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The Letters of Katherine Mansfield: Volume I

August 13, 1919 —

page 240
August 13, 1919

To Anne Estelle Rice

I have been rather badly ill and am only up for the first time to-day. It was a thousand Joys to hear from you. I searched the wee photograph for all there possibly was to see of you and David. Ah, que vous avez de la chance! He looks a perfect lamb, distinctly as though he were thinking about that blackbird, taking it seriously, and making a thorough study of the bird. I hope I shall see him one day. My Pa arrives to-morrow and my plans are still rather en l'air until I have seen him. Why, I don't know. But he seems to me a kind of vast symbolic chapeau out of which I shall draw the little piece of paper that will decide my Fate. But that is absurd. For my plans are to go abroad in about three weeks' time and there to remain. We are on the track of several different places, and not decided yet, but c'est tout.

I shall be more thankful than I can say to be out of it all here. I hate the place and the people always more and more, and I am sure the whole of England is finie, finie. Perhaps it isn't if you have a baby to laugh things over with, but otherwise, and plus life on a sofa, it's just hell. What wouldn't I give for one of our laughs, ma chère? As it is, things aren't funny any more. They only make me feel desperate. “It's time for me to go,” as the song says. The only thing I have got out of it all these months is pennies. I have earned quite a few. That gives me a good sense of freedom.

Forgive the dullest dog that ever lay beside a cottage door. I will write again, darling woman, when things are more lively. I'd give a world to hear your “Hil-lo!”