on orange sails. La Patrie lifted up its voice at the métro stations. Nothing was talked of but the raid last night. (I'm dying to tell you about this raid, but I'm sure I shan't be able to.)
Oh, Jack, it was really rather fine. I came home late. I had been dining with B. at the Lilas. It was a lovely night. I came in, made some tea, put out the lamp, and opened the shutters for a while to watch the river. Then I worked till about one. I had just got into bed and was reading Kipling's Simples Contes des Collines, when there was a sharp quick sound of running, then the trumpets from all sides blaring Garde à vous! This went on, accompanied by the heavy groaning noise of the shutters opening and then a chirrup of voices. I jumped up and did likewise. In a minute every light went out except one point at the bridges. The night was bright with stars. If you had seen the house stretching up and the people leaning out! And then there