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The Letters of Katherine Mansfield: Volume II

Le Prieuré — Fontainebleau-Avon — Seine-et-Marne October 23,1922

… I'll tell you what this life is more like than anything; it is like Gulliver's Travels. One has, all the time, the page 262 feeling of having been in a wreck and by the mercy of Providence, got ashore—somewhere… Simply everything is different. Not only languages, but food, ways, people, music, methods, hours—all. It's a real new life…1

Dr. Young, a real friend of mine, comes up and makes me a good fire. In ‘return’ I am patching the knee of his trousers to-day. But it's all ‘stranger’ than that. For instance, I was looking for wood the other evening. All the boxes were empty. I found a door at the end of the passage, went through and down some stone steps. Presently steps came up and a woman appeared, very simply dressed, with her head bound in a white handkerchief. She had her arms full of logs. I spoke in French, but she didn't understand—English, no good. But her glance was so lovely—laughing and gentle, absolutely unlike people as I have known people. Then I patted a log and she gave it to me and we went our ways…

1 A detailed account of life at the Gurdjieff Institute is contained in an essay by Dr. James Young in The New Adelphi for September 1928.