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The Letters of Katherine Mansfield: Volume I

Saturday — February 23, 1918

Saturday
February 23, 1918

Yesterday the woman at the paper-shop gave me a bouquet of violets. Here are some. And Juliette has filled my vases with yellow goldy wallflowers. God! how I love flowers.

After all my coming back is only delayed by a little more than three weeks. That's what I cling to for consolation. Then I shall come back, for I can't stop here any longer. Even the doctor says not to stay here after March. So I must come. Hooray! Will my Rib be at the window? What a throwing about he will get! Does he ever walk up you? Never? Do you ever read who made him on his tummy? Never? Attend un tout p'tit p'tit p'tit beau moment, as they say here, and he'll know these joys again….

page 134

On Monday, P. G. I'll post more manuscript to you. Would The Nation publish Sun and Moon? If they publish that rubbish by S. I think they might. Have you read any reviews of Yeats's book? And did you see his remarks on Keats? There was a good story agin him (though he didn't know it) in a quote I saw. He dreamed once ‘in meditations’ (!?) that his head was circled with a flaming sun. Went to sleep and dreamed of a woman whose hair was afire, woke up, lighted a candle, and by and bye discovered ‘by the odour’ that he's set his own hair ablaze. This he calls sort of prophetic. I think it's wondrous apt. It's just as far as he and his crew can get to set their hair afire—to set their lank forlorn locks a-frizzle. God knows there's nothing else about them that a cartload of sparks could put a light to. So he can jolly well shut up about Keats. If you should ever have the chance pull his nose for me….

But oh! how ignorant these reviewers are, how far away and barred out from all they write. There was a review of Coleridge in The Times—so bad, so ill-informed. But then, of course, I feel I have rather a corner in Coleridge and his circle….

The sea is breaking restless and high on the coast opposite….