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'Katherine Mansfield Today' Blog
What was KM thinking and writing 90 years ago today? The ‘KM blog’ posts daily extracts of her letters and notebooks written almost 90 years ago...
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10 March 1920
My dearest Bogey
Please reply to all of this in detail for I shall be home now in six weeks and I must know certain things.
(A) I have just received a letter from you about your country expedition with Brett. I am in complete agreement about the cottage. As long as you can find one L.M. and I will do the rest. But I am certainly not well enough to spend the 6 months (and not 4 as you ever so airily suggest darling!) in a cottage. As I have already told you I return to England on the 30th of April & do not leave before November. I must [therefore] have Portland Villas and I beseech you to realise that QUITE DEFINITELY. I long to spend a country holiday with you but I intend when I return to see Doctor Sorapure, to go very slow and certainly it were impossible for me to pass those 6 months in the country. We shall have to make a financial scheme by which this will be ‘easy'; I am sure we can. (Does 2 months make so little difference to you? Darling, what a queer lover I have!) [To J.M. Murry in Collected Letters]
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9 March 1920
When we reached the mountain tops we got out and lay on the grass, looking down down, into the valleys and over Monaco which is, if anything in this world is Cinnamon's capital. The palace seen from so high - with its tufts of plumy trees, the harbour basin with his yacht & a sail boat and a minute pinnace. Angelica's chemises were hanging out to dry in a royal courtyard. I saw them through the glasses. The hedge-sparrow had cushions & rugs for her. The american whose name is Bunny lay flat on her back smoking - Jinnie, never still for a moment roamed about & one heard her singing. She couldn't keep still & Connie (of course) unpacked the tea basket & fed us all & poured cream down us and then gave away the cakes to two funny little mountain children who watched us from behind a rock. We stayed there about 2 hours & then dropped down by another road to Monte. The light & the shadow were divided in the hills but the sun was still in the air all the time - the sea very rosy with a pale big moon over by Bordighera. We got home at 6.30 & there was my fire, the bed turned down - hot milk - May waiting to take off all my things. ‘Did you enjoy it Madam?' Can you imagine such a coming back to Life? Its simply incredible! But I was simply filled with thoughts of you all the time - every moment. I lay back in the car & talked to you . . . How can one repay them for all this? Its not money its not because they are rich it is the spirit of it all the way they do it, their voices and looks and tones. It is living by love. How I do scorn all that horrible old twisted existence I mean really the weekends at Garsington - the paralysis of everybody the vanity and ugliness of so much. [To J.M. Murry in Collected Letters, 4 March 1920]
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8 March 1920
As soon as I get back (in 7 weeks) I shall arrange everything for you. I think the Cottage idea is the right one & we shall have a whole month there in the summer. L.M. & I will make it perfect. I do not ask you to spend one penny on P.V. I never have. All that we buy will be for the Heron & P.V. is our storehouse. Remember this, Bogey dear. I have already spent 200 francs on most lovely things for us here - cups, saucers, trays, boxes, exquisite oddments. I bought them with such deep joy but your letter makes me feel perhaps my joy was a little premature & you will not care so greatly. Its a great effort to love just now - isn't it? Ah, Bogey -
Darling - do not drink more wine than you need. It does you great harm. Won't you get Sorapure to give you some injections as you are over tired? May I write & ask him to come & see you?
And will you tell me in your very next letter whether you want Waterlow to stay on. As regards his money - I will pay the £13 a month. If you want him we must fit him in somehow. It is for you to say but please tell me won't you?
I feel your fatigue is dreadful. Take care of yourself my precious boy & remember that in seven weeks please God you will be able to hand over many of your worries to your own devoted for ever -
Your very own
Wig.
Do confide in me if you possibly can - won't you?
[To J.M. Murry in Collected Letters, 7 March 1920]
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7 March 1920
My darling Bogey
After two days and nights of misery trying to make bricks out of straw I was forced to give up. I cant write on novels unless I can have some novels to write on. You see I have no intellectual stimulus here & my nerves are still so overstrained that they just fail me.
I am also exceedingly worried about you. Except for that hurried note in reply to my important letter you have not referred to it: you have not talked it out at all. I tried my very best darling to make you realise how deeply I felt it for you but I am afraid I did not succeed at all. But try not to forget that we are all in all to each other and that you when you ‘confess you are selfish' and talk of the no compensations in London you are saying things which I not only know just as deeply just as finely as you - we have talked of them all in the deepest intimacy - but you hurt my love in speaking as though I were a stranger. Must you? Try not to! It is like your other letter saying: ‘My days are very laborious & I am none too pleased with Life.' Can't you feel how these words strike another? Oh so strangely and sadly, dearest. [To J.M. Murry in Collected Letters]
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6 March 1920
I heard from Violet today & will reply via you tomorrow.
Dear Bogey
Your Monday note has just come (written at 200 miles an hour, I should think.) I haven't received the A. yet. My proof came last night: a thousand thanks for correcting it so minutely. What a printer they have! Im posting it back today together with a review. Dearest please do not accept any invitations for me - will you. I am coming HOME because I want to be with you and in my room & not to spend part of the summer in Mrs Locke Ellis' house, tho' its very kind of her. Id rather stay where I am than do that. And please dont ask anybody to dinner the day I come home or for the week following - not Brett - or anybody except of course my dear little ‘brudder' whom Im going to ask to meet me at the station. I have not the remotest desire to see anybody but you and Arthur and my cats & the house and Sorapure and the willows and the shepherdess and Violet & Gertie. I am afraid you don't know how homeloving I am & how it thrills me to think - oh bliss untold! of opening the grey door & being in the hall! My ‘perfect times' here are only pastimes. So dont bother to cry ‘hurrah' - funny one.
At the moment (and yesterday) Im in bed with rather a severe chill & fever but everybody is looking after me so ‘hurrah' I suppose again-
Yours for ever
Wig. [To J.M. Murry in Collected Letters]
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5 March 1920
Its the most divine spring-summer weather - very hot. This is the kind of thing that happens at 1.30. A big car arrives. We go in from our coffee & liqueurs on the balcony. May is waiting to dress me - I wear ‘somebodys' coat - ‘anybodys' - we get in - there are rugs cushions - hassocks - & yesterday the tea basket and away we go. Yesterday we went to La Turbie (I cant spell it and am ashamed to ask.) Its up up high high on the tops of the mountains. Its a tiny ancient roman town, incredibly ancient, with old bits with pillars & capitals. Oh - dear - it is so lovely. The road winds & winds to get there round & round the mountains. I could hardly bear it yesterday - I was so much in love with you. I kept seeing it all - for you - wishing for you - longing for you. The rosemary is in flower (our plant it is) the almond trees, pink & white, there are wild cherry trees & the prickly pear white among the olives. Apple trees are just in their first rose & white - wild hyacinths & violets are tumbled out of flora's wicker ark and are everywhere. And over everything, like a light are the lemon & orange trees glowing. If I saw one house which was ours I saw twenty. I know we never shall live in such houses but still they are ours - little houses with terraces & a verandah - with bean fields in bloom with a bright scatter of anemones all over the gardens. [To J.M. Murry in Collected Letters, 4 March 1920]
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4 March 1920
My dear Jones
I want to tell you a secret but I cannot when we are face to face. I feel you know what it is. But the fact is all I can tell you now. Later on, Ill laugh about it and talk about it and you can make fun of me but just at present Jones Im so sensitive that I couldn't even bear to hear you say you had got this letter. I tremble with shyness - that is dead true, my dear. Later on, I promise it won't be so, but for the present will you forgive me if I ask you not to even breathe a word of it to me.
This afternoon when we were lying on the hills (Ill tell you all about it one day) I knew there was a God. There you are.
One day (before I go back to England I hope) I mean to be received into the Church. I am going to become a Catholic. Once I believe in a god, the rest is so easy. I can accept it all MY OWN WAY - not ‘literally' but symbolically: its all quite easy and beautiful. But unless one really believed in a god even thought it is tempting to have that great inward gate opened - it is no good.
I mean to make Life wonderful if I can. Queer, Jones, Ive always a longing to heal people and make them whole, enrich them: thats what writing means to me - to enrich - to give. I want to do it in Life too. [To Ida Baker in Collected Letters]
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3 March 1920
I cant draw our little girl till Ive got a fine pen, but he's not bad is he? Darling Bogey I do wish I could draw. Im always wanting to put little small drawings on the tops of your letters & I had such a thrill when I made that little boy. We'll have to take our sketch books away this year. You know re the South of France I have grown to like it far more than ever I did. The mechanical appearance goes & theres something about the rocks & stones which reminds me of New Zealand - volcanic - & the sea is really a wonderful colour. Yes, Ive grown to love it. The air in the mountains is wonderful & then the trees - the pepper trees & the lemons. If only you shared my winters, & we had a minute Broomchen here where we grew jonquils, early peas & lettuces & anemones . . . You would be happy I know. I would not go to Bandol again because its not far enough South. Between here & Nice there are lovely little unspoilt corners in the mountains. But we can wait & come in 30 years' time. That will do. [To J.M. Murry in Collected Letters]
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2 March 1920
Have my letters arrived? I've written every day & I have sent a review of Pilgrims of Circumstance & Jewish Children. This week Im awfully badly off for books. Couldn't I have Rebecca Wests novel The Judge & The Woman Called Smith by Vember Heinemann &- some others? Its fearfully difficult to review things which ought not to have long reviews.
About the Constable excisions in je ne p. p it depends what they ask - doesn't it? I want to cut a small bit out of Prelude but that I can do in proof. Bogey, are you going to review my Story in the Athenaeum? Every week - I look - and dont see it. Your book was reviewed so I suppose its not a question of the staff at any rate it wouldn't be for I dont sign. But if youd rather let it alone - alright darling.
Your Blunden man - oh what a curse. He doesn't really thrill me yet. I cant ‘get away with it' - it seems to me the first poem [is] overweighted - overheavy. But I KNOW I am not fair & I understand what he must be to you & all success to him! If anyone sent a poem from N.Z. from my school that had even one happy line - But that is not your first interest in him, of course. Boge, do remember to be sober in your praise - temperate. You remember how little fired us when we were young & to be over generous is dangerous. You of course would shower love on anyone whom you thought was walking the right path - and I love you for it and yet - I know one must hold back a bit. [To J.M. Murry in Collected Letters]
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1 March 1920
My own Bogey,
A perfect pile of letters came today - one telling me about Dollie Radford. Also there came the paper. I think it is vastly improved with the contents across p. 1. It looks a very good number. I have not had time to read any but your most admirable article yet. Therell be no me this week I am afraid. Letters have simply not been going to England. I suppose you don't realise là bas how serious this strike has been here. I have seen the D.N. [Daily News] (Jinnie takes it) & it seems to be just dismissed but the french papers are full of it and full of its esprit revolutionaire. Were it not for the post Id snap my fingers at it. What does it matter here - when Jinnie takes up a piece of omelette & says "come on hedge-sparrow, peck away." Thats her name for me!
I want to write about a million things but I am held up because I do not know what you are feeling about my letter about the house. I feel your keen disappointment & Id give my eyes to able to retract it. But I cant. Its no good imagining that I can live in an English winter yet. I just dare not: it might cripple me for life. And we cant have a half life. You are the very last man on this earth to have to do with an ‘invalid wife' - I know that so well. I know that the springs of our life together will be poisoned if I am not well - Italy taught me that & now this rheumatism which Rendall assures me is most obstinate & which I know for agony convinces me that nothing but sun from November till May will do. [To J.M. Murry in Collected Letters, 2 March 1920]
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28 February 1920
"Something to do with lilacs" - an old air of France.
Le temps des lilas et le temps des roses
Ne reviendra plus ce printemps-ci
Le temps des lilas et le temps des roses
Est passé - the temps des oeillets aussi.
Le vent a changé les cieux sont moroses
Et nous n'irons pas couper et cueillir
Les lilas en fleurs et les belles roses
Le printemps est triste et ne put fleurir.
Oh, joyeux et doux printemps de l'année
Qui vint, l'an passé, nous ensoleiller
Notre fleur d'amour est si bien fanée
Las! que ton baiser ne peut l'eveiller.
Et toi, que fais-tu? Pas de, fleurs ecloses
Point de gai soleil ni d'ombrages frais;
Le temps des lilas et le temps des roses
Avec notre amour est mort á jamais.
Life's a queer thing. I read this today and in my mind I heard it sung in a very pure voice to a piano and it seemed to me to be part of the great pain of youthful love.
[KM Notebooks, dated 29 February 1920]
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27 February 1920
[. . .] I KNOW you hate London but darling Heart you MUST be in London anyway for a time and you certainly could get every weekend off & when the house is found perhaps you could spend every weekend there. P.V. when Ive seen to it wont be in the least what it is now. And Bogey, you must realise that I want to give you your heart's desire this moment but I must consider well what is easiest and best for us. Life in the country without your wife would not do. It would make immense demands on your energy. It cant be done with[out] L.M. and me there all the time - and I really think I dare not face this rheumatism for two years. You see what it amounts to is: I come back thoroughly set you up - get all really exquisite - you find a country place or a pied à terre & go slow just for the present. Light a cigarette. Think it well, well over. I wish you were here so that I could talk it out with you. I do so feel its the right thing to do. Let Sydney know & ask him. Tell him how snug I mean to make P.V. & well kept in every way. And if you do agree please read this letter to Violet & give it to her immediately & darling please please wire me either agree or dont agree. I shall wait for that wire. Ill go into all the details once I'm home - & I promise you great comfort - no domestic worries and L.M. shall establish your country comfort.
Thats all.
Your devoted
Wife Wig. [To J.M. Murry in Collected Letters, 26 February 1920]
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26 February 1920
THE IMPORTANT LETTER.
Darling Precious little Husband
I want you to read this slowly and to remember that I am loving you with my whole heart and putting you first in my thoughts always. I know how terribly anxious you are to leave P.V. but what are you going to do if I go abroad for the winter. Rendall said today: it would be madness for me to spend the next 2 winters in England because whatever the luxury I live in the air is almost perpetually damp and there IS very little sun. It is not as though I were a simple consumptive who can walk, lie about and so on: I am handicapped very severely by my rheumatism which cannot be cured until my lungs are cured. It is that which prevents me from leading the normal life in a cold climate which another consumptive can do. He says that for the next two years I ought to be here from November till May. I must take this opinion into account; it is shared by these 2 women and I dare not face a prolongation of my illness. Now if I do come abroad L.M. must be with me. She would not let me come alone & she says she dare not. I think she is right. You remember I once was cruel enough to suggest that we put off establishing our house: I still suggest it. Yes, I still think it would be 1000 times better to wait for 2 years. Please don't get angry. Please read on. You could surely get a weekend place for yourself every weekend. I would spend May till October in P.V. I suggest offering Violet & Roger the basement floor & her bedroom - with a door at the top of the kitchen stairs for them so that they live there. [To J.M. Murry in Collected Letters]
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25 February 1920
REPLY URGENT.
Marie Louise - domestique de 30 ans, venant de Nord - pent faire la cuisine - travaille admirablement - desire venir avec nous comme cuisinière - femme de menage. Mais elle a avec elle sa nièce, jeune fille de 17 ans, admirable comme parlour maid et serving maid qui vent venir aussi. Si je m'attache tons les deux? Please reply! Ce sont deux femmes superbes!!! Mais pas un mot d'Anglais. Je suis très anxious to bring them.
Wig.
[Postcard to J.M. Murry in Collected Letters]
My dear old Boy
[. . .] In the Hermitage letter you asked me what were my views about Adam in this great swinging garden. Now thats awfully difficult to answer. For this reason. I cant help seeing all the evil and pain in the world: it must be faced and recognised - and I cant bear your sentimentalist or silly optimist. I know it all: I feel it all. And there is cruelty for instance - cruelty to children - how are you going to explain that, and as you say the beauty - yes the beauty that lurks in ugliness that is even outside the pub in the gesture of the drinking woman. I cant explain it. I wish I could believe in a God. I cant. Science seems to make it impossible - and if you are to believe in a God it must be a good God & no good God could allow his children to suffer so. No, Life is a mystery to me. It is made up of Love and pains. One loves and one suffers - one suffers and one has to love. I feel (for myself individually) that I want to live by the spirit of Love - love all things. See into things so deeply and truly that one loves. That does not rule out hate - far from it. I mean it doesn't rule out anger. But I confess I only feel that I am doing right when I am living by love. I don't mean a personal love, you know, but - the big thing. Why should one love? No reason; its just a mystery. But it is like light. I can only truly see things in its rays. That is vague enough isn't it? [Letter to Richard Murry in Collected Letters, 24 February 1920]
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24 February 1920
There is a book which we must positively not be another week without. It is Forster's Life of Dickens. How is it people refer to this & have many a time & oft talked of it to me & yet - as though it was of course a very good Life a very good Life indeed - about as good as you could get & immensely well worth reading. But so dispassionately - so as a matter of course. Merciful Heavens! Its one of the most absolutely fascinating books I have ever set eyes on. [. . .]
I had your Saturday (home again) letter today. Fancy winter back again & here we go from sun to sun. Ill tell L.M. to write to Harlow Downs and Ill write to Belle in case she hears from any of her friends of anything. Dont get agitated or desperate for a minute. When we're back we'll get what we want. I have no possible doubt. You do realise darling theres a chance I may have to return here next winter - a big big chance? Its for the sun, and I cant risk taking 10 years getting well when I might take 2. If I do come here of course it will be with Connie & Jinnie & Ill leave L.M. in charge of the house & you. Id come from November till May. Rendall saw me yesterday. He says my lung is better even in a week but my old rheumatism which has located itself at present quite definitely in the right hip joint is 'very troublesome'. It could be cured by baths but then my lungs wont stand baths - so Ill have to get them going before I can cure it. It doesn't prevent me from living my life however [. . .] Who made God?
Wig. (I don't mean I did).
[To J.M. Murry in Collected Letters]
Oh to be a writer a real writer given up to it and to it alone! Oh I failed today I turned back, looked over my shoulder and immediately it happened I felt as tho' I too were struck down. The day turned cold & dark on the instant. It seemed to belong to summer twilight in London - to the clang of the gates as they close the garden - to the deep light painting the high houses to the smell of leaves & dust, to the lamp light, to that stirring of the senses to the languor of twilight - the breath of it on one's cheek - to all those things which (I feel today) are gone from me for ever ... I feel today that I shall die soon - & suddenly but not of my lungs.
There are moments when Dickens is possessed by this power of writing - he is carried away - that is bliss. It certainly is not shared by writers today. For instance the death of Merdle - dawn fluttering upon the edge of night. One realises exactly the mood of the writer and how he wrote as it were for himself. It was not his will he was the fluttering dawn and he was Physician going to Bar. And again when the [. . .]
[KM Notebooks, dated February 1920 by J.M. Murry]
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23 February 1920
Darling
[. . .] We came back through pine forests, past Cap Martin & then at the edge of the brimming sea. Ive never heard of Monte before - never dreamed there was such a place. Now I want to go to the rooms & see it all. Its dreadful but its fascinating to me. We stopped the carriage outside the cafe & waited for about five minutes. I thought of the Heron & OUR life - & I thought how strange it was that at the Heron I should no doubt write a story about that woman over there that ancient long nosed whore with a bag made of ostrich feathers - I wonder if youd like to see such a thing. Would you? I dont in the least know. Cruelty is there - & vultures hover - & the devil waiters wear queer peaked caps to hide their horns. Its another dead calm gorgeous summer - June - day - as I write - perfect weather! I wish you shared that at any rate. Take care of yourself my own - and dont forget for a moment how perfect our house is going to be. It will be far better than we imagined in the past because all is different now. No, I can never forget anything of what has happened because it has changed everything but I dont regret it. It had to be.
Your own
Wig.
I can get a lovely coat here I find, so don't forget to wire me if I must not expect the other, but parcils do take 3 weeks from Paris.
[Across top of letter]
Re the New Forest I was talking about it to Cousin Connie last night & she says its so difficult to get anything on gravel - and that gravel is the most important thing. One might as well dig a grave as live on clay. [To J.M. Murry in Collected Letters]
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22 February 1920
My Very own Bogey
It is raining but such lovely rain; the drops hang in the rose bushes & on every tip of the palm fronds. Little birds sing; the sea sounds solemn & full & silver gulls fly over. I can smell the earth & I can feel how the violets are growing & all the small things down there under my window. It is exquisite. Talking about flowers you know gentlemens buttonholes? (A double daisy small). Child, they grow here in every conceivable colour - & massed together they are really a superb sight. I am sure Sutton would have them. We must remember to grow them so in our garden a round bed. Country Life, of course makes it almost impossible to wait for a garden. When one reads the collection of flowery shrubs, par example - mock orange (you remember that: it was at Mylor) four kinds of flowering quinces, mexican fuchsia ... oh dear me! And then the annuals that sewn in January & February are flowering in Avrilo - there are at least 24 kinds & if you are clever you can grow them so that one kind marches up with banners after the other until the chrysanthemum is there. I think I shall become a very violent gardener. I shall have shelves of tomes & walk about the house whispering the names of flowers. We must have a tiny potting shed, too, just big enough for you & me. I see as I write little small forked sticks with labels on them - daphne grows in England: Eden Phillpotts has a great bush. I shall write for a cutting. I read in Country Life of a most excellent apple called Tom Putts. Silly name, but it seems to be a very fine fruit & the trees bear in their second year. [To J.M. Murry in Collected Letters]
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21 February 1920
Would you give enclosed letter card to my manager J.M.M. & ask him to get his menials to post the necessary books to the gent. I think he ought to have a copy of Je ne parle pas & be told about the Constable book but thats as my manager pleases. As to Biographical Note:
Née 14 Octobre à Nouvelle Zélande.
Premier voyage age de six mois.
Premier histoire publié age de neuf ans.
La reste de ma vie est passé en voyagant et en écrivant les ‘short stories'.
Written for Australian & English papers & reviews.
Wife of the brilliant poete et critique J.M.M. who is the famous editor of the newly brought to life and prominence Athenaeum -
Two cats.
K.M.
I am so sorry about Aldous. Do publish another review by another hand if you've a mind to. Ill understand absolutely - only I could not say more. Boge they were such BILGE.
Wig-chik.
[To J.M. Murry in Collected Letters, c. 22 February 1920]
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20 February 1920
They waited in a very quiet room rich with books and old dark coloured prints & dark highly polished furniture. Jinnie went out for a preliminary talk & came back for her and they entered the doctor's room. He was short, dry, with a clipped beard & fine shrewd eyes. A fire burned, there were books everywhere - German books too, reminding her of Croft Hill. Jinnie stayed while the long familiar careful examination went on again. The doctor took infinite pains. When he had done she dressed & Jinnie said "Doctor it's the desire of my life to cure this - little friend of mine. You must let me have her - you must let me do it." And after a pause which the other thought final he said "I think it would be ideal for her to be with you. She ought not to have to suffer noise and the constant sight of repellent people. She is highly sensitive & her disease - of such long standing - has increased it a thousandfold."
He was quiet, grave, gentle. Oh, if they could have known or seen my heart that had been stabbed & stabbed. But she managed to smile & thank the doctor & then Jinnie put her back into the brougham & it was arranged she would leave in a week.
All that afternoon she had been seeing wallflowers. Let me never have a sprig of wallflowers if ever I have a garden. Oh anguish of Life! Oh bitter bitter life! He just threw her away - well "don't give me up entirely." That reminded her of wallflowers & Shakespeare. Yes how in a Winters Tale Perdita refused gillyflowers in her garden. "They call them nature's bastards." She came back into her room & lay down. it was like Bavaria again - but worse worse & now she could not take a drug - or anything. She must just bear it and go on. [KM Notebooks, dated February 1920 by J.M. Murry]
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19 February 1920
She dressed & went downstairs into the horrible hall because there with the monde drinking coffee & cigarettes she dare not cry. A little brougham drove up with an old dragging man. She got in. A la poste. Oh these little broughams, what I have gone through in them - the blue buttoned interior the blue cords & ivory tassels, all, all. She leaned back & lifted her veil & dried her tears. But it was no use. The post office was full. She had to wait in a queue for the telegrams among horrible men who shouted over her shoulder - horrible men. And now - where? A dose of sal volatile at the chemist. While he made it up she walked quickly up & down the shop twisting her hands. There was a box of Kolynos. It said Jack. Jack in her room, talking about the foam, saying he'd leave his. Four francs seventy-five.
She bought and drank the mixture, & now - where. She got into the cab, the old man hung at the door. She couldn't speak. Suddenly down the road on the opposite, looking very grave, came Jinnie. She crossed over & taking her hand said "Deo gratias." And then was silent a moment. Then she said suddenly "Come along & see Rendall now. Let's fix it now this moment." [KM Notebooks, dated February 1920 by J.M. Murry]
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18 February 1920
The courier was so late. She rang and asked the eternal déja passé & heard the eternal ‘pas encore Madame.' At last Armand appeared with a letter from him & the papers. The letter. She read - she read to "don't give me up entirely". When she read those words it happened again - again there seemed to be a dreadful loud shaking & trembling, her heart leaped, she sank down in the bed. She began to weep and could not stop. What was he made of - to talk of them giving each other up. The cruel - the ghastly ice-cold cruelty. Never say again you have imagination - never say you have the capacity to love and that you know pity. You have said things to me that have wounded me for ever. I must go on but I'm wounded for ever by you.
The first bell rang. She got up. She began to dress, crying & cold. The second bell. She sat down & steeled herself - her throat ached, ached. She powdered herself thickly & went downstairs. In the ascenseur: Armand cherchez-moi une voiture pour deux heures juste. And then 1 hour and a quarter in the brilliant glaring noisy salle, sipping wine to stop crying & seeing all the animals crack up the food. The waitress kept jerking her chair offering food. It was no good. She left & went upstairs but that was fatal. Have I a home? A little cat? Am I any man's wife? Is it all over? He never tells me a thing - never a thing - just all those entirely self-absorbed letters and now just these notes. What will come next? He asks if I believe he loves me & says "don't give me up" but as though perfectly prepared for it. She wrote out the telegram. He is killing me, killing me. He wants to be free - that's all. [KM Notebooks, dated February 1920 by J.M. Murry]
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17 February 1920
No its not like that
Love
Will you put this letter from A. & the drawing in the file? Both are so characteristic of him & so delightful they ought to be kept. And would you please post this letter to Anne? No post for me today - not a letter or a paper: I am so disappointed. I had none yesterday either. I am sure they have not gone to the Hermitage; they must be en route. And my overcoat. Bogey was it registered. When can I expect it? Can you know? I am worried about it. Its not that I want it so much just at the moment (though I do) but Im so afraid it may have gone astray & yet this is surely very unlikely with a parcel in the sac diplomatique. But was it insured? It is a vile day - a real Mistral. One is protected from it here - though. But Rendall says I can go for walks & that makes one impatient. I want to go for gallops to the china shop. Bogey if ever you have neuralgia or rheumatism or any pains of that kind take irénine. It is in the form of cachets & its absolutely Infallible. Dont forget darling. Any French chemist would sell it to you I expect. This isn't a letter today. J'attends -
Your own Wigchik. [To J.M. Murry in Collected Letters]
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16 February 1920
My darling darling Anne
Ive just heard from Murry that Constable has accepted my book & that you may perhaps do some drawings for it. This last fact simply FILLS me with joy. Will you do them? It excites me so - the thought of them. You know how I admire & love your work - you blessed woman - and how proud I am to have your name & mine walking bras dessus bras dessous. You know my BAG. It is my chez moi. It goes with me like Mary's lamb wherever I go. Whenever I get into another Strange Room - out comes the Bag & the Interior Decoration is complete. How many times I have greeted you as I put it on the sofa end or on the wardrobe handle. I don't believe a day passes but I think of you. It will always be so. There you just are. Whenever I fill the jar with anemones or peel a tangerine or see a tree covered with fruit or pick flowers or throw a stone into the sea or laugh on the quiet OR try on a hat or see a particularly ravishing bébé I think ‘ANNE'.
Ive been (dont laugh) ill since December 5th with a cursed heart - and I cant walk even yet. But the corner is turned and I shall be a well girl again very soon. You know Anne the ‘art business' for me is the only Thing that Matters - I cant find a substitute which is ‘both nourishing & satisfying'. I wish you were here - the weather is glorious. Italy is a cursed spot but France - is the old old story.
Salutations. Love - a great deal of Love to you & to le petit. Heaven bless your loves. [. . .]
I am always your
Katherine. [To Anne Drey in Collected Letters]
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15 February 1920
And yet one has these ‘glimpses' before which all that one ever has written (what has one written) all (yes, all) that one ever has read, pales . . . The waves, as I drove home this afternoon - and the high foam, how it was suspended in the air before it fell . . . What is it that happens in that moment of suspension? It is timeless. In that moment (what do I mean) the whole life of the soul is contained. One is flung up - out of life - one is ‘held' - and then, down, bright, broken, glittering on to the rocks, tossed back - part of the ebb and flow. I don't want to be sentimental. But while one hangs, suspended in the air - while I watched the spray I was conscious for life of the white sky with a web of torn grey over it, of the slipping, sliding, slithering sea, of the dark woods blotted against the cape, of the flowers on the tree I was passing - and more - of a huge cavern where my selves (who were like ancient seaweed gatherers) mumbled, indifferent and intimate ... and this other self apart in the carriage grasping the cold knob of her umbrella thinking of a ship, of ropes stiffened with white paint & the wet flapping oilskins of sailors . . . Shall one ever be at peace with oneself, ever quiet and uninterrupted - without pain - with the one whom one loves under the same roof? Is it too much to ask? [KM Notebooks, dated February 1920 by J.M. Murry]
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14 February 1920
Dear Mrs Jones
This is my permanent address until May for the papers. I hope the little one has got over his bronchitis . . . I shall love to see him one day.
Mr Murry once promised me Country Life. Will you ask him if he wants to break his promise?
K.M.
[Postcard to Alice Jones in Collected Letters]
Brett darling
This is my new & permanent address. You see what a nice easy one it is . . . Please take the hint. I long for a letter from you. I shall write a big answer. Im fearfully busy - but DO let me hear your news. Take care of yourself. It will be such joy to see you again - you darling! Ever your woolly lamb
K.M.
[Postcard to Dorothy Brett in Collected Letters, 16 February 1920]
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13 February 1920
Dressmaker 11 a.m. [KM Notebooks]
Precious love - you know the Italian china? The 2nd kind we liked even better than the first? Its shop is here - packed. Plates, cups, letter racks, china trays. I am going to buy a whole pile of it with my Art & Letters money - if you agree? Do you? And have it packed in a crate. Its such a perfectly thrilling shop - one of our own shops you know. Its cold - deadly cold today. I am writing my review of Peter Jackson & the Dark River. But I feel a rag: Ive got fever. Temperature 100. I shant stir a step. Its the chauffage qui ne marche pas. But it wont matter after Sunday. Jinnie came yesterday to see me, it was her birthday: she is 64: I thought she was about 47. We are the same age when we're together - thats whats so queer. But she is a saint - a real saint - a holy woman. Its a great privilege to have known her.
Boge I see Gaby Deslys is dead of pleurisy. I am so sorry. She had just given up the stage because of her lungs - she couldn't sing any more & she was going to be married to the man & now poor little soul she and all her hats are dead. God rest her soul!
Grant Richards is coming to the Villa Flora on Tuesday with a closed car, taking me to Cap Martin & seeing me home - guaranteed no steps. But he says may I hope to persuade you to let me have the first refusal of your next novel? Well, I suppose there is no harm done: Ill ask for £60 in advance & then he'll be sorry. Woman next door to me - inferior Belgian in bed - with fever - being sick all day & then sighing in between & making SUCH noises - 2nd class Ladies Cabin noises like Harwich & Antwerp. Its very fierce not to have this place properly heated, though. Addio my own darling precious ONE.
Your Wig. [To J.M. Murry in Collected Letters]
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12 February 1920
A lie is the unjust denial of the truth. She stood here. Yes, 64 dear, sat & raised her hands. Can I help her? I want to. Here is a woman whom I would love to make just a little happy - a great woman. [KM Notebooks]
Monday evening letters (1) and (2) received.
(1) Very well, Isabel about the Pension. But I must write an introduction saying it is early early work - or just that it was written between certain years, because you know, Betsy love, its nothing to be proud of. If you didn't advise me Id drop it overboard. But of course Ill do the other thing, & certainly it airs ones name. But why isn't it better! It makes me simply hang my head. Ill have to forge ahead & get another decent one written thats all.
(2) Ill repay you for the overcoat when Constables pay me. Thank you enormously for the figgers. They frighten me. You never mentioned your new suit. I don't know what colour it is or shape or anything - or whether there is any fringe on the trousers. I always rejoice when you buy clothes. When I am rich you will have such lovely clothes all real lace and silk velvet. You will have crimson satin sleeves slashed with Indian green silk and embroidered gloves with sachets sewn in them - just wait.
(3) I had your wire last night about my story. Oh dear I hope you do find a moment just to say a little more against OR for. I burned for you to like it.
(4) You are a perfect darling to have bothered to say all this about the money. No, theres not much to play with indeed. We're both rather short of pocket money. If God would only give us a sheer 1d a week dropped from Heaven every Saturday morning just for us to go off & spend. [To J.M. Murry in Collected Letters]
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11 February 1920
Mrs Dunn came in the afternoon & squeezed up on the chair or crouched on the floor. [KM Notebooks]
My Precious,
Your Saturday evening letter has come with the ‘explanation'. Dont say another word about it. Lets after this put it quite away. Yes, I felt in Ospedaletti that you refused to understand and I have felt since I have been abroad this time that you have turned away from me - withdrawn yourself utterly from me. I have felt like a person in an open boat, tossing about on frightful waves calling and crying to be saved & you have seen me from your ship & refused to see me or rescue me because you were not made of whipcord or steel. Yes, Boge, it has been a suffering such as I don't feel you ever could know. But its over and its taught me a lesson and I don't regret it. I could turn to it now and kiss it. I can't enter into what it has taught me but the difference is there. It had to be. If Im dead sincere I must say that I believe in the mystery: out of evil good shall come. But now - put it all away, my own. And you really must give up the word desperate with regard to our relations. Dont let it exist. Dont make an effort to love me - my silly darling - or to fly after enamel spoons. Just remember: That From Now I Am not ill. Because that is the truth. So lean on me, give me your things to hold, confide in me, worry me, treat me as your wife. Just rest on the thought of me. You are absurd when you say you are no good as a lover. That is just nonsense and its not fair to me. I dont want a slave and an admirer, my love. You would be a perfectly rotten slave & admirer. As a lover, you are - well simply you - just all my life and my joy and my pride. [To J.M. Murry in Collected Letters]
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10 February 1920
Love
[. . .] You see the war - the tragedy of the war was that ever since I knew you you had been trembling towards it. (This is a secret.) The war was no surprise to you: it was a supreme justification of all you had trembled towards (like a compass) all your life. Thats what nobody else can ever know. It wasn't the war that broke a bright, radiant, ardent, loving, rich spirit as all your friends and admirers think. You never wrote in pictures or other than in that austere fashion, and you were talking to Gordon about weariness of the spirit, ultimate obscenity, vultures, ‘our wounds' years & years before. But I always felt that behind all that talk - "I am very tired" a quoi bonisme there hid - what I cant help calling a bright burning angel - loving, turned to the light. Oh my child! But like some daisy - innocent as others are not - wise as others are not - dreaming, fulfilled, serene, a poet, the father of my children. Oh, my pride to think that!
But the war came - your dark self pulled over, and finally at the Casetta you said you did not even want the angel to triumph - and I knew we would never have children - wed never be Adam and Eve lying under a tree looking up through the branches with our own little flowery branch lying between us. My own, you are always so terrified that I want to intrude, to have you other than you are. You are always thinking theres a need of escaping from MY idea of you. You are wrong. I adore you as you are - your deepest self, but yes it is the ‘angel' I adore and believe in for ever.
Wig. [To J.M. Murry in Collected Letters]
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9 February 1920
Hell. Letter from Jack. It was too much. I wept all the morning. In the afternoon sitting in the sun - alas alas! The sun is so warm - like summer. All's over then. My dream was right. [KM Notebooks]
Urgent.
My Bogey
I cannot stand it any longer. You must tell me the truth. Here is your Thursday letter: "Well Wig dont give me up entirely." If you really contemplate the possibility of it then you no longer love me or believe in our marriage. You are simply killing me again and again with every letter. Your last, ASKING me to wire if I loved you! Now tell me at once, BY WIRE whether all is over or not. God! To have been driven by you to write such words. You cruel cruel - oh I am crying. Of course when I said I would not write again I only meant until I had your answer.
No you are too cruel. To throw away SUCH Love throw it away. Oh, how you must have lied to me! I thought we could not live without each other. But now put me out of my pain. I cant bear it. I am in utter despair. I must know.
Your Wife.
[Across top of letter]
This your Thursday letter makes mine about the Villa Flora just a silly dream. Again I am not. I just steel myself somehow not to weep before people - thats all.
[To J.M. Murry in Collected Letters]
THURSDAY LETTER COME TELL WING WIRE IMMEDIATELY YOUR COLDNESS KILLING ME TIG [Telegram to J.M. Murry in Collected Letters]
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8 February 1920
To Villa Flora. In the garden with the unhappy woman lying on the hard bench. Seeing them all at tea in their beauty. The Spanish brocade cloth, the piece of heliotrope. Jinnie's plan that I shall go and live there. Came back & wrote it all to Jack in delight. Then a nuit blanche, dreadful nightmare. I think I should like to join the Roman Catholic Church. I must have something!
[KM Notebooks]
Dear Darling
I received a letter from you yesterday saying (1) you had bought me an overcoat. I wish you hadn't. It is obvious that you raced to buy it & that you bought it with your little brains & nerves . . . You are the man in the Daudet story you know the man with the golden brain. But there. When it comes Ill see. Ill cherish it.
(2) You have paid £10 into my Bank. Now I am going to ask you if you can put another £10 in March. After that I shall need no more of your money.
(3) You've sold my book. With the £40 I shall spend £10 for living expenses in the mois d'Avril & the £30 for fares and travelling home. [. . .]
Another change in the near future. I have not mentioned it, but this place is intolerably noisy. I am so sensitive to noise - oh - so sensitive. It hurts me really. They bang my door other doors shout shriek crash -I cant endure it & really cant work or sleep. The doctor suggested une forte dose de Veronal for sleep. Merci. But really its bad. I just mentioned this to Jinnie. She came one day when I was feeling it a bit badly. Today she arrived with a carriage & fur rugs & silk cushions. Took me to their Villa - it is really superb - exquisite outside & in. They had a chaise longue in the garden - a tiny tray with black coffee out of a silver pot - grand marnier - cigarettes - little bunch of violets - all ready. Then we went in to tea. Their villa is really - Boge - its a dream. I mean even the furnishing is perfect. [To J.M. Murry in Collected Letters]
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