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The Letters of Katherine Mansfield: Volume I

Saturday — June 1, 1918

page 185
Saturday
June 1, 1918

It is another day the spit of yesterday. I think it is the end of the world—but not a Sullivan end. No, the planet will fry rather than grow cold…. Nine o'clock. The room is bathed in sun. I've just had bregglechick and I am so hot that I pine for a cold shower. Is it hot like this in London?

Yesterday A. and I took our lunch and tea and went off for the day. We found an ideal beach, really ideal. And the flowers on the way! Every blade, every twig has come into flower. Right down by the sea there are the foxgloves, sea pinks, dog daisies—I even found violets—and yellow irises every where. It was really almost too hot—exhausting. I crawled into a cavern and lived there a long time. Then I went among the deep sea pools and watched the anemones and the frilled seaweed, and a limpet family on the march! By lunch time our sang-wiches were frizzling, and A. kept wishing her Thermos flask had a great platter of ice cream in it, my dear!

We had intended to work and we tried to, but it wasn't possible. This is the most astounding place. Where we were was absolutely deserted—it might have been an island—and just behind us there were great woods and fields and may hedges. I got fearfully burned and tired, too. I simply had to lie down with a stone for a pillow at one point; but in the cool of the evening when we came home I felt refreshed again. Only I wanted to come back to a cottage instead of a big hotel. It was still light, pale, wonderful at ten o'clock last night and very warm.

This heat—in this place, you see, the water and the country—is absolutely the ideal weather, I think. And, as A. says, that terrible dust you get down South isn't here. All is intensely clean, dazzling, the seagulls glitter even when you are close to them down at the ferry, and all the old men are clean and fine as sailors are.

A. has just been here to ask me to go whiffing all day. But I can't stand another of those days just yet. I am page 186 sitting on the balcony all day now under my parachute, feeling tre-mendously well and fit and eating away and getting browner and browner—and I want to ‘work’ to-day. She of course says: “If you've got your health and you feel good, to Hell with art!” But, elle est plus simple et rude que moi.

What about this Billingsgate trial? Is it going to topsy-turvy England into the sea? What ultimate Cinema is this? It is very nauseating. I feel great sympathy for Maud Allan. But I have not seen much of the trial—only Daily News without tears.

P.S.—This letter is badly written and expressed: it's the dancing light. Forgive it.

P.P.S.—4.30. I've not moved from my balcony all day. If you could see the water, half green, half a tender violet, and just moving. It is unbelievably exquisite.