The Letters of Katherine Mansfield: Volume II
— October I, 1921
To the Hon. Dorothy Brett
October I, 1921
To the Hon. Dorothy Brett October I, 1921
I am sitting writing to you in the balcony among teacups, grapes, a brown loaf shaped like a bean, a plaited cake with almond paste inside and nuts out. M. has forsaken it to join our cousin Elizabeth. She appeared to-day behind a bouquet—never smaller woman carried bigger bouquets. She looks like a garden walking, of asters, late sweet peas, stocks, and always petunias.
She herself wore a frock like a spider web, a hat like a berry—and gloves that reminded me of thistles in seed. Oh, how I love the appearance of people—how I delight in it, if I love them. I have gathered Elizabeth's frocks to my bosom as if they were part of her flowers. And then when she smiles a ravishing wrinkle appears on her nose— and never have I seen more exquisite hands. Oh, dear I hope we shall manage to keep her in our life. It's terrible how one's friends disappear and how quickly one runs after to lock the door and close the shutters….The page 140 point about her is that one loves her and is proud of her. Oh, that's so important! To be proud of the person'one loves. It is essential. It's deep—deep. There's no wound more bitter to love than not be able to be proud of the other. It's the unpardonable offence, I think.
But no doubt Elizabeth is far more important to me than I am to her. She's surrounded, lapped in lovely friends. Read her last book, if you can get hold of it. It's called Vera and published by Macmillan. It's amazingly good!
Except for her we are lost in the forest. And next month the weather will change. Six weeks or two months in the clouds, with nothing to see but more cloud, before it clears and the snow falls. Other people who flee from the mountains in the between seasons seem to think it will be a very awful time. But there is so much to do. And I love to be in a place all the year round, to know it in all its changes.
I am very interested in your doll still life. I've always wondered why nobody really saw the beauty of dolls. The dollishness of them. People make them look like cricket-bats with eyes as a rule. But there is a kind of smugness and rakishness combined in dolls and heaven knows how much else that's exquisite, and the only word I can think of is precious. What a life one leads with them! How complete! Their hats—how perfect—and their shoes, or even minute boots. And the pose of a doll's hand—very dimpled with spreading fingers. Female dolls in their nakedness are the most female things on earth…
I keep on being interrupted by the sound in the trees. It's getting late—the tree-tops look as if they had been dipped into the gold-pot and there's a kind of soft happy sighing or swinging or ruffling—all three—going on. A bird, bright salmon pink with mouse-grey wings hangs upside down pecking a fir-cone. The shadows are growing long on the mountains. But it's impossible to describe this place. It has so brought back my love of nature that page 141 I shall spend all the rest of my life … trekking. A winter in Spitzbergen is an ambition of ours after some photographs in The Sphere. It looks marvellous. The only question is will our cat be able to stand it! The nearest other cat is in China…
I've started and torn up two bad stories and now I am in the middle of the third. It's about a hypocrite. My flesh creeps as I write about him and my eyes pop at his iniquities…
Don't get caught in the cold blasts. Wrap yourself up. Make the charlady feed you on bakin. In my infancy I used to cry myself to bed with the tragic lines:
I bought a pound of ba—kin
An fried it in a pan
But nobody came to e—eat it
But me—e and my young man!