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The Letters of Katherine Mansfield: Volume I

Monday — November 24, 1919

Monday
November 24, 1919

Master of the Cats! Hail!

I've gone and gained another 2 lbs. I weighed myself and couldn't believe it and made the man weigh me as though I were beurre frais at least and still there it was—another kilo—that's a bit more than 2 lbs. Pretty good, for a young 'un, don't you think? Please whisper the news in Wing's ear. I now weigh 7 stone 4 and when I left home I weighed 6.13. Having found out this fact I phantasmagorically (see Miss R. Wilson) danced off to the post and found hymn number 163—the one hundred and sixty-third hymn (why do they always say that?) waiting for me. 1 I read it in the public eye, but when I found you had not given me the chuck absolute for my review I lost my head and kissed it—looked up and saw an old female leaning on a broom watching me and smiling very broadly. This was awkward because I blushed and had to climb up a flight of steps so as not to pass her. Her broom by the way, was made of those great reddish stems that grow in the centre of palms with tiny dates on them—a very nice broom indeed.

Don't ever flatter me. Beat me always before you would beat anyone else. But God! to think that review was all right. I've been on the point of wiring my regret

1 Our letters were numbered. No. 163 meant that there were 163 days to K. M.'s return.

page 299 that I had failed you. That's enough to make a person gain 20 more….

I am so glad that the precious cats have won S.'s heart. I sent them each a card yesterday. I see little Wing rabbiting on the stairs. They are blessed creatures and must have perhaps a whole tiny cottage of their own in Sussex. I see Wing leaning out of the window pouring a jug of water on to Athy in the garden below. Athy will get very ‘pa’ in his old age, don't you think?

The furniture makes my mouth water. A chest, a cupboard, a couch, a delicious cabinet. I should like to have a cabinet—tall—you know the legs. Oh dear! Why aren't we rich? We want £800 a year without working, please, and just a few lump sums, that's all. It's not much to ask. If I ever went to Mentone I might meet an old dying American there who for sufferings-nobly-borne might well leave me twice the sum. But I don't want to go to Mentone. Terra Cotta, the new stove, has been installed to-day. It's a regular German stove with a flat top [a drawing of the stove]. It looks awful there. But that round thing is where the red shows and below is a sort of baby oving. I should think it would box it 1—the cold, I mean.

You see I can't afford to go to Mentone and live there. It would cost quite double this place, I am sure. No, if I see tumpany here and go into San Remo and see people, I think I can manage, and this place must be terribly healthy for me to have gained 4 lbs., stopped all my fever and planted in me a roaring appetite. And then—Mayy!! I feel so well to-day that only to write that makes me almost unbearably excited.

I have to do the books for Art and Letters this week. It's a dreadful sweat having to re-read two, and The Mask, which I imagine I am supposed to admire. I dislike it intensely. It's a very vulgar ill-bred book with two climaxes where the little Jew is forced to expose himself

1 To ‘box’ something, in K. M.'s private language, was to settle it satisfactorily.

page 300 —–would think it a masterpiece: that's the exact measure of it, but I can't quite say that, though I'd like to.

I had 8 pages from F. at Toulon, written just before he left. You know how in the old days you used to wring my heart in letters—all the ghastly things that happened just to you. F. does it. If he manages to secure one egg on a journey, it's a bad egg. He loses things, people cheat him, he goes to a hotel where they won't give him a fire—he “feeling very shaky”—, he peels the bad egg, letting the shells fall into the crown of his hat so as not to make a litter, and the ‘juice’ spirts out all over the lining that he showed me with such pride the other day when he was here,—and so on. Of course, he has money, but it makes no difference to him. He falls into absolute pits of depression and loneliness.