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The Letters of Katherine Mansfield: Volume I

Saturday — November 1, 1919

Saturday
November 1, 1919

I had thought to have your Monday letter yesterday—but no, it wouldn't come. You must throw them more quickly down the letter boxes, hurl them, send them flying, tell them that if they come quickly there is nothing—nothing she won't give them. They can take whatever they please, pull off her rings and put them on their thumbs, peacock in her flowery shawl, eat all the honey jar at once…. Oh no, they are not children: I won't page 272 have them children. Little children must never travel. How could I have written so! It breaks my heart only to think of them. No, they are just—birds to whom the journey is no labour. Up they fly, out of sight, with one beat of a delicate wing…. But birds are so heartless, alas!

It is a fearful day; long cold rain, a homeless wind crying at the windows, the sea like ashes. I am sitting in my little room in a corner, wrapped up with a hot brick at my feet. I must work hard to-day. Thank God for definite work—work that must be done.

November 1st. Six months to May. After that don't leave me alone. I am not made to live alone. I should have gone to a place like Mentone where I could sometimes go for a small walk without a climb and lift the shutter that I live behind. But work, work, work—simply to thy cross I cling. (Why must it be a cross? What a question to ask at 31! But I do still ask it.)

Six months. Only six months to cross. A mountain a month. Six mountains and then a soft still quiet valley where no wind blows—not even enough to fray the one o'clock dandelion….