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The Letters of Katherine Mansfield: Volume II

October 27, 1922

page 263

… What are you going to do to the fruit-trees? Please tell me. We have masses of quinces here. They are no joke when they fall exprès on your head.

I do hope you are having this glorious weather. Day after day of perfect sunshine. It's like Switzerland: an intense blue sky, a chill in the air, a wonderful clarity so that you see people far away, all sharp-cut and vivid.

I spend all the time in the garden. Visit the carpenters, the trench diggers. (We are digging for a Turkish Bath—not to discover one, but to lay the pipes.) The soil is very nice here, like sand, with small whitey-pinky pebbles in it. Then there are the sheep to inspect, and the new pigs that have long golden hair—very mystical pigs. A mass of cosmic rabbits and hens and goats are on the way… It's so full of life and humour that I wouldn't be anywhere else. It's just the same all through—ease after rigidity expresses it more than anything else. And yet I realize, as I write this, that it's no use. An old personality is trying to get back to the outside and observe, and it's not true to the present facts at all. What I write seems so petty. In fact, I feel I cannot express myself in writing just now. The old mechanism isn't mine any longer, and I can't control the new. I just have to talk this baby talk…