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The Letters of Katherine Mansfield: Volume II

May 1, 1922

page 207

To Anne Estelle Rice

I have just been through that déchirante experience, two lovely young creatures from the chemisier with little frocks “pour essayer seule-ment, Madame.” I'm sitting, fringe straight again at last, writing to you in the one they forced on me—a kind of plum grey—tout droit, with buttings on the hips and no trimming at all except a large embroidered lobster bien posé sur la ventre!!! Shall I ever wear it again? It's beginning to look extraordinary every moment. The little creatures twittering Chic-chic-chic! would have made me buy a casserole for a chapeau with two poireaux in the front. That is the worst of living as I do far from the female kind. These moments come and I'm lost.

Yes, I'll be here first week in June for sure. Do come then. Otherwise I don't know where I shall be off to. I've got a wandering fit on. Anywhere, anywhere but England. The idea would be to have a small permanent nid in Paris and another in the South and then a small car and so on, ma chère. Very nice—only one thing missing to make it complete. However, I never care much about money. I always feel sooner or later it will turn up—one will find it somewhere, in the crown of one's hat or in the jampot.

If only it would stop raining—large spots of rain as big as mushrooms fall every day—Paris would be perfect just now. I don't see much of it for I have still two weeks of my X-ray ‘cure’ to go. But after that I shall really begin to prowl. I can't say much about the cure till it's over. I dare not. But I feel very different already. I'm so sorry to hear of your servant débâcle. If I go to Germany this summer (we've almost settled to go) I mean to find a good sober German and keep her attached to me for ever. Shall I look out one for you? Germans are the ideal servants, I think, and they are so lasting. They don't ladder at once like the English kind. I want to get a very nice one with a pincushion in the shape of a strawberry pinned on her buste and she will catch my page 208 ribbons when they run out of my chemises and run them in again and be a comfort. That's what one really wants. A Comfort. They ought to be bred specially.