Other formats

    TEI XML file   ePub eBook file  

Connect

    mail icontwitter iconBlogspot iconrss icon

The Letters of Katherine Mansfield: Volume II

September 24, 1921

To Sylvia Lynd

I have been waiting to talk to you—to have you to myself, no less—until I could chase my new book out of the house. I thought it never would go. Its last moments lingered on and on. It got up, turned again, took off its gloves, again sat down, reached the door, came back, until finally M. marked it down, lassooed it with a stout string and hurled it at Pinker. Since when there's been an ominous silence. True, I haven't had time to hear yet, but one has a shameful feeling that it ought to have been “recognised” even at the bottom of the first mountain and a feeble cheer—a cheer left over page 138 from Charlie C.—might have been raised… No, that sounds proud. It's not really pride but Fear!

But it's gone. May I give you a small hug for your marvellous letter? It really is a heavenly gift to be able to put yourself, jasmine, summer grass, a kingfisher, a poet, the pony, an excursion and the new sponge-bag and bedroom slippers all into an envelope. How does one return thanks for a piece of somebody's life? When I am depressed by the superiority of men, I comfort myself with the thought that they can't write letters like that. You make me feel, too, that whatever star they were born under it wasn't the dancing one. Keep well! Never beill again! …

I lapped up the gossip… What is happening to “married pairs”? They are almost extinct. I confess, for my part, I believe in marriage. It seems to me the only possible relation that really is satisfying. And how else is one to have peace of mind to enjoy life and to do one's work? To know one other seems to me a far greater adventure than to be on kissing acquaintance with dear knows how many. It certainly takes a lifetime and it's far more “wonderful” as time goes on. Does this sound hopelesly old-fashioned? I suppose it does. But there it is—to make jam with M., to look for the flowers that Never are in the Alpine Flora book, to talk, to grow things, even to watch M. darning his socks over a lemon, seems to me to take up all the time one isn't working. People nowadays seem to live in such confusion. I have a horror of dark muddles. Not that life is easy, really, or that one can be “a child” all the time, but time to live is needed. These complications take years to settle, years to get over. I wish you'd write a novel about married happiness. It is time for one… It is time for a good novel on any subject, though. Perhaps we don't see them here…

One thing one does miss here, and that is seeing people. One doesn't ask for many, but there come moments when I long to see and hear and listen—that most of all.

page 139

Otherwise this September has been perfect. Every day is finer. There's a kind of greengage light on the trees. The flowers are gone. All except flat starry yellow and silver ones that lie tight to the turf. M. is a fierce mushroom hunter. He spares none. Little mushroom “tots” swim in the soup and make me feel a criminal. The mountain ash is brilliant—flashing bright against the blue. And the quince jam is boiling something beautiful, M'm, as I write. I love Autumn. I feel it's better than summer, even. Oh, the moss here! I've never seen such moss, and the colour of the little wild strawberry leaves that are threaded through. They are almost the only leaf that turns here, so turn they do with a vengeance.

I hardly dare mention birds. It's rather hard Harold M. should have such a very large bird in his bonnet; it makes all the rest of us go without. There are some salmon pink ones here just now passing through, which but for Harold M. I should enjoy…