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The Letters of Katherine Mansfield: Volume II

— Sunday. Paree. — May 23, 1922

To Richard Murry


But seriously—isn't it almost frightening the difference fine weather can make? I wish Einstein could find some way of shooting a giant safety-pin at the sun and keeping it there. It has been tremendously hot in Paris. Like an oven. Jack and I gave up writing altogether. We were overcome and could do nothing but fan ourselves, he with a volume of Anthony Trollope (very cool) and me with my black penny paper one. The strawberries and cherries came out in swarms—very big cherries and little wild strawbugs. Finally we found a spot in the Louvre among the sculpture which was cool as a grotto. Jack had an idea of making himself a neat toga, taking the Nation for a parchment roll and standing becalmed upon a Roman pedestal until the weather changed. There are glorious things in that first room in the Louvre. Greek statues—portions of the Parthenon Frieze, a head of Alexander, wonderful draped female figures. Greek drapery is very strange. One looks at it—the lines seem to be dead straight and yet there is movement—a kind of suppleness and though there is no suggestion of the body beneath one is conscious of it as a living, breathing thing. How on earth is that done? And they seemed to have been able to draw a line with a chisel as if it were a pencil. One line and there is an arm or a nose—perfect. The Romans are deaders compared to them. We had a long stare at the Venus de Milo, too. One can't get away from the fact—she is marvellously beautiful. All the little people in straw hats buzz softly round her. Such a comfort to see page 212 something they know. “Our Maud has ever such a fine photograph of her over the piano.” But ‘she doesn't care.’

About Rubens. I never can forget his paintings in Antwerp. They seemed to me far more brilliant than the London ones—I mean impressive. He must have enjoyed himself no end a doing of them. But I confess I like his small paintings best. One gets really too much for one's money in the big ones—There's rather a fat woman wading in a stream in the National Gallery—Quite a small one. It's very good—isn't it?

I shall have no time to look at pictures here till we get back from Switzerland. It's terrible how Jack and I seem to get engaged. We are pursued by dinners and lunches and telephone bells and dentists. Oh, Richard, do you Fear the dentist? He reduces me to a real worm. Once I am established in that green plush chair with my heels higher almost than my head all else fades. What a fiendish business it is! One day I shall write a story that you will have to tie up your face to read. I shall call it Killing the Nerve.

Since I last wrote to you a great deal seems to have happened. But that is the effect of living in a city. I long to get away and to work. We are spending June and July at a hotel about 750 feet below Montana. It is a very simple place and isolated, standing in one of those forest clearings. There are big grassy slopes almost like lawns between the clumps of trees and by the time we get there the flowers will all be out as they were last year. Paris is a fine city but one can't get hold of any big piece of work here; the day splits up into pieces and people play the piano below one's window or sing even if one sits with the door locked and the outside world putaway.