The Letters of Katherine Mansfield: Volume I
December 16, 1915
I am better but still in bed, for there is a bitter east wind blowing to-day and I feel it is not safe for me to start my normal life in it. I think my Englishman's stuff is going to do me a great deal of good and he has made me so perfectly hopeful—and has been in so many ways such a comfort to me. Should this stuff not quite cure me he has given me the address of a place in Normandy where one goes for a cure once a year. The cure only takes three weeks; it is a small inexpensive place and he says it's simply miraculous. Well, I am sure I can get my Father to give me a little extra a year for this purpose. “You'll be skipping like a two year old after a week there” says my nice, funny man. I am being rubbed twice a day and dieting carefully and only drinking Vichy. This man isn't really a doctor. He's the Head of Guy's Dental Hospital—but he is a queer, delightful, good-natured person and he has certainly been a comfort to me.
I feel very sober to-day. I am afraid you will think my last letters very silly. They won't happen again. I understand you far better now, somehow—and I'll not ask for the moon either.
A knock at my door. A letter in pencil from you and funnily cnough almost the second sentence is about crying for the moon. Thank you darling for your letter; it's an awfully sweet one. I do hope you get your studio at Haverstock Hill, it sounds really delightful—et pas trop. Your present room must be horrid. I am sorry too—you do not know how sorry, that we have not talked more about the things we have read and seen and felt. Still, it was fate and can't be altered.
Tell you all that I am doing? Why, Bogey, I'm lying dowa or sitting up in bed. All I'm feeling? Ah, I can't—I've lost the key just for the minute—you know how things do get lost in bed.
Since I have been alone here the loss of my little brother has become quite real to me. I have entered into my loss if you know what I mean … always before that I shrank from the final moment—but now it is past.
As I write it is raining fast with a loud noise on the windows. I have the bed covered with copies of the Times, marked at certain places with large blue crosses and a copy of Le Temps with arrows in the margin and “this will interest you” written underneath. All from the same kind and only donor.