3 September 1920

Travelling to Menton, France

A man poked his head in at the door & said tea was served. "Tea! Dear me!" she fussed at once. "Would you care to go ... Shall we do you think. On the other hand I have some tea here. I'm afraid it will not be very good. Tea that is not fresh and then there is that [. . .] water - what it is I do not know but - Shall we care to try it?" "Might as well." "In that case dear perhaps you would not mind lifting down my suitcase. I am sorry to say the tea is in there. Such a bother. These racks are so very high. I think they are decidedly higher than English racks. Mind! Do take care! Oh!"
He: Ugh!
Finally she spread out a piece of paper, put on it a little cup & an odd saucer, the top of the thermos flask, a medicine bottle of milk, and some sugar in a lozenge tin. I am very much afraid said she. Would you like me to try it first? He looked over the top of his paper and said drily, Pour it out. She poured it out and gave him the cup and saucer of course, while she filled the mot uncomfortable little drinking cup in the world for herself, and sipped & anxiously watched. Is it so very ...
Might be worse!
[KM Notebooks, undated]

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2 September 1920

Travelling to Menton, France

A Dance at the - -
Is Life going to be all like this? thought Laura. And she lay down in bed & put her arms round the pillow and the pillow whispered "Yes - this is what Life is going to be like - only always more & more splendid, more and more marvellous!"
But supposing said Laura, speaking very fast with the greatest possible earnestness, supposing you were terrifically successful & were married to the person you adored & you had every single thing you wanted and - and your first child was just born (that's supposed to be a marvellous moment, isn't it?) would you be really happier than you are now?
They stared hard at each other a moment.
Then no, said Laurie. I simply couldn't be.
At his words Laura gave a beaming smile, a great sigh, & squeezed her brother's arm. Oh what a relief! she said. Neither could I - not possibly! Laura, Laurie. What are you doing up there. Come down at once. The Ns have arrived.
Laura stooped down & kissed her grandmother. You're by far the most beautiful girl in the room, my little precious, she whispered. As Grandma passed on, the Major and Laura suddenly turned round to catch her eye. She raised her eyebrows in a very curious astounded way, & sucked in her cheek. The old woman actually blushed.  [KM Notebooks, undated]

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1 September 1920

Travelling to Menton, France

Four little boys. One minute, three larking. When the three ran on to the lines tried to dash & tried to dash themselves to death the little one obviously suffered torture & did his best to drag them back again. I realised this would have been just the same if it had been deep water.

An old man, an old woman, a tiny boy in a cape. When the old woman disappeared, the ancient took the little boy with such tender care. He had a pipe in his beard - it looked as though his beard were curling ... Poplars springing in green water - red willows. The luxury of trees!

- - - For a story little boys [......] and a yard paved with hard little stones[?]. Heirloom[?] homes. Why are the town doors all guarded with bars and tines of iron. Hideous shapes. Villas oleanders & birches & pretty with lead pencil spires. Beau Sejour - with dim lights, Belle Bague, Pension des Amis. Bague. The lake very cold with little diving steps pegged out into the water.
Lecons de piano & behind a pair of trousers hanging out to dry.
Why do people always put on such airs when they are saying goodbye.
They smile - [.....]
They seem so exquisitely glad to be staying. Are they? Or is it envy?

This is John's Fountain pen and I don't think much of it. It's all on one side! [KM Notebooks, undated]

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31 August 1920

2 Portland Villas, Hampstead - London

Miss Gertrude Stein has discovered a new way of writing stories. It is just to keep right on writing them. Don't mind how often you go back to the beginning, don't hesitate to say the same thing over and over again - people are always repeating themselves - don't be put off if the words sound funny at times: just keep right on, and by the time you've done writing you'll have produced your effect. Take, for instance, the first story of the good Anna who managed the whole house for Miss Matilda and the three dogs and the underservant as well. For five years Anna managed the little house for Miss Matilda. In those five years there were four underservants. 'The one that came first ...' She was succeeded by Molly; and when Molly left, old Katy came in every day to help Anna with her work. When Miss Matilda went away this summer 'old Katy was so sorry, and on the day that Miss Matilda went, old Katy cried hard for many hours ... When Miss Matilda early in the fall came to her house again old Katy was not there.' At last Anna heard of Sally....
Now that simple German way of telling about those simple German women may be very soothing - very pleasant - but let the reader go warily, warily with Melanctha. We confess we read a good page or two before we realized what was happening. Then the dreadful fact dawned. We discovered ourselves reading in syncopated time. Gradually we heard in the distance, and then coming uncomfortably near, the sound of banjos, drums, bones, cymbals and voices. The page began to rock. To our horror we found ourselves silently singing:
[Quotation from ‘Three Lives']. Those who have heard the Southern Orchestra sing ‘It's me - it's me me' or ‘I got a robe' will understand what we mean. ‘Melanctha' is negro music with all its maddening monotony done into prose; it is writing in real rag-time. Heaven forbid Miss Stein should become a fashion! [Review of Three Lives by Gertrude Stein, the Athenaeum,  15 October 1920.]

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30 August 1920

2 Portland Villas, Hampstead - London

Dearest Violet 

It is now decided that we leave on Thursday week. So that if you come on Wednesday it will do just as beautifully well as Tuesday.
That 'Pickle' comes in my book; I wrote it in 1917. But there's a much longer story to be written about those two - the man and woman - when they were together.
S. made me feel in his letter how vital it was to have the full free courage of one's ideas. Its time [we] told, as Tolstoi says, "everything, everything".
I look forward to seeing you both - immensely.
With love
Yours ever
K.M. [Letter to Violet Schiff in Collected Letters]

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29 August 1920

2 Portland Villas, Hampstead - London

Dearest Violet 

I look forward tremendously to seeing you on Tuesday week: it will be great happiness. But I DO hope you are not coming up 'specially' as they say.
I suppose you know - but can you really know - what delight it gives me to feel that you like my work a little. But never bother to acknowledge any. Im sending you one with this - just in case you feel inclined to read it. Its a perfect night. Ive spent the day preparing for flight - sorting papers, burning papers. Now there is nothing to do but look at the moon - I wonder what you and S. are doing: I wish you were here or I there.
Yours with love
Katherine. [Letter to Violet Schiff in Collected Letters]

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28 August 1920

2 Portland Villas, Hampstead - London

My dear Brett

Thank you for letting me see the book. Ive read it. But it wouldn't be fair for me to say to you just what I think about it. After all the blood bond between sisters is very very strong; Id hurt you. The little children Laurette and Elissa say some nice things - don't they?
I didnt really hope to get that letter back. One never does, neither on the stage, nor in novels nor in real Life. This is a rule. One might as well try to lure the moving finger back to cancel half a line. However, I did ask for it: I have repudiated it. That puts me right with posterity . . .
But don't think I am unhappy or desperate or lonely. I am not. I am simply a woman with a craving to work - who longs to get away to her own tiny house and indulge the craving. My one regret is - health. And that doesn't remind me - but gives me the chance to say to you how much, how deeply I feel for you in your deafness. Perhaps you think people "accept" it, forget it. I never do and I never could. I think you are wonderfully courageous to accept it as you do and I am constantly realising what it must mean to you. I hope you have a happy time.
Katherine [Letter to Dorothy Brett in Collected Letters]

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27 August 1920

2 Portland Villas, Hampstead - London

Tedious Brief Adventure of K.M.

A doctor who came from Jamaica
Said: This time I'll mend her or break her
I'll plug her with serum
And if she can't bear ‘em
I'll call in the next undertaker.

His locum tenens Doctor Byam
Said: Right 0, old fellow, let's try ‘em
For I'm an adept 0
At pumping in strepto
Since I was a surgeon in Siam.

The patient. who hailed from New Zealing
Said: "Pray don't consider my feeling
Provided you're certain
‘Twill not go on hurtin'
I'll lie here and smile at the ceiling."

Those two very bloodthirsty men
Injected five million, then ten
But found that the strepto
Had suddenly crept to
Her feet - and the worst happened then!

Any day you may happen to meet
Her alone in the Hampstead High Street
In a box on four wheels
With a whistle that squeals
And her hands do the job of her feet.
[KM Notebooks, undated]

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26 August 1920

2 Portland Villas, Hampstead - London

'Then the train rattled among the housetops and among the ragged sides of houses torn down to make way for it, and over the swarming streets and under the fruitful earth ... A little more, and again it roared across the river, a great rocket: spurning the watery turnings and doublings with ineffable contempt, and going straight to its end, as Father Time goes to his. To whom it is no matter what living waters run high or low, reflect the heavenly lights and darknesses, produce their little growth of weeds and flowers, turn here, turn there, are noisy or still, are troubled or at rest, for their course has one sure termination, though their sources and devices are many.
Then a carriage ride succeeded, near the solemn river, stealing away by night, as all things steal away, by night and by day, so quietly yielding to the attraction of the loadstone rock Eternity ...' (Our Mutual Friend.)
Dickens on Death. It's always the same gesture. What does it imply? [KM Notebooks, undated]

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25 August 1920

2 Portland Villas, Hampstead - London

I am so sorry I have not sent the paper this week. I am sending it today. Did you see your dear sister was mentioned in The Times last week? It was funny to hear the solemn old Times call me 'K.M.', tout court. Better than ‘Kassie', tho.
Well, dearest here comes lunch - grilled sole, cream cheese & grapes. Its borne by the faithful Violet who came back from her wedding last night. I have had to admire the photographs today - can't you see them - Pa, Ma, and relations so complicated that ones brain whirls. "That's Roger's sister's niece-by-marriage with her step brother by first wife." "Oh, yes, Violet - I SEE!"
Goodbye darling. Give the Little un my best love. Do
Let me hear from you.
Your own
K.  [Letter to Charlotte Beauchamp Perkins in Collected Letters, August 1920]

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24 August 1920

2 Portland Villas, Hampstead - London

[. . .] It will be perfect joy to be 'over there' just in time to put in all the Christmas flowers - Menton is real home to me: I love the little town and the idea of pottering in it - making my Isola Bella really as pretty as I can, buying little spotted curtains for its windows and cups with lemons painted on them for its breakfast is very delightful after cold London. I shant come back here next year. Its useless. Ive lost 5lbs of very valuable flesh - stolen - nipped away - so I shall stick to furrin parts until I am really mended. Do remind me of this when I write wicked letters wailing to you about Hampstead darling.
How are you? How is everything going? Are your plans advanced? Are you happy? I wish I could pop in & find out these and many other things. I am always thinking about you - as you know.
Jack is so full of fire and health that I feel I have married a prize fighter. He plays tennis every day for hours - and even started at 7 A.M. one morning! I never seem to see him except in a white woolly sweater, clean white flannel trousers & wet hair after a cold bath. Men whose names Ive never heard of - names like Mr Funnel and Mr Nutt ring up & ask if he will be "at the Courts this morning" as though he were in a perpetual state of being taken before a magistrate. Its very good for him - I feel just like his Mother - sitting up in bed and saying "run along dear & put on your jacket if you get over heated . . ." [Letter to Charlotte Beauchamp Perkins in Collected Letters, 23 August 1920]

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23 August 1920

2 Portland Villas, Hampstead - London

My precious Marie

I am up today and lying on the sofa in my room. Its such a joy to feel dry land under one's feet once more instead of the heaving bed.
Have you ever known anything to equal this weather? It is winter in Hampstead - a pale red sun, deep misty mornings and china asters in the vases. I think this is the final summer England will ever have. Its been just a lick and a promise. Next year it will be a promise only. Why not bow down to it & all dress in rabbit skins and not attempt anything less substantial than long sleeves and high necks. The gooseberries at Woodhay and the raspberries and the beautiful springing bunches of sweet peas & those lovely lilies in the corner were (in spite of the rain) my real summer this year.
We have taken tickets for September 7th subject to my teeth, feet etc. And I have really rented Jinnies small villa the Isola Bella which she is having made ready - The darling woman came in the other day & we had a pow-wow about our plans. I hope to be able to help her about things until she can get out there - give an eye to her villa & its arrangements. [. . .] [Letter to Charlotte Beauchamp Perkins in Collected Letters, 23 August 1920]
 

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22 August 1920

2 Portland Villas, Hampstead - London

Are we to meet again soon? I have been thinking of you both so much today. We loved the evening when you came; Mr Trench is delightful.
My private feeling is that the last story in the paper - which reminded me of nothing so much as a galosh or an unclaimed umbrella has disgusted you both. It's useless to pretend I can control what stories we do print. I can up to a certain point (that, of course, makes it ridiculous) but after that Murry says I am "too precious in my taste". However, I shall go on until I do. I have been out today for a little walk on the Heath. It was so wonderful to feel the summer wind.
I hope you are happy. Be happy. Thats my great constant wish for you. You are the people to whom happiness should come - I love you both.
K.M. [Letter to Sydney and Violet Schiff in Collected Letters]

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21 August 1920

2 Portland Villas, Hampstead - London

I can call up certain persons -Doctor Sorapure for instance. And than I remember how I used to say to J & A "he was looking very beautiful today." I did not know what I was saying. But when I so summon him & see him ‘in relation' he is marvellously beautiful. There again he comes to every tiny detail to the shape of his thumbs, to looking over his glasses, his lips as he writes & particularly in all connected with putting the needle into a syringe - I relive all this at will.
But my life with Jack I'm not inclined to. It doesn't enter my head. Where that life was there's just a blank. The future - the present life with him is not. It has got to be lived. There's nothing in it. Something has stopped - a wall has been raised and its too recent for me to wish to go there even. Wait till it looks a little less new....is the feeling. I'm not in the least curious either - & not in the least inclined to lament.
If one wasn't so afraid - why should I be - these aren't going to be read by Bloomsbury et Cie - I'd say we had a child - a love child & its dead. We may have other children but this child can't be made to live again. J. says forget that letter. How can I? It killed the child - killed it really & truly for ever as far as I am concerned. Oh, I don't doubt that if I live there will be other children but there won't be that child. [KM Notebooks, undated]

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20 August 1920

2 Portland Villas, Hampstead - London

It often happens to me know that when I lie down for sleep at night instead of getting drowsy I feel wakeful and lying here in bed I begin to live over little scenes from real life or imaginary scenes. Its not too much to say they are almost hallucinations: they are marvellously vivid. I lie on my right side & put my left hand up to my forehead as though I were praying. This seems to induce the state. Then for instance its 10.30 p.m. on a big liner in mid ocean...
People are beginning to leave the Ladies Cabin. Father puts his head in & asks if one of you would care for a walk before you turn in, its glorious up on deck. That begins it. I am there. Details - father rubbing his gloves, the cold air, the night air rather he brings to the door, the pattern of everything, the feel of the brass stair rail & the rubber stairs. Then the deck. The pause while the cigar is lighted, the look of all in the moonlight, the steadying hum of the ship, the 1st officer on the deck, so far aloft the bells, the steward going into the smoking room with a tray, stepping over the high brass-bound step. All these things are far realer, more in detail, richer than Life. And I believe I could go on until....there's no end to it. I can do this about anything. Only there are no personalities. Neither am I there personally. People are only part of the silence, not of the pattern - vastly different to that - part of the scheme. I could only do this to a certain extent - but its only since I was really ill that this shall we call it "consolation prize" has been given to me. my God, it's a marvellous thing! [KM Notebooks, undated]
 

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19 August 1920

2 Portland Villas, Hampstead - London

My dear Brett,
If you really do feel any friendship for me - it is a rare feeling, terribly rare - will you send me any letters you have of mine to you. I am the most unfortunate of women - There were one or two or even three times when I committed to paper what I never ought to have let out of my heart. Grant my prayer for the sake of any good moments we may have had and let me have the chance of destroying what ought never to have been sent. I felt (very queerly) that you were in a specially confidential ‘position' because you had been a witness at that Registry Office. But that was great nonsense - such ceremonies are no more binding than tea parties. But please send the letters.
Yours
Katherine [Letter to Dorothy Brett in Collected Letters]

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18 August 1920

2 Portland Villas, Hampstead - London

The tepidity, almost bordering on idiocy, of her family circle, their politeness, forbearance, gentleness and modesty towards one another, are excellently described, as is the scene between her parents and herself when the fatal manuscript is discovered. For crime, and to save her family from being corrupted by her very presence among them, she is sent away to a widowed Aunt, and there, meeting a real live man, who is as wicked as he is handsome, she learns to live her book over again. This time she is saved by a friend of the Aunt's and sent home - to spend the remainder of her life - i.e. sixty years - repenting. But what had she written? Either it was pestiferous balderdash or it was all nonsense. Either her parents were idiots or she was a little horror. And what happened between her and the villain thus to destroy her whole life? And was her mind a perfect sink or was she merely the victim of growing curiosity? All these questions are left dans le vague - in that dreamy, faint, dazed world where girls of thirteen and girls of eighty-five laugh and cry over the same book. [Review of A Fool in her Folly by Rhoda Broughton, Athenaeum, 20 August 1920]

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17 August 1920

2 Portland Villas, Hampstead - London

In the sympathetic short preface which Mrs Belloc Lowndes has written for this, Miss Broughton's last novel, she tells us that Miss Broughton was 'curiously humble about her books. It was almost as if she was content to regard her literary gift as a kind of elegant accomplishment...' Why should this astonish Mrs Belloc Lowndes? It is delightful to think that the author should have been so nice a judge of her talent, for that, after reading A Fool in her Folly, is precisely what we feel it to have been - 'a kind of elegant accomplishment'. It is far from our desire to be lacking in respect for Miss Broughton's memory; but why does Mrs Lowndes trouble to quote the 'acute modern critic writing for Americans' when he declares that Miss Broughton 'seemed to him the nearest thing [sic] in spirit to Jane Austen that we have had in recent times'?
There can be no question of comparison between them. That Miss Broughton always put the best of herself into everything she did is undoubtedly true, but that she could have, even if she would have, put all of herself into anything that she did is quite a different matter. We do not think she had any such aim.... [Review of A Fool in her Folly by Rhoda Broughton, Athenaeum, 20 August 1920]

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16 August 1920

2 Portland Villas, Hampstead - London

Dearest Violet,
I shall be delighted to keep Tuesday afternoon free. Im much better. The 'trouble' has been lve had an overdose of vaccine and it laid me low. Ten million - oh twenty million - hosts of streptococci attacked and fought one another. I have done with vaccine. The English Review is become so degraded that one can expect nothing better of it. All the same it is disgusting; one longs to see such work in print.
Weren't those Tchekhov sketches absolute parings. But M. [Murry] was not responsible that time. It was the staff's choice. My Catholic cousins (the Villa Flora ones) have bought a new huge villa in Garavan - the other bay. It has, at its gates, a dolls house with a verandah, garden, everything complete. And this I have taken from them. I shall be in touch with them, still, & they are getting me a maid and so on, but at the same time Im free. Can you imagine the delight of writing to the villa Violet of telephoning to them (my Isola Bella has a telephone) and asking them if they will come over? Don't you envy me? By the time you come my garden will be full of flowers - Heavens! What a joy that will be. And we shall ignore Time - trick the wretch just for a little -
Yours ever
Katherine.. [Letter to Violet Schiff in Collected Letters]

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15 August 1920

2 Portland Villas, Hampstead - London

My dearest Violet,
Forgive my silence. I have been in bed ever since I last wrote to you and having an odious time. But today I am better and shall get up at the end of the week. Down in my writing room there is your last letter unanswered. I have kept thinking about it, thinking about you both, and seeing you out in this marvellous weather (at last). Is Sydney writing? I simply long to know. Hail! my Brother-artist! And Violet, let me clasp you warmly one little moment . . .
I shall not be able to leave London until I go away. That will be, I hope, the second week in September. May I know your plans? When do you return to London? I long to go, but I do want to [see] you both first. Lying here in my little top room at night I hear the trains go thrumming round the hollow world and the old longing comes back.
Oh what is the use of a letter. I cant write letters. Let us sit together in some corner of a warm quiet café, let us talk endlessly. I could talk about Tolstoy for hours. I burn to talk about Tolstoy. And then - and then - and then -
But - one thing. The story for the English Review - is it to be published? Today is my first day free from pain - and just to be washed up on the shore and allowed to think about this 'writing' is almost too much.
I will write when I am, as they say, more sensible. My love to you both
Katherine. [Letter to Violet Schiff in Collected Letters]

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14 August 1920

2 Portland Villas, Hampstead - London

A few days ago I went to see Mr. Barrie's as-successful-as-ever play Mary Rose, and what impressed me chiefly were the extraordinary efforts considered necessary to prepare the audience for something strange, something out of the common, something which does not happen every day in that block of residential flats over the way. To begin with, while the lights still glared, the orchestra banged the good old "Gondoliers" about our heads, to such good effect that the lady in front of me did pause, did say to her friend: "My dear, don't I know that? Isn't it Carmen?" And then, before the curtain rose, the shaded lights, one by one, fainted, failed, gave up their little souls, and left us in the dark exposed to a kind of emotional raking process by the violins and violas, whereby the hard stony soil of our reluctant hearts was broken up and prepared for the magic seed the wizard should scatter. Voices joined the instruments, wordless, rising and falling in what sounded to be celestial gargling... [KM Notebooks, undated]

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13 August 1920

2 Portland Villas, Hampstead - London

[. . .] It is true that in this particular story the hero escapes from them almost immediately. He and Giuseppe are left on a rock outside the cave, so that the boatman may dive and recover his notebook. But the mischief is done. All through the enchanting story told by Giuseppe after the book is rescued, we seem to hear a ghostly accompaniment. They ‘had been left together in a magic world, apart from all the commonplaces that are called reality, a world of blue whose floor was the sea and whose walls and roof of rock trembled with the sea's reflections'; but something has happened there which should not have happened there - so that the radiance is faintly dimmed, and that beautiful trembling blue is somehow just blurred, and the voice of Giuseppe has an edge on it which makes it his voice for the foreigner: the aunt and the chaplain, in fine, are never to be wholly got rid of. By this we do not wish to suggest for one moment that the key of the story should be changed, should be pitched any lower. It is exquisitely right. But we do wish Mr Forster would believe that his music is too good to need any bush. [. . .]  [Review of The Story of the Siren by E. M. Forster, Athenaeum, 13 August 1920]

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12 August 1920

2 Portland Villas, Hampstead - London

[. . .] In the case of Mr Forster the danger is peculiarly urgent because of his extreme reluctance to - shall we say? - commit himself wholly. By letting himself be borne along, by welcoming any number of diversions, he can still appear to be a stranger, a wanderer, within the boundaries of his own country, and so escape from any declaration of allegiance. To sum this up as a cynical attitude on the part of the author would be, we are convinced, to do him a profound wrong. Might it not be that this conscience is over-developed, that he is himself his severest critic, his own reader full of eyes? So aware is he of his sensitiveness, his sense of humour, that they are become two spectators who follow him wherever he goes, and are for ever on the look-out for a display of feeling ...
It was the presence of 'my aunt and the chaplain' on the first page of The Story of the Siren which suggested the tentative explanation above. The teller of the story is in a boat outside a little grotto on a great sunlit rock in the Mediterranean. His notebook has dropped over the side. [Quotation from the novel]. It would be extremely unfair to suggest that Mr Forster's novels are alive with aunts and black with chaplains, and yet these two figures are so extraordinarily familiar, that we caught ourselves unjustifiably wondering why there must always be, on every adventure, an aunt and a warbling chaplain. Why must they always be there in the boat, bright, merciless, clad from head to foot in the armour of efficiency? [. . .] [Review of The Story of the Siren by E.M. Forster, Athenaeum, 13 August 1920]

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11 August 1920

2 Portland Villas, Hampstead - London

The delightful event of a new story by Mr E. M. Forster sets us wishing that it had not been so long to wait between his last novel and his new book. He is one of the very few younger English writers whose gifts are of a kind to compel our curiosity as well as our admiration. There is in all his novels a very delicate sense of the value of atmosphere, a fine precision of expression, and his appreciation of the uniqueness of the characters he portrays awakens in him a kind of special humour, half whimsical, half sympathetic. It is in his best-known novel, Howard's End, that he is most successful in conveying to the reader the effect of an assurance that he possesses a vision which reigns within; but in Howard's End, though less than elsewhere, we are teased by the feeling, difficult to define, that he has by no means exerted the whole of his imaginative power to create that world for his readers. This, indeed, it is which engages our curiosity. How is it that the writer is content to do less than explore his own delectable country?
There is a certain leisureliness which is of the very essence of Mr Forster's style - a constant and fastidious choosing of what the unity shall be composed - but while admitting the necessity for this and the charm of it, we cannot deny the danger to the writer of drifting, of finding himself beset with fascinating preoccupations which tempt him to put off or even to turn aside from the difficulties which are outside his easy reach. [. . .] [Review of The Story of the Siren by E.M. Forster, Athenaeum,  13 August 1920]

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10 August 1920

2 Portland Villas, Hampstead - London

My dear Violet,
Yes, our letters crossed. It was a joy to hear from you and you are too generous in your criticism of my work for the paper. Nevertheless, its immensely stimulating to know that I give you pleasure - I often say things expressly for you both - Im sure you know I do.
This week I had happened to read a really typical article in an imbecile ‘womans paper' and I threw my three silly novels away and wrote about it instead. I am afraid the greater number of readers will think I have gone mad. But oh, they are such DULL dogs sometimes and I am ill - I must be gay. My heart and my cough, my dear woman, won't let me walk up and down stairs, even, at present. Im afraid I cannot come to you. You know how much I would like to. And Im not sure when I can get away to France; Im not 'up' to the journey - as they say, at present. It is very cursed; I try not to mind: I mind terribly.
But forgive me. You have a right to be disgusted with me for being ill, I know. If I ever am well and strong again Ill try and make up for this unsatisfactory
K.M. [To Violet Schiff in Collected Letters]

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9 August 1920

2 Portland Villas, Hampstead - London

I am writing to say that to our great disappointment we shall not be able to come on Wednesday. It is my fault. I am in bed with a very loud-beating and hateful heart for company. And I can't walk for the present. I must just keep still . . . Is there any way of removing the wrath of the Lord? It has pursued me for nearly three years. Oh, how I should love to have come! But you know, when I am better perhaps we can go out together again.
I wonder what you felt about our talk here. It made Murry very happy. I wish you could know him better. Do not wait for me. Its so useless to ever count on me. At the last moment I begin to cough and lve no breath. But I do so immensely wish you could know him - or would ask him to come & see you. Am I impertinent? Please forgive me if I am. I am writing in a little top room. The sun shines, faint, reluctant. But its pleasant here - so still. If only one can get ones stories written - if only one is allowed time enough!
I hope you will be happy on Wednesday.
With love to you both.
Yours ever
K.M. [To Violet Schiff in Collected Letters]

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8 August 1920

2 Portland Villas, Hampstead - London

A.B.B. died August 8, 1918.

Charades. Roger of course commits suicide cuts his throat with a paper knife & gurgles his life away. Listen to me. I have been married to you for 15 years ...

The Dud. This is in Society. We know it all. Then Wyndham is his friend & his trouble appeals to him - in vain. One mustn't forget his writing table, is exquisite, and his graceful style of reply. To write a letter was a little act of ritual ... His rooms are off Baker Street - Upper Gloucester Place, in fact.

The daughter of the watch smith. Her piano playing. Her weak heart, queer face, queer voice, awful clothes. The violets in their garden. Her little mother & father - the scene at the baths - the coldness, the blueness of the children, her size in the red twill bathing dress trimmed with white braid. The steps down to the water - the rope across.

Edie has a brother Siegfried. 17. You never know whether he has begun to shave or not. He and Edie walk arm in arm ... Her Sunday hat is trimmed beyond words.

Oh that tree at the corner of May Street. I forgot it until this moment. It was dark and hung over the street like a great shadow. The father was fair & youthful to look at. He was a clockmaker. [KM Notebooks, undated]

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7 August 1920

2 Portland Villas, Hampstead - London

My dear Violet
I would have written before but lve not been well. The weather has been so terrible. On the day we should have come to Hampden Park I felt I couldn't face an hotel especially as Jones was not to have come too. So we are both staying here instead. Murry spends his time playing ten¬nis, playing ‘games' and I spend mine - in my room. Im simply longing to go away and WRITE. The only reason I mind leaving London is that I shall miss you and Sydney. But - there it is. And you understand.
Heavens! How dear you both are to me - Don't forget our last after¬noon together.
With my love
Yours ever
Katherine. [To Violet Schiff in Collected Letters]

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6 August 1920

2 Portland Villas, Hampstead - London

"And if a man will consider life in its whole circuit, and see how superabundantly it is furnished with what is extraordinary and beautiful and great, he shall soon know for what we were born."

How beautiful little children are! I shall kneel before them and...

It was Southey who made the charming remark that no house was complete unless it had in it a child rising six years and a kitten rising six months.

"Courage, my darling!" But the soft word was fatal. Down fell her tears.

The inaudible and noiseless foot of time.

The word which haunts me is egocentric.

Rising above all pain, and all infirmity-rising above everything.

[KM Notebooks, undated]

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5 August 1920

2 Portland Villas, Hampstead - London

[. . .] Let the reader turn to the scene where Sarah gets drunk because her horse has lost. It is a fearful scene, and so closely described that we might be at her elbow. But now Sarah speaks, now Esther, now William, and all is as cold and toneless as if it were being read out of that detective's notebook again. It is supremely good evidence; nothing is added, nothing is taken away, but we forget it as soon as it is read for we have been given nothing to remember. Fact succeeds fact, and with the reflection that Esther and her husband 'fell asleep, happy in each other's love, seeming to find new bonds of union in pity for their friend's misfortune', the scene closes. Is that all? No wonder we forget Mr George Moore. To praise such work as highly as he does is to insult his readers' intelligence.  Review of Esther Waters by George Moore,  Athenaeum, 6 August 1920]

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4 August 1920

2 Portland Villas, Hampstead - London

[. . .] And yet we would say without hesitation that Esther Waters is not a great novel, and never could be a great novel, because it has not, from first to last, the faintest stirring of the breath of life. It is as dry as the remainder biscuit after a voyage. In a word it has no emotion. Here is a world of objects accurately recorded, here are states of mind set down, and here, above all, is that good Esther whose faith in her Lord is never shaken, whose love for her child is never overpowered - and who cares? [Quotes from novel] Do we not feel that to be the detective rather than the author writing? It is an arid, sterile statement. Or this: [Quotes from novel] The image of the little feet on wheels is impossibly flat and cold, and ‘tremulous' is never the word for Esther - ‘trembling' or ‘all of a tremble' - the other word reveals nothing. What it comes to is that we believe that emotion is essential to a work of art; it is that which makes a work of art a unity. Without emotion writing is dead; it becomes a record instead of a revelation, for the sense of revelation comes from that emotional reaction which the artist felt and was impelled to communicate. To contemplate the object, to let it make its own impression - which is Mr Moore's way in Esther Waters - is not enough. There must be an initial emotion felt by the writer, and all that he sees is saturated in that emotional quality. It alone can give incidence and sequence, character and background, a close and intimate unity. [. . .] Review of Esther Waters by George Moore,  Athenaeum, 6 August 1920]

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