25 Dec 1921

25 December 1921

Chalet des Sapins, Montana-sur-Sierre, Switzerland

Dear Michael Sadleir,
   If you think a small limited edition of the Garden Party would sell then I think the idea an excellent one. My only doubt is whether the small public who read my last book wouldn't buy the limited edition and there'd be no one left to buy the other!
   Should you decide, however, to print one I imagine the Oxford booksellers might dispose of some copies.
   I hope you are having a Happy Christmas & that you are going to have a Happy New Year.
   Yours ever
              Katherine Mansfield. [To Michael Sadleir, 25 December 1921.]

Sydney
   This is just a note - not a letter. My letters to you - the ones that remain unwritten - would fill volumes. But I feel you know that.
   I want to tell you something. It is important. It is about your letter to Murry. I don't, personally, believe in chance. God knows I dont see the plan; I dont see what the ‘authors' are driving at. But it does seem to me always more and more positive that a design there ix. And there is a moment which is the perfect moment. But so often, until it has passed by we dont see it. We only see what we have missed. All is in retrospect.
   What this all leads up to is one of those moments marvellously realised, marvellously fulfilled was when you wrote to Murry. He needed your letter and you gave it to him. You know how Murry craves friends. But the men whom he knows are too . . . frightened . . . to ever show him more than a kind of head sympathy, which is very little use to him at all. But that precious sense of security that real friendship gives he has asked for in vain until unasked, you gave it him. Ielieve that you and I think alike about Murry, deep down, deep down. He was in a mood of awful depression just then. I could not help him. He wanted someone who was not K.M. . . . And I am sure men need men in a way few women understand . . . Well, the simple truth is Sydney, that your comprehension and your generosity are beautiful. One loves you for your gifts.  [To Sydney Schiff, 25 December 1921.]