Other formats

    TEI XML file   ePub eBook file  

Connect

    mail icontwitter iconBlogspot iconrss icon

The Letters of Katherine Mansfield: Volume I

Thursday — June 6, 1918

Thursday
June 6, 1918

I have just eaten a juicy, meaty orange that hasn't riped among soup squares and blotting paper like the ones down here. And they're not only food for the body, they positively flash in my room, a pyramid of them, with on either side attending, a jar of the brightest vividest marigolds I've ever seen. (Yesterday on m'a fait cadeau from Mr. Palliser's cliff garden of Spanish irises and marigolds—a boatload full.)

It's very warm. I have a letter from you saying the Elephant seems to want us,—as did your telegram. (God, how I love telegrams. I could live on them, with oranges and eggs en supplément.) But I have so much to say that I can't begin. Let me dance my way through the flowery mazes of your letter again—until I get to (what's the place called in the middle of a maze, where you stand on a little platform and look round?) Well, I'm there now and standing on the top.

(1) They say there are superb sales here. We might jingle off to them when you're here. Chairs, par exemple, eh?

(2) I saw Pagello yesterday, who gave me more cod and iron. He's satisfied with me and he says I'll always be a Light Weight Champion. So don't expect me to be a page 194 Heavy One. Jimmy Wilde is more my size than Jack Johnson.

(3) Rib is glad you liked his letter. He was, very incommoded by a pen. He writes with a brush made of mouse's whiskers as a rule, but you can't get them while the war's on.

(4) Nice look-out for Art when Pemberton-Billing is pelted with flowers and Lord A. D. our conquering hero. I feel very sorry for poor Maud Allan.

(5) Which is a very nice age.

I am sending you some of my notebook to-day. Please let me know what you think of it. I've been keeping it since I was here. Do you think The New Witness might? … Or am I getting a little ‘fresh’? Here's a letter I got from V., too, which is nice….

Well, yesterday, A. and I went to Polperro. It's all my I, you know, to go to places like Étaples and so on while these spots are here. Polperro is amazing, a bit spoilt by “artists” who have pitched garden-suburb tents in and out among the lovely little black and white and grey houses—houses that might have been built by sea-gulls for sea-gulls. But you must see this yourself. You'll not believe it. I didn't, and can't even now. It was a divine afternoon, foxgloves out everywhere, and we found the most Superb fresh strawberries.

A. was a darling yesterday. You can imagine both of us—our excitement at finding these. We each bought a basket and had a basket put by for us to bring home and arranged for the carrier (for 2d.) to bring us fresh berries 3 times a week.

Wig (feverishly): Will they last till the 20th of this month?

Strawberry Woman: “Why, bless eë, they be just a coming on.”

They are grown there in gardens overhanging the sea. A. and I took ours and ate them on the cliffs—ate a basket each (½ lb., 8d.) and then each ate and drank our propre page 195 thé and became ‘quite hysterical,’ as she says. We could hardly move and stayed much longer than we had meant to. The whole afternoon in my memory is hung with swags of strawberries. We carried home our second baskets (just having ‘one more occasionally’) and talked about raspberries and cherries and plums.

Looe is much more beautiful than Polperro. Polperro smells—like those Italian places do, and the people (families who have been there since the Armada: that's true) are dark, swarthy, rather slovenly creatures. Looe is brilliantly clean. But it really is, you know, a place to have in one's inward eye. I saw H. W.'s cottage, but went no furder.

As I wrote that I have kept up a running fire with Mrs. Honey. She says I ought to have children. “It might maäke eë a deal stronger, and they do be such taking little souls.” I agreed and asked her to order me a half-dozen. The other night her husband ‘waited’ for her outside, and she asked me to “come and look at him on the bal-coney.” A fine, neat old man, walking a bit shaky. She said, “He don't look his age, do eë? He wur a rare haandsome lad.” There is still love between those two: that's what attracts me to Mrs. Honey.