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The Letters of Katherine Mansfield: Volume I

Wednesday, — June 5, 1918

Wednesday,
June 5, 1918.

Mittwoch. Die Hitze ist zurückgekommen.

I'm much less depressed to-day. Oh God! I do get black. I simply go dark as though I were a sort of landscape, and the sun does not send one beam to me—only immense dark rolling clouds above that I am sure will never lift. It is terrible—terrible. How terrible I could only ‘put into writing’ and never say in a letter. This afternoon I am going to Polperro with A. and we shall “boire page 192 du thé sur l'herbe fraîche.” She came up to see me last night. She has quite the right idea about the country and living in it. I explained to her last night what I meant by religion. I feel awfully like a preacher sometimes, I really have a gospel: this seemed rather to startle her.

Last night (this letter is like kalter aufschnitt, please forgive it) I read The Well-Beloved by Thomas Hardy. It really is appallingly bad, simply rotten—withered, bony and pretentious. This is very distressing. I thought it was going to be such a find and hugged it home from the library as though I were a girl of fifteen. Of course, I wouldn't say this about it to another human being but you, c'est entendu. The style is so Preposterous, too. I've noticed that before in Hardy occasionally—a pretentious, snobbish, schoolmaster vein (Lawrence echoes it), an “all about Berkeley Square-ishness,” too. And then to think, as he does, that it is the study of a temperament! I hope to God he's ashamed of it now at any rate. You won't like me writing like this about him. But don't you know the feeling? If a man is ‘wonderful’ you want to fling up your arms and cry “Oh, do go on being wonderful. Don't be less wonderful.” (Which is unreasonable, of course.)

This happened yesterday.

(Wig gets up from the table and is followed by old white-bearded monkey, with bruised eyes and false teeth.)

Excuse me Moddom, is thaat a New Zealand stone you are wearing?

W. Yes.

O. M. Do you come from New Zealand, may I ask?

W. Yes, I do.

O. M. Reely! What part, may I enquire?

W. Wellington.

O. M. I know Wellington. (Shows false teeth.) Do you know a Mr. Charles William Smith, a cousin of mine, who was residing there in 1869?

W. ….

O. M. But perhaaps you were not born then.

page 193

W. (very faintly) No, I don't think I was.

Voilà for my grey hairs!

Oh, how lovely these Chinese poems are! 1 I shall carry them about with me as a kind of wavy branch all day to hide behind—a fan.

It's good, I think, that I didn't meet Massingham, who, I am sure, will not print Carnation. And please don't forget to tell me when Bliss comes back. I feel it is come. That's why.

1 Mr. Arthur Waley's translations.