20 Feb
20 Feb
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]