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The Letters of Katherine Mansfield: Volume II

Monday — May 9, 1921

page 101

It was a great pleasure to hear from you to-day and get your postcards of Bandol and Arles. This time I am numbering and keeping your letters… You took me back to Graviers—especially those big pebbles. They are so plain in my memory, big, round, smooth. I see them. I am glad you saw the Allègres, even tho' it was sad. The postcards are very impressive. So was your desire to see a bull-fight. I rolled my eyes.

After my hymn in praise of the weather it changed on Saturday night, to heavy rolling mists and thick soft rain. The mountains disappeared very beautifully, one by one. The lake became grave and one felt the silence. This, instead of being depressing as it is in the South, had a sober charm. I don't know how it is with you; but I feel the South is not made pour le grand travail. There is too much light. Does that sound heresy? But to work one needs a place (or so I find) where one can spiritually dig oneself in… And I defy anybody to do that on the Riviera. Now this morning the mist is rolling up, wave on wave, and the pines and firs, exquisitely clear, green and violet-blue, show the mountain sides. This grass, too, in the foreground, waving high, with one o'clocks like bubbles and flowering fruit trees like branches of red and white coral. One looks and one becomes absorbed… Do you know what I mean? This outer man retires and the other takes the pen. In the South it is one long fête for the outer man. But perhaps, after your tour in Provence, you won't be inclined to agree (I mean about it's not being ideal for working.)

I feel, at present, I should like to have a small chalêt, high up somewhere, and live there for a round year, working as one wants to work. The London Mercury came on Saturday with my story. 1 Tell me if anybody says they like it, will you? That's not vanity. Reading it again,

1 The Daughters of the Late Colonel.

page 102 I felt it might fall dead flat. It's so plain and unadorned. Tommy and de la Mare are the people I'd like to please. But don't bother to reply to this request, dearest. It's just a queer feeling—after one has dropped a pebble in. Will there be a ripple or not? …

What do you feel about Broomies now? This weather, so soft, so quiet, makes me realise what early autumn there might be. It's weather to go and find apples—to stand in the grass and hear them drop. It's Spring and Autumn with their arms round each other—like your two little girls in Garavan.

The packet arrived safely, thank you. Your remark about Tiz reminded me that in a paper here I read a little letter by Gaby Deslys1 saying that Reudel's Bath Saltrates made her feet ‘feel so nice.’ A little laughing picture and a bright string of bébé French. I felt, if I went on reading there'd come a phrase, “Quand on est mort, tu sais…”

1 Gaby Deslys had died shortly before.