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The Letters of Katherine Mansfield: Volume I

Thursday — October 11, 1917 —

Thursday
October 11, 1917

To the Hon. Dorothy Brett

It is a cold, sharp day. I can see the sun flying in the sky like a faint far-away flag. My Japanese doll has gone into boots for the winter and the studio smells of quinces. I have to write all day with my feet in the fringe of the fire—and oh alas! it is sad to think that I shall be warm in front and cold behind from now until next June.

It seems to me so extraordinarily right that you should be painting Still Lives just now. What can one do, faced with this wonderful tumble of round bright fruits; but gather them and play with them—and become them, as it were. When I pass an apple stall I cannot help stopping and staring until I feel that I, myself, am changing into an apple, too, and that at any moment I can produce an apple, miraculously, out of my own being, like the conjuror produces the egg…. When you paint apples do you feel that your breasts and your knees become apples, too? Or do you think this the greatest nonsense. I don't. I am sure it is not. When I write about ducks I swear that I am a white duck with a round eye, floating on a pond fringed with yellow-blobs and taking an occasional dart at the other duck with the round eye, which floats upside down beneath me… 1 In fact the whole process of becoming the duck (what Lawrence would perhaps call this consummation with the duck or the apple !) is so thrilling that I can hardly breathe, only to think about it. For although that is as far as most people can get, it is really only the’ ‘prelude.’ There follows the moment when you are more duck, more apple, or more Natasha than

1 See Prelude, p. 49.

page 83 any of these objects could ever possibly be, and so you create them anew.

Brett (switching off the instrument): “Katherine I beg of you to stop. You must tell us all about it at the Brotherhood Church one Sunday evening.”

K.: “Forgive me, but that is why I believe in technique, too. (You asked me if I did.) I do just because I don't see how art is going to make that divine spring into the bounding outline of things if it hasn't passed through the process of trying to become these things before recreating them.”

I have left your letter unanswered for more days than I could have wished. But don't think it was just because I am so careless and faithless. No, really not. I enjoyed keeping silent with the letter just as one enjoys walking about in silence with another until the moment comes when one turns and puts out a hand and speaks.

I threw my darling to the Wolves 1 and they ate it and served me up so much praise in such a golden bowl that I couldn't help feeling gratified. I did not think they would like it at all and I am still astounded that they do.

“What form is it?” you ask. Ah, Brett, it's so difficult to say. As far as I know, it's more or less my own invention. And “How have I shaped it?” This is about as much as I can say about it. You know, if the truth were known I have a perfect passion for the island where I was born. Well, in the early morning there I always remember feeling that this little island has dipped back into the dark blue sea during the night only to rise again at gleam of day, all hung with bright spangles and glittering drops. 2 (When you ran over the dewy grass you positively felt that your feet tasted salt.) I tried to catch that moment—with something of its sparkle and its flavour. And just as on those mornings white milky mists rise and uncover some beauty, then smother it again and then

1 Prelude was one of the first publications of Mr. and Mr. Woolf at the Hogarth Press.

page 84 again disclose it, I tried to lift that mist from my people and let them be seen and then to hide them again…. It's so difficult to describe all this and it sounds perhaps over-ambitious and vain. But I don't feel anything but intensely a longing to serve my subject as well as I can.

But the unpardonable unspeakable thrill of this art business. What is there to compare! And what more can we desire? It's not a case of keeping the home fire burning for me. It's a case of keeping the home fire down to a respectable blaze, and little enough. If you don't come and see me soon there'll be nothing but a little heap of ashes and two crossed pons upon it.

Are you coming to London soon? Let me know—let us meet. I shall see you float across my window upon a chariot of bright umbrellas?…. Venus laughing from the Skies….

Isn't it a beautiful title, when all is said and done…. Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye.

It's all too wonderful.