Other formats

    TEI XML file   ePub eBook file  

Connect

    mail icontwitter iconBlogspot iconrss icon

The Letters of Katherine Mansfield: Volume I

The Morning of Christmas Eve — December 24, 1915 —

The Morning of Christmas Eve
December 24, 1915

To J. M. Murry

Yesterday after I had posted your letter I went to the Market. You know where it is—in front of that square, curious little Church. Yesterday the Market was full of branches of roses—branches of mandarines and flowers of all kinds. There was also a little old man selling blue spectacles and rings “contre la rhumatisme” and a funny, fat old woman waddling about and pointing to everything she wanted with a fat fowl that she held by the legs. The fowl was furious.

Then I went up to that funny untidy villa with the oranges growing against the walls close to the cemetery—you know the one I mean? It has a long ‘sticky’ garden in front and a large blue board advertising apartments. White roosters peck among the gravel and all the paths are spanned over with brown sprigs of vine. The villa is stone and carved with doves, cauliflowers, lions, monkey trees and setting suns. Very gay.

In the garden, mounted on a very nervous chair, a huge, old man in a blue apron and horn specs, was snipping twigs, and below him a tiny little boy in pink and white socks was receiving them in his pinny. I asked if Mademoiselle Marthe lived there. Certainly, said the man, while the chair wobbled fearfully and then he stood up, raised his snippers, and hailed, “Marthe, Marthe.” Open flew a window, out popped a little round head. “On demande,” said the old man. Then a glass door opened and a little creature in a white cotton jacket with red wool shoes on stood smiling by me. I asked her if she would lift the shoulders of my brown jacket for me—and she said she would—but after the days of fête—n'est-ce pas? And then, her head a little on one side, with a charming timid page 56 smile and one hand with a silver ring on it keeping the sun from her eyes she came to open the gate for me, because she said it was a very difficult gate. I went away longing to write a little play with this setting—I could even hear the music to it. I especially saw the garden by moonlight and the shadows of the oranges and Marthe with a shawl over her head—and her telling him it was a difficult gate.

Two of the big sailing ships have come right into the port this morning and are anchored close to the quai. I think they are unloading something; I must go and ask the paper woman all about it. She is a fund of cheerful gossip and she's a nice soul. When the air is ‘frais’ she produces a tiny charcoal bucket with a pierced lid—and says—“Warm your hands one good little moment.”

My dear! Ten children with their parents and two nurses arrived here last night; they are all ‘une belle famille’ as my maid says. I have not seen them yet, but my brain reels at the idea of their weekly bills.