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The Letters of Katherine Mansfield: Volume I

June, 1918

June, 1918

This weather can't go on. It will stop just before you come. That's my awful fear. I've never never known anything like it. And then I feel so well—eat, walk—went out to sea yesterday with an aged boy in a blue jersey and a straw hat with some sea pinks round the crown. His name was Pearrrrrn. Rib, of course, when I got home started walking on his hands and bursting with laughter. “What's the matter, Ribni?” “Your nose is peeling, now,” said he. It's true. I am as brown as a half-caste. I do wish the Elephant would take our bun that we're offering it so awfully anxiously, don't you? Why does it go on waving its trunk in the air? Blessings on thee, my beast. Do let us go for a ride on you,—I with what the old'un calls my red silk parachute hiding us both from the world.

If you do come down here and I do meet you at the station I think the Heavens will open. I don't want to think about it. No, I hide the thought away, and just page 187 occasionally open the door a tiny bit, just enough to let a beam of light out. But oh, even that's so blinding. You see, we'll go for picnics. Yesterday, I saw you, suddenly, lying on the grass and basking. And then I saw us sitting together on the rocks here with our feet in a pool—or perhaps two pools.

I'll do Gus Bofa and Paul Margueritte on Sunday and post them on Monday. I can't go out on Sundays because I haven't a Prayer Book and Hymn Book to carry. The people would stone me.

Did I tell you they are building a lugger here? To the side of the bridge? To be launched in July. The carpenter and the carpenter's boy think I am so funny, that now when they see “'tis herr again,” they become comedians and pretend to pour tar on each other's heads or to swallow immense long nails and then take them out of their ears. You know the sort of thing. But this boat-building is always a sort of profession d'amour for me. It's our boat, and I am just keeping an eye on the workmen until the King comes down in a jersey and he and the Queen and Ribni the Infanta sail away and away with a silk carpet for a sail.

There is a saw mill here, too, which maketh a pleasant noise.

I hope I see Anne to-day, for last night, after I came in, I wrote 4 of those “Poems” for our book. I rediscovered the form and the style, I think. They are not in verse, nor in vers libre. I can't do these things. They are in prose.

(1)

To a Butterfly.

(2)

Foils.

(3)

Le Regard.

(4)

Paddlers.

You would like them. They are very light. Like Heron feathers, so to say.

God! God! This sun and air. What is one to do? The walls of the Heron are so warm. But the pantry is very cool, and the milk stands in a shallow pan. I went in page 188 there just now. How can there be a War Office and MI7d? 1

I've found a little tiny horse shoe which I am going to nail on one of our doors. Shall I send it you? No.

1 The Department of Military Intelligence in which I was serving.