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The Letters of Katherine Mansfield: Volume I

Sunday night before dinner — December 12, 1915

Sunday night before dinner
December 12, 1915

I have just put on my spencer, an extra pair of stockings and another shawlet and I'm still frozen. I rang for Mary Anne to make me a fire but she is evidently gone a junketing for I can't find her. The only minion I did find said they could not mont any bois until demain. Which seemed to me absurd. Suppose I were in convulsions and had to be wrapped in blankets and laid on an hearth (would that I were!)? Also I am as empty as the little French boy's tirelire and there's nothing to eat here. page 42 And the salon is full of travellers a-sitting round the fire a-toasting of their unworthy toes—Oh, what a wretched little swinging-on-a-bare-twig of a goblin you have got to-night—-and her maladies have been such that she has been forcée to garder her chambre all day except for to post my letter. At about five I nearly swallowed the teaspoon and had done with it. For I have added a sore throat to my fever and I am trying to gargle every 2 hours with three sous worth of borax and it's tasted awful. Just when I wrote in my diary “Adieu chère terre”—a nice little boy who belongs to the hotel brought me a letter from you—it was a gift from heaven. Never was a letter more welcome—It was indeed one of my great-aunt Charlotte's ‘direct answers’ to prayers. I read it once and then twice and then I absorbed it, you know—If you are not careful and less sweet to me I shall say Toujours, too, and then you'll be finally caught out. I do hope they give you a bed among the pottery. 1 Can you choose your jug and basin from the stock? I saw that shop the day Munro flouted me and nearly entered in (Forgive me; I am all sticky with eating so much and such continuous Shakespeare). You told me very little of Kot. Didn't he fall down dead when he saw I wasn't there? And where did you sleep that first night, sirrah?

Alter lunch to-day a kind gentleman lent me an Historical Roman. (Je vous remercie, maman. Bon soir, chèr Père.) But I also saw the last two numbers of La Vie Parisienne left in the salon by a bald-headed old party who brought his own oysters to luncheon.

Monday morning. Then the bell for dinner and I went down and afterwards sat in the salon and talked with the lender of the Roman. What a night I spent, Bogey! My left leg rushed up to reinforce my other ills and it has won the battle—In fact I'm a complete prisoner to it to-day and shall have to give this letter to foreign hands to post for I can't walk at all—However, it's just my old

1 They did. It was the Peasant Shop in Devonshire St., and my landlady was kindness itself.

page 43 rheumatism—you know what it's like. Dressing took me nearly two hours and I nearly gave it up, wore only one stocking, one leg of my ‘pantalons’ etc. to-day, but the old trick of looking at myself in the glass and saying ‘Courage, Katherine’ won after all—and here I am complete even to Flowering Gorse. 1

I got two papers from Kot to-day. They will be a great feast and as always happens I am now so tied and bound, so caged that I know I'll sing. I'm just on the point of writing something awfully good, if you know that feeling. So there is compensation.

The sun shines to-day but the wind is still high and ‘foam flies white over rocks of black,’ opposite.

I feel cut off from all human kind—but I am not sad to-day.

1 ‘Genêt Fleuri.’ K.M.'s favourite perfume.