Katherine Mansfield, The Woman Behind The Books (Including Letters, Journals, Essays & Articles). Katherine Mansfield
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March 1915
I DON'T know what you think of yourself, but I think you're a little pig of a sneak. Not a letter—not a sign—not a copy of The Saturday Westminster—plainly nothing. Why are you so horrid? Or is it the post? I'll put it down to the post and forgive you. A baby in arms could play with me to-day. The weather is so warm I'm sitting with the windows wide open and nothing but a thin blouse on (in a way of speaking). All the trees are popping and the air smells of mignonette. Big open barges full of stones are being towed by black and red beetles up the river; the steering men lean idly, legs crossed—you know their way—and the water froths against the bows. The carts passing make a merry jingle and the concierge has put a pink hyacinth in her window. I'm a fool when I'm alone. I turn into a little child again.
There is a woman on the opposite side of the river. She sits with her back against a tree, her legs stretched out in front of her, combing her long brown hair. To this side and to that she bends, and then with that charming, weary gesture she throws her head back and draws the comb all the length of it. If I were near enough, I am sure I would hear her singing. The idle time of the year is coming, Jack, when you can sit outside with a piece of bread and butter on your knee and watch it frisle. (How do you spell that?)
I felt very flat when I bought La Patrie at midday and found that no Zeppelins had arrived after all. Unfortunately I had already posted your letter, so you can laugh at me. This afternoon I am going to write about last night. I'll send it to you. Do what you will with it. Send it somewhere, will you please? …
I dreamed last night about G. I was at an opera with you, sitting on a converted railway carriage seat, and I heard G. talking of his wife to an American lady. Then he saw me and I went up and spoke to him. Just as I was saying I never had and never would love him, etc., Mrs. S. appeared and seeing us together she came up to me and said, “Oh Katherine, I always felt such love for you, and now I know why,” and she pressed me to her and said “Frank is at home digging in the garden.” This sc [sic] touched me that I nearly sacrifiged myself on the spot, but I knew you were waiting for me in a little house in South Kensington. The opera had disappeared, and I was sitting on the stump of a nut tree, and G. leant against it, toying with a top-hat. So I pressed his hand awfully kindly, picked up a very large rabbit that was watching us, with twitching ears, and walked away, saying over my shoulder to G., “There is always a beginning and an ending, G.” But he burst into tears and called, “Ah, my dear, don't—don't be so wonderful.” “If that is the case,” thought I, “I'm wasting myself. I shall take some inexpensive but good dancing lessons.” Then I woke up.
Next day. After all, I never wrote a thing. Yesterday I began reading and read on till past midnight. There are so many books of “the young men” here, and I glanced through a number to get an impression. Heavens! What a set of lollipops! Really, I did not come across one that counted. Upon the same stage with the same scenery, the same properties, to the same feeble little tune, one after another pipes his piece, and the audience, being composed of a number of young men and females exactly like himself, with precisely the same burning desire to feel the limelight on their faces, applaud and flatter and cherish. You can't believe they were not all littered at a breath. Funny, if it weren't so damned ugly; and the trouble is that nobody will ever kick their little derrières for them because they haven't got 'em to kick—seulement “deux globes d'ivoire”! Afterwards I began to read Stendhal's “Le Rouge et le Noir.” You can imagine how severe and noble it seemed and does still by morning seem to me. But what I feel most deeply is—how tragic a great work of art appears. All these young ‘nez-au-venticistes’ have their place and their meaning in this world; but I seemed to see Stendhal, with his ugly face and pot belly and his little pig's legs, confined within a solitary tower, writing his book and gazing through the window chink at a few lonely stars. (Don't whistle!)
I must go off to the post. I could write to you all day. It is raining fast and my lung hates the weather.
Thursday morning — March 25, 1915
Thursday morning
March 25, 1915
YESTERDAY I had your letters at last…. You seem to have done perfect wonders with the rooms.4 The carpentering job I saw and heard as plain as if I'd been there, to the very sand-papering. All the things are floating in my brain on a sea of blue Ripolin. I feel those rooms will be lovely.
I had a great day yesterday. The Muses descended in a ring like the angels on the Botticelli Nativity roof, or so it seemed to “humble” little Tig, and I fell into the open arms of my first novel. I have finished a huge chunk, but I shall have to copy it on thin paper for you. I expect you will think I am a dotty when you read it; but, tell me what you think, won't you? It's queer stuff. It's the spring makes me write like this. Yesterday I had a fair wallow in it, and then I shut up shop and went for a long walk along the Quai—very far. It was dusk when I started, but dark when I got home. The lights came out as I walked, and the boats danced by. Leaning over the bridge I suddenly discovered that one of those boats was exactly what I want my novel to be. Not big, almost grotesque in shape—I mean perhaps heavy—with people rather dark and seen strangely as they move in the sharp light and shadow; and I want bright shivering lights in it, and the sound of water. (This, my lad, by way of uplift.)—But I think the novel will be all right. Of course, it's not what you could call serious—but then I can't be, just at this time of year, and I've always felt that a spring novel would be lovely to write.
To-day I went to Cook's with my last golden sovereign in my hand to be changed. I am getting on all right as regards money and being very careful. Cooked vegetables for supper at 20 c. the demi-livre are a great find and I drink trois sous de lait a day. This place is perfect for working.
I read your letter yesterday in the Luxembourg Gardens. An old gentleman, seeing my tender smiles, offered me half his umbrella, and I found that it was raining; but as he had on a pair of tangerine coloured eyeglasses, I declined. I thought he was a Conrad spy.
I have adopted Stendhal. Every night I read him now, and first thing in the morning.
4 Two top-rooms in Elgin Crescent which I was preparing.
Saturday afternoon — March 27, 1915
Saturday afternoon
March 27, 1915
I SHALL write you my letter to-day in this café Biard, whither I've come for shelter out of a terrific storm—rain and thunder. I'm soaked and my bones are in dismay already. It is the most absurd rot to have to think like an old pusson every time the rain falls. This is rheumatiz for a dead spit for me. But I am not sad, I am only surprised at God.
I am writing my book. Ça marche, ça va, ça se dessine. It's good.
Last night I woke to hear torrential rain. I got up with a candle and made the shutters firm, and that awful line of Geo. Meredith's sang in my head: “And Welcome Waterspouts that Bring Fresh Rain.” Then I dreamed that I went to stay with the sisters Brontë who kept a boarding house called the Brontë Institut—painfully far from the station, and all the way there through heather. It was a sober place with linoleum on the stairs. Charlotte met me at the door and said, “Emily is lying down.” K. I found was also there, taking supper. He broke an orange into a bowl of bread and milk. “Russian fashion,” said he. “Try it. It's very good.” But I refrained.
Then the bell tinkled and the concierge gave me your letter…. How can all these people afford cabs? Even girls in pinafores without hats are jumping into fiacres. I cannot afford even the principle.
I found a photograph of Willy to-day. He looked like Edward VII. in spirits of wine—an awful fathead. Of course, he has got something, but he's terribly small