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The Letters of Katherine Mansfield: Volume I

Saturday — November 15, 1919

Saturday
November 15, 1919

I have just come downstairs and lighted my fire. Do you smell the blue gum wood and the pommes de pin? It's a perishing coal-black day, wet, dripping wet, foggy, folded, drear. The fire is too lovely: it looks a stag's head with two horns of flame. I managed to get the review off yesterday, but not without a struggle. I wanted to be sincere: I felt I had a duty to perform. Oh dear, oh dear! What's it all come to, I wonder?

This morning J. sent me a box of Khedive cigarettes. That was very nice of her. I admire her terribly. F. sent me a letter. I feel that between them they are going to move me from here. It is I confess extremely cold and draughty here, but on the other hand—privacy, privacy, privacy. I won't go into a hotel or rooms where I'm not private. That's the essential. They (that is F. and his Co.) seem to think of Ospedaletti as a kind of rock that rears its awful form.

Oh, isn't it nice when I write so small? I am taking page 286 very tiny little stitches with my pen and making eyes of admiration at myself. I wish the Albatross would produce lunch: it's nearly one and lunch is at 12 and I'm shaking like a leaf and trembling with want of it.

Now a fly has walked bang into the fire—rushed in, committed suicide.

Lunch.

Lunch over. Pendant ce repas L. M. suggested I should take the tram into San Remo and get another back in ten minutes, just to enjoy the sun. I would not drive a strong pig to market to-day: it's such a weed-killer. So this suggestion for me made me angry. She then said: “Of course it is damp, the damp went right through me, but you do such funny things.” Now, I don't do funny things: I haven't for ages and I hate to be reminded. I came back and smoked a cigarette and got over it. On the cigarette paper it declares:

Qu'à aucun moment de leur fabrication, ni par quelque procédé que ce soit, aucune substance aromatisante, opiacée ou chimique, en un mot, qu'aucun corps étranger n'est introduit dans le tabac….

One feels there must be snippets of sheik brûle in'em after that.

Did I tell you? When I was in San Remo in that motor I went to a bread shop, and there was a queer-shaped loaf which looked nice for tea. A kind of tea bread. So I said: Combien? and he said: I must pèse it, Madame. Will you take it? So I said Yes. And he pèsed it, did it up in a paper with a pink ficelle and said: Cinq-francs-Madame-juste! ! ! Now, what do you do then? I paid and took it and walked out—one living curse. But do the brave give it back? Which is the lesser humiliation? Have you ever decided that? I was awfully ashamed of myself. Then I realised if it hadn't been for the motor, I wouldn't have paid. It was the price of corruption….

All the same I read an article on small cars for tiny people (2 people, their luggage, a cat and its saucer and page 287 bastick) for 3d. a mile all round the world from door to door. Self-starter, electrical installation and a bag for the money to roll into when you come to the place where money rolls. That sounded to me the spit of us. I thought Wing as cleaner would be so good—in overalls, you know, wiping his little nose with a morceau of cotton waste. The trouble with those cars is they ought to cost 3d. to start with. It ought to be all 3d.—3d. all the way through. “I'll have 3d. worth of petrol please, and a thrippenny horse to pull us out of this hole.”

I wish a letter would come. I'd like some good news to put in this room—no, to wear in my bosom. I am very well, with an old-fashioned face coming back, very bright eyes and a pink colour like Bandol. I hardly know it when I powder its nose.