Katherine Mansfield

Edited by

J. Middleton Murry

Alfred A. Knopf New York • 1928

Copyright 1927 by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.

Manufactured in the United States of America

Published September, 1927

Second Printing October, 1927

Third Printing November, 1927

Fourth Printing November, 1927

Fifth Printing January, 1928

Sixth Printing July, 1928

Illustrations

1914 FRONTISPIECE

1908 viii

London, 1913 xvi

1913 14

1914 18

"Chummie," October 1915 34

Garsington, 1916 66

1917 72

Paris, April 1918 80

Mentone, April 1920 152

Mentone, 1921 178

Montana, 1921 196

"Grandma" 224

Introduction

Katherine Mansfield (Katherine Middleton Murry, née Kathleen Beauchamp) was born in Wellington, New Zealand, on October 14, 1888. She was the third daughter of a family of five. The Beauchamps had been in Australia and New Zealand for three generations. The greater part of her early childhood was spent in a small township called Karori, a few miles from Wellington, where the village school was the only school, and where she shared what education there was with the milk boy and the washerwoman's daughters (see The Doll's House). She has left it on record that she had her first story accepted at the age of nine — I remember her saying that it appeared in a magazine called The Lone Hand — and that, at the same age, she gained the first prize for English composition at the village school, the subject being "A Sea Voyage."


At the age of thirteen she was sent to be educated in England, at Queen's College, Harley Street, where she remained till eighteen. There she edited the college magazine. Like other young people of her generation, she found the beginning of intellectual freedom through an admiration of Oscar Wilde and the English "decadents," but, at this time, her main interests shifted over from literature to music. She became a devotee of the violoncello, and a fine executant.

She returned to New Zealand much against her will, and spent the next two years of her life in fairly constant rebellion against what she then considered the narrowness and provincialism of a remote colonial city. Inevitably, London appeared to her as the living centre of all artistic and intellectual life. A family of musicians in Wellington, whom she knew intimately, and who had been a kind of oasis for her in what seemed to her an intellectual desert, left New Zealand for London. At their departure she was in despair. She went on a rough camping expedition through the New Zealand bush. On her return she persuaded her parents to allow her to return to London on a small allowance.


Shortly afterwards, she finally abandoned music for literature. She submitted manuscripts to editors in vain, and, in her effort to make ends meet, she had varied and exacting experiences in minor parts in travelling opera companies and the like, until the quality of her writing was recognised by the editor of The New Age. From 1909 to 1911 she was a fairly constant contributor to that paper. A series of stories she wrote for The New Age, based on her experiences while convalescent in Germany after an illness, was collected and published in 1911, under the title In a German Pension. This book was immediately recognised. It passed quickly into three editions, when its sale was disastrously interrupted by the sudden bankruptcy of


= viii =

Introduction

her publisher. For In a German Pension she received £15 in advance of royalties, of which, of course, there were none.

In December 1911 I met her at the house of the late W. L. George, the novelist. I was, at that time, an Oxford undergraduate, connected with a youthful literary magazine called Rhythm. Katherine Mansfield began to write stories regularly for this. Her first story, "The Woman at the Store," caused a minor sensation. Rhythm, which became for its last three numbers The Blue Review, lasted for about eighteen months, during most of which Katherine Mansfield and I edited it together. Most of the stories she contributed to it, sometimes two a month, have been republished in Something Childish, and other Stories.


When The Blue Review died, in July 1913, Katherine Mansfield had no place to write in. The beautiful story, Something Childish but very Natural, which she wrote in Paris in December 1913, was refused by every editor to whom she submitted it. No home could be found for any one of her stories till the winter of 1915, when she and D. H. Lawrence and I produced three numbers of a little magazine called The Signature, written wholly by ourselves. The Signature died within two months, and again Katherine Mansfield had nowhere to write, until I became editor of The Athenæum in 1919. In the four years between 1915 and 1919, three stories of hers were published by English periodicals, all in 1918. "Bliss" in The English Review, and "Pictures" and "The Man Without a Temperament"


= ix =

Introduction

merit " in Art and Letters. In 1917, however, Prelude had been published as a little blue-paper book by the Hogarth Press, and Je ne parle pas français printed for private circulation by my brother and myself.

Prelude marks the beginning of the final phase in Katherine Mansfield's development. The war had come as a profound spiritual shock to her, as it did to many less gifted writers of her generation. For a long period the chaos into which her thoughts and ideals and purposes had been flung remained unresolved. Then slowly her mind began to turn back towards her early childhood as a life which had existed apart from, and uncontaminated by, the mechanical civilisation which had produced the war. The crucial moment was when, in 1915, her dearly loved younger brother arrived in England to serve as an officer. Her meeting with him formed, as it were, a point round which her changed attitude could crystallise. They talked over their early childhood for hours on end, and Katherine Mansfield resolved to dedicate herself to recreating life as she had lived and felt it in New Zealand. Her brother's death a month later confirmed her in her purpose, and shortly afterwards she left England for Bandol in the south of France, and began to work on a long story of her childhood days called The Aloe, which was published in a different and shortened form as Prelude.


On its appearance as a blue-paper volume Prelude was completely ignored. Most of the newspapers to which it was sent did not review it at all. Those which did saw nothing particular in it. But Katherine Mansfield had her moment of triumph when she heard that the local printer who set up the book had exclaimed on reading the MS., "My! but these kids are real!" It was characteristic of her that she preferred the praise of simple, "unliterary" people to that of the cultured and the critics; and this characteristic became still more marked later on, when, after the publication of "Bliss," she began to receive many letters from simple people who loved her work, and, above all, the child Kezia who appeared in it. She felt she had a responsibility to these people. To them she must tell the truth, and nothing but the truth. This preoccupation with truth, in what she told and in herself to be worthy to tell it, became the devouring passion of her last years. She turned away from modern literature: so little of contemporary work seemed to her to be "true." "The writers are not humble," she used to say; they were not serving the great purpose which literature exists to serve.


In the meantime Prelude was hardly more than a succes d'estime, if indeed it was that. Not until it appeared as the first story in "Bliss" was its unique and profoundly original quality truly appreciated.

But in December 1917, just after she had finished revising the MS. of Prelude for the printer, Katherine Mansfield had a serious attack of pleurisy. The gloom and depression and sunlessness of a London now completely under the shadow of the war had a profound effect on one whose childhood had been spent in a gentler air. She pined for the sun; she was confident

= xi =

Introduction

that she had only to revisit her beloved Bandol in the south of France to be well again. Accordingly she left England at the beginning of January 1918. But travelling conditions in France in the last year of the war were such that the hardships she suffered on the journey (which she had to undertake alone) made her illness worse, and to her dismay, Bandol itself was utterly changed; it also had been wasted by the war. No sooner had she reached the place, ill and alone, than she passionately desired to return to England. Tragic ill-fortune dogged her in her efforts to return. The authorities delayed for weeks before granting their permission; and on the very day she arrived in Paris, weak and by this time very seriously ill, the long-range bombardment of Paris began, and all civilian traffic between England and France was suspended. The hardships of her journey in France turned her pleurisy into consumption.


She went to Looe in Cornwall for the summer of 1918, and returned to a new house in Hampstead for the winter. In the spring of 1919 I became editor of The Athenaeum, and she began to write weekly criticisms of novels under the initials K.M., which then began to be famous, and a little later began to write a story each month for the paper. Then, for the first time, the publishers began to ask her to collect her stories, and at the beginning of 1920 Bliss, for which she received £40 in advance, appeared.

Before it appeared, she had been driven from England once more by her illness. She spent the winter
of 1919-1920 in Ospedaletti and Mentone, where she learned of the success of her book. She returned to Hampstead for the summer, and in September left once more for Mentone. From Mentone she went, in May 1921, to Montana in Switzerland.


In the autumn of 1921 she completed The Garden Party, and Other Stories, which was published in the spring of 1922, while she was in Paris, whither she had gone for a special treatment in February. The appearance of The Garden Party finally established her as the most remarkable short-story writer of her generation in England.

But now in 1922 writing had become for her an almost impossible struggle, not only against disease, but against an inward conviction that some work of inward purification had to be accomplished before she could go forward, before she would be worthy to express the complete truth which in her imagination she apprehended. The Canary, the last complete story she wrote, was completed in July 1922. Shortly after this she abandoned writing for the time and went into retirement at Fontainebleau, where she died suddenly and unexpectedly on the night of January 9, 1923.


It is difficult for me to attempt a critical valuation of Katherine Mansfield's work. All my life I was involved in it. I believed in it, published it, and for one brief moment even printed it with my own hands. And now, and always, it is and will be impossible for me to be wholly detached from it. I can only say that her work seems to me to be of a finer and purer kind than that of her contemporaries. It is more spontaneous, more vivid, more delicate and more beautiful. Katherine Mansfield responded more completely to life than any writer I have known, and the effect of that more complete response is in her work.

Her affinities are rather with the English poets than the English prose-writers. There is no English prose-writer to whom she can be related. The revolution which she made in the art of short-story in England was altogether personal. Many writers have attempted to carry on her work; not one has come within a measurable distance of success. Her secret died with her. And of the many critics who have tried to define the quality in her work which makes it so inimitable, every one has been compelled to give up the attempt in despair. It is noticeable, however, that the most wholehearted admiration her work has received comes preeminently from the most distinguished short-story writers we have in England — H. G. Wells, John Galsworthy, Walter de la Mare, H. M. Tomlinson, Stacy Aumonier, Barry Pain, Ethel Colburn Mayne. These practitioners of the art, with one voice, salute her as


There is a certain resemblance between Katherine Mansfield's stories and those of Anton Tchehov. But this resemblance is often exaggerated by critics, who seem to believe that Katherine Mansfield learned her art from Tchehov. That is a singularly superficial view of the relation, which was one of kindred temperaments. In fact, Katherine Mansfield's technique is very different from Tchehov's. She admired and understood Tchehov's work as few English writers have done; she had a deep personal affection for the man, whom, of course, she never knew. But her method was wholly her own, and her development would have been precisely the same had Tchehov never existed.

= xiv =

Introduction

hors concours, though they find it as difficult as any critic to say wherein her superiority consists. And perhaps a more remarkable fact is that her stories have met with an unusual popular success. For all her art, perhaps more truly because her art was of a peculiarly instinctive kind, Katherine Mansfield's stories are read and loved by innumerable simple people, who find in her characters a living reality which is rare in the literature they read. And it may be that the simplest criticism of her work is the truest; and that the most adequate judgment upon her writing is that of the printer whom I have quoted: "But these kids are real!"


It is, however, impossible for me who knew her intimately, who (in a sense) worked with her during the greater part of her career as a writer, who copied and punctuated and criticised her stories as they were written, to be silent on one element in her nature which, it seems to me, was essential to the peculiar quality of her work. This peculiar quality of her work I can only describe as a kind of purity. It is as though the glass through which she looked upon life were crystal clear. And this quality of her work corresponds to a quality in her life. Katherine Mansfield was natural and spontaneous as was no other human being I have ever met. She seemed to adjust herself to life as a flower adjusts itself to the earth and to the sun. She suffered greatly, she delighted greatly : but her suffering and her delight were never partial, they filled the whole of her. She was utterly generous, utterly courageous; when


= xv =

Introduction

she gave herself, to life, to love, to some spirit of truth which she served, she gave royally. She loved life — with all its beauty and its pain; she accepted life completely, and she had the right to accept it, for she had endured in herself all the suffering which life can lavish upon a single soul.

The brief biographical sketch printed above was written for the information of the many people who have asked me for particulars of Katherine Mansfield's life. It is printed here to serve as a background to the Journal and the two volumes of letters now in preparation. As for the Journal itself, a few words of introduction are necessary.

At various times in her life Katherine Mansfield entertained the plan of writing for publication "a kind of minute note-book" (see the entry of January 22, 1916). Three separate attempts to carry the plan into execution can be traced in her manuscripts, and once she got so far as to ask me to arrange with a publisher for its publication. The notes for this "notebook" would have been rewritten from entries in her Journal. In a few cases, as in May 1919, the original entry and the "note" exist side by side.


The remaining material of which the Journal is composed is of various kinds — brief (and sometimes difficult) notes for stories, fragments of diaries, unposted letters, comments and confessions scattered through her manuscripts. To these I have added a minimum of necessary words of explanation.

= xvi =

Introduction

Save for a single entry the Journal begins in 1914. The " huge complaining diaries " of which Katherine Mansfield speaks (February 16, 1916) were all destroyed. She was ruthless with her own past, and I have little doubt that what has survived is almost wholly that which, for some reason or other, she wished to survive.

John Middleton Murry.


It is at last over, this wearisome day, and dusk is beginning to sift in among the branches of the drenched chestnut tree. I think I must have caught cold in my beautiful exultant walk yesterday, for today I am ill. I began to work but could not. Fancy wearing two pairs of stockings and two coats and a hot-water bottle in June, and shivering. ... I think it is the pain that makes me shiver and feel dizzy. To be alone all day, in a house whose every sound seems foreign to you, and to feel a terrible confusion in your body which affects you mentally, suddenly pictures for you detestable incidents, revolving personalities, which you only shake off to find recurring again as the pain seems to grow worse again. Alas! I shall not walk with bare feet in wild woods again. Not until I have grown accustomed to the climate. . . .

The only adorable thing I can imagine is for my Grandmother to put me to bed and bring me a bowl

of hot bread and milk, and standing with her hands folded, the left thumb over the right, say in her adorable voice: "There, darling, isn't that nice?" Oh, what a miracle of happiness that would be. To wake later to find her turning down the bedclothes to see if my feet were cold, and wrapping them up in a little pink singlet, softer than cat's fur. . . . Alas!


Sunday Morning. Yet another Sunday. ... It is raining again to-day — just a steady persistent rain that seems to drift one from one morning to the other. When I had finished writing I went down to supper, drank a little soup, and the old Doctor next me suddenly said: " Please go to bed now" and I went like a lamb and drank some hot milk. It was a night of agony. When I felt morning was at last come, I lighted a candle, looked at the watch, and found it was just a quarter to twelve! Now I know what it is to fight a drug. Veronal was on the table by my bed. Oblivion — deep sleep — think of it! But I didn't take any. Now I am up and dressed. . . .


"A calm, irresistible well-being — almost mystic in character, and yet doubtless connected with physical conditions."

Writes Dorothy:

William (P.G.) is very well,

And gravely blithe — you know his way —

Talking with woodruff and harebell

And idling all the summer day

As he can well afford to do.

(P.G. for that again.) For who

Is more Divinely Entitled to?

He rises and breakfasts sharp at seven,

Then pastes some fern-fronds in his book,

Until his milk comes at eleven

With two fresh scones baked by the cook.

And then he paces in the sun

Until we dine at half past one.

"God and the cook are very good,"

Laughs William, relishing his food.

(Sometimes the tears rush to my eyes:

How kind he is, and oh, how wise!)


After, he sits and reads to me

Until at four we take our tea.

My dear, you hardly would believe That William could so sigh and grieve Over a simple, childish tale How ' Mary trod upon the Snail,' Or ' Little Ernie lost his Pail.' And then perhaps a good half-mile He walks to get an appetite For supper, which we take at night In the substantial country style. By nine he's in bed and fast asleep, Not snoring, dear, but very deep, Oh, very deep asleep indeed. . . .

And so on ad lib. What a Pa man !

I am going to read Goethe. Except for a few poems, I know nothing of his well. I shall read " Poetry and Truth " immediately.

"When all is done human life is at its greatest and but a little froward child to be played with, and humoured a little, to keep it quiet until it falls asleep, and then the care is over" (Temple).


That's the sort of strain — not for what it says and means, but for the 'lilt' of it — that sets me writing.

The Child in my Arms

"Will you touch me with the child in my arms?" is no mere pleasantry. Change the 'will' into 'can' and it's tief, sehr tief! I was thinking just now . . . that I hardly dare give rein to my thoughts of J. and my longing for J. And I thought: if I had a child, I

The Child in my Arms

would play with it now and lose myself in it and kiss it and make it laugh. And I'd use a child as my guard against my deepest feeling.

When I felt: 'No, I'll think no more of this; it's intolerable and unbearable,' I'd dance the baby.

That's true, I think, of all, all women. And it accounts for the curious look of security that you see in young mothers: they are safe from any ultimate state of feeling because of the child in their arms. And it accounts also for the women who call men 'children'. Such women fill themselves with their men — gorge themselves really into a state of absolute heartlessness. Watch the sly, satisfied smile of women who say, "Men are nothing but babies!"


" They were neither of them quite enough in love to imagine that £350 a year would supply them with all the comforts of life " (Jane Austen's " Elinor and Edward"). My God! say I.

I went to J.'s room and looked through the window. It was evening, with little light, and what was there was very soft — the Freak Hour when people never seem to be quite in focus. I watched a man walking up and down the road — and he looked like a fly walking up a wall — and some men straining up with a barrow — all bottoms and feet. In the house opposite, at a ground-floor window, heavily barred, sat a little dark girl in a grey shawl reading a book. Her hair was parted down the middle: she had a small, oval face. She was perfectly charming, so set in the window with


the shining white of the book. I felt a sort of Spanish infatuation. . . .

It is as though God opened his hand and let you dance on it a little, and then shut it up tight — so tight that you could not even cry. . . . The wind is terrible to-night. I am very tired — but can't go to bed. I can't sleep or eat. Too tired.

"It was the touch of art that P. was suffering, the inexorable magic touch that still transforms in spite of us; that never hesitates to test and examine the materials it has to transmute, but never fails to transmute them."

A Dream March 6. K.T. and her sister were walking down a road that was bounded on one side by a high hill and had on the other a deep ravine. So deep was the ravine that the cliffs at its base shone like points of teeth, sharp and tiny. Her sister was very frightened and clung to her arm, trembling and crying. So K.T. hid her terror and said, "It is all right. It is perfectly all right." She had a little black fur muff slipped over one hand.


Suddenly there came driving towards them a chariot

A Dream

like the one in her Latin book, drawn by six stumpy horses and driven by a charioteer in a skull cap. They came at a furious gallop, but the charioteer was calm; a quiet evil smile dyed his lips.

"Oh, K.T.! Oh, K.T.! I'm frightened," sobbed her sister.

"It's quite all right. It's perfectly all right," scolded K.T.

But as she watched the chariot a strange thing took place. Though the horses maintained their tearing gallop, they were not coming towards her and her sister, but were galloping backwards, while the charioteer smiled as though with deep satisfaction. K.T. put her little black muff over her sister's face. "They're gone. They're quite gone." But now the deafening clatter came from behind them like the sound of an army of horsemen in clashing armour. Louder and louder and nearer and nearer came the noise. "Oh, K.T.! Oh, K.T.!" moaned her sister and K.T. shut her lips, only pressing her sister's arm. The noise was upon them — in a moment — now.


And nothing passed but a black horse as tall as a house with a dark serene rider in a wide hat gliding past them like a ship through the dark water, and gliding importantly down the hill. The sight was so fearful that K.T. knew she dreamed. "I must wake up at once." And she made every effort to shut her eyes and shake away the scene, but it would not go. She tried to call and she felt her lips open, but no sound would come. She shouted and screamed without a sound until at last she felt her bed and lifted her head into the burning dark of the bedroom.

The view from my window this morning is so tremendously exciting. A high wind is blowing and the glass is dashed with rain. In the timber-yard beside the cemetery there are large pools of water and smoke blows from . . .


Travelled with two brown women. One had a basket of chickweed on her arm, the other a basket of daffodils. They both carried babies bound, somehow, to them with a torn shawl. Neat spare women with combed and braided hair. They slung talk at each other across the bus. Then one woman took a piece of bread from her sagging pocket and gave it to the baby, the other opened her bodice and put the child to her breast. They sat and rocked their knees and darted their quick eyes over the busload. Busy and indifferent they looked.


Went to the Albert Hall with B.C. A bad, dull concert. But I thought all the while that I'd rather be with musical people than any others, and that

New Zealand Memories

they're mine, really. A violinist (miles away) bent his head and his hair grew like G.'s : that made me think so, I suppose. I ought to be able to write about them wonderfully.


When I get by myself, I am always more or less actively miserable. If it were not for J. I should live quite alone. It's raining; I have a cold and my fire has gone out. Sparrows outside are cheeping like chickens. Oh heavens! what a different scene the sound recalls! The warm sun, and the tiny yellow balls, so dainty, treading down the grass blades, and Sheehan giving me the smallest chick wrapped in a flannel to carry to the kitchen fire.


Mother's birthday. I wrote at 2 o'clock and got up and sat on the box of the window thinking of her. I would love to see her again and the little frown between her brows, and to hear her voice. But I don't think I will. My memory of her is so complete that I don't think it will be disturbed.

The P.'s dined with us last night. It was dull. They are worthy and pleasant, but Mrs. P. is a weight, and P. makes me feel old. He only likes me because of what I used to be like, and he thinks the 'normal' me abnormally quiet and a bit lifeless. I don't want to see them again. Thank God! there's a sprinkle of sun to-day.

The river to-night was low and the little walls and towers and chimneys on the opposite bank black against the night. I keep thinking of Paris and money. I am getting all my spring out of the sunsets.


L.M. and I travelled miles to-day. We sat in a bus talking, and now and again when I looked up, I kept seeing the squares with their butterfly leaves just ready to fly. We met near the old haunts — Queen Anne Street — and walked in one of the little lanes and short cuts that we know so well — side by side, talking. "Let me tie your veil," and I stop ; she ties it and we walk on again. In the Persian shop she leaned against a red and black silk curtain. She was very pale, and her black hat looked enormous, and she kept wanting to buy me "these things — feel how soft they are," and smiling and speaking just above her breath for tiredness.


New Moon, 6h. 9m. p.m. (I didn't see it, though). L.M. and I took the tram to Clapham. She left at about 9 p.m. having dressed me. When I leave her hands I feel hung with wreaths. A silly, unreal evening at Miss R.'s. Pretty rooms and pretty people, pretty coffee, and cigarettes out of a silver tankard. A sort of sham Meredith atmosphere lurking. A.R. has a pert, nice face — that was all. I was wretched. I have nothing to say to 'charming' women. I feel like a cat among tigers. The ladies, left to themselves, talked

'Charming' Women

ghosts and child-beds. I am wretchedly unhappy among everybody — and the silence . . .


I am writing for L.M. to come. She's very late. Everything is in a state of suspense — even birds and chimneys. Frightened in private.

At the last moment L.M. never said Good-bye at all but took the fiddle and ran. I walked away down some narrow streets ; large drops of rain fell. I passed some packing warehouses, and the delicious smell of fresh wood and straw reminded me of Wellington. I could almost fancy a sawmill. In the evening the C.'s, and the little parrot swinging on a wire.


Put my clothes in order. The crocuses in Battersea reminded me of autumn in Bavaria. The ground is wet, and it looks as though winter were going— the grass long and green among the trampled flowers. Birds are far more savage-looking than the wildest beasts. Thinking of a forest of wild birds — or if the birds ' turned ' even here. I want to get alone. The magnolia conspicua is in bud.


A splendid fine morning, but as I know I have to go out and change the cheque and pay the bills, I can do nothing and I feel wretched. Life is a hateful business, there's no denying it. When G. and J. were talking in the Park of physical well-being and of how they could still look forward to parties, I nearly groaned. And I am sure J. could get a great deal of pleasure out of pleasant society. I couldn't. I've done with it, and can't combat it at all now. I had so much rather lean idly over the bridge and watch the boats and the free, unfamiliar people and feel the wind blow. No, I hate society. The idea of the play seems perfect tripe to-day.


Spent another frightful day. Nothing helps or could help me except a person who could guess. Went for a walk and had some vague comfort given by some children and the noise of the water like rising waves.


I have begun to sleep badly again and I've decided to tear up everything that I've written and start again. I'm sure that is best. This misery persists, and I am so crushed under it. If I could write with my old fluency for one day, the spell would be broken. It's the continual effort — the slow building-up of my idea and then, before my eyes and out of my power, its slow dissolving.


Went for a walk by the river this evening and watched the boats. Two had red sails and one had white. The trees are budding almost before one's eyes in this warm weather — big white buds like birds on

A Moral Victory

the chestnut trees, and round trees just sprinkled with green. The world is exceedingly lovely. My letter to L.M. was a great effort. She seemed somehow 'out of the running.' But then so does everybody. I feel a real horror of people closing over me. I could not bear them. I wish I lived on a barge, with J. for a husband and a little boy for a son.


Won a moral victory this morning, to my great relief. Went out to spend 2s. 6d. and left it unspent. But I have never known a more hideous day. Terribly lonely. Nothing that isn't satirical is really true for me to write just now. If I try to find things lovely, I turn pretty-pretty. And at the same time I am so frightened of writing mockery for satire that my pen hovers and won't settle. Dined with C.'s and D. Afterward to Cafe Royal. The sheep were bleating and we set up a feeble counterpart. Saw a fight. The woman with her back to me — her arms crooked sharp at the elbows, her head thrust out, like a big bird.


No bird sits in a tree more proudly than a pigeon. It looks as though placed there by the Lord. The sky was silky blue and white, and the sun shone through the little leaves. But the children, pinched and crooked, made me feel a bit out of love with God.


I went out with J. to find a shop; but instead we came to Swan Walk and passed and repassed and remarked the delightful houses, white with flowering pear-trees in the gardens and green railings and fine carved gates. I want a little house very much. My mind is full of embroidery, but there isn't any material to hold it together or make it strong. A silly state! L.M. seems to be simply fading away. I can barely remember her objectively: subjectively she is just the same.


The heavens opened for the sunset to-night. When I had thought the day folded and sealed, came a burst of heavenly bright petals. ... I sat behind the window, pricked with rain, and looked until that hard thing in my breast melted and broke into the smallest fountain, murmuring as aforetime, and I drank the sky and the whisper. Now who is to decide between "Let it be" and "Force it"? J. believes in the whip : he says his steed has plenty of strength, but it is idle and shies at such a journey in prospect. I feel, if mine does not gallop and dance at free will, I am not riding at all, but just swinging from its tail. For example, to-day. . . . To-night he's all sparks.


To-day is Sunday. It is raining a little, and the birds are cheeping. There's a smell of food and a noise of chopping cabbage.

Oh, if only I could make a celebration and do a bit of writing. I long and long to write, and the words just won't come. It's a queer business. Yet, when I read people like Gorky, for instance, I realise how streets ahead of them I be. . . .


. . . Then I put my hand over it and felt for a latch, and then through the bars. I suppose one isn't expected to vault over it, I thought, — or to ride a bicycle up this side and dive into a fountain of real water on the other. . . .

To Beauty. Why should you come to-night when it is so cold and grey and when the clouds are heavy and the bees troubled in their swinging?


I simply cannot believe that there was a time when I cared about Turgenev. Such a poseur! Such a hypocrite! It's true he was wonderfully talented but I keep thinking what a good (cinema play?) On the Eve would make.


We go to Cornwall to-morrow, I suppose. I've re-read my diary. Tell me, Is there a God? I'm old to-night. Ah, I wish I had someone to love me, comfort me and stop me thinking.


It's full moon with a vengeance tonight. Out of the front door a field of big turnips, and beyond, a spiky wood with red bands of light behind it. Out of the back door an old tree with just a leaf or two remaining and a moon perched in the branches.

I feel very deeply happy and free. Colette Willy is in my thoughts to-night. I feel in my own self awake and stretching, stretching so that I am on tip-toe, full of happy joy. Can it be that one can renew oneself?

Dear, dear Samuel Butler! Just you wait: I'll do you proud. To-morrow at about 10.30, I go into action.


It's very quiet. I've re-read L'Entrave. I suppose Colette is the only woman in France who does just this. I don't care a fig at present for anyone I know except her. But the book to be written is still unwritten. I can't sit down and fire away like J.


A letter from F. I had not expected it, and yet, when it came, it seemed quite inevitable — the writing, the way the letters were made, his confidence, and his warm sensational life. I wish he were my friend; he's very near to me. His personality comes right through his letters to J. and I want to laugh and run into the road.


The year is nearly over. Snow has fallen, and everything is white. It is very cold. I have changed the position of my desk into a corner. Perhaps I shall be able to write far more easily here. Yes, this is a good place for the desk, because I cannot see out of the stupid window. I am quite private. The lamp stands on one corner and in the corner. Its rays fall on the yellow and green Indian curtain and on the strip of red embroidery. The forlorn wind scarcely breathes. I love to close my eyes a moment and think of the land outside, white under the mingled snow and moonlight — the heaps of stones by the roadside white — snow in the furrows. Mon Dieu! How quiet and how patient !


What a vile little diary! But I am determined to keep it this year. We saw the Old Year out and the New Year in. A lovely night, blue and gold. The church bells were ringing. I went into the garden and opened the gate and nearly — just walked away. J. stood at the window mashing an orange in a cup. The shadow of the rose-tree lay on the grass like a tiny bouquet. The moon and the dew had put a spangle on everything. But just at 12 o'clock I thought I heard footsteps on the road and got frightened and ran back into the house. But nobody passed. J. thought I was a great baby about the whole affair. The ghost of L.M. ran through my heart, her hair flying, very pale, with dark startled eyes.

For this year I have two wishes: to write, to make money. Consider. With money we could go away as we liked, have a room in London, be as free as we liked, and be independent and proud with nobodies. It is only poverty that holds us so tightly. Well, J. doesn't want money and won't earn money. I must. How? First, get this book finished. That is a start. When? At the end of January. If you do that, you are


A horrible morning and afternoon. Je me sens incapable de tout, and at the same time I am just not writing very well. I must finish my story tomorrow. I ought to work at it all day, — yes, all day and into the night if necessary. A vile day. J'ai envie de prier au bon Dieu comme le vieux père Tolstoi. Oh, Lord, make me a better creature to-morrow. Le cœur me monte aux lèvres d'un goût de sang. Je me déteste aujourd'hui. Dined at L.'s and talked the Island.1 It is quite real except that some part of me is blind to it. Six months ago I'd have jumped.

The chief thing I feel lately about myself is that I am getting old. I don't feel like a girl any more, or even like a young woman. I feel really quite past my prime. At times the fear of death is dreadful. I feel ever so much older than J. and that he recognises it, I am sure. He never used to, but now he often talks like a young man to an older woman. Well, perhaps, it's a good thing.


A cold, ugly day. It was dark soon after two. Spent it trying to write and running from my

A plan, how far serious I cannot say after these years, of making a settlement in some remote island. It was probably of the same order of seriousness as Coleridge's pantisocratic colony on the Susquehannah.

room into the kitchen. I could not get really warm. The day felt endless. Read in the evening, and later read with J. a good deal of poetry. If I lived alone I would be very dependent on poetry. Talked over the Island idea with J. For me I know it has come too late.


Woke early and saw a snowy branch across the window. It is cold, snow has fallen, and now it is thawing. The hedges and the trees are covered with beads of water. Very dark, too, with a wind somewhere. I long to be alone for a bit.

I make a vow to finish a book this month. I'll write all day and at night too, and get it finished. I swear.


Saw the sun rise. A lovely apricot sky with flames in it and then a solemn pink. Heavens, how beautiful ! I heard a knocking, and went downstairs. It was Benny cutting away the ivy. Over the path lay the fallen nests — wisps of hay and feathers. He looked like an ivy bush himself. I made early tea and carried it up to J. who lay half awake with crinkled eyes. I feel so full of love to-day after having seen the sun rise.

Evening. Have written a good deal.


J. went to town. I worked a little — chased the fowls. One brown fowl refused to leave the garden. Long after it knew there was no gap in the wire netting it kept on running up and down. I must not forget that, nor how cold it was, nor how the mud coated my thin shoes. In the evening L. and K. They talked plans; but I felt very antagonistic to the whole affair.


Windy and dark. ... At night we went to L.'s. It was a warm night with big drops of rain falling. I didn't mind the going, but the coming back was rather awful. I was unwell, and tired, and my heart could scarcely beat. But we made up a song to keep going. The rain splashed up to my knees, and I was frightened. L. was nice, very nice, sitting with a piece of string in his hand . . .

January 11. I got up in the dark to be ready for my little maid and watch the dawn coming. It wasn't up to much, though. I am wretched. It is a bright winking day. Oh God, my God, let me work ! Wasted ! Wasted !


Have been in more of a state of virtue to-day. Actually finished the story, Brave Love, and I don't know what to make of it even now. Read it to J. who was also puzzled. Violent headache, but rather happy.


A man outside is breaking stones. The day is utterly quiet. Sometimes a leaf rustles and a strange puff of wind passes the window. The old man chops, chops, as though it were a heart beating out there.

In the afternoon there came a violent storm, but we walked over to C.'s, dined with them and the L.'s and the S.'s and had a play after. Late we went to the L.'s to sleep, very untidy — newspapers and faded mistletoe. I hardly slept at all, but it was nice.

A stormy day. We walked back this morning. It has rained and snowed and hailed and the wind blows. The dog at the mill howls. A man far away is playing the bugle. I have read and sewed to-day, but not written a word. I want to to-night. It is so funny to sit quietly sewing, while my heart is never for a moment still. I am dreadfully tired in head and body. This sad place is killing me. I live upon old made-up dreams ; but they do not deceive either of us.


1 am in the sitting-room downstairs. The wind howls outside, but here it is so warm and pleasant. It looks like a real room where real people live. My sewing-basket is on the table: under the bookcase are poked J.'s old house shoes. The black chair, half in shadow, looks as if a happy person had sprawled there. We had roast mutton and onion sauce and baked rice for dinner. It sounds right. I have run the ribbons through my underclothes with a hair-pin in the good home way. But my anxious heart is eating up my body, eating up my nerves, eating up my London brain. I feel this poison slowly filling my veins — every particle becoming slowly tainted. ... I am never, never calm, never for an instant. I remember years ago saying I wished I were one of those happy people who can suffer so far and then collapse or become exhausted. But I am just the opposite. The more I suffer, the more of fiery energy I feel to bear it.


Weather worse than ever. At tea-time I surprised myself by breaking down. I simply felt for a moment overcome with anguish and came upstairs and put my head on the black cushion. My longing for cities engrosses me.


Went to London. We found B.C. had arrived; so D. put us up. D.'s flat looks lovely to me. Had tea at the Criterion with C. and D. Had my hands done. In the evening went to the Oxford and saw Marie Lloyd, who was very good. Slept on the big divan in A.'s room. In the afternoon it was very foggy in London; but the relief to be there was immense.


Met a woman who'd been in the cinema with me — her pink roses in her belt and hollow lovely eyes and battered hair. I shall not forget her. No, no. She was wonderful.


A slight attack of 'flu' is bowling me over. There is a glimpse of sun. The trees look as though they were hanging out to dry.

My cold gained on me all day. I read the lonely Nietzsche ; but I felt a bit ashamed of my feelings for this man in the past. He is, if you like, " human, all too human." Read until late. I felt wretched simply beyond words. Life was like sawdust and sand. Talked short stories to J.


I feel a bit more cheerful to-day because I don't look quite so revolting as I have done.

No, the day ended in being as bad as ever. For one thing my illness is really severe. I have been embroidering my kimono with black wool. Bah! What rot! What do I care for such rubbish!


I can do nothing. Have tidied my desk and taken some quinine and that's all. But I know I shall go, because otherwise I'll die of despair. My head is so hot, but my hands are cold. Perhaps I am dead and just pretending to live here. There is, at any rate, no sign of life in me.


Went to London with J.

She was, probably, the original of Miss Moss in "Pictures." In 1913 K.M. had acted as a super in various cinematograph productions.

A Journey to France


England is like a dream. I am sitting at the window of a little square room furnished with a bed, a wax apple, and an immense flowery clock. Outside the window there is a garden full of wallflowers and blue enamel saucepans. The clocks are striking five and the last rays of sun pour under the swinging blind. It is very hot — the kind of heat that makes one's cheek burn in infancy. But I am so happy I must just send you a word on a spare page of my diary, dear.

I have had some dreadful adventures on my way here because the place is within the Zone of the armies and not allowed to women. The last old fat man who saw my passport, 'M. le Colonel', very grand with a black tea-cosy and gold tassel on his head, and smoking what lady novelists call a ' heavy Egyptian cigarette,' nearly sent me back.

But, my dear, it's such wonderful country — all rivers and woods and large birds that look blue in the sunlight. I keep thinking of you and L. The French soldiers are pour rire. Even when they are wounded they seem to lean out of their sheds and wave their bandages at the train. But I saw some prisoners to-day — not at all funny. Oh, I have so much to tell you I'd better not begin. We shall see each other some day, won't we, darling?


I seem to have just escaped the prison cell, J. dearest,— because I find this place is in the zone of the armies and therefore forbidden to women. However, my Aunt's illness pulled me through. I had some really awful moments. Outside the station he was waiting. He merely sang (so typical) "Follow me, but not as though you were doing so" until we came to a tiny toll-house by the river, against which leant a faded cab. But once fed with my suit-case and our two selves, it dashed off like the wind, the door opening and shutting, to his horror, as he is not allowed in cabs. We drove to a village near by, to a large white house where they had taken a room for me — a most extraordinary room furnished with a bed, a wax apple and an immense flowery clock. It's very hot. The sun streams through the blind. The garden outside is full of wallflowers and blue enamel saucepans. It would make you laugh, too. ...


The curious thing is that I could not concentrate on the end of the journey. I simply felt so happy that I leaned out of the window with my arms along the brass rail and my feet crossed and basked in the sunlight and the wonderful country unfolding. At Chateaudun where we had to change I went to the Buffet to drink. A big pale green room with a large stove jutting out and a buffet with coloured bottles. Two women, their arms folded, leaned against the counter. A little boy, very pale, swung from table to table, taking the orders. It was full of soldiers sitting back in their chairs and swinging their legs and eating. The men shouted through the windows.

The little boy favoured me with a glass of horrible black coffee. He served the soldiers with a kind of dreary contempt. In the porch an old man carried a pail of brown spotted fish — large fish, like the fish one sees in glass cases swimming through forests of beautiful pressed seaweed. The soldiers laughed and slapped each other. They tramped about in their heavy boots. The women looked after them, and the old man stood humbly waiting for someone to attend to him, his cap in his hands, as if he knew that the life he represented in his torn jacket, with his basket of fish — his peaceful occupation — did not exist any more and had no right to thrust itself in here.


The last moments of the journey I was very frightened. We arrived at Gray, and one by one, like women going in to see a doctor, we slipped through a door into a hot room completely fitted with two tables and two colonels, like colonels in comic opera, big shiny grey-whiskered men with a touch of burnt-red in their cheeks, both smoking, one a cigarette with a long curly ash hanging from it. He had a ring on his fingers. Sumptuous and omnipotent he

looked. I shut my teeth. I kept my fingers from trembling as I handed the passport and the ticket.

"It won't do, it won't do at all," said my colonel and looked at me for what seemed an age but in silence. His eyes were like two grey stones. He took my passport to the other colonel, who dismissed the objection, stamped it, and let me go. I nearly knelt on the floor.


By the station he stood, terribly pale. He saluted and smiled and said, "Turn to the right and follow me as though you were not following." Then fast we went towards the Suspension Bridge. He had a postman's bag on his back, and a paper parcel. The street was very muddy. From the toll house by the bridge a scraggy woman, her hands wrapped in a shawl, peered out at us. Against the toll house leaned a faded cab. "Montez! vite, vite!" said he. He threw my suit-case, his letter bag and the parcel on to the floor. The driver sprang into activity, lashed the bony horse, and we tore away with both doors flapping and banging. They would not keep shut, and he, who is not supposed to ride in cabs, had to try to hide. Soldiers passed all the time. At the barracks he stopped a moment and a crowd of faces blocked the window. "Prends ça, mon vieux," he said, handing over the paper parcel.


Off we flew again. By the river. Down a long strange white street with houses on either side, very fairy in the late sunlight. He said " I know you will Rupert Brooke like the house. It's quite white, and so is the room, and the people are, too."

At last we arrived. The woman of the house, with a serious baby in her arms, came to the door.

"It is all right?"

" Yes, all right. Bonjour, Madame."

It was like an elopement.

Sunday, May 16. Paris. I dreamed all night of Rupert Brooke. And to-day as I left the house he was standing at the door, with a rucksack on his back and his hat shading his face. So after I had posted J.'s letter I did not go home. I went a long, very idle sort of amble along the quais. It was exquisitely hot: white clouds lay upon the sky like sheets spread out to dry. On the big sandheaps down by the river children had hollowed out tunnels and caverns. They sat in them, stolid and content, their hair glistening in the sun. Now and then a man lay stretched on his face, his head in his arms. The river was full of big silver stars; the trees shook, faintly glinting with light. I found delightful places — little squares with white square houses. Quite hollow they looked, with the windows gaping open. Narrow streets arched over with chestnut boughs, or perhaps quite deserted, with a clock tower showing over the roofs. The sun put a spell on everything.


I crossed and recrossed the river and leaned over the bridges and kept thinking we were coming to a park when we weren't. You cannot think what a pleasure my invisible, imaginary companion gave me. If he had been alive it would never have possibly occurred; but — it's a game I like to play — to walk and talk with the dead who smile and are silent, and free, quite finally free. When I lived alone, I would often come home, put my key in the door, and find someone there waiting for me. "Hullo! Have you been here long?"

I suppose that sounds dreadful rubbish.

Notre Dame I am sitting on a broad bench in the sun hard by Notre Dame. In front of me there is a hedge of ivy. An old man walked along with a basket on his arm, picking off the withered leaves. In the priests' garden they are cutting the grass. I love this big cathedral. The little view I have of it now is of pointed narrow spires, fretted against the blue, and one or two squatting stone parrots balanced on a little balcony. It is like a pen-drawing by a Bogey. And I like the saints with their crowns on their collars and their heads in their hands.


The 'Life' of Life I bought a book by Henry James yesterday and read it, as they say, ' until far into the night.' It was not very interesting or very good, but I can wade

Henry James

through pages and pages of dull, turgid James for the sake of that sudden sweet shock, that violent throb of delight that he gives me at times. I don't doubt this is genius : only there is an extraordinary amount of pain and an amazingly raffine flash —

One thing I want to annotate. His hero, Bernard Longueville, brilliant, rich, dark, agile, etc., though a witty companion, is perhaps wittiest and most amused when he is alone, and preserves his best things for himself. . . . All the attributive adjectives apart I am witty, I know, and a good companion — but I feel my case is exactly like his — the amount of minute and delicate joy I get out of watching people and things when I am alone is simply enormous — I really only have ' perfect fun ' with myself. When I see a little girl running by on her heels like a fowl in the wet, and say ' My dear, there's a gertie,' I laugh and enjoy it as I never would with anybody. Just the same applies to my feeling for what is called ' nature.' Other people won't stop and look at the things I want to look at or, if they do, they stop to please me or to humour me or to keep the peace. But I am so made that as sure as I am with anyone, I begin to give consideration to their opinions and their desires, and they are not worth half the consideration that mine are. I don't miss J. at all now — I don't want to go home, I feel quite content to live here, in a furnished room, and watch. It's a pure question of whether, that's what I believe. (A terrific Gertie has just passed.) Life with other people becomes a blur: it does with J., but it's enormously


3i

valuable and marvellous when I'm alone, the detail of life, the life of life.

Pere de famille

This family began very modest with Mamma, extremely fat, with a black moustache and a little round toque covered with poached pansies, and the baby boy, bursting out of an English tweed suit that was intended for a Norfolk, but denied its country at the second seam. They had barely settled in their places and pinched every separate piece of bread in the basket and chosen the crustiest when two young men in pale blue uniforms, with about as much moustache as mother, appeared at the doorway of the restaurant and were hailed with every appearance of enthusiasm by sonny, who waved a serviette about the size of a single bed sheet at them. Mother was embraced ; they sat down side by side and were presently joined by an unfortunate overgrown boy whose complexion had enjoyed every possible form of Frühlingserwachen and who looked as though he spent his nights under an eiderdown eating chocolate biscuits with the window shut. . . .


Five single bed sheets were tucked into five collars — Five pairs of eyes read over the menu.

Suddenly with a cry of delight up flew Mamma's arms — up flew sonny's — the two young soldiers sprang to their feet, the etudiant came out in no end of a perspiration as a stout florid man appeared, and walked towards them. The waitress hovered round the table, delighted beyond words at this exhibition of vie de famille. She felt like their own bonne — she felt she had known them for years. Heaven knows what memories she had of taking M. Roue his hot water, of being found by M. Paul, looking for his shirt stud on his bedroom floor, on her charming little hands and her still more delicious knees !


Travelling Alone

Was it simply her own imagination, or could there be any truth in this feeling that waiters — waiters especially and hotel servants — adopted an impertinent, arrogant and slightly amused attitude towards a woman who travelled alone? Was it just her wretched female self-consciousness? No, she really did not think it was. For even when she was feeling at her happiest, at her freest, she would become aware, quite suddenly, of the *tone* of the waiter or the hotel servant. And it was extraordinary how it wrecked her sense of security, how it made her feel that something malicious was being plotted against her and that everybody and everything — yes, even to inanimate objects like chairs or tables — was secretly 'in the know,' waiting for that ominous infallible thing to happen to her, which always did happen, which was bound to happen, to every woman on earth who travelled alone!


The waiter prodded a keyhole with a bunch of keys, wrenched one round, flung the grey-painted door open and stood against it, waiting for her to pass in. He

held his feather duster upright in his hand like a smoky torch.

"Here is a nice little room for Madame," said the waiter insinuatingly. As she entered, he brushed past her, opened the groaning window and unhooked the shutters.

Evening October. They are walking up and down the garden in Acacia Road. It is dusky; the Michaelmas daisies are bright as feathers. From the old fruit-tree at the bottom of the garden — the slender tree rather like a poplar — there falls a little round pear, hard as a stone.

"Did you hear that, Katie? Can you find it? By Jove — that familiar sound."


Their hands move over the thin moist grass. He picks it up, and, unconsciously, as of old, polishes it on his handkerchief.

"Do you remember the enormous number of pears there used to be on that old tree?"

"Down by the violet bed."

"And how after there'd been a Southerly Buster we used to go out with clothes baskets to pick them up?"

October 1915

New Zealand Memories

"And how while we stooped they went on falling, bouncing on our backs and heads?"

"And how far they used to be scattered, ever so far, under the violet leaves, down the steps, right down to the lily-lawn? We used to find them trodden in the grass. And how soon the ants got to them. I can see now that little round hole with a sort of fringe of brown pepper round it."


" Do you know that I've never seen pears like them since? "

" They were so bright, canary yellow — and small. And the peel was so thin and the pips jet — jet black. First you pulled out the little stem and sucked it. It was faintly sour, and then you ate them always from the top — core and all."

" The pips were delicious."

" Do you remember sitting on the pink garden seat?"

" I shall never forget that pink garden seat. It is the only garden seat for me. Where is it now? Do you think we shall be allowed to sit on it in Heaven? "

" It always wobbled a bit and there were usually the marks of a snail on it."

" Sitting on that seat, swinging our legs and eating the pears — "

" But isn't it extraordinary how deep our happiness was — how positive — deep, shining, warm. I remember the way we used to look at each other and smile — do you? — sharing a secret . . . What was it? "


" I think it was the family feeling — we were almost like one child. I always see us walking about together, looking at things together with the same eyes, discussing. ... I felt that again — just now — when we looked for the pear in the grass. I remembered ruffling the violet leaves with you — Oh, that garden ! Do you remember that some of the pears we found used to have little teeth marks in them?"

" Yes."

"Who bit them?"

" It was always a mystery."

He puts his arm round her. They pace up and down. And the round moon shines over the pear tree, and the ivy walls of the garden glitter like metal. The air smells chill . . . heavy . . . very cold.

" We shall go back there one day — when it's all over."


" We'll go back together."

" And find everything — "

"Everything!"

She leans against his shoulder. The moonlight deepens. Now they are facing the back of the house. A square of light shows in the window.

" Give me your hand. You know I shall always be a stranger here."

" Yes, darling, I know."

" Walk up and down once more and then we'll go in."

" It's so curious — my absolute confidence that I'll come back. I feel it's as certain as this pear."

Death

" I feel that too."

" I couldn't not come back. You know that feeling. It's awfully mysterious."

The shadows on the grass are long and strange; a puff of strange wind whispers in the ivy and the old moon touches them with silver.

She shivers.

" You're cold."

"Dreadfully cold."


A misty, misty evening. I want to write down the fact that not only am I not afraid of death — I welcome the idea of death. I believe in immortality because he is not here, and I long to join him. First, my darling, I've got things to do for both of us, and then I will come as quickly as I can. Dearest heart, I know you are there, and I live with you, and I will write for you. Other people are near, but they are not close to me. To you only do I belong, just as you belong to me. Nobody knows how often I am with you. Indeed, I am always with you, and I begin to feel that you know — that when I leave this house and this place it will be with you, and I will never even for the shortest space of time be away from you. You have me. You're in my flesh as well as in my soul. I give others my "surplus" love, but to you I hold and to you I give my deepest love.

November, Bandol, France. Brother. I think I have known for a long time that life was over for me, but I never realized it or acknowledged it until my brother died. Yes, though he is lying in the middle of a little wood in France and I am still walking upright and feeling the sun and the wind from the sea, I am just as much dead as he is. The present and the future mean nothing to me. I am no longer "curious" about people; I do not wish to go anywhere; and the only possible value that anything can have for me is that it should put me in mind of something that happened or was when he was alive.


" Do you remember, Katie ? " I hear his voice in the trees and flowers, in scents and light and shadow. Have people, apart from these far-away people, ever existed for me? Or have they always failed and faded because I denied them reality? Supposing I were to die as I sit at this table, playing with my Indian paperknife, what would the difference be ? No difference at all. Then why don't I commit suicide? Because I feel I have a duty to perform to the lovely time when we were both alive. I want to write about it, and he wanted me to. We talked it over in my little top room

A W oman' s Song

in London. I said: I will just put on the front page: To my brother, Leslie Heron Beauchamp. Very well: it shall be done. . . .


The wind died down at sunset. Half a ring of moon hangs in the hollow air. It is very quiet. Somewhere I can hear a woman crooning a song. Perhaps she is crouched before the stove in the corridor, for it is the kind of song that a woman sings before a fire — brooding, warm, sleepy, and safe. I see a little house with flower patches under the windows and the soft mass of a haystack at the back. The fowls have all gone to roost — they are woolly blurs on the perches. The pony is in the stable with a cloth on. The dog lies in the kennel, his head on his forepaws. The cat sits up beside the woman, her tail tucked in, and the man, still young and careless, comes climbing up the back road. Suddenly a spot of light shows in the window and on the pansy bed below, and he walks quicker, whistling.


But where are these comely people? These young strong people with hard healthy bodies and curling hair? They are not saints or philosophers; they are decent human beings — but where are they?

Wednesday. {December} To-day I am hardening my heart. I am walking all round my heart and building up the defences. I do not mean to leave a loophole even for a tuft of violets to grow in. Give me a hard heart, O Lord ! Lord, harden thou my heart !

This morning I could walk a little. So I went to the Post Office. It was bright with sun. The palm-trees stood up into the air, crisp and shining; the blue gums hung heavy with sun as is their wont. When I reached the road I heard a singing. A funny thought... "The English have come !" But of course, it was not they.


Sunday. Ten minutes past four. I am sure that this Sunday is the worst of all my life. I've touched bottom. Even my heart doesn't beat any longer. I only keep alive by a kind of buzz of blood in my veins. Now the dark is coming back again; only at the windows there is a white glare. My watch ticks loudly and strongly on the bed table, as though it were rich with a minute life, while I faint — I die.

It is evening again. The sea runs very high. It frets, sweeps up and over, hugs, leaps upon the rocks. In the sharp metallic light the rocks have a reddish tinge. Above them a broad band of green mixed with a rich sooty black; above it the cone of a violet mountain; above the mountain a light blue sky shining like the inside of a wet sea-shell. Every moment the light changes. Even as I write, it is no longer hard. Some small white clouds top the mountain like tossed-up smoke. And now a purple colour, very menacing and awful, is pulling over the sky. The trees tumble about in the unsteady light. A dog barks. The gardener, talking to himself, shuffles across the new raked paths, picks up his weed basket and goes off. Two lovers are walking together by the side of the sea. They are muffled


Clad up in coats. She has a red handkerchief on her head. They walk, very proud and careless, hugging each other and braving the wind.

I am ill to-day — I cannot walk at all — and in pain.

An Encounter

This afternoon I did not go for a walk. There is a long stone embankment that goes out into the sea. Huge stones on either side and a little rough goat path in the centre. When I came to the end the sun was going down. So, feeling extremely solitary and romantic, I sat me down on a stone and watched the red sun, which looked horribly like a morsel of tinned apricot, sink into a sea like a huge junket. I began, feebly but certainly perceptibly, to harp : " Alone between sea and sky etc." But suddenly I saw a minute speck on the bar coming towards me. It grew, it turned into a young officer in dark blue, slim, with an olive skin, fine eyebrows, long black eyes, a fine silky moustache.


"You are alone, Madame?"

"Alone, Monsieur."

"You are living at the hotel, Madame?"

"At the hotel, Monsieur."

"Ah, I have noticed you walking alone several times, Madame."

"It is possible, Monsieur." He blushed and put his hand to his cap. "I am very indiscreet, Madame." "Very indiscreet, Monsieur."


Now, really, what is it that I do want to write? I ask myself, Am I less of a writer than I used to be? Is the need to write less urgent? Does it still seem as natural to me to seek that form of expression? Has speech fulfilled it? Do I ask anything more than to relate, to remember, to assure myself?

There are times when these thoughts half-frighten me and very nearly convince. I say : You are now so fulfilled in your own being, in being alive, in living, in aspiring towards a greater sense of life and a deeper loving, the other thing has gone out of you.

But no, at bottom I am not convinced, for at bottom never has my desire been so ardent. Only the form that I would choose has changed utterly. I feel no longer concerned with the same appearance of things. The people who lived or whom I wished to bring into my stories don't interest me any more. The plots of my stories leave me perfectly cold. Granted that these people exist and all the differences, complexities and resolutions are true to them — why should I write about them? They are not near me. All the false threads that bound me to them are cut away quite.

Now — now I want to write recollections of my own country. Yes, I want to write about my own


country till I simply exhaust my store. Not only because it is "a sacred debt" that I pay to my country because my brother and I were born there, but also because in my thoughts I range with him over all the remembered places. I am never far away from them. I long to renew them in writing.

Ah, the people — the people we loved there — of them, too, I want to write. Another "debt of love." Oh, I want for one moment to make our undiscovered country leap into the eyes of the Old World. It must be mysterious, as though floating. It must take the breath. It must be "one of those islands. ..." I shall tell everything, even of how the laundry-basket squeaked at 75. But all must be told with a sense of mystery, a radiance, an afterglow, because you, my little sun of it, are set. You have dropped over the dazzling brim of the world. Now I must play my part.


Then I want to write poetry. I feel always trembling on the brink of poetry. The almond tree, the birds, the little wood where you are, the flowers you do not see, the open window out of which I lean and dream that you are against my shoulder, and the times that your photograph "looks sad." But especially I want to write a kind of long elegy to you . . . perhaps not in poetry. Nor perhaps in prose. Almost certainly in a kind of special prose.

And, lastly, I want to keep a kind of minute notebook, to be published some day. That's all. No novels, no problem stories, nothing that is not simple, open.

K.M.

The Decision


I have written practically nothing yet, and now again the time is getting short. There is nothing done. I am no nearer my achievement than I was two months ago, and I keep half-doubting my will to perform anything. Each time I make a move my demon says at almost the same moment : " Oh, yes, we've heard that before ! " And then I hear R.B. in the Café Royal, "Do you still write?" If I went back to England without a book finished I should give myself up. I should know that, whatever I said, I was not really a writer and had no claim to " a table in my room." But if I go back with a book finished it will be a profession de foi pour toujours. Why do I hesitate so long? Is it just idleness? Lack of will-power? Yes, I feel that's what it is, and that's why it's so immensely important that I should assert myself. I have put a table to-day in my room, facing a corner, but from where I sit I can see some top shoots of the almond-tree and the sea sounds loud. There is a vase of beautiful geraniums on the table. Nothing could be nicer than this spot, and it's so quiet and so high, like sitting up in a tree. I feel I shall be able to write here, especially towards twilight.

Ah, once fairly alight — how I'd blaze and burn! Here is a new fact. When I am not writing I feel my brother calling me, and he is not happy. Only when I write or am in a state of writing — a state of " inspiration " — do I feel that he is calm. . . . Last night I dreamed of him and Father Zossima. Father Zossima said : " Do not let the new man die." My brother


was certainly there. But last evening he called me while I sat down by the fire. At last I obeyed and came upstairs. I stayed in the dark and waited. The moon got very bright. There were stars outside, very bright twinkling stars, that seemed to move as I watched them. The moon shone. I could see the curve of the sea and the curve of the land embracing, and above in the sky there was a round sweep of cloud. Perhaps those three half-circles were very magic. But then, when I leaned out of the window I seemed to see my brother dotted all over the field — now on his back, now on his face, now huddled up, now half-pressed into the earth. Wherever I looked, there he lay. I felt that God showed him to me like that for some express purpose, and I knelt down by the bed. But I could not pray. I had done no work. I was not in an active state of grace. So I got up finally and went downstairs again. But I was terribly sad. . . . The night before, when I lay in bed, I felt suddenly passionate. I wanted J. to embrace me. But as I turned to speak to him or to kiss him I saw my brother lying fast asleep, and I got cold. That happens nearly always. Perhaps because I went to sleep thinking of him, I woke and was he, for quite a long time. I felt my face was his serious, sleepy face. I felt that the lines of my mouth were changed, and I blinked like he did on waking.


This year I have to make money and get known. I want to make enough money to be able to give L.M. some. In fact, I want to provide for her. That's my

A Great Mystery

idea, and to make enough so that J. and I shall be able to pay our debts and live honourably. I should like to have a book published and numbers of short stories ready. Ah, even as I write, the smoke of a cigarette seems to mount in a reflective way, and I feel nearer that kind of silent, crystallised being that used to be almost me.


I begin to think of an unfinished memory which has been with me for years. It is a very good story if only I can tell it right, and it is called "Lena." It plays in New Zealand and would go in the book. If only I can get right down to it.

Dear brother, as I jot these notes, I am speaking to you. To whom did I always write when I kept those huge complaining diaries? Was it to myself? But now as I write these words and talk of getting down to the New Zealand atmosphere, I see you opposite to me, I see your thoughtful, seeing eyes. Yes, it is to you. We were travelling — sitting opposite to each other and moving very fast. Ah, my darling, how have I kept away from this tremendous joy? Each time I take up my pen you are with me. You are mine. You are my playfellow, my brother, and we shall range all over our country together. It is with you that I see, and that is why I see so clearly. That is a great mystery. My brother, I have doubted these last few days. I have been in dreadful places. I have felt that I could not come through to you. But now, quite suddenly, the mists are rising, and I see and I know you are near

me. You are more vividly with me now this moment than if you were alive and I were writing to you from a short distance away. As you speak my name, the name you call me by that I love so — "Katie!" — your lip lifts in a smile — you believe in me, you know I am here. Oh, Chummie! put your arms round me. I was going to write: Let us shut out everybody. But no, it is not that. Only we shall look on at them together. My brother, you know, with all my desire, my will is weak. To do things — even to write absolutely for myself and by myself — is awfully hard for me. God knows why, when my desire is so strong. But just as it was always our delight to sit together — you remember? — and to talk of the old days, down to the last detail — the last feeling — looking at each other and by our eyes expressing when speech ended how intimately we understood each other — so now, my dear one, we shall do that again. You know how unhappy I have been lately. I almost felt: Perhaps "the


new man " will not live. Perhaps I am not yet risen

But now I do not doubt. It is the idea (it has always been there, but never as it is with me to-night) that I do not write alone. That in every word I write and every place I visit I carry you with me. Indeed, that might be the motto of my book. There are daisies on the table and a red flower, like a poppy, shines through. Of daisies I will write. Of the dark. Of the wind — and the sun and the mists. Of the shadows. Ah ! of all that you loved and that I too love and feel. To-night it is made plain. However often I write and

" The Aloe"

rewrite I shall not really falter, dearest, and the book shall be written and ready.


I have broken the silence. It took long. Did I fail you when I sat reading? Oh, bear with me a little. I will be better. I will do all, all that we would wish. Love, I will not fail. To-night it is very wild. Do you hear? It is all wind and sea. You feel that the world is blowing like a feather, springing and rocking in the air like a balloon from Lindsay's. I seem to hear a piano sometimes, but that's fancy. How loud the wind sounds! If I write every day faithfully a little record of how I have kept faith with you — that is what I must do. Now you are back with me. You are stepping forward, one hand in your pocket. My brother, my little boy brother! Your thoughtful eyes! I see you always as you left me. I saw you a moment alone — by yourself — and quite lost, I felt. My heart yearned over you then. Oh, it yearns over you to-night and now! Did you cry! I always felt: He never, never must be unhappy. Now I will come quite close to you, take your hand, and we shall tell this story to each other.


1 found " The Aloe " 1 this morning. And when I had re-read it I knew that I was not quite " right " yesterday. No, dearest, it was not just the

1 " The Aloe " was the original version of Prelude. It exists in its original and longer form, and will be published with the remaining fragments of Katherine Mansfield's writings.

Jo urnal i g 1 6

spirit. " The Aloe " is right. " The Aloe " is lovely. It simply fascinates me, and I know that it is what you would wish me to write. And now I know what the last chapter is. It is your birth — your coming in the autumn. You in Grandmother's arms under the tree, your solemnity, your wonderful beauty. Your hands, your head — your helplessness, lying on the earth, and, above all, your tremendous solemnity. That chapter will end the book. The next book will be yours and mine. And you must mean the world to Linda ; and before ever you are born Kezia must play with you — her little Bogey. Oh, Bogey — I must hurry. All of them must have this book. It is good, my treasure ! My little brother, it is good, and it is what we really meant.


I am sad to-night. Perhaps it is the old forlorn wind. And the thought of you spiritually is not enough to-night. I want you by me. I must get deep down into my book, for then I shall be happy. Lose myself, lose myself to find you, dearest. Oh, I want this book to be written. It must be done. It must be bound and wrapped and sent to New Zealand. I feel that with all my soul. ... It will be.

A Recollection of Childhood Things happened so simply then, without preparation and without any shock. They let me go into my mother's room (I remember standing on tiptoe and using both hands to turn the big white china doorA Recollection of Childhood

handle) and there lay my mother in bed with her arms along the sheet, and there sat my grandmother before the fire with a baby in a flannel across her knees. My mother paid no attention to me at all. Perhaps she was asleep, for my grandmother nodded and said in a voice scarcely above a whisper, " Come and see your little sister." I tiptoed to her voice across the room, and she parted the flannel, and I saw a little round head with a tuft of goldy hair on it and a big face with eyes shut — white as snow. "Is it alive? " I asked. " Of course," said grandmother. " Look at her holding my finger." And — yes, a hand, scarcely bigger than my doll's, in a frilled sleeve, was wound round her finger. "Do you like her?" said my grandmother. "Yes. Is she going to play with the doll's house? " " By-and-by," said the grandmother, and I felt very pleased. Mrs. Heywood had just given us the doll's house. It was a beautiful one with a verandah and a balcony and a door that opened and shut and two chimneys. I wanted badly to show it to someone else.


" Her name is Gwen," said the grandmother. " Kiss her."

I bent down and kissed the little goldy tuft. But she took no notice. She lay quite still with her eyes shut.

" Now go and kiss mother," said the grandmother.

But mother did not want to kiss me. Very languid, leaning against the pillows, she was eating some sago. The sun shone through the windows and winked on the brass knobs of the big bed.

After that grandmother came into the nursery with
Gwen, and sat in front of the nursery fire in the rocking chair with her. Mag and Tadpole were away staying with Aunt Harriet, and they had gone before the new doll's house arrived, so that was why I so longed to have somebody to show it to. I had gone all through it myself, from the kitchen to the dining-room, up into the bedrooms with the doll's lamp on the table, heaps and heaps of times.


"When will she play with it?" I asked grandmother.

"By-and-by, darling."

It was spring. Our garden was full of big white lilies. I used to run out and sniff them and come in again with my nose all yellow.

"Can't she go out?"

At last, one very fine day, she was wrapped in the warm shawl and grandmother carried her into the cherry orchard, and walked up and down under the falling cherry flowers. Grandmother wore a grey dress with white pansies on it. The doctor's carriage was waiting at the door, and the doctor's little dog, Jackie, rushed at me and snapped at my bare legs. When we went back to the nursery and the shawl was taken away, little white petals like feathers fell out of the folds. But Gwen did not look, even then. She lay in grandmother's arms, her eyes just open to show a line of blue, her face very white, and the one tuft of goldy hair standing up on her head.


All day, all night grandmother's arms were full. I had no lap to climb into, no pillow to rest against.

The Doll's House

belonged to Gwen. But Gwen did not notice this ; she never put up her hand to play with the silver brooch that was a half-moon with five little owls sitting on it; she never pulled grandmother's watch from her bodice and opened the back by herself to see grandfather's hair ; she never buried her head close to smell the lavender water, or took up grandmother's spectacle case and wondered at its being really silver. She just lay still and let herself be rocked.

Down in the kitchen one day old Mrs. M'Elvie came to the door and asked Bridget about the poor little mite, and Bridget said, " Kep' alive on bullock's blood hotted in a saucer over a candle." After that I felt frightened of Gwen, and I decided that even when she did play with the doll's house I would not let her go upstairs into the bedroom — only downstairs, and then only when I saw she could look.


Late one evening I sat by the fire on my little carpet hassock and Grandmother rocked, singing the song she used to sing to me, but more gently. Suddenly she stopped and I looked up. Gwen opened her eyes and turned her little round head to the fire and looked and looked at, and then — turned her eyes up to the face bending over her. I saw her tiny body stretch out and her hands flew up, and " Ah ! Ah ! Ah ! " called the Grandmother.

Bridget dressed me next morning. When I went into the nursery I sniffed. A big vase of the white lilies was standing on the table. Grandmother sat in her chair to one side with Gwen in her lap, and a funny little man with his head in a black bag was standing behind a box of china eggs.


"Now!" he said, and I saw my grandmother's face change as she bent over little Gwen.

"Thank you," said the man, coming out of the bag. The picture was hung over the nursery fire. I thought it looked very nice. The doll's house was in it — verandah and balcony and all. Gran held me up to kiss my little sister.

Recollections of College

J.'s application is a perpetual reminder to me. Why am I not writing too? Why, feeling so rich, with the greater part of this to be written before I go back to England, do I not begin? If only I have the courage to press against the stiff swollen gate all that lies within is mine; why do I linger for a moment? Because I am idle, out of the habit of work and spendthrift beyond belief. Really it is idleness, a kind of immense idleness — hateful and disgraceful.


I was thinking yesterday of my wasted, wasted early girlhood. My college life, which is such a vivid and detailed memory in one way, might never have contained a book or a lecture. I lived in the girls, the professor, the big, lovely building, the leaping fires in winter and the abundant flowers in summer. The views out of the windows, all the pattern that was — weaving. Nobody saw it, I felt, as I did. My mind was just like a squirrel. I gathered and gathered and hid away, for that long "winter" when I should rediscover all this treasure — and if anybody came close I scuttled up the tallest, darkest tree and hid in the branches. And I was so awfully fascinated in watching Hall Griffin and all his tricks — thinking about him as he sat there, his private life, what he was like as a man, etc., etc. (He told us he and his brother once wrote an enormous poem called the Epic of the Hall Griffins.) Then it was only at rare intervals that something flashed through all this busyness, something about Spenser's Faery Queen or Keats's Isabella and the Pot of Basil, and those flashes were always when I disagreed flatly with H.G. and wrote in my notes — This man is a fool. And Cramb, wonderful Cramb! The figure of Cramb was enough, he was "history" to me. Ageless and fiery, eating himself up again and again, very fierce at what he had seen, but going a bit blind because he had looked so long. Cramb striding up and down, filled me up to the brim. I couldn't write down Cramb's thunder. I simply wanted to sit and hear him. Every gesture, every stopping of his walk, all his tones and looks are as vivid to me as though it were yesterday — but of all he said I only remember phrases — "He sat there and his wig fell off —" "Anne Bullen, a lovely pure creature stepping out of her quiet door into the light and clamour," and looking back and seeing the familiar door shut upon her, with a little click as it were, — final.


But what coherent account could I give of the history of English Literature? And what of English History? None. When I think in dates and times the wrong people come in — the right people are missing. When I read a play of Shakespeare I want to be able to place it in relation to what came before and what comes after. I want to realize what England was like then, at least a little, and what the people looked like (but even as I write I feel I can do this, at least the latter thing), but when a man is mentioned, even though the man is real, I don't want to set him on the right hand of Sam Johnson when he ought to be living under Shakespeare's shadow. And this I often do.

Since I came here I have been very interested in the Bible. I have read the Bible for hours on end and I began to do so with just the same desire. I wanted to know if Lot followed close on Noah or something like that. But I feel so bitterly I should have known facts like this: they ought to be part of my breathing. Is there another grown person as ignorant as I? But why didn't I listen to the old Principal who lectured on Bible History twice a week instead of staring at his face that was very round, a dark red colour with a kind of bloom on it and covered all over with little red veins with endless tiny tributaries that ran even up his forehead and were lost in his bushy white hair. He had tiny hands, too, puffed up, purplish, shining under the stained flesh. I used to think, looking at his hands —


1 On the opposite page is a long list of the chief figures in the history of English Literature, working backwards from the eighteenth century. Evidently, Katherine Mansfield had been trying to test her knowledge. In the final result, the list, though it is much corrected, is singularly accurate.

The Principal

he will have a stroke and die of paralysis. . . . They told us he was a very learned man, but I could not help seeing him in a double-breasted frock-coat, a large pseudo-clerical pith helmet, a large white handkerchief falling over the back of his neck, standing and pointing out with an umbrella a probable site of a probable encampment of some wandering tribe, to his wife, an elderly lady with a threatening heart who had to go everywhere in a basket-chair arranged on the back of a donkey, and his two daughters, in thread gloves and sand shoes — smelling faintly of some antimosquito mixture.


As he lectured I used to sit, building his house, peopling it — filling it with Americans, ebony and heavy furniture — cupboards like tiny domes and tables with elephants' legs presented to him by grateful missionary friends. I never came into contact with him but once, when he asked any young lady in the room to hold up her hand if she had been chased by a wild bull, and as nobody else did I held up mine (though of course I hadn't). "Ah," he said, "I am afraid you do not count. You are a little savage from New Zealand"—which was a trifle exacting, for it must be the rarest thing to be chased by a wild bull up and down Harley Street, Wimpole Street, Welbeck Street, Queen Anne, round and round Cavendish Square. . . .


And why didn't I learn French with M. Huguenot? What an opportunity missed! What has it not cost me! He lectured in a big narrow room that was painted all over — the walls, door, and window-frames, a grey shade of mignonette green. The ceiling was white, and just below it there was a frieze of long looped chains of white flowers. On either side of the marble mantelpiece a naked small boy staggered under a big platter of grapes that he held above his head. Below the windows, far below there was a stable court paved in cobble stones, and one could hear the faint clatter of carriages coming out or in, the noise of water gushing out of a pump into a big pail — some youth, clumping about and whistling. The room was never very light, and in summer M.H. liked the blinds to be drawn half-way down the window. . . . He was a little fat man.


The old man could not get over the fact that he was still strong enough to lift such a lump of a boy. He wanted to do it again and again, and even when the little boy was awfully tired of the game the old man kept putting out his arms and smiling foolishly and trying to lift him still higher. He even tried with one arm. . . .

Saunders Lane March 12. Our house in Tinakori Road stood far back from the road. It was a big, white-painted square house with a slender pillared verandah and balcony running all the way round it. In the front from the verandah edge the garden sloped away in terraces and flights of concrete steps — down — until you reached the stone wall covered with nasturtiums that had three gates let into it — the visitors' gate, the Tradesman's


Tinakori Road

gate, and a huge pair of old iron gates that were never used and clashed and clamoured when Bogey and I tried to swing on them.

Tinakori Road was not fashionable; it was very mixed. Of course there were some good houses in it, old ones, like ours for instance, hidden away in wildish gardens, and there was no doubt that land there would become extremely valuable, as Father said, if one bought enough and hung on.

It was high, it was healthy; the sun poured in all the windows all day long, and once we had a decent tramway service, as Father argued. . . .

But it was a little trying to have one's own washerwoman living next door who would persist in attempting to talk to Mother over the fence, and then, just beyond her *hovel,' as Mother called it, there lived an old man who burned leather in his back yard whenever the wind blew our way. And further along there lived an endless family of halfcastes who appeared to have planted their garden with empty jam tins and old saucepans and black iron kettles without lids. And then just opposite our house there was a paling fence and below the paling fence in a hollow, squeezed in almost under the fold of a huge gorse-covered hill, was Saunder's Lane.


Jinnie Moore was awfully good at elocution. Was she better than I? I could make the girls cry when I read Dickens in the sewing class, and she couldn't. But then she never tried to. She didn't care for Dickens; she liked something about horses and tramps and shipwrecks and prairie fires — they were her style, her reckless, red-haired, dashing style.

English Food

Sunday. Villa Pauline, Bandol (Var). Mr. F.G. — Never did cucumber lie more heavy on a female's bosom than your curdling effusion which I have read twice and won't again if horses drag me. But I keep wondering, and can't for the life of me think, whatever there was in mine to so importantly disturb you. (Henry James is dead. Did you know?) I did not, swayed by a resistless passion, say that I loved you. Nevertheless I am prepared to say it again looking at this pound of onions that hangs in a string net from a saucepan-nail. But why should you write to me as though I'd got into the family way and driven round to you in a hansom cab to ask you to make a respectable woman of me? Yes, you're bad-tempered, suspicious, and surly. And if you think I flung my bonnet over you as a possible mill, my lad, you're mistook.

In fact, now I come to ponder on your last letter I don't believe you want to write to me at all and I'm hanged if I'll shoot arrows in the air. But perhaps that is temper on my part; it is certainly pure stomach. I'm so hungry, simply empty, and seeing in my mind's eye just now a sirloin of beef, well browned with plenty of gravy and horseradish sauce and baked potatoes, I nearly sobbed. There's nothing here to eat except omelettes and oranges and onions. It's a cold, sunny, windy day — the kind of day when you want a tremendous feed for lunch and an armchair in front of the fire to boa-constrict in afterwards. I feel sentimental about England now — English food, decent


Journal 1916

English waste! How much better than these thrifty French, whose flower gardens are nothing but potential salad bowls. There's not a leaf in France that you can't 'faire une infusion avec,' not a blade that isn't 'bon pour la cuisine.' By God, I'd like to buy a pound of the best butter, put it on the window sill and watch it melt to spite 'em. They are a stingy uncomfortable crew for all their lively scrapings. . . . For instance, their houses — what appalling furniture — and never one comfortable chair. If you want to talk the only possible thing to do is to go to bed. It's a case of either standing on your feet or lying in comfort under a puffed-up eiderdown. I quite understand the reason for what is called French moral laxity. You're simply forced into bed — no matter with whom. There's no other place for you. Supposing a young man comes to see about the electric light and will go on talking and pointing to the ceiling — or a friend drops in to tea and asks you if you believe in Absolute Evil. How can you give your mind to these things when you're sitting on four knobs and a square inch of cane? How much better to lie snug and give yourself up to it.


Later Now I've eaten one of the omelettes and one of the oranges. The sun has gone in; it's beginning to thunder. There's a little bird on a tree outside this window not so much singing as sharpening a note. He's getting a very fine point on it; I expect you would know his
"The Idiot"
name. . . . Write to me again when everything is not too bunkum. Good-bye for now !

With my strictly relative love

K.M.

Notes on Dostoevsky March. Nastasya Filipovna Barashkov ("The Idiot").

Page 7. She is first mentioned by Rogozhin in the train and she is immediately 'recognised' by a man with a red nose and a pimpled face who 'knows all about her.'

"Armance and Coralie and Princess Patsy and Nastasya Filipovna."


"We'll go and see Nastasya Filipovna." Prophetic words.

Page 9. Why did she accept the ear-rings from a man she had never seen? She was not greedy for jewels. She had plenty, and she was extremely particular in her conduct towards other men. Is that a kind of Russian custom? To accept the ear-rings as a kind of recognition of her beauty?

Pages 26, 27. The Portrait: "Dark and deep, passionate and disdainful."

Page 33. "Her face is cheerful, but she has passed through terrible suffering, hasn't she? . . . It's a proud face, awfully proud, but I don't know whether she is good-hearted. Ah! If she were! That would redeem it all."

Page 37. The Story of Nastasya. That change in her when she appears in Petersburg — her knowledge, almost 'technical,' of how things are done in the world, is not at all impossible. With such women it seems to be a kind of instinct. (Maata was just the same. She simply knew these things from nowhere.) Her action, that Dostoevsky says is 'from spite,' is to shew her power, and that when he has jerked out the weapon with which he wounded her she feels the dreadful smart.


Having read the whole of "The Idiot" through again, and fairly carefully, I feel slightly more bewildered than I did before as regards Nastasya Filipovna's character. She is really not well done. She is badly done. And there grows up as one reads on a kind of irritation, a balked fascination, which almost succeeds finally in blotting out those first and really marvellous 'impressions' of her. What was Dostoevsky really aiming at?

Shatov and his Wife ("The Possessed") There is something awfully significant about the attitude of Shatov to his wife, and it is amazing how, when Dostoevsky at last turns a soft but penetrating and full light upon him, we have managed to gather a great deal of knowledge of his character from the former vague side-lights and shadowy impressions. He is just what we thought him; he behaves just as we would expect him to do. There is all that crudity and what you might call *shock-headedness* in his nature


"The Possessed"

— and it is wonderfully tragic that he who is so soon to be destroyed himself should suddenly realise — and through a third person — through a little squealing baby — the miracle just being alive is.

Every time I read those chapters about his newborn happiness I cherish a kind of tiny hope that this time he will escape — he will be warned, he won't die.

How did Dostoevsky know about that extraordinary vindictive feeling, that relish for little laughter

— that comes over women in pain? It is a very secret thing, but it's profound, profound. They don't want to spare the one whom they love. If that one loves them with a kind of blind devotion as Shatov did Marie, they long to torment him, and this tormenting gives them real positive relief. Does this resemble in any way the tormenting that one observes so often in his affairs of passion? Are his women ever happy when they torment their lovers? No, they too are in the agony of labour. They are giving birth to their new selves. And they never believe in their deliverance.


It is so strange! I am suddenly back again, coming into my room and desiring to write, Knock, goes Miss Chapman at the door. A man has come to clean the windows. I might have known it! And so death claims us. I am sure that just at that
final moment a knock will come and Somebody Else will come to 'clean the windows.'
B. has given me his fountain pen. The room is full of smoke to-night, the gas bubbles as if the pipes were full of water. It's very quiet. I have rather a cold, but I feel absolutely alive after my experience of this afternoon.