The Letters of Katherine Mansfield: Volume I
Monday — May 20, 1918
May 20, 1918
Monday: a gorgeous day. I really might be on the sea.
Certainly yesterday had a Big Black Cap on it, but here is dawning another blue day and I feel better—really better. Yesterday this pain was very dreadful and then I had the most trying fits of weeping. I was simply swept away by them. I think it was the fever made me so feeble and wretched. Just as I had written you another farewell letter A. came in with a picture for me. And she, thereupon, took charge, and soon the whole hotel seemed to be off. My bed was made, boiling bottles appeared, hot milk, a shade out of an orange bag she put on the gas, and sent for the doctor—all in the most ideal cheerful manner.
The doctor came at 11 p.m. The whole place shut up of course. He is—or appeared to be—about 19, but I am sure 19 times as intelligent as L. A wild Irish boy with curly hair and eyes which still remember what the world looked like at 9. He spent about an hour walking over the worn old battlefield with his stethoscope and saying, like Gordon, “ Wait now.” Finally decided my left lung is pleuritic again for the present and that is what gives it the pain. I must stay in bed, but I could not be in a better place. A man came down here in precisely my condition and in a month he had gained a stone and was a changed creature in every way.
A., poor darling, was waiting downstairs to hear the verdict. It was midnight before she left, and the manageress left me the Thermos flask full of boiling milk for the night. In fact, they are one and all amazingly kind. So here I am, in bed again, but breathing the sea and the sun and A. The baby doctor is coming again to-day. He made me feel like an old writing woman—a sort of old George Sand tossed up by the tide last night. Once I can get over this attack of pleurisy I know I shall get really well. I feel it, and I keep hearing all about the wonders in the woods and fields.
This is an appallingly dull little note. But you know what one feels like. My skull and crossbones effusion of yesterday I have destroyed…. As soon as I am well enough I am going out sailing with those fishermen that I see from the window. So different from France. Here one longs to be on the sea.
I have still got the feeling that this place is absolutely marvellous even though I haven't seen it.
P.S.—You know the last three days I was in London I had pleurisy. This doctor says I have got over the worst of the attack and have only to lie still to-day and tomorrow, and I shall feel much better again. I believe that.