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'Katherine Mansfield Today' Blog
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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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31 May 1922
Dear dear Koteliansky
I am writing to you in the hall of the hotel; the doors are open and a warm, light wind blows through. It is nine o'clock but the evening seems just to be beginning. People pass walking slowly and talking in low tones.
I went to Manoukhin. I found him alone at the clinic. It was nice. But he simply would not hear the Hippius story. He understood only "trop bien" as he said. He was disgusted with her. And he begged me - but in such a very simple awfully nice way to write to you and to tell you how extremely sorry he would be to think you did not know how he regretted all the trouble you had had with the Hippius. "Please, please write! Please do this for me!" he said over and over again. Please say to Koteliansky "je comprends, je comprends absolument." I said I would. Manoukhin is really a good man. It is pleasant to be with him. He thinks of coming to Switzerland during the summer with Bunin. I hope they come. But l am afraid that on the top of every mountain there would be Hippius and Dmitri always on the skyline.
[To S. S. Koteliansky, 31 May 1922.]
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30 May 1922
Dear Ida
Just to say we leave here on Friday for Switzerland. I was so glad to hear of your safe return & to know that you had spent two peaceful days - would they were twenty! I am anxious to know whether you get into touch with Miss Franklin again. She always sounded a delightful woman - different in kind to the others. Do let me know as much as you can of what happens. Dont for goodness sake take thought when you write to me. Why should you, my dear? I am not as horrid as you think. Ill write from la bas. Its so terribly hot here - as hot as ever & my dentist is really a terrible trial. That, and engagements & packing & so on have taken up all my energy for the moment. But I'll send you a real letter from Switzerland. Dont send me any more money. You ought not to have sent this. Though I won't deny it was most terribly useful as Ive had to pay out rather a lot.
But spend the £20 without a qualm.
Ever your loving
K.M. [To Ida Baker, c.30 May 1922.]
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29 May 1922
Dear Koteliansky
You cannot have believed for one moment that I was taken in by the Hippius tale. Whoever spoke to me unfavourably about you would speak in vain. But that you know, of course, it is absurd to write it. My only reason for telling you of the affair was that I considered you had a right to know. Such things should not be said behind your back. I am going to see Manoukhin today and I shall tell him the facts of the shameful, revolting story. It is hard to understand how anyone can be taken in by her who has soon her. I have never felt a more complete physical repulsion for anyone. Everything about her is false — her cheeks, glowing softly with rouge. Even her breath – soft and sweet. She is a bad woman, and it is simply infernal that she should worry you. In one evening I saw enough of her to write a wholo book about. And little Dmitri M. who listens to every word, leaning forward with a hand to his ear like a shady little chemist leaning over his counter – They will live for evor, though. Nothing could kill Hippius. If there were a wreck at sea she and Dmitri would be in the first boat. In fact she thrives on disaster. [To S.S. Koteliansky, 29 May 1922.]
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28 May 1922
It has been tremendously hot in Paris. Like an oven. Jack and I gave up writing altogether. We were overcome and could do nothing but fan ourselves, he with a volume of Anthony Trollope (very cool) and me with my black penny paper one. The strawberries and cherries came out in swarms - very big cherries and little wild strawbugs. Finally we found a spot in the Louvre among the sculpture which was cool as a grotto. Jack had an idea of making himself a neat toga, taking the Nation for a parchment roll and standing becalmed upon a Roman pedestal until the weather changed. There are glorious things in that first room in the Louvre - Greek statues, portions of the Parthenon Frieze, a head of Alexander, wonderful draped female figures. Greek drapery is very strange. One looks at it - the lines seem to be dead straight, and yet there is movement - a kind of suppleness and though there is no suggestion of the body beneath one is conscious of it as a living, breathing thing. How on earth is that done? And they seemed to have been able to draw a line with a chisel as if it were a pencil - one line and there is an arm or a nose - perfect. The Romans are deaders compared to them. We had a long stare at the Venus de Milo, too. One can't get away from the fact - she is marvellously beautiful. All the little people in straw hats buzz softly round her. Such a comfort to see something they know. "Our Maud has ever such a fine photograph of her over the piano." But ‘she' doesn't care. [To Richard Murry, 28 May 1922.]
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27 May 1922
Dear Arnold Gibbons,
In Arthur-or-Richard's last letter he told me you had had the idea of letting me see some of your work sometime. Is that right? I'd feel most awfully happy and honoured if you would show me some of your stories. Its harder to know which is the greater pleasure - writing stories or reading other people's. And can I talk them over when I've read them? The address at the top will find me until August. I won't ask you to send them to Paris, one can attend much better in Switzerland.
I hope you and the person I like to think of as my young brother are enjoying this weather.
Until I hear from you I'll look forward to those stories.
Yours very sincerely
Katherine Mansfield.
[To Arnold Gibbons, 27 May 1922.]
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26 May 1922
I never realised what drapery was until today. I had a good stare at the Venus de Milo with all the other starers. And she is lovely as ever - the balance is most marvellous. Its intensely fascinating to see the development of that perfection - to trace it from heads that are flat as flatirons with just one dab for a nose - then to the period of tree worship when all the bodies are very round and solid like the trunks of trees, then through the Egyptian influence when they begin to have stiff and terrible wings, and at last that perfect flowering flower. It makes one in love with the human body to wander about there - all the lovely creases in the belly and the roundness of knees and the beauty of thighs. The Louvre is a superb place; one could spend months there.
We hope to leave here next Friday evening. Next week will be a rush. We have so many engagements, lunches, dinners and I must go to that dentist every day. I feel we are only just leaving Paris in time; one would be swept away. And these little social affairs take up such an amount of the day - preparing for them, seeing to ones gloves & brushing ones coat and skirt and so on and cleaning shoes. It takes me hours to get ready. But I shall speed up later. Already we are putting off engagements until the autumn . . . I sound rather smug and as tho I liked it all, don't I? No, its not that. As one is here its the only thing to do. Serious work is out of the question in a city. One simply cant feel free enough. So one accepts distractions; thats all. [To Ida Baker, 27 May 1922.]
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25 May 1922
It is nice to know the poor little cat is out of its basket. Awful to love that cat as one does. I suppose you imagine I don't care a bean for him because I keep on talking of having him destroyed. To say that and see his little paws dodging in and out of the wool basket, & see him sitting in the scales or returning from his walk with paw uplifted stopping now and then. . . In fact I shall one day write a cat story which will be heart breaking! In the meantime I do hope he will not die & that you will give him an occasional sardine tail. . .
Its less fearfully hot here. There is a breeze. It has been terrifically hot until tonight (Saturday.) I went to the Louvre this afternoon & looked at Greek sculpture - wonderfully beautiful. The difference between the Greek and the Roman stuff is extraordinary; the Greek lives, breathes, floats; it is like life imprisoned - except that imprisonment sounds like unhappiness and there is a kind of radiant peace in the best of it. Scraps of the Parthenon frieze e figures greeting, and holding fruits and flowers and so on are simply divine. [To Ida Baker, 27 May 1922.]
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24 May 1922
My dear Ida
I was so infinitely relieved to get your wire & to know you had arrived safely. It was kind of you to send it. My heart was wrung at the last moment of parting from you, as you must have known. I could not believe it. It seemed solemn and wrong. But dont lets call it or consider it a parting. We shall make some arrangement sometime that will make it possible for us to be together. Aren't you certain of that? I am. Dont let S. de P. tire you. Don't send me back any money. Spend your money! If you knew what that little account book made me feel. I could have howled for misery like a dog. And then they snatched £5 from you & left you hard up! It is too bad.
I don't seem to have said anything to you at all. But the heat was overpowering and my tooth added to it. Perhaps it doesn't matter so very much. But oh! how I hate to see you travelling. I feel your fatigue and I know you will hurry and wont eat enough and your hat will hurt and so on for ever. When I am rich, my dear Ida, I shall buy you a house & ask you to keep a wing & a chicken wing & a Wingley for me in it. In the meantime I wish you could stay with Mrs Scriven and eat Easter custards or play with Dolly's babies. [To Ida Baker, 26 May 1922.]
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23 May 1922
I feel as though I have become embedded in this hotel. The weeks pass and we do less and less, and seem to have no time for anything. Up and down in the lift, along the corridors, in and out of the restaurant - it's a whole, complete life. One has a name for everybody; one is furious if someone has taken ‘our table', and the little gritty breakfast trays whisk in and out unnoticed, and it seems quite natural to carry about that heavy key with the stamped brass disk 134, and Murry is 135.
Oh, dear - I have so much to tell you, so much I would like to write about. Your last enchanting letter has remained too long unanswered. I wish you could feel the joy such letters give me. When I have finished reading one of your letters, I go on thinking, wishing, talking it over, almost istening to it .... Do feel, do know how much I appreciate them - so much more than I can say!
I must reply about Ulysses. I have been wondering what people say are saying in England. It took me about a fortnight to wade through, but on the whole I'm dead against it. I suppose it was worth doing if everything is worth doing. . . but that is certainly not what I want from literature. Of course, there are amazingly fine things in it, but I prefer to go without them than to pay that price. Not because I am shocked (though I am fearfully shocked, but that's ‘personal': I suppose it's unfair to judge the book by that) but because I simply don't believe. [To Ottoline Morrell, 26 May 1922.]
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22 May 1922
Dear Koteliansky
I feel you ought to know this. I met Bunin last Tuesday evening. He seemed very surprised that he had received nothing for this story in The Dial and that he had not been consulted in anyway about the English translation of his stories. He realised that there is no law by which a Russian author can claim any sum of money for the translation rights of his stories. But it was evident that he felt, in the existing circumstances, when he receives no money at all from Russia and finds it terribly difficult to live at all, he was entitled to a share of whatever profits there may be. I don't know. Perhaps you have a scheme by which he may benefit later. But if that is the case would you write to him and explain? I think it would relieve him greatly. You see they do not know you and poverty has made them resentful. Zinaida Hippius (whom I detest) chipped in with the fact I that you had received 500 dollars for the American acting rights of her play and that you had told her she was not entitled to a penny. But it is Bunin who matters. He is a very decent man - awfully decent, and both he and Manoukhin believe Hippius' story.
You understand why I write this?
Yours ever
Katherine. [To S.S. Koteliansky, 25 May 1922.]
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21 May 1922
Dear Ida
You are waiting to hear from me about the various arrangements, are you? I will try & reply. But if I leave anything unsaid you must just use your discretion. I am so busy.
Yes, leave E. the revolver - unloaded! No, we don't want the fur rug. It would be a good thing to have the rug case up there at the hotel. Yes, please leave the iron there. The address for the boxes is Pope's Furniture.
I think that is all. How soon are you coming? Have you heard from Mrs M? We heard this from her yesterday. It doesn't sound v. satisfactory. I mean I am afraid she is taking her time.
So sorry to write at such haste. Many thanks for your letter. Jack who is reading off this cant understand a word. I suppose you can't either. Stand on your head & try it through a looking glass . . . I think that is all. I can't think.
Goodbye for now. The little house must be v. spick & span. I expect it will be horrid to leave it.
Yours ever
K.M. [To Ida Baker, 18 May 1922.]
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20 May 1922
Dont be sad, my dear! Your house has tired you. Moving is dreadful. One moves everything - one's whole being is taken up & shaken & put down again with a hammer & nails. A little holiday will make you feel different. And try not to mind your people. How tremendously you do mind them! Too much, dearest Brettushka, far too much. For if you can't change them all your unhappy thoughts of them do no good & they exhaust you like all useless thinking does. I know what its like. But try & shake them off. Its because you find it a bit hard to work just now that you feel as you do - isn't it? When I cant get on I want to (and I find my self doing it) almost torture myself.
Oh, I wish you could hear this man playing the piano, practising below me. But so beautifully! He is listening to every tone, working quietly and carefully & now and again giving himself a treat by breaking off his exercises & bursting into ‘something rich and strange'.
[...] When you come lets go really into the question of your deafness, too. Don't think I ignore it. I think of it often and often. I feel sure that there is a way out - not with X-rays though. Have I ever told you Ive been deaf in my right car for nearly 2 years now with noises in my head always going on - sometimes less and sometimes more. What a warrior! [To Dorothy Brett, 13 May 1922.]
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19 May 1922
Dearest Brett,
I can't write a long letter as I would like to for I am infernally busy with work. But read inbetween the lines, dearest, & forgive me. About your coming. This hotel is absolutely full up. Not even a room for 1/2 an hour! And they don't know when there will be one. So you'll go to your Big Men? Paris looks absolutely marvellous just now - it has never been more beautiful and so light, so airy-fairy. I hope you'll come. If you do - would you bring me 2 tablets Cuticura soap? The only soap for the complexshun! Here it is so dear that one can't afford to wash one's face at all. You know the stuff done up in a horrid black & yellow packet, gooseberry green soap. But it is pure as a lily.
I went to the clinic for the last time yesterday. Manoukhin says I am not I yet ‘out of the wood'. My right lung is still a bad one. After 2 months of repose I have to go back for 12 more séances. However . . . I am infinitely better - as long as the sun shines. Why does the sun ever go in? Ask this question one of your Thursdays & tell me what your philosophers answer! [To Dorothy Brett, 13 May 1922.]
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18 May 1922
Yes, I think your idea of a Swiss hotel is the best. But there is another thing. If the cat is ill would not the doctoress put it out of pain painlessly? Its terrible cruelty to carry about a sick cat. I am absolutely certain Jack's mother wouldn't take it. But I can't judge at this distance. This letter is scribbled in great haste. I wish to Heaven you did not so throw one into confusion. Now you must run after Susie de P! And all else is nothing to you. "Youll manage somehow" about the house & leave Ernestine to go through the inventory. That you really cant do. What a relief when the whole business is over and there are no more waving strands like this. It would kill me to live like you.
You do understand, do you? This £I0 is for your journey and your personal expenses. Its no good my writing any more. I can only repeat that I do think in this matter Susie de P. ought to consider you. Surely she knew why you were at the chalet? Extraordinary!
K.M.
Why muddle? Why rush? Why fuss? Why kill yourself? Its your own fault. I didn't ask you to go at 60 miles an hour. But I see plainly you're the milling slave of the new ‘person'. It really is humiliating. [To Ida Baker, 11 May 1922.]
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17 May 1922
My dear Ida
I hasten to reply to your letter. Jack is writing Mrs M. today and asking her to reply to you direct. Ida, I don't see how you can leave until you get that reply! You were up there, I thought, to settle up the "leaving all in order". You can't leave it half done, surely? Why this rush now with Susie de P. S0 like you! Shes the one bright star. But how maddening! I do beg you to stay there & see all is arranged. We shall tell Mrs M. about Ernestine going in once a week. I have already wired about the boxes. Of course it would be folly to have lids at that price if the others are strong. I beg you - its so utterly absurd! - now that you have been up there for nearly 3 months to see to settling up the house not to rush off before its done. I send you a cheque for £I0 for yourself If you want more, tell me. That is for your own personal expenditure. Send us the bills for the boxes. But I have faithfully believed I could leave this matter of the chalet to you. If you are going to let me down - wire at once. It is absolutely distracting. You must go through the inventory with Mrs M 's representative & get him to sign that all is in order and that the house is in order. I have no reply whatever, otherwise, to what Mrs M may say.
[To Ida Baker, 11 May 1922.]
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16 May 1922
My dear Elizabeth,
How glad I was to hear from you! I had been thinking of you - feeling how you must love this weather. It is simply so perfect that I seem to spend the day in telling myself how exquisite it is. What else can one do? And one's self never grows impatient, which is such a relief but agrees enthusiastically every time . . . And then it's so adorable of you to ask me how I am - to care about knowing. If you knew how I appreciate that! As far as I can see this treatment has been wonderfully successful. I have hardly any cough, I've gained pounds and pounds, and the only thing that remains is a tired heart. Which will of course recover now that it does not get such a never-ending shaking. I can't say that I am cured for certain until after the second series, but I feel cured, Elizabeth, quite absolutely different! Of course I can only crawl like a snail, but a [ ] snail - a rejoicing one. In fact it is so marvellous that it's still a dream. . .
Will you feel we are haunting you in your glades and groves when I say we are going to the Hotel d'Angleterre in June. We both have so much work to do that we don't dare to look for a new place or to make holiday. But I long for that air, those mountains, the shining peace of June. There is no place more beautiful! Don't mind us! We won't intrude! But it would be heavenly to come to the Chalet in August. [To Elizabeth, Countess Russell, c.10 May 1922.]
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15 May 1922
Dear Ida
Just a line to say - Jack and I both have so much work to do this summer that we have decided when we leave here (end of this month) to go to the Hotel d'Angleterre, Randogne. Does that make you open your eyes! But in the summer June and July that place was so lov ely & I know it. It would only take a day to settle and a look at the mountains before one could work. All other arrangements are too difficult - Germany & so on. We have not, literally, the time to discover a new place and take our bearings. Then we shall be near Elizabeth, too. The winter we are going to spend in Bandol at the Beau Rivage. I am going to get a maid now at once. I can't do without one. I simply have not the time to attend to everything and I can't bear as you know ‘untidiness'. I shall advertise in the Daily Mail. Jack may be going to lecture in England this autumn too, so I should like to have a really trustworthy person to post letters and so on and be with me. By the way it may interest you Jack is really very successful now. His reputation is at least double what it was. He has a new job with The Times too which is being enormously successful. Don't speak of our plans, by chance, will you?
There is a really superb professional pianist here. He plays nearly all day & one writes to his music.
Au revoir
K.M. [To Ida Baker, Draft 10 May 1922.]
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14 May 1922
But what nonsense I am writing. I must get up & go have my wool washed. The shutters are 1/2 shut & through them gleams a red azalea that Jack bought at Poitiers. It looked a poor thing then but it has turned into a superb creature in this blessed oh how blessed heat and light!
Ida - can you take a parcel for me?? If not you & I will tie up one here & nip out to the post with it. I must get rid of these old skins. Short of digging a hole in the carpet I cant with Jack about. Jack has accepted more or less a lecture tour in England this autumn. I go to Bandol when my time is up here - to the Beau Rivage. I hope to get a maid before I leave here. But I haven't done anything about it yet. Someone I must have. But really as long as the sun shines nothing is urgent. It is as hot as San Remo. I have slashed the sleeves off my blue charmeuse. Sleeves are intolerable. At 10.30 last night I paddled in the bath. But they still feed me on puree de lentilles and soissons. I had strawbug tartlets with the Schifls yesterday. Can you make them? Forgive a very silly letter. [To Ida Baker, 10 May 1922.]
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13 May 1922
Jack told you - didn't he - we are coming to the Angleterre. If you have time would you run down & SEE a couple of rooms? It would be very nice if you could as you are so near. I look forward beyond words to the early summer there for working. Any other place would take up too much time. We can settle in there in a day and start off. Both of us are behindhand. And its harder & harder to work here. The weather is really divine. I spent yesterday in the Bois at a marvellous place with the Schiffs. I think I should begin to dance if I stayed here long. You can't imagine how beautifully these women dance in the open under flowering chestnut trees to a delicious band. All the very height of luxury. I do like luxury - just for a dip in and out of. Especially in Paris because its made into such an Art. Money buys such really delightful things. And then all is managed so perfectly. One has tea out of doors but its so exquisite. One's cup & saucer gleams & the lemon is a new born lemon and nobody fusses. Thats the chief point of money. One can buy that complete freedom from fuss. [To Ida Baker, 10 May 1922.]
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12 May 1922
Confidential.
Dear Ida
As far as I can tell this treatment has been (I hesitate to use this big word) completely successful. I hardly ever cough. I have gained 8 pounds. I have no rheumatism whatever. My lungs have not been re-examined yet nor has the sputum. Ill let you know about these things. But so far - it seems I am getting quite well. My voice has changed back. I take no medecines. The only thing that remains is that my heart is tired and weak. That means I get breathless and cannot walk yet except at a snail's pace with many halts. But I have no palpitation or anything like that. And of course now that I don't cough or have fever my heart will gradually recover. Manoukhin says I ought to be able to walk for an hour in June, even. I put confidential to this letter because I don't feel its fair to tell anyone who may ask you until I have the facts like X ray & analysis. Should anyone ask - just say I am infinitely better & that Ive gained 8 lbs. I mean Hudson or Woodifield. [To Ida Baker, 10 May 1922.]
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11 May 1922
About coming over. That is for you to say. We shall be here until the end of this month, and really all times are the same, now. But do I catch just the faintest hesitation - about leaving your house and so on just as you have got in? If its there darling lets put off meeting again until later. Please tell me bang out. Oh, before I forget. If you have not bought that linen please don't buy it. It suddenly horrifies me - the idea of anyone buying me all that awful white linen. How gruesome! How terrible! If you have bought it - Ill pay gladly - and ask you to keep it. But dont buy it for me! There would be a coffin worm in its folds. This is just a note written as usual on the flat of my back. Can you read such awful writing.
Love - love - a special summer line of love.
The Mountain passes through Paris on the 10th on her way to London. I am going to ask her to take a parcel to you. It will consist of among other things 3 frocks of mine (I love exchanging things like this !) which I thought you might like to have for gardening in. So simple to throw off & on & when finished throw over the wall. They are quite good as people say. There is no snag. If you hate them or feel insulted give em away to the next lady who wants to sell you a fern. [To Dorothy Brett, 8 May 1922.]
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10 May 1922
Dearest, I wouldn't if I were you make rules about not showing your work for so and so long. Let us talk it all out when you come over. The great thing is to go on quietly, steadily, your own way. Thats the secret. I think myself you have worked too much without someone near you to discuss what you are doing as you go along - to think it out, talk it over and so on. You have not had enough attention. Some people need a tremendous great deal in order to develop their own powers. Its as though you were a kind of plant, my lamb, that needs a ‘frame' as well as the sun, for a bit. You need cherishing. You need the feeling that you are carried in the breast of another. I don't need that. There is something hard in me which even refuses it absolutely where work is concerned. But I know, quite simply I can give that to another. I can help others - for some reason (Im not ‘proud' of it you know, any more than a water diviner is proud of his queer flair). There it just is. I wish you could make use of it. [To Dorothy Brett, 8 May 1922.]
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9 May 1922
Dearest Brett
Do you mean the true original Eva? I always felt she was a wonderful creature! I feel inclined to steal her immediately. No, only in jest. But what amazing luck! I do hope she looks after you really well.
Do you regret Thurlow Road? One always regrets that skin. One always leaves something precious like a little hoard of treasure buried somewhere and back one goes to it like a ghost, seeking and tapping. How I feel that about Isola Bella! But next Winter M. and I are going to spend in the South! Oh God, what a joy! Brett, as soon as I have the money the little house will be bought in the woods above Bandol. But now I have flown off, darling and I meant to say I feel this house of yours is going to be a happy one. Don't you? I•haven't you taken it to your heart?
I am going to get up today & attack solid food again. It sounds a joke but my last five days Ive had a fearful tummy upset - like poisoning - with pains & high fever. Isn't it extraordinary! I suppose these are the final rages of the devils The weather has been perfect & Ive been in my horrid old bed, useless as ever. But I think its on the wane again.
But the warmth! The sun! The air - so soft. The bells so gentle! It is impossible not to feel happy and thankful for Life - beautiful Life. [To Dorothy Brett, 8 May 1922.]
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8 May 1922
My dear W.J.D.
I have been trying to arrive at this moment ever since your letter came about J.M.Ms book. But the cares of my dilapitated little house take up nearly all my time. Last month I really began to breathe again, as they say, but in stalked the influenza and he is a persistent fellow; he's not gone yet. This is very annoying. But please do not hate me for it. . .
I did not expect you to write to me about my Garden Party. But I wanted you to have a copy. A strange thing - the night of the day when I last wrote to you, just before I fell asleep I saw, in the air, the envelope of my letter to you about Miss M. I had addressed it 14 Annesley Road. But it seems to me impossible you should not know how much I loved Miss M. She is part of my world. I wish you were here; I wish we could talk about her for a long time - no less than walk through whole chapters. But these are bold words.
Your Fanny seems to me so much the one and only Fanny that I feel I must apologise for using her name in vain in The Nation. Florence (whom I feel understands Fanny best) I expected to challenge me to a duel. Speaking of Florence, there is a Florence Dela Mare in this hotel. We keep no end of an admiring eye on her. Sometimes she is late for lunch and we pine. Then she comes down to dinner in a frock to take the breath. We met her first in the lift - flew up in the air with her. And J.M.M. said ‘Florence De la Mare' and I said ‘of course'. [To Walter J. de la Mare, 6 May 1922.]
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7 May 1922
Dear Ida,
You will send me the bills in good time, won't you? So that all can be settled up there.
With regard to Jacks possessions. Will you please pack his breeks, his cricket shirts, all socks or stockings, his summer underclothes, and in fact anything he may need this summer - in his large suitcase & bring it with you? Is that possible? Fur rug & striped tick blanket & so on must go into another box. Blue serge suit please throw away. He'd like his white trousers please. And will you bring his camera?
[...] Yes I am terribly terribly busy. Its worse every day. And the letters. Oh - these letters. They stream in & have to be answered. I ousted my flu finally with 1/2 bottle of champagne. I felt really awful [the] first few days & then one day ordered champagne for lunch & it did the trick. Its worth knowing. Its not an extravagance. It saves hundreds of bipalatonoids & their kind. [To Ida Baker, 5 May 1922.]
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6 May 1922
My dear little Hugh,
First I must beg your pardon for not having thanked you for that lovely postcard you painted for me. But I wanted to run out and buy you a little present to pop in the letter and I have not been able to yet, for I have been ill, too. But I won't forget. The very first time I go out I will drive to a shop that sells presents.
How very nicely you painted that bee-hive. I have always wanted to live in a bee hive, so long as the bees were not there. With a little window and a chimney it would make a dear little house. I once read a story about a little girl who lived in one with her Grandma, and her Grandma's name was old Mrs. Gooseberry. What a funny name!
Mr. Murry thinks you write very well. He liked the "R" best. He said it looked as if it was going for a walk. Which letter do you like making best? "Q' is nice because of its curly tail.
I have pinned the postcard on the wall so that everybody can see it. I hope you are nearly well again.
With much love from
"Mrs. Murry" [To Hugh Jones, 5 May 1922.]
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5 May 1922
Dear Mr Pinker,
Very many thanks for your letter. About In a German Pension. I think it would be very unwise to republish it. Not only because its a most inferior book (which it is) but I have, with my last book, begun to persuade the reviewers that I don't like ugliness for ugliness sake. The intelligenzsia might be kind enough to forgive youthful extravagance of expression and youthful disgust. But I don't want to write for them. And I really cant say to every ordinary reader "Please excuse these horrid stories. I was only 20 at the time!"
But perhaps these reasons have too much sentiment in them. As a business proposition it would I am sure be bad. It would, quite rightly provoke all those critics who have been good enough to let byegones be byegones in judging the Garden Party.
[To Eric Pinker, 3 May 1922.]
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4 May 1922
My dear Lamb
If I sound cold and horrid - unloving - sometimes, forgive me. I try to help it but I don't succeed very well. What I ought to say is "I am writing about Bolshevism and so on for two reasons. (1) Because it is interesting in a superficial way but (2) because I want to tide over a difficult moment." (2) is the most important thing. Its rather like the nonsense people talk in doctors' waiting rooms. You know? Not being able to keep quiet or to show what I feel I hand you the copy of Punch or whatever it is . . . Forgive me, my little Brettushka. And do understand once and for always its not for lack of love.
[...]Its rather an important day for me. I am beginning my long serial half of which has to be finished in a month from now! And I have also signed away all the rest of my book to be ready sans faute by the end of the summer. The serial is very exciting. Its 24.000 words, a short novel in fact. I want it to end with a simply scrumptious wedding - rose pink tulle frocks for the bridesmaids, favours on the horses heads, that marvellous moment at the church when everyone is waiting - the servants in a pew to themselves. The cook's hat. But all all divinely beautiful if I can do it - gay, but with that feeling that "beauty vanishes beauty passes. Though rare, rare it be . . . "
[To Dorothy Brett, 3 May 1922.]
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3 May 1922
Im sick to death of this hotel. Ive eaten hundreds of wings of hotel chickens & God knows how many gritty little trays have whisked in and out of my room. But its a marvellous spot to know of I can never be grateful enough. Its so simple, as they say, and all the servants are pleasant. But I want to be off where I can work more - I can't work in cities. And Ive already sold every story of my new book in advance - and have 12 to deliver in July. Im afraid I am absolutely ‘booked up' for this year with work for here and America. But if we could meet next spring, Anne, & do a book then. I mean - make a small spring Tour & write a book on it. I think that would be a perfectly adorable idea.
Weve seen nobody in Paris - Joyce came one day for a talk but thats all. Im a bit too old, or I feel too old for cafes, even if I were well enough to go to them. I don't like that crowd - Nina Hamnet and Co. Can't get on with it. Life is too short. Or perhaps this is old age.
J.M. who is an excellent nose flattener has bought two lovely old apothecary jars decorated in green and pink and yellow. I wish you could see them as they are now full of anemones. [To Anne Drey, 1 May 1922.]
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2 May 1922
I was horrified to realise David is old enough to make jokes. Heavens! Do keep him a nice small little boy for a little bit longer. Does he know about the ‘Three Little Kittens who Lost their Mittens' and rhymes like that? I think there is nothing to beat those very silly but awfully funny nonsense rhymes and when you are small they have a meaning that we forget later. Oh, Anne I saw such perfect lambs of little boys in the Bois the other day. They made me wish wish wish that you and David were there too. The Bois is simply too beautiful just now. Jack Murry haunts the Luxembourg Gardens however and is to be seen creeping into the back row of the 2d guignol. No one else is there over four. But he says when the VOLEUR appears with a most terrific eye - you know the kind - he cant help letting out a yell himself. If only it would stop raining - large spots of rain as big as mushrooms fall every day - Paris would be perfect just now. I dont see much of it for I have still two weeks of my X ray ‘cure' to go. But after that I shall really begin to prowl. I can't say much about the cure till its over. I dare not. But I feel very different already. [To Anne Drey, 1 May 1922.]
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1 May 1922
Dearest Anne,
I have just been through that déchirante experience - two lovely young creatures from the Chemiserie with little frocks "pour essayer seule-ment Madame". Im sitting, fringe straight again at last writing to you in the one they forced on me - a kind of plum grey - tout droit, with buttings on the hips and no trimming at all except a large embroidered lobster bien pose sur la ventre!!! Shall I ever wear it again? Its beginning to look [more] extraordinary every moment. The little creatures twittering chic-chic-chic would have made me buy a casserole for a chapeau with two poireaux in the front. That is the worst of living as I do far from the female kind. These moments come and Im lost.
Yes, darling Ill be here first week in June for sure. Do come then. Otherwise I don't know where I shall be off to. Ive got a wandering fit on. Anywhere, anywhere but England! The idea would be to have a small permanent niche in Paris and another in the South and then a small car, and so on, ma chere. Very nice - only one thing is missing to make it complete. However, I never care much about money. I always feel sooner or later it will turn up - one will find it somewhere, in the crown of ones hat or in the jam pot. [To Anne Drey, 1 May 1922.]
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