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The Letters of Katherine Mansfield: Volume II

Saturday — October 30, 1920

Saturday

Your Tuesday letter came, telling me that you were reading Mrs. Asquith. I read certain parts of her book and felt—just that—there was something decent. At the same time the whole book seems to me in-decent. Perhaps I feel more than anything that she's one of those people who have no past and no future. She's capable of her girlish pranks and follies to-day—in fact, she's at the page 67 mercy of herself now and for ever just as she was then. And that's bad. We only live by somehow absorbing the past—changing it. I mean really examining it and dividing what is important from what is not (for there is waste) and transforming it so that it becomes part of the life of the spirit and we are free of it. It's no longer our personal past, it's just in the highest possible sense, our servant. I mean that it is no longer our master.1 With Mrs. A.this process (by which the artist and the ‘living being’ lives) never takes place. She is forever driven.

“I am the Cup that thirsteth for the Wine”—

These half-people are very queer—very tragic, really. They are neither simple—nor are they artists. They are between the two and yet they have the desires (no, appetites) of both. I believe their secret whisper is: “If only I had found The Man I might have been anything…” But the man isn't born and so they turn to life and parade and preen and confess and dare—and lavish themselves on what they call Life. “Come woo me—woo me.” How often I've seen that in——as her restless distracted glance swept the whole green countryside…

(By the way, I do love Sir Toby's saying to Viola, “Come taste your legs, Sir. Put them in motion,” when he wanted her to leap and fly. I wish I had a little tiny boy to say that to.)

There's a violent N.W. wind to-day—a howling one— I had to go into town. The great immense waves were sweeping right up to the road and over. I wish you'd seen them. Three brigs are in—the sailor's pants hanging on lines and dancing hornpipes. Leaves are falling; it's like autumn. But the shops are full of flowers and everywhere little girls, wrapped up to the eyes go by at a run carrying a bouquet of chrysanthemums in a paper—For to-morrow is Le Toussaint.

1 That is the wrong image. I used to think this process was fairly unconscious. Now I feel just the contrary. (K. M.'s note.)