The Letters of Katherine Mansfield: Volume I

Monday evening — June 3, 1918

Monday evening
June 3, 1918

This is just a line because I feel lonely and want to talk. It is ‘close on dinner’ as Mrs. H. says, so I'll soon have to sit among the fuzzies again. I've solved the tea problem, which I really could not stick (tea en famille: one big pot). I give my flask to the cook and then she pours mine in and leaves it for me to descend for. I feel awfully like a spider going down for a fly and tearing off to eat in solitude. But it is a great idea. I could not see those awful old claws among the bread and butter again. Why do I mind uglies so? Mrs. H.—funnily enough—seems quite to understand that I do, and talks as though she ‘tended’ them in their cages. Well, I wish she did. My bregglechick in bed has become a kind of gay feast—without'em. I saw A. to-day who wanted me to go out, but no, I've spent the day up here resting in my chair and looking at the sea which has got quite rough. Now you can hear the boats creaking in the roads and the waves sound eager.

Oh God! Suddenly it sweeps over me again. We are writers! You are a poet and I write stories. But how this knowledge makes me ache for us to be together.

I wonder what it meant—your telling me the story of Strawberry Heart. 1 For me it was something like this. We lay down together and it grew dark, and while we were there we wandered away to that country you told me about. But curiously there were moments when this wandering was almost intolerably painful to me. I wanted to implore you to stop. I felt I'd faint if you went on, and you went on and on. I lost absolutely all sense of time and place until it was like dying, like the years one must go through before one dies…. And then quite suddenly the front door came back, and there stood an old sniggering crone with long, long grey curls, curls past her waist, fumbling at the keyhole with a bunch of keys and come to spy on us.

Gong.

Well, that's over, and I waylaid the waitress and took my coffee up here. Perhaps they think I've got a deserter sewed up in the mattress. And now it's cloudy and almost cold and all the ships have gone.

No, I'll write no more to-night. I want to pull up the tent pegs. I don't like this ground any more. Something smells.

Tuesday. (A New Nib.) If you could have known what an inspiration your little ‘chit’ was. The post was late. I argued that I couldn't hear from you this morning, and then down this fluttered. I had been awake nearly all night, too. It was all so noisy and at 2 o'clock my French windows burst open—out popped the candle—the blinds flapped like sails. As I rushed to the rescue I thought of that Appalling Moment when Kirillov rushed at Pyotr Stepanovitch. 2 There's a big Gale blowing this morning, but it's sunny.

For some curious reason (I can't explain) this is ‘over’ for me. I mean, my being here by myself. It's finished, done with. It don't interest me a pin. It's a marvellous place really, an incredible place, but I've got cold to it again. And this continual uncertainty about the Elephant! Not that I want it hurried. Good God, no! But I do wish they would say Yea or Nay. I want to put myself in it, and I'm afraid to, in case they throw me out. By myself it's understood that I mean us with every single one of our possessions.

Note. ( a) Need we rush into stair carpets? Foreigners don't. C-C.'s stairs were delightful in their bones.

( b) Why buy a geyser? A big sort of stock-pot with a tap on a gas ring (like those things in Lyons) would surely cost a deal less and do the job.

( c) You're not to buy things without me, and please, oh please, don't let L. choose Anything. Her idea of me is so utterly absurd: it's always humiliating.

“Are you disagreeable to-day?”

No, but I feel that I am shut behind so many doors. And I'm sad and exasperated—and the wind throws everything about. Everything is flapping, even my thoughts and ideas.

But if we get into a quiet place—a rabbit burrow—or creep under a giant rhubarb leaf, I'll lie still and look at you, and you will find I am really warm and loving….

P.S.—Has Harrison returned Bliss? I bet £100 Massingham won't print Carnation: that's just ‘by the way.’ I know he would hate my mind.

1 Cœur de Fraise, a story by the late J. P. Toulet, which I had retold in a letter.

2 In Dostoevsky's The Possessed.