The Letters of Katherine Mansfield: Volume I
Tuesday — November 11, 1919
November 11, 1919
I have just had the extraordinary comfort of seeing a really first-chop doctor—the man Ansaldi. L. M. was at San Remo. It was getting dusky. There was a ring at the bell and I opened the door and nearly fell into the arms of a beaming, glistening Jewish gentleman mit a vite felt hat. I immediately decided he was a body-snatcher and said, most rudely, “Vous désirez?” At which he replied “Ansaldi” and abashed me very much. He came in—dark bright skin, gleaming eyes, a slight stoop—and said, “Oh vot a nice little house you have here!” The spit of the music halls. It made me feel terribly laughy. I don't know: L. M. away, this solitary spot, this queer stranger with his stethoscope in a purse (it would be a purse) and me in less time than it takes Wing to pounce, sitting draped in my flowery shawl, with my discarded woollen coats strewing the floor like victims. He examined me before he saw my chart.
My bad lung he says is drying: there's only a small spot left at the apex. (When I was in London there was a spot the size of a hand.) The other has also a small spot at the apex. I told him my history to date and he says that I have gained weight and can eat are excellent signs. There is no reason (bar accident) why I should not recover. “Never to be a lion or shoot the chamois or the hare”— figurez-vous! I'd rather feed them with rose leaves—but to lead a normal life, not the life of an invalid. The chances are, he says, 99 to 100 that I can do this.
He was urgent about no mental worry, very urgent, but work—all you like and be in the air and walk, but never to tire yourself. Always stop everything before you are tired. I'll tell you the truth. He said I was not half warmly enough dressed. He was most emphatic on that, though I was wearing my jaeger and a jersey and a cardigan. He says this climate is admirable and especially here because the air is balsamic and positively healing, but one must take absolutely no risk as regards a chill. Never to go out uncovered and really never to know what it is to feel cold: he says that wastes one's energy—fighting the cold. This I am sure is sensible. But what was so good was his confidence in me: it made me feel so confident. He told me I had so much life even in my skin and eyes and voice that it was abnormal for me to be ill and that was my great ‘pull’ over other consumptives. He's coming again in a fortnight. But after closely examining my chart and reading aloud that writing we couldn't read, he pronounced a definite improvement. Isn't that really superb? (I'll not always be such an egoist.) Of course, he told me a chill or influenza might mean disaster, or mental worry—but I must try to avoid those things. And also he impressed on me that I shall never be a lion. That, of course, is bad, one wants to be a lion, but after these years to think I could lead a normal life is lion-like enough.
But here's a brilliant, clever, sympathetic doctor on the spot, see? When I go to San Remo I must please to call on him so that he may show me some little politenesses (as though he had a collection of them. I saw them, darling little tinies, sitting on his finger.) Then like the bee, the lizard and the man in the poem ‘he went away.’ I went upstairs, put on an extra pair of stockings and a scarf and came down and had tea and ate four delicious fresh dried figs with it. Terribly good!
Fancy calling my work “critical essays”! I saw you wink at Wing, and Wing, overcome, turning a catherine wheel (with a K).