Other formats

    TEI XML file   ePub eBook file  

Connect

    mail icontwitter iconBlogspot iconrss icon

The Letters of Katherine Mansfield: Volume I

10.30 Saturday morning. In bed — May 18, 1918

10.30 Saturday morning. In bed
May 18, 1918

Having ‘slept in it’ I am convinced that this place is what the South of France should have been—so still and warm and bright. The early sun woke me pouring into the room and I looked out and there were the little fishing boats with red sails, and row boats in which the rower stood—in the familiar way. Rib was wide awake. He looks such a grab down here—poor darling—after his long dip in filthy London.

The old woman who looks after me is about 106, nimble and small, with the loveliest skin—pink rubbed over cream—and she has blue eyes and white hair and one tooth, a sort of family monument to all the 31 departed ones. Her soft Cornish cream voice is a delight, and when she told me “There do be a handsome hot bath for eë,” I felt that I had given a little bit of myself to Cornwall, after all, and that little bit was a traveller returned. I had the hot bath and slipped back into bed for breakfast. (I should have brought Charles 1 rather than Dorothy. 2)

Breakfast was—porridge, a grilled mackerel—most excellent—four bits of toast, butter, home-made winter-crack jam, cream ad lib and coffee with ½ pint hot milk—all on a winking bright tray. So there!

I shan't get up till 12 any day, and then I shall just sit page 168 in the sun and read. The Three Windows are wide open now: one is almost on the sea.

This is only a note. Do you know what guelder roses are? Big sumptuous white clusters with a green light upon them. We must grow them….

1 Charles Lamb's Letters.

2 Dorothy Wordsworth's Journal.