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The Letters of Katherine Mansfield: Volume I

Tuesday — December 18, 1918 —

Tuesday
December 18, 1918

To the Hon. Dorothy Brett

Oh—the cold! My feet are ice—my fingers and nose—ice, too. And shiver after shiver goes down my spine—I cannot konker it with clothes. Where did your lamb come from? Is it one of the Jaeger flock? I think I shall have to buy an immense tea-cosy and wear it and crawl under it as a snail does its shell—I go to Switzerland in early April. The cows ought to be laying properly by then—It's no good before then. My plan is to let this house furnished for a year—then Murry will come back, find a tiny farm in a remote spot and put the furniture page 221 into it and live there. I shall make my General Head-Quarters abroad—a little house and a big maid on some mountain top—Italy, I think.

When I have found a cuckoo clock you will come and stay with me—won't you—and draw mountains? At present I feel with you that Life is ugly. I am hardly alive. I have not been out for months and cannot walk up and down the stairs with any success. But apart from that—I feel in my heart as though I have died—as far as personal life goes. I don't even want to live again. All that is over—I am a writer who cares for nothing but writing—that's how I feel. When I am with people I feel like a doctor with his patients—very sympathetic—very interested in the case! very anxious for them to tell me all they can—but as regards myself—quite alone, quite isolated—a queer state.