20 June
20 June
20 June 1920
2 Portland Villas, Hampstead - London
Brett,
I must work like a Trooper tomorrow. lve promised an article by Friday & I can't fail. So would you come on Thursday instead if you are free. I am so sorry about tomorrow but may the horn blow & the worm come for me this very night if I am not too busy for anything.
K.M. [Postcard to Dorothy Brett in Collected Letters]
Suppose we put it in the form of a riddle: ‘I am neither a short story, nor a sketch, nor an impression, nor a tale. I am written in prose. I am a great deal shorter than a novel; I may be only one page long, but, on the other hand, there is no reason why I should not be thirty. I have a special quality - a something, a something which is immediately, perfectly recognizable. It belongs to me; it is of my essence. In fact I am often given away in the first sentence. I seem almost to stand or fall by it. It is to me what the first phrase of the song is to the singer. Those who know me feel: ‘Yes, that is it.' And they are from that moment prepared for what is to follow. Here are, for instance, some examples of me: ‘A Trifle from Life', ‘About Love', ‘The Lady with the Dog'. What am I?
It does not appear from The Mills of the Gods, however, that the question has ever troubled Miss Elizabeth Robins. [Review of The Mills of the Gods by Elizabeth Robins, Athenaeum, 25 June 1920]