The Edinburgh Edition of the Collected Letters of Katherine Mansfield, Volume 1: Letters to Correspondents A – J 9781399504171

Table of contents :
Contents
Acknowledgements
Abbreviations
Foreword
Letters Chronology: Volume 1
Introduction: Living in Letters
The Collected Letters A–J
Conrad Aiken
Elizabeth von Arnim
Ida Constance Baker
Amy Barkas
Annie Burnell Beauchamp
Charlotte Mary Beauchamp
Sir Harold Beauchamp
Jeanne Worthington Beauchamp
Leslie Heron Beauchamp
Vera Margaret Beauchamp
Andrew Mackintosh Bell
Marie-Adelaide Belloc Lowndes
Edith Kathleen Bendall
Princess Elizabeth Bibesco
Edmund Blunden
George Bowden
Edwin J. Brady
Dorothy Brett
Laura Bright
Beatrice Elvery Campbell
Francis Carco
Douglas Clayton
Constable & Co.
Marie Dahlerup
Walter de la Mare
Oscar Raymond Drey
John Drinkwater
Lulu Dyer
John Duncan Fergusson
Jinnie Fullerton
John Galsworthy
Constance Garnett
Edward Garnett
Mary Gawthorpe
William Gerhardi
Mark Gertler
Arnold Gibbons
Frederick Goodyear
Frank Harris
Violet Hunt
Mary Hutchinson
Alice Jones
Hugh Jones
Works Consulted
Index

Citation preview

The Edinburgh Edition of the Collected Letters of Katherine Mansfield

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The Edinburgh Edition of the Collected Letters of Katherine Mansfield This new four-volume edition of the complete correspondence of Katherine Mansfield has been designed to enable readers to explore the psychological, cultural and socio-economic range of Katherine Mansfield’s epistolary craft. Thanks to extensive archival research, the series offers new transcriptions of all extant correspondence, hitherto unpublished materials, detailed biographical surveys of all Mansfield’s correspondents, meticulous explanatory notes and a rich contextual background that reflects the most up-to-date biographical and critical scholarship in the field. Organised by recipient rather than chronologically, this edition is entirely innovatory in its conception, foregrounding the different degrees of self-portraiture and self-invention that the writer adopts according to her addressee, thereby giving a rich sense of the dialogic nature of correspondence compared to all other forms of intimate writing. At the same time, it reassesses the importance of her personal correspondence and life writing in the context of the dynamic expansion of Modernist Studies over the past twenty years. The letters offer a detailed exposé of Mansfield’s life: from exile and emigration, intimacy and betrayal, and the traumas of war and disease, to nature and the environment, and fashions and food. Nor are Mansfield’s letters merely supplements in terms of her creative life. As the four volumes in the Collected Letters show, letter writing is an essential part of her literary production; many letters are as finely written and crafted as the stories, as a number of scholars have noted. There are a good number that illustrate the stylistic, imaginative and expressive scope of Mansfield as a writer even better than certain stories composed with the publishing market and commercial readerships in mind. This four-volume series works from the principle that the letters double Mansfield’s œuvre, and thus constitute an essential body of work for today’s readers. Volume 1 Letters to Correspondents A–J Volume 2 Letters to Correspondents K–Z Volume 3 Letters to John Middleton Murry, 1912–1918 Volume 4 Letters to John Middleton Murry, 1919–1923

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The Edinburgh Edition of the Collected Letters of Katherine Mansfield Volume 1 Letters to Correspondents A–J

Edited by Claire Davison and Gerri Kimber Editorial Assistant: Anna Plumridge

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Edinburgh University Press is one of the leading university presses in the UK. We publish academic books and journals in our selected subject areas across the humanities and social sciences, combining cutting-edge scholarship with high editorial and production values to produce academic works of lasting importance. For more information visit our website: edinburghuniversitypress.com

© editorial matter and organisation Claire Davison and Gerri Kimber, 2020 © the chapter Introductions their several authors, 2020 Edinburgh University Press Ltd The Tun – Holyrood Road, 12(2f) Jackson’s Entry, Edinburgh EH8 8PJ Typeset in 10.5/12 Adobe Sabon by IDSUK (DataConnection) Ltd, and printed and bound in Great Britain A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978 1 4744 4544 3 (hardback) ISBN 978 1 4744 4546 7 (webready PDF) ISBN 978 1 4744 4547 4 (epub)

The right of the contributors to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, and the Copyright and Related Rights Regulations 2003 (SI No. 2498).

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Contents

Acknowledgements Abbreviations Foreword by Ali Smith Letters Chronology: Volume 1 Introduction: Living in Letters Claire Davison and Gerri Kimber The Collected Letters A–J Conrad Aiken Introduction by Sydney Janet Kaplan

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Elizabeth von Arnim Introduction by Jennifer Walker

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Ida Constance Baker Introduction by J. Lawrence Mitchell

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Amy Barkas Introduction by Gerri Kimber

177

Annie Burnell Beauchamp Introduction by Anna Plumridge

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Charlotte Mary Beauchamp Introduction by J. Lawrence Mitchell

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Sir Harold Beauchamp Introduction by Helen Rydstrand

223

Jeanne Worthington Beauchamp Introduction by J. Lawrence Mitchell

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Leslie Heron Beauchamp Introduction by J. Lawrence Mitchell

268

Vera Margaret Beauchamp Introduction by Anna Plumridge

273

Andrew Mackintosh Bell Introduction by Gerri Kimber

310

Marie-Adelaide Belloc Lowndes Introduction by Claire Davison

312

Edith Kathleen Bendall Introduction by Moira Taylor

317

Princess Elizabeth Bibesco Introduction by Claire Davison

324

Edmund Blunden Introduction by Gerri Kimber

329

George Bowden Introduction by Gerri Kimber

332

Edwin J. Brady Introduction by Gerri Kimber

336

Dorothy Brett Introduction by Aimée Gasston

339

Laura Bright Introduction by Gerri Kimber

499

Beatrice Elvery Campbell Introduction by Claire Davison

501

Francis Carco Introduction by Claire Davison

512

Douglas Clayton Introduction by Gerri Kimber

517

Constable & Co. Introduction by Gerri Kimber

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contents

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Marie Dahlerup Introduction by Gerri Kimber

521

Walter de la Mare Introduction by Jenny McDonnell

523

Oscar Raymond Drey Introduction by Claire Davison

527

John Drinkwater Introduction by Claire Davison

530

Lulu Dyer Introduction by Gerri Kimber

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John Duncan Fergusson Introduction by Aimée Gasston

536

Jinnie Fullerton Introduction by Gerri Kimber

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John Galsworthy Introduction by Bronwen Carlisle

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Constance Garnett Introduction by Claire Davison

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Edward Garnett Introduction by Claire Davison

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Mary Gawthorpe Introduction by Claire Davison

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William Gerhardi Introduction by Claire Davison

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Mark Gertler Introduction by Chris Mourant

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Arnold Gibbons Introduction by Claire Davison

599

Frederick Goodyear Introduction by Gerri Kimber

604

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Frank Harris Introduction by Claire Davison

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Violet Hunt Introduction by Gerri Kimber

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Mary Hutchinson Introduction by Gerri Kimber

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Alice Jones Introduction by Claire Davison

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Hugh Jones Introduction by Claire Davison

626

Works Consulted Index

628 637

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Acknowledgements

The editors would like to thank many organisations and individuals for their help in the creation of this volume. Firstly, we would like to thank Jackie Jones, our editor at Edinburgh University Press (EUP), for having the vision and foresight to commit wholeheartedly to taking this massive project on, together with the editorial team at EUP, including James Dale, Ersev Ersoy, Rebecca McKenzie and Carla Hepburn, for their good-natured efficiency; our wonderful copy-editor, Wendy Lee, for her incredible attention to detail in the most complex of manuscripts; the Society of Authors, as the literary representatives of the Estate of Katherine Mansfield, for granting permission to reproduce copyright material, and especially Sarah Burton, who has been so generous with her time; our Editorial Assistant, Anna Plumridge, who has worked tirelessly in locating hard-to-find manuscripts for us in New Zealand; Ali Smith, an outstanding Mansfield scholar in her own right, for being so encouraging of all our endeavours, and for agreeing to write the Foreword to this volume; the Advisory Board – Dr Aimée Gasston, Dr Jackie Jones, Professor Sydney Janet Kaplan, Professor Todd Martin, Emeritus Professor C. K. Stead and Professor Janet Wilson – and especially Todd Martin, who undertook extensive research at the Newberry Library in Chicago on our behalf, and who is one of the unsung heroes of this edition; the Alexander Turnbull Library in Wellington, particularly Gillian Headifen, Linda McGregor, Fiona Oliver and especially Audrey Waugh, who, in the latter stages of this volume, went out of her way to help us locate missing manuscripts; the Bodleian Library, Oxford; the British Library, London; the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas at Austin, and especially Rick Watson; the Huntington Library, San Marino, California; the Newberry Library, Chicago; the Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of English and American Literature, the New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations, and especially Joshua Mckeon; the Collection of Steve Forbes, and especially Bonnie Kirschstein of the Forbes Collections; Owen Leeming; Rachel Scott, for kindly allowing us to use her mother, Margaret Scott’s, personal transcriptions of a handful of letters we were unable to locate; our talented Introduction compilers, Bronwen Carlisle, Aimée Gasston,

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Sydney Janet Kaplan, Jenny McDonnell, J. Lawrence Mitchell, Chris Mourant, Anna Plumridge, Helen Rydstrand, Moira Taylor and Jennifer Walker, the last of whom, in addition to her Introduction, so patiently answered our many questions regarding Elizabeth von Arnim; Moira Taylor, for so generously offering to help us with correcting the proofs; Joe Williams, for so kindly undertaking research on our behalf in Cambridge; Joseph Spooner, for his musical and linguistic expertise; and last but not least, Ralph Kimber, index compiler extraordinaire, as well as for his invaluable and constant technical support. Every effort has been made to trace the owners of the letters to Andrew Bell, Constable and Lulu Dyer. The editors and publisher will be pleased to correct any errors in this volume in future editions.

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Abbreviations

N.B. KM’s personal writing throughout this edition has been transcribed verbatim, with all errors included and without the use of editorial ‘[sic]’. For reasons of concision, Katherine Mansfield and John Middleton Murry are referred to as KM and JMM in the annotations, thereby adopting the abbreviated forms of their names, which they themselves so often used. Alpers Antony Alpers (1980), The Life of Katherine Mansfield, New York: The Viking Press ATL Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington b. Born B Bodleian Library, Oxford Baker [Ida Baker] (1971), Katherine Mansfield: The Memories of L.M., London: Michael Joseph Berg The Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of English and American Literature, the New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations BL British Library, London BTW John Middleton Murry (1935), Between Two Worlds: An Autobiography, London: Jonathan Cape

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C Cambridge University Library CP Katherine Mansfield (2016), The Collected Poems of Katherine Mansfield, Gerri Kimber and Claire Davison (eds), Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press CW1 and CW2 Katherine Mansfield (2012), The Edinburgh Edition of the Collected Works of Katherine Mansfield, vols 1 and 2 – The Collected Fiction, Gerri Kimber and Vincent O’Sullivan (eds), Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press CW3 Katherine Mansfield (2014), The Edinburgh Edition of the Collected Works of Katherine Mansfield, vol. 3 – The Poetry and Critical Writings, Gerri Kimber and Angela Smith (eds), Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press CW4 Katherine Mansfield (2016), The Edinburgh Edition of the Collected Works of Katherine Mansfield, vol. 4 – The Diaries of Katherine Mansfield, including Miscellaneous Works, Gerri Kimber and Claire Davison (eds), Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press DVW (plus volume number) Virginia Woolf (1977–84), The Diary of Virginia Woolf, 5 vols, Anne Olivier Bell and Nigel Nicolson (eds), London and New York: Houghton Harcourt. EVW (plus volume number) Virginia Woolf (1986–2011), The Essays of Virginia Woolf, 6 vols, Andrew McNeillie and Stuart Clarke (eds), London: Hogarth Press. Glenavy Beatrice, Lady Glenavy (1964), Today We Will Only Gossip, London: Constable H Huntington Library, San Marino, California Hankin John Middleton Murry (1983), The Letters of John Middleton Murry to Katherine Mansfield, C. A. Hankin (ed.), London: Constable

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abbreviations

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HRC Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin JMM John Middleton Murry KM Katherine Mansfield Letters 1928 Katherine Mansfield (1928), The Letters of Katherine Mansfield, 2 vols, John Middleton Murry (ed.), London: Constable LVW (plus volume number) Virginia Woolf (1975–80), The Letters of Virginia Woolf, 6 vols, Nigel Nicolson and Joanna Trautmann (eds), London and New York: Houghton Harcourt. m. Married name N Newberry Library, Chicago TLS Times Literary Supplement tr. Transcribed by

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Foreword Ali Smith

Let us be honest. How much do we know of T chekhov from his letters. Was that all? Of course not. Don’t you suppose he had a whole longing life of which there is hardly a word? Then read the final letters. He has given up hope. If you desentimentalize those final letters they are terrible. There is no more T chekhov. Illness has swallowed him. (CW4, p. 434)

How much do we know of Katherine Mansfield from her letters? Quite a lot, if we read attentively, because her letters – whether they’re written to those close to her, or to people she knew only tangentially, only knew by correspondence, or to whom she wrote hardly at all – are all at once personal gifts and layered literary constructs, crafted pieces of rhetorical performance, concerned like pretty much everything she wrote with getting to the core of the relationship between language, exchange, expression and honesty. We can gauge from them her generosity, her seductiveness, her charm, her charming and abrasive slipperiness, her skill in terms of voice and tonal modulation, and her imperative faith and trust in the literary work that sustained her and the aesthetic disciplines on which she never compromised. We know her social and psychological imperatives. We know her courage. We know the life in the life of her. ‘A storm rages while I write this dull letter. It sounds so splendid, I wish I were out in it’ (see Mansfield’s letter to Violet Schiff, 9 August 1922). She wrote this last line when she was extremely unwell, hadn’t long left before illness would swallow her too, but the very idea of the word dull near any typical letter from Mansfield is laughable, since a typical letter from Mansfield is written – by force of the fierceness of her commitment to her literary impetus – at a level of complex psychological construction, performance and resonance, and deceptive too in that its surface will glitter with social seduction, throwaway trivia, innocentlooking phrases. She knew the world’s distances; she’d crossed by ship from New Zealand to the UK twice, and subsequently travelled far more in Europe in her short life than she’d ever stayed settled in one place. She knew how a letter could cross distances. Perhaps because of this – in combination

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with a decade of failing health which paradoxically didn’t stop her travelling though it massively curtailed her physical energy – she lived viscerally from postal delivery to postal delivery, went into regular letter-fret, even into a sort of end-of-the-world despair when letters meant to arrive didn’t arrive. She knew the life in letters, the way they embody the writer, the risk they run, the sign and performance of self they are and the often erotic intimacy and energy with which they resonate. That she knew perfectly well how much of her self (and of her talent for combining many selves in the one self, a talent often mistaken by her social milieu and her critics for a kind of hypocrisy in her) she gifted to her correspondents is borne out by how sedulously she bought, burnt, chased up and worried about so many of the letters she’d sent to people over the years. Yet she knew, too, as she suggests in that note on Chekhov, how little of the real ‘life’ of its sender the literary letter represents. It’s to be hugely celebrated, then, that this first volume of this new definitive collection of Mansfield’s correspondence, ordered alphabetically by correspondent and accompanied by in-depth introductions for each correspondent, returns the life threefold to the old artefact of the letter: the life of the writer, the life of the person to whom she’s writing, and finally the life of the times both people inhabited. This new project invaluably returns each time to that original artefact to make a wealth of corrections, returning missed or misrecorded words from Mansfield’s originals, replacing misprints and punctuation changes lost in the original transcriptions. Such tiny adjustments are often tonal. With Mansfield tonality was all important; in this writer’s output a difference so small as that between a dash and a full stop has echoing implication. More: several crucial texts plus drafts of lost or unsent letters among her papers are included here for the first time. The new alphabetical structuring of the correspondents means this first volume opens with the only extant letter, and a seemingly rather slight one at first glance, between Mansfield and the American writer Conrad Aiken. But this demonstrates well how this newly structured reading of the correspondence will recontextualise Mansfield by making clear the immense effect of her presence in her social, literary and family circle and the fast changing contemporaneia she and her correspondents inhabited. A short letter to Aiken displays her warm social playfulness alongside a seriousness when it comes to self-critique, and ends with a moment of unexpected intimacy – all of which the accompanying introduction to Aiken then fleshes out to astonishing effect with references to points of contact both personal and literary and the longtime resonance across Aiken’s life arising from the admittedly slight contact Aiken and Mansfield had in Aiken’s time visiting the UK in 1920. So this thin slip of a letter opens, via contextualisation, into a rush of understanding of people and era, and into a world movingly and fragilely human; and again and again these volumes, with their accompanying details throughout of the lives of the

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foreword

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correspondents before and beyond Mansfield’s own life, will dimensionalise humanly and historically Mansfield’s whole correspondence. For example, George Bowden, long seen as a casualty of Mansfield’s resoluteness / waywardness steps dimensionally out of the shadows and comes alive; the tangential contact Mansfield had with the translator and Russophile Constance Garnett gives way via Claire Davison’s introduction to an understanding of Garnett’s own literary roots and the shape her own life took. The chronological arrangement of letters to each correspondent also showcases Mansfield’s acute understanding of social register, how she tailors tone to recipient, an act of generosity which has a kind of winking vitality even when Mansfield is in her last months of life, fading physically while her letter-writing voices stay strong, only altering to focus with even more strength of command in the very last months of her life when her visit to Gurdjieff’s institute near Fontainebleau grants her new context and space and sharpens her letters away from this habitual tonal generosity towards something more urgent, untrammelled by social performativity – differently generous, you might say. Reading one after the other the letters to a single correspondent over time is richly revealing. The letters the young romantic adolescent Mansfield sends to her sister Vera give way to letters revealing her palpable consciousness of the outcast she becomes to her family; and when, in the summer of 1922, after a flurry of constant contact, there’s suddenly an absence of letters between Mansfield and her friend and lifelong companion Ida Baker, the silence, huge and impactful, speaks presence. ‘If I am your friend you have the right to expect the truth from me’ (p. 403). The letters the painter Dorothy Brett received make a body of thought which is practically a powerful work in its own right, featuring some of Mansfield’s best art writing. These letters to Brett were also so loving, so affectionate and full of attentiveness, that after Mansfield’s death when she discovered Mansfield’s less flattering version of her in letters sent to others, Brett was devastated. But truth is multiple, versatile, via the multiple-selfed Mansfield, who knew exactly how to please Brett and went out of her way to do so while also remaining uncompromising in her aesthetic critique of Brett’s work – and being very frank, much more so than she is to most others, about how ill she is and what it feels like. Then again, this volume lets it readers compare the different note of frankness when, for instance, Mansfield is writing to the painter J. D. Fergusson, the tone of which correspondence reveals the sentimentalising, gentle ameliorating voice Mansfield has tailored, bespoke, for Brett’s letters. The recontextualisation of the correspondence also sends us to other sources: Conrad Aiken’s short story based on his meeting Mansfield, ‘Your Obituary, Well Written’, Beatrice Campbell’s memoir Today We Will Only Gossip, Mansfield’s soldier lover Francis Carco’s written texts, and more. One stray letter to Walter de la Mare opens question upon question about lost letters and surviving letters between the friends; the

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accompanying introduction sends readers off to find the poem he dedicated to her – and when you do, the poem becomes an act of correspondence, a gesture towards the shared meeting of minds. A reconstruction of people and their world; a communal act via one person’s correspondence: you sense, reading this volume, that Mansfield, who was fiercely private about her letters and never wanted anyone after her death to read her correspondence, might even have approved of what this edition is making of her private literature. The readers of this volume are held throughout by an open time structure in which, as you read from beginning to end, time moves backwards as well as forwards, starts again, leaves off in the middle, sends you to the end then back from the end to the early life, or the middle of the life again – so that you find yourself living repeatedly through time as an ever-widening cycle. Since this allows time not to be about the sequential movement towards the early death of Katherine Mansfield, or not to be just about it, there’s a liberation from and a recontextualising of a sequence of events that have always tended to lead to (even to bind Mansfield into) the story of her short-livedness, her final tragic demise. But here time becomes spatial, dimensional. The context shifts, becomes less about Mansfield’s life chronology, more about her specific personal interactions and what happens to these over time with each person in a widening circle of connectedness. ‘Marie I love domestic details in a letter. After all one tells the other items of news to the outside world. But when you say you’ve just made your second batch of marmalade I feel as though I had run in & were watching you hold the bottle up to the light’ (p. 219). In her letters, time opens. Round them a community opens, takes shape around her. A century opens, becomes vivid beyond belief. The last letter in this volume, a single, one-off slight-seeming letter, like the one to Aiken we began with, tells when contextualised the full story of the century, and the ways lives connect, the life in that connecting. All this, from a one-off greeting from Katherine Mansfield to a five-year-old boy, a note full of generosity for his being in touch with her at all, one full of the promise of gifts exchanged, story exchanged, and in the writing of which she doesn’t just inhabit the imaginative space of a child but attends to that child – to the letter.

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Letters Chronology: Volume 1

12 March 1903 28 October 1903 31 August 1906 July 1907 23 September 1907 11 October 1907 20 November 1907 25 November 1907 29 November 1907 2 December 1907 17 January 1908 Late March 1908 April 1908 May 1908 Late May 1908 12 June 1908 19 June 1908 26 June 1908 5 November 1908 Early 1909 Late summer 1909 24 August 1909 24 August 1909 10 November 1909 4 September 1911 1 January 1912 3 January 1912 23 May 1912 Summer 1912 November 1912 18 January 1913 January 1913 30 January 1913

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Lulu Dyer Lulu Dyer Lulu Dyer Edith Kathleen Bendall E. J. Brady E. J. Brady Annie Burnell Beauchamp Charlotte Mary Beauchamp Annie Burnell Beauchamp Jeanne Worthington Beauchamp Vera Margaret Beauchamp Vera Margaret Beauchamp Vera Margaret Beauchamp Vera Margaret Beauchamp Vera Margaret Beauchamp Vera Margaret Beauchamp Vera Margaret Beauchamp Vera Margaret Beauchamp Vera Margaret Beauchamp and Jeanne Beauchamp Ida Constance Baker Ida Constance Baker Annie Burnell Beauchamp Annie Burnell Beauchamp Jeanne Worthington Beauchamp Mary Gawthorpe Jeanne Worthington Beauchamp Jeanne Worthington Beauchamp George Bowden Frank Harris John Drinkwater John Drinkwater John Drinkwater Edward Garnett

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February 1913 11 October 1913 22 December 1913 24 February 1914 21 September 1914 15 December 1914 15 December 1914 4 January 1915 c. 17 February 1915 c. 18 February 1915 2 February 1915 Late March 1915 Late March 1915 May 1915 22 September 1915 11 November 1915 15 November 1915 16 November 1915 20 December 1915 26 February 1916 4 March 1916 6 March 1916 4 May 1916 14 May 1916 15 July 1916 Early August 1916 Late August 1916 18 September 1916 Early October 1916 1 August 1917 11 October 1917 19 November 1917 21 November 1917 7 December 1917 12 December 1917 15 January 1918 18 January 1918 20 January 1918 24 January 1918 12 April 1918 14 April 1918 18 April 1918 19 April 1918 30 April 1918 1 May 1918 12 May 1918

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Edward Garnett Jeanne Worthington Beauchamp Charlotte Mary Beauchamp Ida Constance Baker Laura Bright Annie Burnell Beauchamp Sir Harold Beauchamp Douglas Clayton Francis Carco Francis Carco Douglas Clayton Francis Carco Francis Carco Francis Carco Leslie Heron Beauchamp Mary Hutchinson Mary Hutchinson Amy Barkas Mary Hutchinson Vera Margaret Beauchamp Frederick Goodyear Sir Harold Beauchamp Beatrice Elvery Campbell Beatrice Elvery Campbell Beatrice Elvery Campbell Mary Hutchinson Mary Hutchinson Mary Hutchinson Mary Hutchinson Dorothy Brett Dorothy Brett Dorothy Brett Dorothy Brett Dorothy Brett Dorothy Brett J. D. Fergusson Annie Burnell Beauchamp Annie Burnell Beauchamp J. D. Fergusson Ida Constance Baker Ida Constance Baker Ida Constance Baker Ida Constance Baker Dorothy Brett Dorothy Brett Dorothy Brett

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letters chronology: volume 1 20 May 1918 21 May 1918 22 May 1918 24 May 1918 31 May 1918 3 June 1918 8 June 1918 9 June 1918 12 June 1918 14 June 1918 16 June 1918 17 June 1918 25 June 1918 26 June 1918 15 July 1918 19 July 1918 22 July 1918 26 July 1918 1 August 1918 3 August 1918 7 August 1918 14 August 1918 17 August 1918 25 August 1918 September 1918 5 October 1918 27 October 1918 17 December 1918 1 January 1919 10 January 1919 7 June 1919 10 June 1919 9 July 1919 18 July 1919 29 July 1919 18 December 1919 20 December 1919 Late January 1920 12 January 1920 14 January 1920 31 January 1920 14 February 1920 16 February 1920 4 March 1920 18 March 1920 26 March 1920

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Ida Constance Baker Ida Constance Baker Dorothy Brett Ida Constance Baker Ida Constance Baker Ida Constance Baker Ida Constance Baker Ida Constance Baker Ida Constance Baker Ida Constance Baker Ida Constance Baker Ida Constance Baker Ida Constance Baker Ida Constance Baker Ida Constance Baker Dorothy Brett Dorothy Brett Dorothy Brett Ida Constance Baker Ida Constance Baker Dorothy Brett Dorothy Brett Charlotte Mary Beauchamp Dorothy Brett J. D. Fergusson Dorothy Brett Dorothy Brett Dorothy Brett Dorothy Brett Dorothy Brett Dorothy Brett Dorothy Brett Dorothy Brett Dorothy Brett Dorothy Brett Jinnie Fullerton Dorothy Brett Alice Jones Marie Dahlerup Jinnie Fullerton Charlotte Mary Beauchamp Alice Jones Dorothy Brett Ida Constance Baker Dorothy Brett Dorothy Brett

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20 May 1920 Late May 1920 26 May 1920 20 June 1920 12 July 1920 19 July 1920 19 August 1920 23 August 1920 29 August 1920 19 November 1920 c. 20 November 1920 9 December 1920 22 December 1920 9 January 1921 8 February 1921 23 February 1921 1 March 1921 8 March 1921 11 March 1921 13 March 1921 14 March 1921 16 March 1921 18 March 1921 20 March 1921 21 March 1921 24 March 1921 26 March 1921 Early April 1921 April 1921 April 1921 April 1921 20 April 1921 30 April 1921 3 May 1921 26 May 1921 Late May 1921 4 June 1921 15 June 1921 23 June 1921 End July 1921 24 July 1921 25 July 1921 29 July 1921 8 August 1921 c. 20 August 1921 20/21 August 1921

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Dorothy Brett Mark Gertler Dorothy Brett Dorothy Brett Dorothy Brett Mary Hutchinson Dorothy Brett Charlotte Mary Beauchamp Dorothy Brett Constable & Co. Constable & Co. Dorothy Brett Dorothy Brett Dorothy Brett Constance Garnett Alice Jones Dorothy Brett Ida Constance Baker Ida Constance Baker Ida Constance Baker Ida Constance Baker Ida Constance Baker Ida Constance Baker Ida Constance Baker Ida Constance Baker Princess Elizabeth Bibesco Ida Constance Baker Ida Constance Baker Princess Elizabeth Bibesco Marie-Adelaide Belloc Lowndes Dorothy Brett Dorothy Brett Violet Hunt Marie-Adelaide Belloc Lowndes Marie-Adelaide Belloc Lowndes Beatrice Elvery Campbell Dorothy Brett Elizabeth von Arnim William Gerhardi Elizabeth von Arnim Alice Jones Dorothy Brett Dorothy Brett Dorothy Brett Ida Constance Baker Elizabeth von Arnim

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letters chronology: volume 1 21 August 1921 25 August 1921 29 August 1921 29 August 1921 30 August 1921 7 September 1921 12 September 1921 1 October 1921 5 October 1921 14 October 1921 15 October 1921 16 October 1921 21 October 1921 23 October 1921 October/November 1921 24 October 1921 25 October 1921 Early November 1921 Early November 1921 1 November 1921 2 November 1921 4 November 1921 11 November 1921 12 November 1921 14 November 1921 21 November 1921 29 November 1921 30 November 1921 5 December 1921 11 December 1921 13 December 1921 15 December 1921 19 December 1921 22 December 1921 Late December 1921 26 December 1921 27 December 1921 2 January 1922 2 January 1922 4 January 1922 9 January 1922 11 January 1922 Late January 1922 21 January 1922 26 January 1922

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Charlotte Mary Beauchamp and Jeanne Worthington Beauchamp Ida Constance Baker Ida Constance Baker Dorothy Brett Elizabeth von Arnim Ida Constance Baker Dorothy Brett Dorothy Brett Dorothy Brett Jeanne Worthington Beauchamp Dorothy Brett Elizabeth von Arnim William Gerhardi Elizabeth von Arnim Elizabeth von Arnim Conrad Aiken John Galsworthy Vera Margaret Beauchamp Andrew Mackintosh Bell Sir Harold Beauchamp Dorothy Brett William Gerhardi Dorothy Brett William Gerhardi Dorothy Brett William Gerhardi Elizabeth von Arnim William Gerhardi Dorothy Brett Dorothy Brett Dorothy Brett Elizabeth von Arnim Dorothy Brett Dorothy Brett Elizabeth von Arnim Dorothy Brett Oscar Raymond Drey Charlotte Mary Beauchamp Jeanne Worthington Beauchamp Dorothy Brett Dorothy Brett Elizabeth von Arnim Elizabeth von Arnim Dorothy Brett Vera Margaret Beauchamp

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26 January 1922 31 January 1922 Early February 1922 2 February 1922 3 February 1922 4 February 1922 5 February 1922 5 February 1922 6 February 1922 6 February 1922 8 February 1922 8 February 1922 10 February 1922 14 February 1922 14 February 1922 16 February 1922 18 February 1922 18 February 1922 19 February 1922 19 February 1922 20 February 1922 21 February 1922 21 February 1922 22 February 1922 22 February 1922 24 February 1922 26 February 1922 28 February 1922 28 February 1922 Late February 1922 1 March 1922 2 March 1922 3 March 1922 3 March 1922 6 March 1922 7 March 1922 9 March 1922 11 March 1922 11 March 1922 11 March 1922 13 March 1922 13 March 1922 14 March 1922 15 March 1922 15 March 1922

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Dorothy Brett John Galsworthy Elizabeth von Arnim Dorothy Brett Dorothy Brett William Gerhardi Charlotte Mary Beauchamp Alice Jones Dorothy Brett Walter de la Mare Elizabeth von Arnim William Gerhardi Charlotte Mary Beauchamp Ida Constance Baker Dorothy Brett Ida Constance Baker Ida Constance Baker Dorothy Brett Charlotte Mary Beauchamp Jeanne Worthington Beauchamp Ida Constance Baker Elizabeth von Arnim Ida Constance Baker Ida Constance Baker Alice Jones Ida Constance Baker Dorothy Brett Ida Constance Baker Dorothy Brett Charlotte Mary Beauchamp Charlotte Mary Beauchamp and Jeanne Beauchamp Ida Constance Baker Ida Constance Baker William Gerhardi Elizabeth von Arnim Ida Constance Baker Dorothy Brett Ida Constance Baker Charlotte Mary Beauchamp William Gerhardi Ida Constance Baker Sir Harold Beauchamp Ida Constance Baker Ida Constance Baker Dorothy Brett

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letters chronology: volume 1 16 March 1922 17 March 1922 18 March 1922 19 March 1922 20 March 1922 21 March 1922 22 March 1922 24 March 1922 25 March 1922 26 March 1922 28 March 1922 29 March 1922 30 March 1922 2 April 1922 3 April 1922 4 April 1922 5 April 1922 8 April 1922 8 April 1922 8 April 1922 17 April 1922 19 April 1922 23 April 1922 24 April 1922 25 April 1922 29 April 1922 30 April 1922 3 May 1922 3 May 1922 5 May 1922 5 May 1922 7 May 1922 8 May 1922 10 May 1922 11 May 1922 13 May 1922 13 May 1922 Mid May 1922 18 May 1922 27 May 1922 27 May 1922 28 May 1922 End May 1922 4 June 1922 5 June 1922 5 June 1922

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Ida Constance Baker Ida Constance Baker Sir Harold Beauchamp Dorothy Brett Vera Margaret Beauchamp Ida Constance Baker Ida Constance Baker Elizabeth von Arnim Ida Constance Baker Charlotte Mary Beauchamp Ida Constance Baker Ida Constance Baker Dorothy Brett Ida Constance Baker Ida Constance Baker Dorothy Brett Ida Constance Baker Ida Constance Baker Charlotte Mary Beauchamp Dorothy Brett Dorothy Brett Ida Constance Baker Elizabeth von Arnim Ida Constance Baker Elizabeth von Arnim Dorothy Brett Ida Constance Baker Dorothy Brett Alice Jones Ida Constance Baker Hugh Jones Alice Jones Dorothy Brett Ida Constance Baker Ida Constance Baker Ida Constance Baker Dorothy Brett Elizabeth von Arnim Ida Constance Baker Ida Constance Baker Arnold Gibbons Elizabeth von Arnim Ida Constance Baker Ida Constance Baker Elizabeth von Arnim Dorothy Brett

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7 June 1922 11 June 1922 11 June 1922 12 June 1922 14 June 1922 14 June 1922 14 June 1922 16 June 1922 20 June 1922 21 June 1922 21 June 1922 22 June 1922 24 June 1922 25 June 1922 9 July 1922 10 July 1922 13 July 1922 Mid-July 1922 Late July 1922 Late July 1922 28 July 1922 31 July 1922 End July 1922 3 August 1922 7 August 1922 10 August 1922 10 August 1922 10 August 1922 10 August 1922 11 August 1922 15 August 1922 c. 15 August 1922 Late August/ Early September 1922 Late August/ Early September 1922 Late August/ Early September 1922 Late August/ Early September 1922 18 August 1922 18 August 1922 19 August 1922 c. 21 August 1922 22 August 1922 23 August 1922

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Ida Constance Baker Ida Constance Baker Dorothy Brett Ida Constance Baker Ida Constance Baker Dorothy Brett William Gerhardi Ida Constance Baker Ida Constance Baker Sir Harold Beauchamp Sir Harold Beauchamp Dorothy Brett Arnold Gibbons Dorothy Brett Sir Harold Beauchamp William Gerhardi Arnold Gibbons Elizabeth von Arnim William Gerhardi William Gerhardi Sir Harold Beauchamp Elizabeth von Arnim Edmund Blunden Elizabeth von Arnim Dorothy Brett Sir Harold Beauchamp Vera Margaret Beauchamp Dorothy Brett Dorothy Brett Dorothy Brett Sir Harold Beauchamp Elizabeth von Arnim Dorothy Brett Dorothy Brett Dorothy Brett Dorothy Brett Sir Harold Beauchamp Sir Harold Beauchamp Sir Harold Beauchamp William Gerhardi Sir Harold Beauchamp Elizabeth von Arnim

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letters chronology: volume 1 23 August 1922 26 August 1922 28 August 1922 29 August 1922 1 September 1922 10 September 1922 11 September 1922 27 September 1922 30 September 1922 Early October 1922 3 October 1922 9 October 1922 15 October 1922 23 October 1922 24 October 1922 28 October 1922 28 October 1922 28 October 1922 30 October 1922 2 November 1922 2 November 1922 6 November 1922 7 November 1922 10 November 1922 11 November 1922 13 November 1922 20 November 1922 23 November 1922 2 December 1922 12 December 1922 15 December 1922 15 December 1922 24 December 1922 31 December 1922 31 December 1922 31 December 1922 31 December 1922 Early January 1923

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Sir Harold Beauchamp William Gerhardi Sir Harold Beauchamp Sir Harold Beauchamp Sir Harold Beauchamp Dorothy Brett Andrew Mackintosh Bell Sir Harold Beauchamp Sir Harold Beauchamp William Gerhardi Dorothy Brett Dorothy Brett Dorothy Brett Ida Constance Baker Ida Constance Baker Ida Constance Baker Ida Constance Baker Dorothy Brett Ida Constance Baker Ida Constance Baker Sir Harold Beauchamp Ida Constance Baker Ida Constance Baker Ida Constance Baker Ida Constance Baker Ida Constance Baker Ida Constance Baker Ida Constance Baker Ida Constance Baker Ida Constance Baker Ida Constance Baker Dorothy Brett Ida Constance Baker Elizabeth von Arnim Charlotte Mary Beauchamp and Jeanne Beauchamp Sir Harold Beauchamp Dorothy Brett Ida Constance Baker

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Introduction: Living in Letters Claire Davison and Gerri Kimber

Letters with holiday snaps to enlarge in, Letters with faces scrawled on the margin Letters from uncles, cousins and aunts, Letters to Scotland from the South of France, Letters of condolence to Highlands and Lowlands, Written on paper of every hue, The pink, the violet, the white and the blue. (W. H. Auden, ‘Poem for Night Mail’, 1936)

Every ‘complete’, ‘new’, ‘thoroughly updated’ edition of a writer’s correspondence represents a unique editorial challenge, the paradoxes and contradictions of which are largely hidden from view by the time the reader starts to browse through the orderly, neatly laid out published volumes. The very act of reading an author’s letters, peering over their shoulder and eavesdropping on the intimacies of everyday life, always entails a sense of intrusion, almost a breach of trust. Those picture postcards, those scribbled notes, those carefully drafted exchanges are intended for someone else to respond to, part of a network of exchanges and negotiations to which we no longer have access. ‘Burn my letters!’, Katherine Mansfield sometimes urged her correspondents (Ida Baker, Beatrice Campbell and John Middleton Murry being just three examples). Baker dutifully obeyed, burning hundreds and hundreds of Mansfield’s letters sent to her before 1918, but not before rereading them as part of a final gesture of a lifetime’s affection and admiration. Murry, more in tune with notions of posterity and the literary marketplace than the urgent biddings of his wife, saved them, later publishing some and archiving others. Between these two extremes, a host of other recipients, either by preserving or discarding the letters they received, determined the narrative of Mansfield’s ‘life in correspondence’, to be discovered by readers one hundred years later. So how is that narrative to be told? What ‘plot’ best suits a sprawling body of letters sent – exactly the sort that W. H. Auden pictures in the night mail train’s jute sacks? Such questions demand a response, for here is a letter writer who possibly devoted more of her time to drafting,

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writing, receiving, reading, responding to and appealing for letters than almost any of her contemporaries, to the extent that anyone wishing that Mansfield had lived long enough to write her own autobiography will find much of what they are seeking within these pages. The four large volumes that comprise this new edition bear ample witness to Mansfield’s epistolary energies. ‘My bed’, she tells Dorothy Brett, ‘is a battlefield of letters and press cuttings’ (p. 455). Her lifestyle, constantly on the move, makes letter writing an even more essential, inevitable factor of day-to-day existence; it also accounts for the richness of detail they contain, as Mansfield conjures up the scenes, emotions and physical realities of her quotidian life to render them tangible. Absence and time lapses also account in part for the play of fantasy, invention and sheer imaginative freedom that characterise so many of the letters. Taken as a whole, these letters are not merely an addition to Mansfield’s work; they arguably offer some of her very best writing, quite simply because, freed from the constraints of censorship and the economic bidding of the literary marketplace, the blank page of writing paper was a far freer, more liberating, more spontaneous space than the manuscript examined or commissioned by editors. When ill health kept Mansfield confined to the often squalid realities of impersonal, foreign, occasionally fumigated, cheap hotel rooms, letters became the realm of self-reinvention, where she could escape from the confines of a bed or even a medical corset, rather like the character of little B, who escapes from the breakfast table by flying off with the sparrows, in the story ‘A Suburban Fairy Tale’ (CW2, pp. 170–3). As C. K. Stead notes in the Introduction to his selection of Mansfield’s letters and notebooks, published in 1977, she had the rare talent of being able to address herself intimately to anyone, or even to no one – to a blank page. (‘She has the terrible gift of nearness’ Frieda Lawrence once wrote. ‘She can come so close’.) The particularity and vividness of the writing is an extension of the particularity and vividness of the personality, and it is everywhere present.1

Indeed, Murry would make a similar statement in a letter written to Violet Schiff in 1950: ‘It’s indubitably true that she tended to assume a personality to please a correspondent. I suppose we all do it in some degree. But in her it was very pronounced.’2 Such personalities become all the more evident when the correspondence is ordered by recipient, as in our edition, the rationale for which is further explained later in this Introduction. The voice Mansfield adopts for, say, Ida Baker, veers between matter-of-fact practical requests, occasional affection, more frequently annoyance and sometimes – it has to be said – downright rudeness: ‘I wish to Heaven you didn’t refer some of these silly little points to me. Its really idiotic to ask me if I wish to take the advice re cleaning of Shoolbreds man. Of course I do. Why not? Am I an idiot?’ (p. 97). To the aristocratic and well-connected Dorothy Brett, however, her voice is

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one of playful intimacy with a fellow artist, though later letters also hint at a jealous need to monitor and deflect Brett’s infatuation with Murry covertly, as here: But Murry is really seriously excessivement bobbish, & when we are alone together, just talking, or putting a stick on the fire – or especially when we lie in bed at night, all neat & brushed, smelling faintly of Kalodont toothpaste & reading out of one poetry book, our happiness quite overcomes us & we feel positively faint – I don’t know what it is in our love – that seems to give everything a touch of faëry – It is a different world altogether from the world that other people live in. (p. 367)

Such gleanings of Mansfield’s personality are magnified a hundredfold when all the correspondence to one individual is read without interruption, affording a much deeper understanding of each epistolary relationship. For, as noted above, in the case of Mansfield, her letters do not just complement her œuvre; they are an essential part of it. Indeed, some of the letters are as finely written and crafted as the stories, and even illustrate the stylistic, imaginative and expressive scope of Mansfield as a writer better than certain stories composed with the publishing market and commercial readerships in mind. An example of her pitchperfect epistolary prose can be found here, in a letter sent to her cousin, Elizabeth von Arnim: But speaking of autumn, it is here. Yesterday, soft, silky, sweet-smelling summer kissed the geraniums and, waving the loveliest hand, went. To-day it is cold, solemn, with the first snow falling. Oh, Elizabeth, how I longed for you this morning on my balcony! The sun came through, a silver star. In the folds of the mountains little clouds glittered like Dorothy Wordsworth’s sheep. And all that paysage across the valley was a new land. The colour is changed since you were here. The green is gold – a very deep gold like amber. On the higher peaks snow was falling and the wind walking among the trees had a new voice. It was like land seen from a ship. It was like arriving in the harbour, and wondering, half frightened and yet longing, whether one would go ashore. But no – I can’t describe it. (p. 32)

As Antony Alpers notes of Mansfield’s period away from Murry between September 1919 and the end of April 1920: ‘Soon Katherine was back in London, having written to Murry since September some 110,000 words in letters, or twice as many words as are in her whole Collected Stories. Some passages in those letters are more worthy to endure than many of her stories.’3 Overall, the letters double the word count of Mansfield’s extant writing, and thus constitute in themselves an essential body of work for today’s readers. Beyond the surface narrative of Mansfield’s day-to-day life and her defiant, imaginative rejoinders to the imposition of the real world, the letters have a host of other stories to tell, and this is where the editorial challenge becomes so complex. Firstly, the letters need, quite simply, to be traced – for they are now preserved in numerous public and private

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collections, and to this day new letters are coming to light as library archivists review and digitise their catalogues, as old books reveal longforgotten letters tucked carefully between their pages, and as scholars stumble serendipitously upon pages unexpectedly stored in other collections. Nor does the term ‘letter’ quite do justice to the material objects we are talking about, for it implies a certain standardisation in format, whereas these notes, signed by Mansfield, are diverse in character – a staccato series of short nouns sent by telegraph; a serried paragraph filling the small, blank square of a postcard; a page of an account book or a school exercise book ‘recycled’ to serve as letter paper when none is at hand; airmail paper so fine that the words written on each side of the sheet are always apparent at the same time; pencil-written notes now fading with age. And then, of course, there is her notoriously bad handwriting to contend with – which may be a source of delightful fantasy, as she herself admits to the young author William Gerhardi: ‘But now its hard to write to you when I know you are laughing at my poor little “y”s and “g”s and “d”s. They feel so awkward; they refuse to skip any more. The little “g” especially is shy, with his tail in his mouth like an embarrassed whiting’ (p. 590). But this near-illegible scrawl, especially towards the end of her life, tells a poignant tale too – of her hands becoming crippled with arthritis, or that of an invalid writing, immobilised, lying down in bed. Because most of these letters are personal correspondence, written to friends rather than to professional contacts, they also pose the problem of language usage. When she writes business letters, Mansfield’s tone, style and language use may be carefully correct, but the intimate letters, often composed in a flurry of emotion, are inevitably rife with misspellings, omissions, blanks to be guessed at, private codes to be deciphered, quotations and veiled allusions to a previously received letter, in which words are written and scribbled out again. All these forms of ‘nonstandard’ usage demand an editorial decision before they reappear reprinted on the page here. In keeping with standard editing practice today, we have chosen never to edit ‘silently’, instead leaving the transparent transcriptions to speak for themselves. The mistakes and misuses are as vital a part of the writer’s voice as their deliberately creative language games; they stand as markers of what Mansfield herself calls a ‘very very emõrtional’ voice (p. 592) and are of biographical and stylistic interest in themselves. For this reason, they are not even highlighted by the rather didactic, condescending and intrusive editorial ‘[sic]’. The reader is thus left to draw their own conclusions when faced with blanks, omissions and mistakes, and what they might signify. Even as the letters were being retrieved and transcribed, a whole host of collateral obstacles stood in the editors’ way. A postscript might be written across the top of the page, or squeezed into an empty corner by the date, or appended in the margin, to be read vertically rather than horizontally. Sometimes ideas continue to flow once the envelope has been

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sealed, and so they are added there rather than inside, thereby running an even greater risk of being condemned to oblivion when the envelope gets ripped open. When paper is hard to get – such as during wartime shortages – every blank space is valuable, but can we be certain that the texts we are bringing to the reader’s eye today really reflect the order and linearity of the writing when, clearly, composition was more sporadic? If, for practical reasons, we had to turn Mansfield’s diagonal and vertical lines, and a number of her idiosyncratic hand-written twists into the smooth regularity of today’s typescript, we have nevertheless tried to indicate some of her more interesting detours from the standard topto-bottom, left-to-right norms of composition in the footnotes. This can at least point a future scholar interested in epistolary praxis in the direction of the archives, so that they, in turn, can confront the constellatory nature of a letter in the making. Another dilemma, once the conflation of transcriptions was under way, was how best to order this network of letters that had once made their way across Britain, across Europe and even across the globe – making Mansfield’s correspondence an ideal example of what Duncan CampbellSmith presents as an epistolary Golden Age (1914–39),4 fuelled by thriving rail and steamship connections and not yet under serious threat from the telephone. We wanted this more contextual backcloth to play a larger part, especially now that more than a century separates the composition and reading of these letters. With the abundance of digital resources now available, we also have at our disposal the use of technologies denied to previous editors of Mansfield’s letters, which means that a wealth of secondary narratives can be brought to the fore, beyond the simple boundaries of the author’s known biographical details. For all the above reasons, the current edition is ordered rather differently to previous editions of Mansfield’s letters. Murry’s earlier editions (a two-volume general selection of Mansfield’s letters to a variety of recipients published in 1928, followed by a much larger, 700-page edition of her letters written only to himself)5 foregrounded the narrative of her life as he liked to recount it. He omitted letters, dates and other markers in favour of a certain tone, an emotional harmony and an overarching hagiographical unity, without, of course, the general reader being aware that he was doing any such thing. In his brief Introduction to the 1928 edition, he states: ‘My hope is that, taken together with her Journal, the letters as now arranged will form an intimate and complete autobiography for the last ten years of her life.’6 In fact, Murry’s bowdlerisation of Mansfield’s literary legacy contributed to his reputation, by the early 1930s, of being ‘the most despised literary figure of the time’.7 The five-volume Oxford University Press edition, edited by Margaret Scott and Vincent O’Sullivan, opts for the strictest possible narrative of time passing – organising the letters into a single chronological thread, which inevitably means imposing a rule of sequence upon those many letters that are undated. But chronology also has the huge disadvantage

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of turning the foibles and surprises of everyday life into the ineluctable march of destiny. There is only one ending, death, waiting grimly on the last page of the last volume, ready to claim and obliterate. This edition has opted for an alternative approach to chronology that responds – or so we hope – to Mansfield’s own notion of who and what the writing self was: ‘To thine own self be true’ was the despair of collectors. How dull it was, how boring, to have the same thing written six times over. [. . .] Of course it followed as the night the day that if one was true to oneself. . . True to oneself! Which self? Which of my many – well, really, thats what it looks like coming to – hundreds of selves. For what with complexes and suppressions, and reactions and vibrations and reflections – there are moments when I feel I am nothing but the small clerk of some hotel without a proprietor who has all his work cut out to enter the names and hand the keys to the wilful guests. (CW4, pp. 349–50)

In other words, rather than following the linear sequence of the life of ‘one’ Mansfield, from her first surviving correspondence – a holiday postcard to her cousin, Lulu Dyer – to the last – a longish, detailed letter to Ida Baker, written before she died but not posted – this new edition of Mansfield’s letters has been arranged by recipient, in A–Z sequence,8 allowing for those ‘hundreds of selves’ and their individual voices to shine through. The one exception to this rule are the letters to Murry, which, due to their sheer number, constitute two separate volumes, 1912–18 and 1919–23. This is still a rare approach to the ordering of letters but the reader will hopefully appreciate our reasoning as soon as they start reading, and especially given contemporary critical contexts of auto-ethnography, life writing and self-biographising. Classification according to recipient foregrounds the theatrical performances of self that characterise each of Mansfield’s letter-writing selves – the ‘I’ writing to her mother is strikingly different to the ‘I’ who writes to Brett, or Baker (as noted above), or her sister Vera, or her friend Beatrice Campbell, to cite but four of the key correspondents in this volume. Indeed, that spontaneity in her letter writing, mentioned above, is sometimes nothing of the sort, as Mansfield puts on one mask, and then another, and yet another, depending on whom she is writing to. This is what we all do, of course, and Mansfield is no exception. Indeed, discussing the letters of D. H. Lawrence (Mansfield’s erstwhile close friend), Keith Cushman makes the following observation: If Lawrence wrote ‘naturally’, he also wrote with a mind to creating an effect. He wanted his friends to take pleasure in his letters; he wanted his adversaries to understand exactly where they had fallen short. [. . .] The most striking letters flow freely; they seem fresh and uncalculated. But a performative element is also discernible. He is showing his correspondent what he can do.9

This perfectly exemplifies Mansfield’s own letter-writing modus operandi: Mansfield, the accomplished actress and mimic, whose epistolary poses

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frequently offered a barrier of self-protection against the complex literary and artistic milieu in which she found herself, such as can be seen in this letter to Brett, as she rails against perceived injustices exacted on Murry by Philip Morrell: But the flower of the affair is Philips abusive attack on Murry in the Nation – – To have professed friendship for Murry – to have clasped his hand and then, without a word of warning – without even a commonly courteous note [. . .] – just to come out with this great Full Blare of Pomposity . . . . !! If I didn’t feel so contemptuous – the spectacle of Philip, rising from the sea like a lighthouse & turning his Awful Beam upon dear Murry in the ‘professional armchair’ would be very very comic – But it is too ugly to laugh over really – When I think of M’s passionate honesty, his scrupulous fairness & sincerity – and then of how he has aired himself at Garsington I cannot understand how, at a jump, in one moment Philip was ready to believe anything of him . . . . . (p. 358)

As far as Mansfield’s family are concerned, a different level of selfprotection, combating the notion that she has been a disappointment – the ‘black sheep’ – is ever present. In the case of her mother, for example, with whom her relationship had been complex even before she left New Zealand, it becomes clear, in the few letters that remain (bearing in mind that Mansfield must have written literally hundreds of letters to her mother over the course of her life), that letter writing becomes the means by which Mansfield creates the mother she wished she had had and the daughter her mother longed for. As the years go by, so warmth and affection amplify, telling as much the story of a mother and daughter’s epistolary relationship as a story about letters: Every evening when my work was done and I sat down by the fire I felt your nearness and your dearness to me and such love for you in my heart and such a longing to hold you in my arms that I could have cried like a baby. The only way to cure my sadness was to talk about you to Jack and make him see you, too. I really believe (with all the ‘going into the silence’ nonsense aside) that you and I are curiously near to each other. I feel through you so much and I dream of you so vividly. Oh, my little precious brave Mother, if my love can help you to get strong you are better now. My heart yearns over you. I see you in bed with your pretty hands crossed and your springy hair on the pillow and I cannot bear to think that we are far away from each other, and that I cannot come in and ask you if you feel inclined for a little powwow. (p. 187)

Mansfield never knew until after her mother’s death, however, that she had been cut out of her will in 1909, following her disastrous marriage to George Bowden, an act that her mother never rescinded, despite these letters of affection. Read individually, then, these letters are a poignant reminder of their strained relationship and Mansfield’s unfulfilled yearning to be mothered; read as a sequence, and as part of the complex thread of letters to the various members of the Beauchamp family, the voice and persona of Mansfield as a dashing, daring, albeit – on the surface at

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least – loving daughter and sister, yearning to be loved in return (albeit at her own pace), emerges as never before. Here are letters about letters, letters staging the daily longing for letters, and letters as vital to her health and daily well-being as food, or books, or love. In fact, the boundaries between all these even dissolve as the writing runs on, as here to her sister Vera: Digression no 2 – I had to leave this letter – go into the kitchen & cut myself an entire round of bread & bloater paste – tin loaf – because the body refuses to consider itself dined on one piece of flounder & an orange – I didn’t know that Life held anything so ineffably delicious as this bread – was für Warheit! Simple pleasures are the refuge of the complex – nicht? (p. 292) Oh, Vera, and while I am on the subject of eating – for I am convinced E.F. Benson wrote the book on an empty, healthy tummy, do please read ‘Sheaves’ – (p. 292)

Likewise, each friend addressed in Mansfield’s letters brings to light a new theme or variation in the chorus of voices that come together to form the single writer. When she is corresponding with Brett, we see quite a different figure emerging, as noted above – Mansfield’s empathic concerns regarding her hearing-impaired friend, treating her to acoustically enriched accounts of life; her vividly detailed stories of life on the continent to a friend then living mostly between London and Scotland; and, above all, her powerfully visual evocations, clearly inspired by the knowledge that she was dialoguing with a ‘fellow’ artist: Are you drawing? Have you made flower drawings. I wish you would do a whole Flower Book – Quarto size – with one page to each flower – its leaves, roots, buds, petals. – all its little exquisite life – in colour – very delicate with an insect or two creeping in on a blade of grass or a tiny snail. [. . .] Do you ever see those books Karl Larson made of his house and garden & children – They didn’t need any words at all – They were fascinating. I wish you would make such a book; you have just the vision for it – delicate – & light light as a flying feather. (p. 376)

Likewise, while Mansfield clearly loved appending little doodles and illustrations to all sorts of letters, an overview of the ‘Brett’ sequence reveals that it is to Brett that she addresses the most illustrations, making the language of graphics a central feature of their shared idiom. While these numerous pictures have not been reproduced in this edition, editorial notes indicate the location and nature of each illustration so that readers so inclined will know how to trace these and enjoy them for themselves. The letters to Beatrice Campbell, meanwhile, reveal a much less acknowledged figure in Mansfield’s collection of self-theatricalising masks: her subtle but well-honed political ‘I’. In this case, we read one side in a dialogue between two outsiders – in Virginia Woolf’s sense of

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the term: Mansfield the cosmopolitan, city-loving, countryside-fantasising ‘little Colonial’, speaking intimately to the Dublin-born, Home Rule-defending, metropolitan-minded artist: ‘There is no accounting for Ireland – – The fact that while one street was under hot fire & people falling in all directions the milkmen with their rattling little vans went on delivering milk seemed as Lawrence would say “pretty nearly an absolute symbol”’ (p. 504). In the case of Mansfield’s letters to Ida Baker, an even more complex ‘portrait of the artist’ emerges – as does a far fuller, more profound sense of their unique friendship. Too easily caricatured as the docile, saintly, dull and absurdly doting companion, Baker shines through the letters to her that remain as by far the most reliable, proactive and also modern of Mansfield’s long-term friends, as she zigzags back and forth across the Channel and fits in extended travels of her own on the way. While ‘Katie’ (a throwback name from their schooldays at Queen’s College) waits in anguish, panics, stands aghast or rants, and while their peer group gossip, socialise and vanish sporadically into the complex activities of their own lives, Baker tackles the daily worries of food, parcels, transport reservations, travel permits, furniture sales, last-minute shopping and even, as here, Mansfield’s clothing concerns: I shall be alone here in the early part of tomorrow (Saturday) afternoon. If you ‘get off’ at 12 would you come over & help me? I stand forlorn in front of the chest of drawers & cant find a thing or put a thing away. Do come & put me in order and lay your kind hands on a very tangled, knotty disgraceful Katie. (p. 77)

As we reconstruct the admittedly one-sided stages of this immense ‘Testament of Friendship’, fleshing it out at times with Baker’s own retrospective account, written with more than half a century’s hindsight, so we gain intimate and invaluable insights into the daily lives of a generation of women on the brink of enfranchisement, as they learn to juggle with the complex price to be paid for independence. As for what they say of the letter writer herself, Mansfield’s letters to Baker offer us one of her most multi-faceted and least camouflaged or dramatised autobiographical sketches. They show us the artist at work, composing epistolary fake scenarios of her own to solve tenancy agreements she no longer wants, or to keep Murry at a distance and allow Baker to take his place. And they bear messages of the most poignantly raw, unadorned emotion, whether Mansfield is petulantly protesting or – far more rarely, it must be said – expressing sincere affection: ‘You can, in spite of my rages, read as much love as you like into this letter. You won’t read more than is there’ (p. 104). Surely these words alone would convince any sincere friend that the frequent outbursts of anger

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or extended periods of unexplained silence are worth enduring. Baker herself admits as much: These letters which I received while I was in Hampstead throw, for me now, a new light on this woman who living intensely in all the beauty she found around her, fought so bravely against her illness. She seemed to cut through any falseness or furry edges sharply, yet always with an underlying tenderness. (Baker, p. 157)

It is interesting, meanwhile, to note how both Brett and Gerhardi bring out an autobiographising, and yet intensely Chekhovian, voice in Mansfield, which, in so doing, offers a rationale for how these letters need to be read, at least in part: as a fictional workshop – the place where self dissolves into authorial persona, and where material reality and dayby-day factuality are recast as the raw ingredients of fiction. In doing this, Mansfield unwittingly suggests to a more complex ‘ideal reader’ – which includes us, looking on a century later – how she would hope to be read. Take, for example, in this letter to Gerhardi, the exquisite glimpse into how she perceives herself, or would like to be perceived, and how deftly rhythmatised the little wistful self-caricature becomes along the way as it is transformed into a reflection on poetics: I like such awfully unfashionable things – and people – I like sitting on doorsteps, & talking to the old woman who brings quinces, & going for picnics in a jolting little waggon, and listening to the kind of music they play in public gardens on warm evenings, and talking to captains of shabby little steamers, and in fact, to all kinds of people in all kinds of places. But what a fatal sentence to begin. It goes on for ever. In fact one could spend a whole life finishing it. (p. 573)

Here, then, is the first volume of the new edition of Mansfield’s letters, bringing the letter-loving, letter-reading, letter-inventing author to life from sometimes familiar, sometimes unexpected angles. Some of the scribbled notes taken individually, of course, have nothing to add to our perception of the writer and her times. Read together, however, as a suite of framed stories and landscapes, they contribute exponentially to our understanding of the complex historical, technological and cultural context in which Mansfield wrote, and in which both the vastly expanding thrill of emerging modernism and the huge, often devastating upheavals of modernity resonate on and in between the lines. ‘That is the worst of letters,’ as Mansfield herself despairs in a letter to von Arnim, ‘they are fumbling things’ (p. 64). But with the worst comes the best – flights of fancy taking wing, reconnecting the past and the present, topicality and whimsy, lives lived and lives imagined, enabling us to indulge the fantasy that we too are somehow invited to become the privileged recipient, as here in a letter to Brett, to whom these gifts are addressed:

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I feel I want to wave each of the hankies separately in silent greeting and to send this letter by a carrier pigeon with the three ribbons dangling from its little red feet. Please feel how I appreciate ribbon, too, how they all added to the festa. There was one the green which is really such a heavenly colour that one can hardly believe in it, but all are delicious . . . (p. 429)

Notes 1. Stead, ‘Introduction’, in The Letters and Journals of Katherine Mansfield: A Selection. 2. See JMM’s letter to Violet Schiff, dated 21 December 1948 (BL, Add MS 52919/203). 3. Alpers, p. 314. 4. Campbell-Smith, pp. 213–16. 5. Mansfield 1928; Mansfield 1951. 6. Mansfield 1928, p. vii. 7. Lea 1975, p. 52. 8. Edinburgh University Press is also providing a complete list on its website of all the letters, ordered chronologically, to assist scholars. 9. Cushman, pp. 15–23 (p. 17).

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The Collected Letters A–J

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Conrad Aiken (1889–1973)

Introduction Only one letter from KM to the American poet, critic and fiction writer Conrad Aiken remains, and any letters he might have written to her have not been uncovered. Her letter, dated 24 October 1921, was written in response to his review of Bliss and Other Stories, which had appeared in the Freeman on 11 May of that year.1 In his review he had expressed some hesitation about a few of the stories, where he felt she might have depended too much on ‘cleverness’ or ‘the trickery of surprise’. Yet he praised her in much stronger terms as a writer whose ‘genius’ is ‘for a kind of short narrative poem in prose, a narrative lyric’.2 KM’s tone in her letter is somewhat ambiguous, especially its salutation, where she puts quotation marks around his name, and misspells his surname as ‘Aidken’. Perhaps this hints at an earlier misuse of his name, possibly when she first met him in 1920, when he spent four months in London.3 KM’s acquaintance with Aiken was related to his involvement with the Athenaeum. Shortly after taking on its editorship in 1919, JMM had invited Aiken to write a series of reviews to be entitled ‘Letters from America’. Although KM was disappointed with Aiken’s first article for the Athenaeum, finding it too ‘particular’, she discerned that ‘this chap gives one an idea he could write very well’ and told JMM, ‘Its first chop to have secured it’ (13 October 1919). She and JMM were pleased to have been able to attract a writer as well connected with the American literary scene as Aiken. Not only was he a close friend of T. S. Eliot’s (a friendship that dated back to their undergraduate years at Harvard University as co-editors of its student periodical, The Advocate), but he most recently was Contributing Editor for the Dial, the pre-eminent journal of American Modernist writing. He had already published five books of poetry and an important and influential critical study – Scepticisms: Notes on Contemporary Poetry. He would later go on to write five novels and numerous books of poetry, and to win all the major awards for poetry in the United States, including the Pulitzer Prize in 1930 for his Selected Poems; he was honoured by being appointed Consultant to the Library of Congress (now titled ‘Poet Laureate’) in 1950.

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Aiken contributed two further ‘Letters from America’ before he arrived in London in the spring of 1920 and became acquainted with JMM and KM, as well as others involved in the production of the Athenaeum, such as J. W. N. Sullivan. Many years later, in his experimental autobiographical narrative, Ushant, Aiken would describe ‘a dreadful Athenaeum luncheon’, where he sat ‘between those two geniuses, Katherine Mansfield and Virginia Woolf’ and observed how they ‘had measured each other with a locked gaze of feral enmity while they exchanged honeyed phrases of compliment and question’. Most relevant to his letter from KM is his further description in Ushant of ‘the tea in Hampstead, the next day, with Katherine Mansfield, the two laburnum trees, at the back of the walled garden, glowing through the solid London rain; and their talk of rain, their shared love of rain’.4 Aiken would not write any further ‘Letters’ for the Athenaeum, however. His biographer, Edward Butscher, remarks that he ‘surrendered his “American Letter” column in a fit of pique, preferring instead to write for and deal with Squire’s Mercury’.5 (Aiken’s growing dislike of JMM, once he began working with him, might account for the absence of any correspondence between them in the Conrad Aiken Papers at the Huntington Library, which contains more than three thousand letters.)6 Despite the unpleasant conclusion to his connection with the Athenaeum, Aiken never lost his appreciation for KM, both as a writer and as a person. When he returned to London with his wife and children in the autumn of 1921, planning to live permanently in England, KM had already settled in Switzerland.7 He would never see her again. Two months after he received her letter, Aiken wrote to his editor, Robert Linscott, that ‘Tom Eliot has had some sort of nervous breakdown and is at present in Lausanne’ and that ‘Reports conflict about Katherine Mansfield – by some she is said to be fatally ill with t.b., in Davos. Isn’t that frightful! When idiots can live so long. A sequel to her “prelude” will probably be in January “Mercury”.’8 KM did not respond to Aiken’s review of The Garden Party and Other Stories – ‘The Short Story as Colour’, which appeared in the Freeman on 21 June 1922. Whether she ever read it is not definitely known, but KM wrote to her father, Harold Beauchamp, on 9 July 1922, that she had ‘received two reviews from America’ and thought she would send them along, as they ‘may amuse you’. It is possible that one of them was Aiken’s but unlikely, given that it is a serious analysis of KM’s stories in terms of their poetic techniques, rather than a review that might ‘amuse’ her father. Aiken there emphasises ‘the fact that Miss Mansfield goes to the short story as the lyric poet goes to poetry’.9 By the time Aiken reviewed the Journal of Katherine Mansfield on 17 September 1927, there was no holding back his praise: ‘Taken as a whole, her short stories form the best group of short stories which have ever been written in the English language,’ and he further claimed ‘that by her death, in January

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1923, English literature suffered perhaps the greatest single loss which has befallen it in this century’.10 Soon after Aiken reviewed JMM’s reconstruction of KM’s Journal he wrote a short story, ‘Your Obituary, Well Written’, published in 1928 in his second collection of short stories, Costumes by Eros. It contains a lightly veiled version of his encounters with KM and JMM. She is depicted as Reine (pronounced ‘rain’) Wilson, a brilliant young writer whose novel in progress is titled ‘Scherzo’ (reminiscent of ‘Prelude’) and whose husband edits a literary magazine. The narrator considers her ‘the most remarkable woman [he] had ever met’ and cannot imagine how her ‘fool’ of a husband ‘managed to attract so exquisite a creature as his wife’. The narrator is ‘transported’ by what he has read of ‘Scherzo’ and considers it ‘the most exquisite prose [he] had ever read – extraordinarily poetic and exquisitely feminine’. He soon finds himself falling hopelessly in love with her. The story centres on a depiction of a version of Aiken’s ‘tea’ with KM, in which he devotes two pages to anecdotes about the narrator and Reine’s reciprocal appreciation for rain: its effect on the imagination and its shaping power in childhood, such as Reine’s memory of one day when she was a child and the rain was ‘as solid and serried as rain in a Japanese print, and how she turned to the piano and the keys felt ‘as if [she] were dipping [her] hands into the clearest of rain-water’.11 Aiken’s narrator begins the last section of the story with the words: ‘I never saw her again.’ His only further contact with Reine was a letter from her in response to one he had sent to her praising Scherzo after it was published as a book. (He would hear of her death only a few weeks later.) He describes her letter as: rather cool, rather cryptic, distinctly guarded. She thanked me formally, she was glad I liked the dream so much, she felt, as I did, that the ending was perhaps a shade ‘tricky,’ of a ‘surprise ‘sort which didn’t quite ‘go’ with the tone of the rest. That was all. But there was also a postscript at the bottom of the page which seemed to me to be in a handwriting a little less controlled – as if she had hesitated about adding it, and then, impulsively, dashed it in at the last minute. This was simply: ‘I always think of you as the man who loves rain.’ . . . . That was all.12 Sydney Janet Kaplan

Notes 1. Aiken 1921, pp. 210–11. It is reprinted in Blanchard, pp. 291–3. 2. Blanchard, p. 292. 3. KM also refers to him as ‘Aidken’ in a letter to Violet Schiff, 16 July 1920. There is also a mention of someone named ‘Aitken’ in a letter from JMM to KM on 11 May 1915. Hankin’s footnote reads: ‘Probably Conrad Aiken’ (Hankin, pp. 63–4). It could not have been, however, because Aiken had

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4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12.

collected letters of katherine mansfield, vol. 1 returned to the United States in August 1914 because of the war. The Aitken mentioned in JMM’s letter was more probably Charles Aitken, Director of the Tate Gallery, who was closely associated with the two Scottish artists Muirhead Bone and Dugald Sutherland MacColl, who had been the other guests at JMM’s dinner. Aiken 1952, pp. 292–3. The luncheon took place on 1 July 1920. Butscher, p. 327. Four ‘Letters from America’ by Aiken appeared in the London Mercury during 1921–2. JMM had also written a generally negative, condescending review of Aiken’s The Charnel Rose, Senlin: A Biography, and Other Poems in the Athenaeum on 5 September 1919. After living briefly in London, Aiken finally settled in Rye, East Sussex, amongst a community of artists and writers, staying there until 1939, when he returned to the United States because of the onset of World War Two. Aiken 1978, p. 65. The review is reprinted in Pilditch, pp. 9–12. Blanchard, p. 297. Originally published in the New York Post, 17 September 1927, p. 10. Aiken 1982, p. 414. Ibid., pp. 415–16.

24 October 1921 [H] Permanent address: c/o The Nation & The Athenaeum 10 Adelphi Terrace London W.C.2 24 X 1921 Dear ‘Conrad Aidken’ I want to thank you for your review of my little book in The Freeman.1 You are too kind to me, but I shall try & deserve some of your praise, but what I want to thank you for particularly is for pointing out so justly where I have failed. Yes, you are quite right, I ought not to have published some of those ‘stories’; Ill publish no more like them. Queer – isn’t it – how helpful it is to know that someone else sees what is wrong in ones work. At least I find it so, & Im very grateful to you – I nearly sent you a copy of Bliss. Then I decided Id wait & send you my next one instead – – – I hope you are well & working. I always think of you as the man who loves rain.2 Yours sincerely Katherine Mansfield.

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Notes 1. The Freeman was an American weekly magazine ‘which saw itself as a journal of social record and comment [. . .] to enlighten public opinion rather than to instruct it’ (Brooker and Thacker, p. 869). While warmly appreciative of KM’s poetic sensibility, Aiken points to elements of ‘cleverness, escurient humour, or even [. . .] the trickery of surprise’ as the shortcomings in her style. See Aiken 1921, pp. 20–1. 2. In ‘American Poetry’ (1919), JMM’s assessment of Aiken as a poet is sharply ambivalent, although he draws attention to the boldly physical musicality of lines such as ‘Death himself in the rain . . . death himself . . . / Death in the savage sunlight . . . skeletal death . . . / I heard the clack of his feet’ (in Murry 1920, p. 96). KM, however, is more likely picking up on poems such as his ‘Meretrix: Ironic’, a poem published in 1916, whose memorable second stanza reads: Here, it rains. The small clear bubbles Pelt and scatter along the shimmering flagstones, Leap and sing. Streaks of silver slant from the eaves, The sparrow puffs his feathers beneath broad leaves And preens a darkened wing. The letter’s closing note suggests KM’s startlingly vivid sense of Aiken’s sensibility too: the seventh section of his 1931 ‘Preludes for Memnon’ opens, ‘Beloved, let us once more praise the rain. / Let us discover some new alphabet, For this, the often-praised; and be ourselves / The rain, the chickweed, and the burdock leaf’. Meanwhile, in his autofictional novel Ushant, he recalls vivid memories of KM and Woolf ‘glowing through the solid London rain; and their talk of rain, their shared love of rain’ (Aiken 1952, p. 292).

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Elizabeth von Arnim (1866–1941) (m. Countess Russell, née Mary Annette Beauchamp)

Introduction It may come as a surprise to readers of KM’s work to discover that an older cousin, Mary Annette Beauchamp, was the writer known to us today as Elizabeth von Arnim. In the early years of the twentieth century, ‘Elizabeth’ (as she became known to her readers) established an enviable reputation as a best-selling novelist following the publication of her first work of fiction, Elizabeth and Her German Garden (1898). This and her later novel, The Enchanted April (1922), remain the best known of her twenty-one published works. Recent scholarship, however, is now acknowledging the considerable depth and complexity of all her novels.1 KM’s remarkable series of letters to her cousin convinces the reader of the intensity of their brief friendship during the last few years of KM’s life. Not all the responses from Elizabeth exist, but from those that do, we realise how much this special friendship meant to her. Their circumstances at the time, as is related below, were extraordinary. Mary Annette Beauchamp, the youngest daughter of Henry Herron and Louey (Elizabeth) Beauchamp, was born in Sydney, Australia, on 31 August 1866. Her father had spent his early years in London but was one of several Beauchamp brothers to emigrate to the southern hemisphere. Several younger brothers followed him to Australia, including Arthur Beauchamp, KM’s grandfather, who settled eventually in New Zealand.2 Henry Herron based his business as a shipping merchant in Sydney, Australia, where he married Elizabeth Weiss (Louey) Lassetter, in 1855. His business flourished, enabling the growing family to live in various desirable locations on Kirribilli Point. In January 1870, Henry Herron and his wife decided to take their family of four sons3 and two daughters4 to Europe. They left their pleasant colonial home in Sydney and set off on the long sea voyage to join Louey’s brother and his family in London. Mary was just three years old when she left Australia with her parents; she would never return to the country of her birth. A year spent in London was followed by an interlude based in a chalet near the shores of Lake Geneva in Lausanne, Switzerland. From there, the

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parents explored Europe while the children were tutored at home. The beauty of this environment, with the wonderful background of mountain scenery, made a lasting impression on their youngest daughter. After three years in this delightful location, the family returned to London, where Mary’s education could begin in earnest. From the age of sixteen, she attended Queen’s College School in Acton, and it is from here that we have an early description of her, given by a fellow pupil: ‘a very small person with long fair hair tied at the nape of the neck with a ribbon. She had blue eyes and a brilliant colour.’5 This description gives a clear indication of the petite but remarkable woman who was to emerge from this chrysalis. Her chosen motto was to be ‘Parva sed Apta’ (‘small but fit for purpose’), summing up her attitude to life, which was characterised by generally robust health and a ‘no nonsense’ approach. An intelligent and musically gifted child, Mary was able to develop her talents by studying at the Royal College of Music, where her principal focus was the organ. Her distinguished teacher, Sir Walter Parratt, had a lasting influence on her intellectual and musical development, leading her to consider a career as a professional musician. In 1887, as the only female Exhibitioner of her year at the College, Mary was invited to give an organ recital before students and professors. However, the promise of such a career was disrupted by the concern of her parents that, at the age of twenty-two, their beautiful daughter was beginning to dismiss the idea of marriage in favour of a more independent life. A ‘grand tour’ of Europe was therefore organised, with the aim of finding her a suitable husband. Mary set off with her father for Rome, where introductions to Italian musicians had been organised by her college professors. One of these was to Signor Sgambati, a pianist, conductor and composer, and former pupil of Liszt. It was at one of his musical evenings that Mary met ‘Il Conte’, a Prussian Count who had also studied with Liszt and was a friend of the Wagner family. Graf Henning August von Arnim-Schlagenthin was fifteen years older than Mary and recently widowed. Greatly impressed by her organ playing, as well as her personality, he pursued Mary and her father on their tour, finally proposing to her on top of the Duomo in Florence.6 The implications of this love match gradually dawned on the Beauchamp parents, especially when the Count insisted that they should accompany him and their daughter on a visit to Bayreuth. Here, she was introduced to the upper echelons of German society, even performing organ works by Liszt for his daughter, Cosima Wagner. Following her engagement to the Count, Mary remained in Dresden, with her mother in attendance, to be coached in German and prepared in the etiquette required for her future life as a German Countess. The couple were married in Kensington, London, on 21 February 1891; after two days in Paris, they began their married life in a Berlin apartment. Despite her enjoyment of balls and operas, the restrictions of her life among the German aristocracy was often a trial to Mary, who sought relief from her social isolation in joyful expeditions to the nearby park with her dachshund dog.7

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The succeeding few years in Berlin were dominated by difficult pregnancies and the subsequent births of three daughters. She was finding that the previous delights of her girlhood, enjoying books and music, and experiencing nature, were stifled. Mary’s graphic impressions of the sufferings of pregnancy and childbirth would later feature in her novel The Pastor’s Wife.8 A way of escape from the stultifying existence of Berlin presented itself on a visit in the spring of 1896 to her husband’s country estate, Nassenheide, in Prussia.9 Mary immediately fell in love with this remote place, far from the constraints of Berlin Junker society; she announced that this was where she wanted to live and bring up her family. The feelings of freedom she at last experienced in this environment inspired her to write her first novel, Elizabeth and Her German Garden. Written in diary form under the assumed identity of ‘Elizabeth’, it was published anonymously by Macmillan in September 1898 and became an instant best-seller, making its young author a fortune. Over the years, Mary developed her literary career, completing twenty further highly successful works, usually published with the phrase ‘by the author of Elizabeth and Her German Garden’ as the only clue to their authorship. As ‘Elizabeth’, she established an international literary reputation, and it was to ‘Elizabeth’ that her younger cousin, Kathleen Beauchamp, as Katherine Mansfield, would address her letters.10 There was much speculation in the press as to the true identity of the mysterious author ‘Elizabeth’, which was for some time a closely guarded secret. As time went on, Elizabeth became the name by which she was known to her readership, her friends and even most of her family. The pseudonym Alice Cholmondeley was used for the novel Christine (1917), and one other novel, In the Mountains (1920, also in diary form) was published anonymously. Seven further successful novels were written and published while Elizabeth11 was living at Nassenheide. These, notably The Adventures of Elizabeth in Rügen (1905) and The Pastor’s Wife (1914), often feature aspects of life in Germany as experienced by their author. Their lively and engaging style, together with themes of embracing solitude and happiness as a way of life, helped ensure a growing readership. In the early years of the twentieth century, Elizabeth rapidly became a literary celebrity; the publication of each new novel was eagerly awaited and widely reviewed. Her life at Nassenheide was enhanced by the arrival of several young undergraduates from Cambridge – ostensibly employed to tutor her family but also to provide Elizabeth herself with some stimulating intellectual company. One of these, introduced to Elizabeth by her nephew Sydney Waterlow (also studying at Cambridge), was E. M. Forster. Forster arrived at Nassenheide in the spring of 1905 and stayed for a year, a period that he recalled vividly in a BBC radio broadcast of 1958.12 He was succeeded by Hugh Walpole, a shy young man who found his initial relationship with his employer difficult. Both former tutors remained on friendly terms with Elizabeth in later life, Forster joining her group of

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caravaners in the summer of 1907 (fictionalised in Elizabeth’s novel, The Caravaners, 1909) and Walpole becoming a life-long friend. In 1902, Elizabeth had been staying in London to be attended by her brother Sydney (an obstetrician) for the birth of the last of her children, a son. She was now the mother of five children, and her life was far removed in years and experience, as well as geographically, from that of her teenage cousin, KM. It was, however, just a year later that KM and her sisters came to London, brought by their parents to spend three years benefiting from an ‘English’ education at Queen’s College in Harley Street. The family from New Zealand became acquainted with Henry Herron and his wife at this time, spending Christmases with them and some of their other Beauchamp cousins. They even met little Felicitas, the youngest von Arnim daughter, who stayed with her grandparents for the Christmas of 1903. With her many other preoccupations, however, it is unlikely that Elizabeth gave much attention at this stage to the cousin who would later become a writer of such importance. Because of the Count von Arnim’s failing health and the deterioration in his financial situation, it was becoming clear that Nassenheide would have to be sold, and Elizabeth and the children would have to move to England. Also, there was a real threat of war between England and Germany, and Elizabeth (technically now German because of her marriage), could not risk being stranded in Prussia. The summer of 1910 saw the production of the dramatisation of Elizabeth’s novel, The Princess Priscilla’s Fortnight, at the Haymarket Theatre, London.13 She attended with her three older daughters, but shortly afterwards they returned to be with the Count von Arnim at a sanatorium in the Tyrol, Austria. He died there in August 1910. The death of the Count von Arnim marked the end of this period of Elizabeth’s life. For the next ten years, her focus would be divided between her increasingly rich literary life in London and the vast home she was planning to build in the mountains of neutral Switzerland. Here, at her Chalet Soleil, in the Valais mountains in the commune of Randogne,14 she hoped to provide a secure home for her half-German family and peace for herself. Despite having to spend much of her life in Prussia, Elizabeth, by this time, had formed ‘wide associations with a loose group of influential artists and thinkers in the early twentieth century’.15 These were mainly based in London and included, among others, socialists and feminists associated with the Arts and Crafts movement. Among them were George Bernard Shaw and Thomas Cobden-Sanderson and his suffragette wife, Annie. Elizabeth also maintained contact with E. M. Forster and Hugh Walpole, and a close friendship now developed with an exact contemporary, H. G. Wells, a relationship that soon became a problem as well as a delight.16 His stimulating company was irresistible, but at the same time Elizabeth found him demanding and difficult. He could perhaps have said the same of her; it seems they were a match for each other. This close relationship, which lasted until the early years

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of 1914, gradually turned into a lasting friendship that endured until the final years of Elizabeth’s life. When war broke out in August 1914, Elizabeth and her family were forced to leave the Chalet Soleil and return to London. Once there, she became naturalised as a British citizen. However, her two older daughters, Evi and Liebet, and her son, Henning Berndt, found their German accents made life difficult in wartime England; these two daughters went to live in the United States and were followed later by her son, after he had completed his education at Eton. Another daughter, Beatrix (known as Trix), decided to remain in Germany. Felicitas, the youngest daughter, was sent to stay in Germany in the summer of 1914 but was trapped there after war broke out. Tragically, she died of pneumonia the following June. When Lord Francis Russell, the older brother of Bertrand Russell, entered Elizabeth’s life during a stay at the Chalet Soleil over Christmas 1913, she found herself drawn irresistibly into another relationship. They were married in February 1916, in London. The marriage was a disaster and the couple separated acrimoniously three years later. They never divorced, however, and she remained the Countess Russell for the rest of her life. Whilst living in London during the war, Elizabeth became aware that the young writer, known as Katherine Mansfield, whose reviews and short stories were very much admired, was in fact her younger cousin, Kathleen Beauchamp. Indeed, a review of Elizabeth’s novel, Christopher and Columbus, written by KM, had appeared in the Athenaeum in 1919.17 A meeting with KM and the journal’s editor, JMM, was arranged; despite KM’s initial reluctance to meet her cousin, they got on well and arranged to meet again soon afterwards. A year later, when KM was seeking help for her declining health, they met once more. It seems likely that Elizabeth used her knowledge of the medical treatment available in Montana to encourage her cousin to think of receiving treatment at this mountain resort. KM’s letters to her cousin date from the time when she and JMM arrived in Montana in June 1921. Elizabeth had recently arrived to stay at the Chalet Soleil and offered them help with settling in to their own Chalet des Sapins. This was the beginning of a summer of deepening friendship between the cousins. Apart from just one visit,18 KM’s physical weakness prevented her from getting down the mountainside to the Chalet Soleil, but JMM enjoyed the company he found there and the vast library of books on offer. Thus, Elizabeth often visited KM, and during long talks at her bedside the cousins found they had much in common. Their letters show how they shared thoughts on music, flowers, poetry, Shakespeare and Jane Austen.19 It was an intimate but sometimes tense relationship. KM was often in pain and resentful of Elizabeth’s vitality; Elizabeth often felt inadequate in her response and wary of her cousin’s penetrating intelligence. They nevertheless encouraged and supported each other’s work. The sequence of letters below is very revealing, not least for the increasing familiarity with which KM addresses her cousin; at first, she appears

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rather shy and reserved but her responses rapidly reveal her sensitive and poetic nature. It is hard to read the painful bravery she expresses when talking of her declining health, and it is hard to read how Elizabeth felt her own efforts at communication with her cousin were often misplaced. This perception is expressed in a letter Elizabeth wrote to JMM written after her cousin’s death but where she adds: ‘Yet I adored her.’20 During the years of their friendship, the cousins frequently communicated their admiration for each other’s work in their letters and in letters to their friends. KM’s letters include particular mention of Elizabeth’s latest novels, Vera and The Enchanted April, the last of Elizabeth’s books to be read by her cousin. The reference to the music of Mozart in the latter is particularly telling here, acknowledging KM’s high regard for this novel and her understanding of her cousin’s work. In a letter to A. S. Frere-Reeves (a Cambridge undergraduate and the future director of Heinemann’s), Elizabeth expresses admiration for KM’s latest publication, The Garden Party and other Stories. Elizabeth maintained her summer gatherings of friends and family at the Chalet Soleil until 1929. Her guests during these years included Dame Ethel Smyth, Vernon Lee, Maud Ritchie, Max Beerbohm, Thelma Cazalet, Augustine Birrell, Bertrand Russell and his wife Dora. Her tiny writing chalet, located beside the main building, was essential to her during these years as a place for solitude and concentration. The Enchanted April was followed by seven more highly successful novels, three of which were written at the Chalet Soleil.21 These novels were often concerned with the plight of women in older age, and the financial problems suffered by women following marital breakdown. Finding the mountain climate too harsh as her health began to fail, Elizabeth spent the final years of her life in Europe at the Mas des Roses, her home in Mougins, near Cannes, in the South of France. Moving there in 1930, she completed three more books, created a magnificent garden, enjoyed the lively companionship of a collection of small dogs, entertained friends and supported local charities. The threat of another war with Germany was, however, casting a dark shadow over what could have been an idyllic existence. She was especially concerned for her third daughter, Trix, now married to a German officer and living in Bavaria. Germany had, by this time, become a place she viewed with increasing abhorrence, as becomes clear in her two novels, The Jasmine Farm (1934) and Mr Skeffington (1940). In the summer of 1939, the situation in Europe forced her to flee to the United States, where her daughters, Evi and Liebet, and her son were living. It was a source of some anguish that Trix had to remain in Germany. While Elizabeth was in the United States, the publication of her final novel, Mr Skeffington, made her enormously popular with the American public. However, although supported by her devoted second daughter Liebet and close friends, her fragile health was declining. She died of influenza in Charleston, South Carolina, on 9 February 1941. After the

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end of World War Two, her ashes, in accordance with her wishes, were taken by her daughter to be interred with those of her brother, Sir Sydney Beauchamp, in the small churchyard of St Margaret’s Church, Tyler’s Green, Buckinghamshire, England. Jennifer Walker Notes 1. See Women: A Cultural Review, 28: 1–2, spring–summer 2017. Special issue on von Arnim. 2. See Walker 2018, pp. 28–50. 3. Ralph, Sydney (later Sir Sydney Beauchamp), Walter and Henry (later ‘Gardy’ to KM). 4. Charlotte Elizabeth (b.1859, later Charlotte Waterlow and mother of Sydney Waterlow, later Sir Sydney Waterlow, known in the family as ‘Monarch’) was the second child of Henry Herron and Louey Beauchamp. She was seven years older than Mary Annette. 5. Walker 2013, p. 18, n. 12. 6. For von Arnim’s version of this proposal in her fictional autobiography, see von Arnim 2003, p. 20. 7. Ibid., p. 24. 8. Von Arnim 1987, pp. 235–41. 9. The former estate of Nassenheide is now located in Rzedziny, Poland. 10. See Kimber 2016, p. 66, for an account of how Arthur Beauchamp’s son, Harold Beauchamp, and his wife Annie visited his uncle, Henry Herron, and his wife in Bexley, London, in 1898. On their return to New Zealand, it is likely that they presented a copy of Elizabeth and Her German Garden to their daughter, KM. 11. Mary Beauchamp/Arnim, for the sake of simplicity, is referred to here by her authorial name, Elizabeth. 12. The occasion of this broadcast was the publication in 1958 of the biography of her mother, Elizabeth, by her second daughter, Liebet, under the pseudonym Leslie de Charms. 13. The title of the play was Priscilla Runs Away. 14. This area is at a high altitude, just below the modern ski resort of CransMontana, known in the early twentieth century simply as Montana; it was developed in the late nineteenth century as a health resort, providing specialist clinics for tuberculosis patients. See Galofaro 2005, ‘Le Dr Stephani et les sanatoriums’, pp. 52–5. The Palace Hôtel, where KM was later to stay, had once been one of Dr Stephani’s sanatoriums, known as the Beauregard. 15. See Women: A Cultural Review, p. 3. 16. Walker 2011, pp. 31–2. 17. Quoted in Walker 2013, p. 213. 18. Ibid., p. 245. 19. Ibid., pp. 237–77. 20. Ibid., p. 276. 21. A notable BBC film adaptation of The Enchanted April appeared in 1993.

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[15 June 1921] [BL] Saturday, June 15. 21. Palace Hotel Dear Elizabeth, Murry does not know the extent of my guilt towards you. He thinks he is bearing greetings. But the truth is this little letter hangs its head. Can you – dare I ask you to forgive what must appear to be just dreadful blackheartedness? When your perfect letter came I was ill. I put off answering it until I was better. I did answer it and never sent the reply. And then my wickedness frightened me and I hid. But even if you never want to see such a horrid creature again, please let me say how I did appreciate – I did love the beautiful gesture that made you write to me. It is one of the penalties of illness that one loses what one would give so much to hold. And you know, dear wonderful Elizabeth, I have always longed to be allowed to know you a little. But – there. I can only say I am sorry with all my heart. Please never feel you have to even greet me: I understand too well Katherine.

[end July 1921] [BL] [Chalet des Sapins, Montana-sur-Sierre] Dearest Elizabeth Do you think this is a good or a bad idea? John and I would be so very happy if you and your guests would lunch with us here on Tuesday. John is a little frightened of asking you for he feels ‘you can’t ask anyone to come so far’. Perhaps he’s right. But I can’t resist the temptation. Would you all come to lunch on Tuesday at 12.30? It would be simply too lovely. Ah, Elizabeth, you’ll never know how much I love being with you & I am a bore to say so as often as I do. How horrid I was to make John gloomy last week end; I hope he’s been happy today – I have drunk in new life in hearing ‘what happens at the chalet’. I could write a whole book about it – from afar – With much love to your precious little self. Ever Katherine.

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[20/21 August 1921] [BL] [Chalet des Sapins, Montana-sur-Sierre] Dear Elizabeth, It seems so slight a return to make only une réverence nouvelle1 for these flowers! I have a whole petunia and nasturtium summer to thank you for – no less. Never shall I forget it. I know you will understand me when I say that every time I go into the salon they give me a fresh small shock of delight; every time one bends over them to greet them it is to discover fresh beauties. I have ‘planted out’ some of my petunias into a story so that they may live a little longer, and now I am looking for a favourable corner for a whole blaze of nasturtiums.2 Breathes there the man, do you think? – who understands a woman’s love of flowers? Perhaps a very ancient Chinaman or two – But they, to judge by their poetry, found lettuces so moving, which I find a little hard to understand.3 Not that I don’t fully appreciate a lettuce – but its green food to sing on – –– A thrill went through the Chalet des Sapins to hear you were gone to Italy! To Italy – no less. Italian airs sang at the windows, and we ate our small mountain grapes at supper with a difference. But I hope this rain – so lovely here – is not falling so far. Shall we see you soon. Oh well! Why cant I once run down the hill and pipe ‘Elizabeth’ very small – just once – beneath your windows. Farewell With our loves Katherine. Notes 1. (Fr): ‘Faire une révérence’– To bow or curtsey. Here, ‘to give another curtsey of thanks’. 2. See ‘All Serene!’, dated September 1921 in CW2, pp. 395–8. In the slightly later ‘Marriage à la Mode’, ‘a window-box full of petunias’ gives radiance to the protagonists’ otherwise ‘poky little house’ in London. See CW2, p. 333. KM’s dream of ‘a whole blaze of nasturtiums’ perhaps materialised as the densely packed floral world of ‘At the Bay’ (1922), in which nasturtiums figure prominently. See CW2, pp. 343–73. 3. A number of anthologies of Classical Chinese poetry were published in Great Britain between 1890 and 1920, and confirm the predominance of simple agricultural and floral motifs – including the lettuce. Arthur Waley’s A Hundred and Seventy Chinese Poems (1918), for example, includes T’ao Ch’ien’s ‘Shady, shady the wood in the front of the Hall’, in which ‘When I rise from sleep, I play with books and harp. / The lettuce in the garden still grows moist: / Of last year’s grain there is always plenty left’ (Waley 1918, p. 103). The poem that was more likely to be in KM’s mind, however, was T’ao Ch’ien’s ‘Reading the Book of Hills and Seas’. Not only does this include an evocation of a heady month of June, in which ‘In high spirits

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I pour out my spring wine / And pluck the lettuce growing in my garden’ (p. 114), but also KM was given a calligraphed print of the extract for her birthday in 1918, most probably by Ida Baker (MS-Papers-21326-091, Murry Family Collection, ATL. Inscribed: ‘Katherine’s birthday 1918’). See also Kimber 2017.

[30 August 1921] [BL] Chalet des Sapins. Dear Elizabeth, It is on my conscience that I was horribly ungracious the other afternoon.1 I felt half scrubbed and half painted away and yet another workman had sung The Merry Widow in at my window from dawn till noon.2 The Swiss are very vocal. But that doesn’t excuse my being as horrid as I know I was. I would have telephoned you and asked you to forgive me but my breath fails me at telephone & I pant like the hart3 . . . Please forgive me. Would you and Miss Ritchie drink a dish of tea with us on Thursday?4 It would make us very happy ––––– And please – because I love your petunias so much – don’t rob your garden. Eight shut-tight, sealed perfect little buds have come into flower from the last ones. Here is John, standing over me with a revolver at least. With love, dear Elizabeth Katherine. Notes 1. On 27 August, Elizabeth had visited with flowers but KM was in bed, too ill to get up. 2. Franz Lehár’s comic operetta The Merry Widow premiered in Vienna in 1905 and was soon internationally acclaimed. The first London production was in 1907 and the first French version in 1909. It features a number of well-loved themes and songs that remained popular for years. 3. See the opening line of Psalm 42: ‘As the hart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God.’ Although a biblical reference, the verses were much better known in the anthem ‘As Pants the Hart’ by George Frideric Handel (1713), the opening line of which runs ‘As pants the hart for cooling streams, so longs my soul for thee, O God.’ 4. The Hon. Maud Ritchie (1872–1958), a life-long friend of Elizabeth, was the daughter of the 1st Baron Ritchie of Dundee.

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[16 October 1921] [H] [Chalet des Sapins, Montana-sur-Sierre] Oct. 16. 21. Dear Elizabeth, I must, even though it is not my turn, send you a note in John’s letter . . . We – I – miss you, lovely little neighbour. I think of you often. Especially in the evenings, when I am on the balcony and it’s too dark to write or to do anything but wait for the stars. A time I love. One feels half disembodied, sitting like a shadow at the door of one’s being while the dark ride rises. Then comes the moth, marvellously serene, and small stars, very merry, for some reason of their own. It is so easy to forget, in a worldly life, to attend to these miracles. But no matter. They are there waiting, when one returns. Dawn is another. The incomparable beauty of very early morning, before human beings are awake! But it all comes back to the same thing, Elizabeth. There is not escaping the glory of Life. Let us engage to live for ever. For ever is not half long enough for me . . . London feels far away from here. We thrill, we are round-eyed at the slightest piece of news. You cannot imagine how your letter was taken in – absorbed. I see you slipping into carriages, driving to the play, dining among mirrors and branched candlesticks and far-away sweet sounds. Disguised in ‘kepanapron’1 I open your door to illustrious strangers, Mighty Ones, who take off their coats in the large hall and are conducted into your special room where the books are . . . Do not forget us. John has been so deep in Flaubert this week that his voice has only sounded from under the water, as it were.2 He has emerged at tea time and together we have examined the – very large, solid pearls . . . I must say I do like a man to my tea. And here are your petunias, lovely as ever, reminding me always of your garden and the grass with those flat dark rosettes where the daisy plants had been. But this isn’t a letter. Farewell. May Good Fortune fall ever more deeply in love with thee. Katherine. Notes 1. ‘Cap and apron’ – KM theatricalises herself here as the maid, dazzled by the illustrious guests that arrive at her cousin’s home. 2. First published as the lead article of the Times Literary Supplement on 15 December 1921, JMM’s essay, ‘Gustave Flaubert’, forms a chapter of his Countries of the Mind (1922). The essay’s founding concept of there being

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‘two Flauberts’: the psychologically complex man and the ‘incorporeal giant, a symbol, a war-cry, a banner under which a youthful army marched’ (p. 203), remained a key point of reference in Flaubert’s literary reception in Great Britain until the 1960s.

[23 October 1921] [H] Chalet des Sapins Montana/s/Sierre. Sunday. Dearest Elizabeth, I actually had the strength of mind to keep your letter unopened until John came back from his wood-gathering. Then spying him from my balcony while he was yet afar off, I cried in a loud voice. And he came up and we read it together and thanked God for you . . . You do such divine things! Your visit to Stratford, Hamlet in the churchyard, the snap-dragons, the gate of Anne’s cottage, King Lear in the river – it all sounded perfect.1 In fact, one felt that if the truth were known William had gathered you the snap-dragons and you had leaned over the gate together. We were very interested in your news of Vera.2 My heart warms to Sydney.3 Of course one knew he would appreciate it but I’d like to talk it over with him, and agree and exclaim and admire. That is such a rare joy. I wish he had seen more reviews. My little sisters have just send a copy to my Father. Which makes me gasp. But I expect he will admire Weyness tremendously and agree with every thought and every feeling and shut the book with an extraordinary sense of satisfaction before climbing the stairs to my stepmother4 . . . The Wells party sounded one of those disturbing festas where people, like plates, are no sooner set before one than they are snatched away.5 But I am very glad you secured Koteliansky.6 He would be very impervious to snatching. That is one of his charms. But he has many. I wish I could have kept him in my life. What are you reading, Elizabeth? Is there something new which is very good. I have turned to Milton all last week. There are times when Milton seems the only food to me. He is a most blessèd man. . . . ‘Yet not the more cease I to wander where the Muses haunt clear Spring, or Shadie Grove, or Sunnie Hill Smit with the love of sacred song;’7 But the more poetry one reads the more one longs to read! This afternoon John, lying on my furry rug, has been reading aloud

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Swinburne’s Ave Atque Vale, which did not sound fearfully good.8 I suspect those green buds of sin and those gray fruits of shame. And try as one may, one can’t see Beaudelaire. Swinburne sits so very tight on the tomb. Then we read Hardy’s poem to Swinburne, which John adored.9 I, being an inferior being, was a little troubled by the picture of Sappho and Aegemon meeting en pleine mer10 (if one can say such a thing) and he begging her to tell him where her manuscript was. It seemed such a watery rendezvous. But we went on reading Hardy. How exquisite – how marvellous some of those poems are! They are almost intolerably near to one. I mean I always long to weep . . . That love and regret touched so lightly – that autumn tone – that feeling that ‘Beauty passes though rare, rare it be . . .’11 But speaking of autumn, it is here. Yesterday, soft, silky, sweet-smelling summer kissed the geraniums and, waving the loveliest hand, went. To-day it is cold, solemn, with the first snow falling. Oh, Elizabeth, how I longed for you this morning on my balcony! The sun came through, a silver star. In the folds of the mountains little clouds glittered like Dorothy Wordsworth’s sheep.12 And all that paysage across the valley was a new land. The colour is changed since you were here. The green is gold – a very deep gold like amber. On the higher peaks snow was falling and the wind walking among the trees had a new voice. It was like land seen from a ship. It was like arriving in the harbour, and wondering, half frightened and yet longing, whether one would go ashore. But no – I can’t describe it. Soon after all was grey and down came the white bees. The feeling in the house changed immediately. Ernestine became mysterious and blithe.13 The Faithful One ran up and down as though with cans of hot water . . .14 One felt the whisper had gone round that the pains had begun and the doctor had been sent for. We simply adored the joke about little Mary.15 Jokes at [ ] go on and on resounding. John immediately walked out to find Doctor H. to impart it. Doctor H. will never get over it.16 Those geraniums I mention so lightly are yours. I am taking care of them. They are full of buds. I dream of returning you seven potsful from my bud in Janvier (Janvier is – ‘The month when Elizabeth returns.’)17 Have you begun your play? Are you working? My book is to lie in Constable’s bosom until after the New Year. I have changed the name to The Garden-Party. I am just at the beginning of a new story, which I may turn into a serial. Clement Shorter wants me.18 But he stipulates for thirteen ‘curtains’19 and an adventure note! Thirteen curtains! And my stories haven’t even a wisp of blind cord as a rule. I have never been able to manage curtains. I don’t think I shall be able to see such a wholesale hanging through. John decked the week with a song. He wrote a lovely poem – moon – still . . . But I must bring this letter to an end. Is it too long? It’s much too long. Forgive it this once.

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Farewell, lovely little artist. Don’t let them hurt you. May you be happy! With my love, Katherine. The knitting becomes almost frenzied at times. We may be sober in our lives – but we shall be garish in our shrouds and flamboyant in our coffins if this goes on. John now mixes his wools thereby gaining what he calls a ‘superb astrachan effect.’ Chi lo sa!20 I softly murmur over my needles – I find knitting turns me into an imbecile. It is the female tradition, I suppose. Notes 1. Elizabeth visited Stratford-upon-Avon in early October 1921 for the first time in her life, and recounted the visit to KM in her letter dated 16 October. KM here alludes to one passage in particular: I finished Hamlet [. . .] sitting on a slab in the churchyard while the service was going on, and then read Lear in a punt the whole afternoon, tied up to a quiet bit of the bank. I meditated in the garden of New Place & stole some of his snapdragons, I went & reconstructed his birth in his mother’s bedroom, & walked out & leaned on the gate of Ann Hathaway’s garden. (H: ER 1480–1483) The ‘snapdragon’ is the popular name for the antirrhinum. 2. Von Arnim’s novel Vera, published in 1921, is a grim portrayal of marriage in which a young heroine, Lucy Entwhistle, marries a bullying and narcissistic widower, only to find herself being gradually destroyed by both him and the haunting image of his former wife. The novel is commonly taken to be autobiographical – a feature that did not escape Elizabeth’s second husband, John Francis Russell, 7th Earl Russell, generally called Frank, who threatened to sue for libel. Frank Russell was the elder brother of Bertrand Russell, the eminent philosopher and mathematician, who was also a close friend of KM and JMM. Both brothers were actively engaged in reformist and Labour Party politics. 3. Sydney Waterlow (1878–1944) was the fourth son of von Arnim’s sister, Charlotte Beauchamp, and therefore also related to KM. Knighted in 1935 for his distinguished career as a diplomat, he was also an author, editor and translator, and well known to JMM. 4. Everard Wemyss is the bereaved and passionately troubled widower in von Arnim’s novel, who befriends Lucy and marries her, only to reveal a far more sinister side to his character; this lends credence to the suspicion that his first wife, believed to have died by accident, had in fact committed suicide. Harold Beauchamp had married his late wife’s close friend – and KM’s godmother – Laura Bright, in January 1920.

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5. Elizabeth’s letter (16 October) includes an account of an enjoyable party given by H. G. Wells on 6 October, where her nephew, Sydney Waterlow, introduced her to J. W. N Sullivan, Ottoline Morrell and S. S. Koteliansky. She and Wells first met in 1907 and had a love affair in the 1910s; they remained warm friends afterwards. Wells’s essay in his Experiment in Autobiography, ‘The Episode of little e’, was long understood to be a truthful account of their liaison. As more recent research has revealed, however, this chapter, along with a number of others in the experimental ‘autobiography’, was often fanciful and self-fictionalising. See Walker 2013, pp. 127–8. 6. H. G. Wells and his family were some of S. S. Koteliansky’s closest friends; in 1920, both father and son had taken Russian lessons with him, as KM herself had done. In autumn 1921, however, as the letter indicates, KM and Koteliansky were no longer on speaking terms, although by the end of October they were reconciled and remained intimate from then on. 7. The lines, taken from Milton’s Paradise Lost (III. 26–9), are spoken by the blind Poet, assessing his loss of intimacy with the Holy Spirit. JMM’s Aspects of Literature and Countries of the Mind include detailed engagements with the poetics of Milton and Swinburne. 8. Algernon Charles Swinburne’s ‘Ave Atque Vale’ (Latin: ‘Hail and Farewell’) takes its title from the last line of Roman poet Catullus’s Poem 101, an elegy to the ashes of his deceased brother. Swinburne’s long poetic elegy (first published 1868) is dedicated to the memory of the French poet Charles Baudelaire and quotes a five-line extract – evoking the wind-stripped trees in October – from Baudelaire’s ‘La Servante au grand cœur’ in Les Fleurs du mal as the epigraph. Despite revisiting many of the settings and leitmotifs of Baudelaire’s poetry, however, Swinburne’s elegy is arguably more evocative of his own fin-de-siècle poetic sensibility – as KM implies here. The seventeenth, and penultimate, stanza includes the lines, Out of the mystic and the mournful garden Where all day through thine hands in barren braid Wove the sick flowers of secrecy and shade, Green buds of sorrow and sin, and remnants grey, Sweet-smelling, pale with poison, sanguine-hearted. 9. Unlike Swinburne’s ‘Ave Atque Vale’, Thomas Hardy’s poem, ‘A Singer Asleep’, is a strikingly modern elegy on the death of Swinburne in 1909, written after Hardy visited Swinburne’s grave on the Isle of Wight in March 1910. The poem invokes Sappho as the dead poet’s ‘singing-mistress’ and the ‘music-mother / Of all the tribes that feel in melodies’, with ‘the unslumbering sea / That sentrys up and down’ pounding in the distance. 10. (Fr.): Far out at sea. 11. Doubtless citing from memory, KM here misquotes lines from Walter de la Mare’s ‘Epitaph – To a Beautiful Lady’: ‘But beauty vanishes; beauty passes, / However rare – rare it be.’ 12. The unexpected image of ‘glittering sheep’ occurs several times in Dorothy’s diaries; in 1798 in Alfoxden, for example, she records ‘the blue-grey sea, shaded with immense masses of cloud, not streaked; the sheep glittering in the sunshine’ (Wordsworth, p. 5). In Grasmere in 1802, she notes ‘the glittering silver line on the ridge of the backs of the sheep, owing to their situation in the sun, which made them look beautiful, but with something of strangeness, like animals of another kind, as if belonging to a more splendid world’ (p. 138).

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13.

14. 15.

16. 17. 18. 19. 20.

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The writings of Dorothy Wordsworth held a lasting appeal for KM, and sometimes echo back through KM’s own poetic idiom and voice – one instance being a 1914 poetic pastiche, ‘William P. G. is very well’, written in the voice of Dorothy (CP, pp. 141–2), another the prose-poem effect of the opening passage of ‘At the Bay’. See also her reading notes in CW4, pp. 318–19. Ernestine Rey was the Swiss maid employed at the Chalet des Sapins. According to Walker, she was ‘the sister of the founder of the tourism industry in the area, Louis Rey. His daughter, Rose, still possesses Katherine’s desk and many photographs’ (Walker 2013, p. 240). ‘The Faithful One’ is one of many nicknames that KM used for Ida Baker. In her letter to JMM and KM dated 20 December 1921, Elizabeth comments, ‘Have you heard how brutal Lascelles was to the Queen? He pinched her little Mary.’ ‘Mary’ was popular Australian slang for a woman, and a ‘little Mary’ a euphemistic, slightly saucy term that could refer to the stomach or the lower abdomen. The contemporary reference, with its sexual insinuations, was to court gossip – which KM then passes on in a letter to Anne Estelle Rice (Drey) (24 December 1921). Henry Lascelles, then Viscount Lascelles, had just become engaged to the Princess Royal, Princess Mary, only daughter of King George V and Queen Mary. A far grander royal spouse had been planned for the Princess before the war, but diplomatic relations in the new post-war years had also changed the pace of royal match-making. The general feeling, however, was that the Princess had made a rather dull, lowly choice, despite press efforts to enhance the romance of the affair. See also KM’s interest in the court marriage expressed in her letter to Brett below (p. 450). Dr Bernard Hudson was a pulmonary specialist working alongside KM’s consultant, Dr Théodore Stephani, at the English clinic in Montana; Hudson’s mother, Mrs Maxwell, owned, and let out, the Chalet des Sapins. (Fr.): January. Clement Shorter (1857–1926) had founded the Sphere, a weekly magazine then subtitled ‘The Empire’s Illustrated Weekly’ in 1900; he remained the chief editor until 1926. Derived from theatrical conventions, a ‘curtain’ refers to a dramatic finale preceding the final falling of the curtain, or (shortened from ‘curtain-raiser’) a dramatic opening scene. (It.): Who knows?

[October/November 1921] [H] Chalet des Sapins Montana-sur-Sierre Valais. Dear Elizabeth, It is John’s turn but I can’t refrain from slipping a Bon Jour into the envelope. It’s such a marvellously bon jour, too; I wish I could send it you intact. Blazing hot, with a light wind singing in the trees and an exquisite transparent sky with just two little silver clouds lying on their back like cherubs basking.

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We don’t only read Shakespeare and the poets. I have re-read Queechy lately, ‘fresh bursts of tears’ and all.1 I loved it. ‘Mr Carleton, who made that,’ said the child, pointing to the slowly sinking orb on the horizon with streaming eyes. The young English peer had no answer ready. His own eyes filled. ‘Will you lend me your little Bible,’ he said gently. ‘Oh, Mr. C!’ Sobs were her only answer, but happy sobs, grateful sobs. She could not see to hand it to him, nor he to see it offered.’ I have also been reading modern novels, Stephen McKenna and W. L. George & Co for the Daily News.2 They are a vulgar, dreary lot. Why all this pretence? When we have not said a quarter of what there is to say. Why can’t writers be warm, living, simple, merry or sad as it pleases them? All this falsity is so boring. I hope Rose Macaulay gets that prize rather than Brett Young; his Black Diamond had not enough spirit.3 It will be a happy relief to see Bertie’s articles in the Nation.4 I hope his baby is laughing at the light by now. It’s nice to know they are enjoying life. We have received a very breathed-on letter from poor old Mrs. M.5 The blow has fallen, the axe descended. There will be a Divorce, after all. Doctor Hudson has said nothing about it but he is twice the man already and has flowered into eligible waistcoats and ties spotted like the tails of deep sea fishes. But oh, this perfect weather! Big Snow has not come yet but the footprints of Little Snow are everywhere. John is sliding on the ice with the –––––6 of Montana each day and my faithful one sends up all the food buttoned into tight little suet jackets. Suet is a very awful invention . . . But I must not write any more. You have had enough of us for now. We shall rejoice to see you again. I wish my new book were better. There are holes in it, Elizabeth, black ones. I know they are there. But I shall have to trust people not losing all patience, and make my next one better. The Lord be with us all, With love, Katherine. Notes 1. Queechy (1852) is a gently uplifting novel of family affections, matrimony and grace, published in 1852 by Elizabeth Wetherell, the pen-name of the highly successful, New York-born, evangelical author Susan Warner (1819–85). The novel’s epigraph is a six-line excerpt from Byron’s ‘The Prisoner of Chillon’, evoking the beauties of the natural world in terms that resonate with KM’s opening gambit here. There are no ‘fresh bursts of tears’ in the novel but there are at least twenty episodes in which the warmly engaging young heroine Fleda dissolves into fits of weeping. The novel’s closing line, indeed, reads ‘hiding her face again on his breast Fleda gave [her promise], amid a gush of tears every

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one of which was illumined with heart-sunshine.’ In the same vein, the extract KM quotes is pastiche rather than citation, improvising around an episode in Chapter 11, portraying Fleda as a young girl innocently preaching faith to Mr. C[arleton], her future husband. ‘The Fashionable Novel’, reviewing McKenna and George’s novels, appeared in the Nation and Athenaeum, 30: 12, p. 473. It is, however, signed by JMM and not KM. Close stylistic analysis would be necessary to decide whether the piece was co-authored, or whether KM did submit a review that JMM signed and published, possibly having edited it himself. In 1922, Rose Macaulay’s novel Dangerous Ages (1921) was indeed awarded the prestigious French Prix Femina – Vie heureuse for an ‘imaginative’ work in English. The jury consisted exclusively of women writers and intellectuals. Francis Brett Young’s The Black Diamond and KM’s own Bliss and Other Stories were shortlisted. In December 1921, the Nation and Athenaeum published a series of three articles by Bertrand Russell, depicting his visit to China at the prompting of Liang Qichao, the distinguished journalist, political activist and founder of the Chinese Lecture Association, and officially invited by Fu Tong, Professor of Philosophy at the Government University, Beijing. He spent a full academic year there with his partner Dora Black, who was pregnant when they returned. Their child, John Conrad, was born on 16 November. Mrs Maxwell, the mother of Dr Hudson and the owner of the Chalet des Sapins; she took care of KM during her stay. The typescript of this letter, which does not survive in its manuscript version, leaves a large blank at this point.

[29 November 1921] [H] Chalet des Sapins Montana-sur-Sierre Valais Tuesday. Dear Elizabeth, I have only just read in the newspapers of ––––– death.1 I am so very deeply sorry for you. Cruel, terrible Death! There is nothing more to say. Forgive me if this note intrudes on your sorrow, and please do not answer it. Dear precious Elizabeth, would that this had not happened to you! Katherine. Notes 1. No manuscript of the letter survives. The blank in the typescript alludes to von Arnim’s elder brother Sydney (affectionately nicknamed ‘Sinner’), killed in a traffic accident in London on 22 November 1921. Sydney Beauchamp (1861–1921) was an eminent gynaecologist, knighted in 1921 for his wartime service as a physician.

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[15 December 1921] [H] [Montana sur Sierre] Chalet des Sapins. Tuesday. Dear Elizabeth, Forgive this paper but I am out of reach of handmaidens. So awful is the weather that I have retired under the edredon1 until it changes. There is no snow. But there is a cold sheet of icy mist, like a slate pressing against the windows and we feel like slate pencils inside. Nothing warms one. The chauffage2 goes night and day but one shivers night and day as well. If this is the between season people are wise to avoid it. The worst of it is our brains are frozen, too. We live for the postman and he brings us bills. We long for letters – the kind of letters exiles are supposed to receive, and a copy of The Nation comes instead.3 In fact, all is very devilish and if it weren’t for Jane Austen in the evenings we should be in despair . . . 4 We are reading her through. She is one of those writers who seem to not only improve by keeping but to develop entirely new adorable qualities. ‘Emma’ was our first. John sighed over Jane Fairfax – I felt that Mr. Knightley in the shrubbery would be happiness. But her management of her plot – the way, just for the exquisite fun of the thing, she adds a new complication – that one can’t admire too greatly. She makes modern episodic people like me – as far as I go – look very incompetent ninnies. In fact she is altogether a chastening influence – But, ah, what a rare creature! Have you seen any of the reviews of John’s Poems?5 Most of the reviewers seized the book only to whack him on the head with it. But he is the most modest soul and takes it all nobly. I should be a seething kettle of spite and venom by this time. And his calmness is not because he does not care. He has felt it more than I like to consider. But he goes on. I should like something excessively pleasant to happen to him now. It is the moment. Our quilt is done. We think it very handsome. Will Elizabeth admire it. John is very dubious, so am I. It is a kind of conjuror’s blanket. One expects to lift it and see the pitch black little babies underneath. Which reminds me of Bertie’s white one – Conrad the Small. What happiness for him. I am always half expecting a woollen boot or a powder puff to appear in the very middle of his ‘Modern China’ . . .6 I fear I am dull; I am boring you. But I wanted so much to write just for the sake of sending you our love; of saying how often you are in our thoughts and how we long to see you. The petunias, asters, nasturtiums, sweet peas – oh, how glorious they were! – flash upon my inward eye very often. But only to mention them is to remember how one loves flowers and longs for them. Even a florist’s shop. I can smell one now and even the paper the roses were wrapped in has its smell.

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But here is the gentle Ernestine with the supper tray, so one’s nose goes into le potage7 instead – or rather, hovers over. Farewell, dear Elizabeth, Do not quite forget us, Katherine. Notes 1. (Fr.): Eiderdown. 2. (Fr.): The heating. 3. The Nation had merged earlier that year with the Athenaeum, and the new literary and political weekly was then under the editorship of Henry Massingham. It published articles by both KM and JMM, who had been editor of the Athenaeum from 1919 until 1921. 4. Reading aloud was a favoured evening entertainment when JMM and KM were together, as their notebooks and extensive reading notes attest. Here they are reading Jane Austen’s fourth novel, Emma (1815), a romantic comedy in which the would-be matchmaker Emma Woodhouse eventually marries George Knightley after a hapless series of mishaps and misunderstandings. Jane Fairfax is a more impoverished friend, whom Emma tries to take under her wing; the episode in the shrubbery occurs in Chapter 49, when the two protagonists finally discover their mutual passion for each other. KM’s notebook for early January 1922 also records reading Mansfield Park (CW4, pp. 398, 400). 5. JMM’s Poems 1916–1920 was published in 1921 by Cobden-Sanderson. It includes some of his most evocative verses such as ‘Heard Melody’, ‘Midsummer Night’s Song’ and ‘Lines Written on an August Morning’. 6. Russell’s articles on China appeared in a wide variety of British newspapers in 1921, including the Nation, Foreign Affairs, Labour News, Manchester Guardian and the Daily Herald. KM was most likely reading his ‘Sketches of Modern China’, which were serialised in the Nation and Athenaeum on 3, 10 and 17 December. The various articles later formed the basis of Russell’s 1922 publication, The Problem of China, published by Allen and Unwin. 7. (Fr.): Soup served in the evening.

[Late December 1921] [H] Chalet des Sapins Montana-sur-Sierre Valais. Dear Elizabeth, I must catch at the flying heels of this old year and wish you a Happy New One. I do, with all my heart. May it be rich in Blessings. Do you like to know you are loved, Elizabeth. If you do, think of me as a small fire, glowing, at a distance. But a self-feeding fire that needs no attention, even though it does leap for joy when you stretch forth your small, supple hand.

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Your letter came this afternoon. There is something wrong with life that a man like Sydney should die and others be left to go their useless ways. If only one could believe in a kind God who moved in a mysterious way – on purpose! It does not bear writing about . . . But one thinks and feels, all the same. It is no longer so dreadfully cold. Snow has fallen to-day, but only a sprinkle. We are longing for it to really begin. The F.O. is positive all will be white for Christmas.1 But she has of course, a Christmas complex. She is a living tree already and never comes into my room without another candle or coloured ball or glass bird to show me. She still believes in Santa Claus firmly and the whole house rustles with tissue paper and I suspect even the gentle Ernestine of gambolling on the ground floor. It’s awfully difficult to be adequate; my sentimental part is for her. I know she will have crackers for John to pull with her at dinner. They will dine tête-à-tête for I am cast away again, prone in my cursed bed with a touch of congestion. I don’t mind for myself as much as I do for John. I am no sort of a woman for a young man of 33 to be tied to. It is devilish luck for him. Oh, we had such a Christmas letter from Ma Maxwell. Except for the Divorce things have turned out ‘very nicely.’ Her dear son Jack’s wife is expecting her first little one any moment now and she is there to catch it. She is ‘helping the young folk’ prepare the nest for ‘the advent.’ I am very grateful for Mrs Maxwell. We are still reading Jane.2 Let us talk about her when you come. I believe John enjoys her more than I do. The engagements put him in a positive flutter. Innocent male! They come as a surprise to him. Farewell. When I think of the Chalet Soleil now there is a difference. There is a stirring now that January is near. Yours ever, Katherine. Notes 1. F.O: that is, ‘Faithful One’, one of KM’s many nicknames for Ida Baker. 2. Jane Austen. See above, p. 39, n. 4.

[11 January 1922] [H] Chalet des Sapins Montana-sur-Sierre Valais. My dear Elizabeth, I love my little pelt – its coat is so warm.1 Thank you very much for it. Its such a charming co-partnery, too, between virtue and quelque chose plus gai.2 And for the Bath Salts which carried my nose straight back to

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Regent Street. I always had to make a giant swerve past Morny Frere or I went in and was lost.3 It was delightful to get such a parcel on such a day. I hope you are warm and happy – It is horrid to think there was no fire to welcome you. Ah, Elizabeth, what can I do to know that my little figures projected on the bright screen of Time make a ‘pretty little story’ in the Mercury.4 Good God! How I worked at them and tried to express and squeezed and modelled . . . and the result was a ‘pretty little story’! I sank to the bottom of the ocean after you’d gone and stifled thought by writing another story which wasn’t – couldn’t be pretty. It is a very fearful thing to be a writer – – – John will bring the De La Mare book on Sunday.5 I hope you will like it. Some of the poems seem to me – marvellous. I shall pray a double prayer for fine weather now that I know you are there and at work. Work is the only perfect joy, and only blessed state. There is nothing to compare with it. With very much love. Katherine. I am flying to Paris in a fortnight’s time – – Notes 1. Elizabeth’s Christmas present to KM was ‘a funny little petticoat (beneath which your feet will [feel] like mice etc. etc.) and hope it will keep your middle at least warm’ (H: Elizabeth Russell Papers, 1480–1483). 2. (Fr.): Something more gay. 3. Morny Freres was a grand pharmacy and parfumier on the corner of Conduit Street and Regent Street, London W1. The French-sounding name had been chosen to enhance the impression of chic and luxury; the original name was just Morny, after the racehorse Mornington, ridden by Victorian jockey Tom Cannon. 4. The London Mercury was a monthly literary magazine edited from 1919 by J. C. Squire, under whose editorship a number of KM’s stories appeared, including ‘At the Bay’ in January 1922. See CW2, pp. 343–72. 5. Walter de la Mare (1873–1956), the acclaimed poet and short story writer, was also a close friend of the Murrys. The volume JMM delivered to Elizabeth was his most recent and much-praised poetry collection, The Veil and Other Poems, which had been published in autumn 1921.

[late January 1922] [H] Chalet des Sapins Montana-sur-Sierre VALAIS. Thank you, dear Elizabeth, for your beautiful letter. It was happiness to receive it. I feel that it has put a blessing on my journey. We are solitary

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creatures au fonds.1 It happens so rarely that one feels another understands. But when one does feel it, it’s not only a joy; it is help and comfort in dark moments. For I have far less courage than you grant me, Elizabeth. I faint by the way (although I manage to do my fainting privately.) It is bitter to be ill. And the idea of being well – haunts me. Ever since I have realised this possibility I dream of it at night – dream I am alone – crossing streams or climbing hills or just walking. To be alone again. That is what health means to me; that is freedom. To be invisible, not to be offered chairs or given arms! I plan, I dream, yet I hardly dare to give way to these delights . . . (Tho’ of course one does) But, if I should become an odious bouncing female with a broad smile tell me at once, Elizabeth, and I’ll flee to some desert place and smile unseen. Bill Shakespeare is really past a joke. It’s a terrible giveaway for poor Clemence Dane.2 I’d like to write a potted version with a real great thumping bunch of watercress come hurtling through the window when the Queen throws down her penny. But it’s so cheap, so vulgar and ‘stagey’. Dean with one foot on chair roaring out song, wanton sitting on table (it’s always a table) swinging her foot, voices in the distance, she dotes on voices in the distance, and Shakespeare with arms outstretched against the wintry sky!! As to the love passages, they are written by your french pear, your withered pear, your true virgin. It smells of the ‘performance’ I even hear ‘chocolates – chocolates’ at the fall of each curtain and after Act II almost feel myself passing one of those maddening tea-trays with fingers of ancient plumcake on it and a penny under the saucer. But enough – more than enough. I am as persistent as Anne’s Voice. Oh, God! Elizabeth, on our knees we beg – write a new play.3 Oh, how thrilling it would be to sit by John and watch your play. I reread The Cherry Orchard to take the taste of Clemence Dane away4 – and the real fascination of the real thing shines through it. It’s an exquisite play. I hope your work goes well. I think of you often – This weather is odious. Today was a disgrace to God. Would you lunch with us on Sunday? or any day that suits you – I hope you like dear De la Mare. There is one poem ‘Why is the rose flowered and faded And these eyes have not seen’4 – – – I’m not sure of the words. It seems to me almost the best. I hope you meet him one day. With very much love, and thank you for everything. Katherine. Notes 1. (Fr.): At heart. 2. Clemence Dane (1888–1965), the pseudonym of Winifred Ashton, was a prolific journalist, novelist and playwright, as well as an accomplished sculptress

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and painter. All her works favour a female-centred view of the world and engage with women’s cultural politics. Her comic play, Will Shakespeare: An Invention in Four Acts, premiered at the Shaftesbury Theatre, London, in November 1921, and was published soon after. On 15 January, KM notes in her diary: ‘E. lent us Will Shakespeare. Really awful stuff. I had better keep this for a sign’ (CW4, p. 404). As her summary / pastiche here indicates, she read the script carefully, however contemptuous she felt about it: she picks out several minor episodes or features, including the name of the producer Basil Dean, a cress-selling hawker, the ‘wanton’ Mary Fitton, and the haunting voice of Anne Hathaway appealing to Shakespeare’s conscience when Fitton tries to lead him astray. 3. Von Arnim’s 1905 comic novel, The Princess Priscilla’s Fortnight, had been adapted for the stage in 1909, with the new title The Cottage in the Air. The next year, her new play, Priscilla Runs Away, premiered in London and met with popular success. 4. Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard (1904; first British performance 1911) is widely held to be his greatest play. JMM (or possibly KM) reviewed the 1920 production at the Arts Theatre for the Athenaeum (CW3, pp. 631–4). KM’s Chekhov readings in the last years of her life were prolific, as her letters and notebooks attest. See also Diment 2017, pp. 24–40. 5. For de la Mare, see above, p. 41, n. 5. The poem alluded to here is ‘Awake’, the opening line of which runs: ‘Why hath the rose faded and fallen, yet these eyes have not seen?’ (The Veil and Other Poems, p. 34).

[early February 1922] [H] Victoria Palace Hotel 6 Rue Blaise Desgoffe Rue de Rennes. Dear Elizabeth, Let me write what is in my heart – will you? But don’t let it worry you or disturb your work. It is as I thought – the Russian Doctor wants me to begin the treatment at once1 – now – and not to go back to Montana until May when he says I will be ‘perfectly well’. I’d have to come back here in the Autumn for another ten weeks of treatment but that is all. He strongly advises me not to take another journey. He says ‘But why delay? You have been ill so long. Why lose any more?’ And I don’t feel a single throb of joy. Now that this wonderful chance has come I am torn in two. John hates the idea of a city, loathes hotels, is happy now as he never has been. I see him up there, hatless, well, on his skis, or sitting at peace in his little brown room that is like a nut. And now I must disturb him, tear him up, stop his work, ask him to do all the things he hates. The man here says I ought not to wait until April. John would like me to wait until then. Then all would be arranged; he would be ready; the subject would be familiar. But its no good, I shall have to stay and send the faithful one back to leave all in order. Or shall I not?

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Love is a difficult thing. I love John a shade too much, I think. I want to spare him everything. When I was with him and discussed the possibility of this very thing happening, because it made him wretched and because he didn’t want to face it I refrained. And now I’m in a worse case. But that sounds as though I am wailing. No, Elizabeth dear, I’m not. But its rather awful now that the prison door is open to realise one hesitates, – after all – knowing that John would rather I stayed there a little longer! Fantastic horrid positions! The city is horrid, too, dark and people look glum. Life is only given once. I wish we were all happier. And this outpouring is not a very cheerful one. But I yielded to temptation. Forgive it and me. With very much love. Ever your Katherine. Notes 1. Although sometimes dismissed as a charlatan, Ivan Manoukhin (1822–1930), the Russian doctor whom KM travelled to Paris to consult, was a respected medical practitioner in Russia, whose reputed, revolutionary methods for treating tuberculosis included submitting the spleen to X-ray radiation. Manoukhin achieved a certain international prestige after treating the writer Maxim Gorky and his wife, a feat acknowledged by the press worldwide. See Diment 2016, pp. 40–57.

[8 February 1922] [H] Victoria Palace Hotel 6–8 Rue Blaise Desgoffe Rue de Rennes Paris 8. II 1922. My dear Elizabeth, Thank you so much for your letter. But what horrid snow. There must be too much of it. I hope it now settles down and the sun shines warm. It seems impossible that I missed you at Randogne. You were in my thoughts as we waited at the station & I tried to catch a glimpse of your chalet. I hate to think I did not see you. It served me right about John. After my agonies as to what would become of him – relief breathed in the poor boy’s letter.1 He was like a fish off a line, swimming in his own element again, and never dreaming really of coming here. He made me feel like a very stuffy old Prospero who had been harboring a piping wild Ariel.2 I hope he does stay where he is. It would be much the best plan. Poor John! its horrible to think

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how I have curtailed his freedom. In my silly innocence I felt certain he couldn’t bear not to know what this Russian man said and so on. But not a bit of it. He is hand-in hand with his new novel – I see them rather like the couple in Donne’s Ecstasy.3 But I do hope he wont change his ideas now. Bad weather and no posts are a trial which he hasn’t experienced yet in solitude. He would repent of coming to Paris Im sure while he is seething with work which will out. Id much rather be alone until May, too, now that I know his sentiments. Its literally years since I have been in a city. Hampstead was only my room – it wasn’t any more of London.4 But in an hotel one is plunged into the very housemaid’s pail of it, and odious it seems to me. There is nothing sweet sound fresh except the oranges. Paris looked at through a taxi window has its grave beauty. It is a lovely city! But the people. Did people always look so – – – impudent? And I used to think all the women were pretty in a way. And now I think they are bold, stupid hussies and the men awfully like dogs. Is it because I do not leap and fly, myself Elizabeth? As to the flowers – I haven’t had a flower yet. Tulips are 1.50 each. The F.O. can’t find anything sweet and reasonable. And it had been my plan to send you a basket the very first thing. Nothing but my horrid poverty stops that basket arriving. Manoukhin says that by the second week in May Ill feel perfectly well. Its exactly like being in prison and hearing somehow that there is a chance you may be let out. Now I know what a prisoner’s dreams must be. I feel inclined to write a long story about a gaol bird. But I shouldn’t know how to end it. I wonder how your novel is going?5 I am hard at Shakespeare again, tapping away at him like the birds tapped at my half coconut on the window sill.6 The F.O. has been looking for small flats. Yesterday she found one – ‘very nice’, where five girls with bobbed hair lived with their uncle.7 It was, she confessed rather full of beds at the moment. But when the girls, who were from the country had gone the beds would be whisked away. And the concierge was most agreeable. The house very quiet. It seemed to me rather a strange menage but I went to see over it today. Really the F.O. is like Una in the Fairy Queen.8 She is too innocent for words to express. That flat! Those bobbed haired girls! ‘Uncle’ had departed but two cigars remained to prove as F.O. murmured to me ‘that a man lived there’. And the B E D S. Merciful Powers! There was something horribly pathetic about it in the pale afternoon light, in its attempts at gaiety, at real flowering. But the whole place will haunt me for ever. I said to the F.O. as we left ‘But its a bawdy-house.’ And after a long pause she said ‘Dear me! I had never imagined such a thing. But I quite see what you mean!’ This letter must end. With much love, dear Elizabeth, Yours ever, Katherine.

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1. JMM, still staying at the Chalet des Sapins, had written to KM on 5 February, unsure of whether to stay or to travel to Paris to be more supportive. He admits: For the life of me I don’t really know what’s best. I do want to break the back of this novel; I do want to get some articles done. But at the same time just as sincerely I want to be with you if I’m any help – even if it’s only as a cribbage partner. So I rely on you to tell me faithfully what your mind is. (Hankin, p. 355) KM responded instantly, by telegram, encouraging him to stay and work. 2. In Shakespeare’s The Tempest, Prospero is the rightful Duke of Milan who, usurped by his brother, lives on an island with his daughter Miranda. He is also a magician, planning to restore rightful order through illusion and stagecraft. Ariel is the wood sprite, indentured to Prospero and yearning to retrieve his freedom. 3. JMM was engrossed in his novel The Things We Are, published later that year by Dutton. KM captures his fusional devotion to the work-in-progress by likening them to the entranced lovers in John Donne’s long poem, ‘The Ecstacy’, a characteristic metaphysical poem, conflating spiritual and physical aspirations. 4. From late August 1918, and intermittently for the next two years, KM and JMM lived at 2 Portland Villas, East Heath Road, Hampstead. 5. Elizabeth’s best-selling novel, The Enchanted April, was published later in 1922. 6. The last of numerous references to reading Shakespeare in KM’s diary is dated 5 February 1922; it reads, ‘Wrote at my story. Read Shakespeare. Read Goethe’ (CW4, p. 414). 7. Ida Baker’s memoirs shed light on the desperate and sometimes erratic search for suitable lodgings. She writes, Katherine and I arrived in Paris on 31st January, and took a small suite of rooms – two bedrooms and a private bathroom – at the Victoria Palace Hotel [. . .] Katherine settled to [start the X-ray treatment] and I began to look for cheaper accommodation for our headquarters. [. . .] However my troubles were cut short, before anything suitable was found, by Murry, who, finding that the chalet at Montana under Ernestine’s control was not so enchanting as when Katherine was organizing his life, decided that, after all, he would come to Paris. He arrived on 11th February. I was to return to look after the chalet and Wingley, while he and Katherine would share her rooms at the hotel and stay in Paris until the end of May. She would then be better and they would pack their bags and together wander through Europe till they found a home. (Baker, p. 175) 8. Una is one of the explicitly allegorical figures in Edmund Spenser’s verse epic, The Faerie Queene (1590–6), personifying the ‘True Church’ and the upholding of Truth. She embarks on a quest with the Redcrosse Knight to save her family home from a dragon, and to defeat the upholders of the False, and foreign, Faith. Spenser portrays Una as fair and gentle, but also long-suffering, woeful and meek.

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[21 February 1922] [BL] [Victoria Palace Hôtel, rue Blaise Desgoffe, Paris] 21 II 1922 Most dear Elizabeth It rains and rains here and then the sun shines and its silvery. Big drops hang along the balcony. John goes out and comes back with four anemones and a handful of leaves bright with rain. Its like spring. The woman in the room opposite has a wicker cage full of canaries.1 How can one possibly express in words the beauty of their quick little song rising, as it were, out of the very stones . . . I wonder what they dream about when she covers them at night, and what does that rapid flutter really mean. And there sits the woman in her cage peering into theirs, hops down to the restaurant for her seed, splashes into a little too short bath. It is very strange. We speak of you so often. John, after his beating at chess has had the satisfaction of teaching me. If he wallops me absolutely he remarks ‘A good game. You’re getting on.’ If it is a draw he exclaims ‘My God, Im a complete idiot. Ive lost my head completely.’ This strikes me as very male. The gentle female would never dare to be so brutal. There is a look of Bertie about the Knight – don’t you think? And John Conrad can be a little pawn attending . . .2 We have settled down, shaken into this life as if we had been here for months. That is one blessed thing about work. It prepares a place for one everywhere. And though it would be awful to live in a hotel indefinitely, while we are waiting for the ‘arrival’, so zu sagen,3 its not too bad. I feel exactly as though I were going to have an infant in May. Everything dates from then. I am sure if the Faithful One were here she would begin making little caps. But she is not here, and the horrid fact is one is thankful. Of course I do – I must feel undyingly grateful but oh the joy it is not to be watched! Men, in my experience, however much they may care for you, they do not watch you, they don’t want to share your very shell in the way a woman does. One can issue forth and retire at will. But there is something about the persistent devotion of women (I expect its very noble) which is stifling! Or am I wrong. John tells me there is a chance – just a chance that we may meet in the summer in Bavaria. Elizabeth, it would be happiness! Warmth, flowers, long evenings, the smell of grass the shadow of leaves on a table and funny things that make one laugh happening. Will it come true. No, please let all the pride be mine that you are my cousin. If you knew how I feel it. I should like to write one story really good enough to offer you one day. Which reminds me that my unfortunate book is

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due to come on Thursday.5 When you open the parcel there will sound a squeak of terror! I hope it is fine; I hope you are warm and that your work is going quickly. John is immersed in Plutarch’s Lives.6 Accept my love Katherine. Notes 1. Observations like these were clearly feeding KM’s poetic imagination at the time; a letter to Brett (p. 433) records the same fascination and delight as she watched the birds’ habits and mused over their inner lives. The following summer, she wrote her final completed story, ‘The Canary’. See CW2, pp. 511–15. 2. KM may here be likening Bertrand Russell to the figure of the White Knight on horseback in the Tenniel illustrations of Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass, the philosophical and logical tradition of which was intimately familiar to Russell. His son, John Conrad, was then aged three months. 3. (Ger.): So to speak. 4. KM had not returned to Bavaria since December 1909; Elizabeth lived for extended periods of her life in Germany, and the influence of the country and culture can be felt throughout her work, both fictional and non-fictional. 5. The Garden Party and Other Stories, published by Constable, came out on 23 February 1922. 6. ‘Plutarch’s Lives’ is the shortened name by which Plutarch’s Lives of the Noble Greeks and Romans tends to be known, ‘Parallel Lives’ being the other commonly used nickname. It is the foremost work by the great Classical Greek biographist and essayist, laying down a number of models for biographical character sketches and psychological studies.

6 March 1922 [BL] [Victoria Palace Hôtel, rue Blaise Desgoffe, Paris] 6 III 1922.

Paris.

Most dear Elizabeth, Your letter about my Garden-Party was almost ‘too good to be true’.1 I could not believe it; I kept taking peeps at it all day. I know of course you are far too generous to me. But oh, dear Elizabeth how you make me long to deserve your praise. My stories aren’t half good enough yet; I shall try with all my heart to make the next book better. Its rather hard to work just now. I am at the moment when one feels the reaction. After five doses of X rays one is hotted up inside like a furnace and one’s very bones seem to be melting. I suppose this is the

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moment when real martyrs break into song but I can think of nothing but fern grots, cucumbers and fans. And they won’t mix in a story. However this stage does not last. I am glad you are going back to England – to spring. There is new green on some of the trees already and even those that are still bare have a hazy, thoughtful look. John brought me a bunch of daffodils yesterday, the little half wild kind that smell sweet – far lovelier than the others, I always think. Garden daffodils are so plump and selfcontained, rather like ducks. I feel I shall never look at a bud or a flower again without thinking of you, and that there is an extra reason for saying – – as one does – Praise Him – as one smells the petunias. I still ‘in vacant or in pensive mood’2 go over those bunches you brought last summer, disentangle the sweet peas, marvel at the stickiness of the petunia leaves, come upon a sprig of very blithe carnations and shiver at the almost unearthly freshness of the nasturtiums. What joy it is that these things cannot be taken away from us. Time seems to make them fairer than ever. Did you receive a mysterious letter from Sir Henry Lunn asking for the pleasure of your company this summer.3 He told me, in the letter you forwarded that he had asked us both. For a moment I saw us arriving with little bags at the foot of those beetling mountains and being met by a body of Lunn’s Tours. How terrifying! But I should call myself ‘the Rev.’ if I did go. I am sure the lecture would open with a prayer and Mrs Arnold at the harmonium. I want to say how sorry I am about Major Bernhard.4 Its such a violent change of subject – but then Death always is. I felt I knew him; I used to ask Dr H. about him and the last news was ‘much better’. And now May will come and he won’t get up and feel the sun – poor man! We both send our loves Katherine. Notes 1. Elizabeth’s letter, dated 1 March 1922, announces: Your book is a delight. It arrived the day before yesterday. I have read it three times, always with fresh surprises, little wonderful things I hadn’t seen in the first gulping. [. . .] I laughed & rejoiced over it at every fresh delicious remark, felt so proud of you. (H: Elizabeth Russell Papers 1480–483) 2. From the final stanza of Wordsworth’s 1807 poem ‘I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud’, often referred to as ‘Daffodils’: ‘For oft, when on my couch I lie In vacant or in pensive mood, They flash upon that inward eye Which is the bliss of solitude;

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Although clearly cited in all sincerity here, KM had used exactly the same verses in her very earliest satirical writing, a self-fictionalising notebook entry dated 1903 and titled ‘Concerning Cornet players’. See CW4, p. 10. 3. Sir Henry Lunn (1859–1939) was a late Victorian humanitarian, Methodist church minister and doctor. He founded a travel tour company in the 1890s, initially intended to further Christian cooperation, health and education; the company, which soon adopted the name Sir Henry Lunn Travel, later became one of Britain’s largest travel agencies. From the early 1900s, he organised summer tours in Alpine resorts, offering both religious reflection and healthy activities, and appears to have invited KM and her cousin to give a talk at one of these. One of Lunn’s sons was the writer Hugh Kingsmill, whose circle of friends included Frank Harris, JMM and, later in the 1920s, William Gerhardi. 4. Elizabeth’s letter (1 March 1922) evokes a flu epidemic that began raging just after KM left, during which ‘my poor Arthur Bernard whom I used to go and see got it and died at once and Ive been miserable trying quite in vain to comfort his sister’.

24 March 1922 [H] [Victoria Palace Hôtel, Rue Blaise Desgoffe, Paris] 24 III. 1922.

Paris.

My Dear Elizabeth, I have been on the point of writing to you for days. And now – merciful Powers! – it’s winter again with real live snow, and I’ve not been out of this hotel once since I arrived in Paris eight weeks ago except to go to the clinic and back.1 Oh to be on grass – feed again after all this hay and dry food. I’ve read Michelet and Madame d’Epinay and Remy de Gourmont (exasperating old stupid as often as not) and I cling to Shakespeare.2 But even Shakespeare . . . It’s awful. However the Russian promises that after this week I really begin to mend, so have no right to make moan.3 But cities are the very devil, Elizabeth, if one is embalmed in them. And here’s this postcard of the Chalet Soleil in summer in all its ravishing loveliness, with two perfect guardian angels, large, benign, frilly ones, in full leaf, behind it. I think they are oaks. I cherish, embedded in Twelfth Night a sprig of mignonette from the bush that ran wild in its second generation by the front door.4 And do you remember smelling the geraniums in the late afternoon in the hall? It seemed just the time and the place to smell those geraniums – I can’t even imagine what going back there would be like; it would be too great happiness. But I shall remember that day for ever.

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Oh, I’ve just remembered that you asked me about Ernestine. She is not a breaker, faithful, honest, almost terrifyingly clean. And the F.O. has taught her to cook quite well. I mean she makes excellent omelettes, soups, egg-dishes, pastry, and so on. She never sings except when a pig is being killed afar off and then she breaks into a kind of lustful crooning . . . At present she and the F.O. are still at Montana.5 The F.O. thinks of going to the Palace in the winter as a V.A.D.6 I am beginning to find where I miss her. The ribbons run out of one’s chemise and pantalons so fast and I never have time to run them back again. I shall soon be doomed to walk abroad with a paper ham frill round each leg. How are you – dear Elizabeth. Oh, how nice it would be to see you, to hear you. Lucky people in London! My book has died down. Mrs Hamilton (Bertie’s friend) tore my hair out beyond words in Time and Tide.7 How awful such reviews are. One’s whole world trembles. John’s book is just born.8 (Speaking confidentially to you alone) I wish I could be enthusiastic about it. It’s a horrid fate. Have you read anything very good? Is your tour beginning soon? With both our loves – much love Yours ever, Katherine. Notes 1. KM returned to Paris on 31 January to pursue treatment at Dr Manoukhin’s clinic, a private establishment set up in partnership with Dr Louis Donat near the Trocadero in the 16th arrondissement of Paris. Her diary jottings during these weeks include a number of accounts of appointments and her reactions. See CW4, pp. 410–18. 2. Jules Michelet (1798–1874) was one of the most eminent French historians of the nineteenth century, as well as an essayist and journalist. While KM may have been reading one of his highly esteemed major works, it is possible that a more personal link brought her to focus on his more minor writings. Michelet’s first wife and two of his children died of tuberculosis, inspiring a strong sense of guilt that prompted him to explore the social, medical and sanitary conditions linked to the disease. His sociological survey, Amour, links tuberculosis, dietary habits and basic food hygiene, and also defines diets liable to improve the body’s resistance to infection. The work was quoted at length in one highly influential French study of tuberculosis and arthritis published in 1911 by a Parisian pulmonary specialist, Dr Paul Carton, whose new methods for treating tuberculosis appealed to progressive and theosophist circles in London and Paris – with repercussions even in Moscow. Carton’s work certainly circulated in Modernist circles too; extracts were published as pamphlets in London in 1913, translated into English by Dorothy Richardson. Louise d’Epinay (1726–83) was a French essayist, literary editor and influential femme de lettres, whose Parisian salon brought together some of

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3.

4. 5. 6.

7.

8.

collected letters of katherine mansfield, vol. 1 the foremost intellectuals of the pre-revolutionary Enlightenment. Rousseau was one of her close friends. In the early twentieth century, she was particularly reputed, along with Madame de Staël and George Sand, for her volumes of correspondence. Remy de Gourmont (1858–1915) was a French essayist, novelist and art critic much appreciated in Symbolist circles. Severely ill in his later years, his life and works attracted the interest of certain French doctors in the late 1910s and early 1920s. As KM explains in a letter to Ida Baker (see below, p. 124) midway through the series of X-ray sessions, Manoukhin expected the patient to feel much weaker as part of the ‘grande réaction’; once this was past, the patient could hope to recover their strength quickly. See also Diment 2016, pp. 43–8. Mignonette (Reseda) is a popular garden plant renowned for its extremely sweet-perfumed flowers. In French, the name means ‘My pretty one, or, my sweetheart’. Ida Baker and Ernestine remained at the Chalet des Sapins, in Montana, as the lease had not yet expired. The Palace was a clinic in Montana, Switzerland, where Ida Baker was working as a nursing auxiliary (Baker, pp. 168–9). Voluntary Aid Detachment (VAD) was a voluntary scheme of nurses and medical carers set up during World War One. Time and Tide was a British weekly literary and political magazine that began (in 1920) as a feminist and reformist publication. The future Labour Party politician Mary Agnes Hamilton’s scathing review of The Garden Party was published on 3 March 1922. JMM’s Problem of Style was published in February; given KM and von Arnim’s subsequent exchange of letters, however, it would appear that here the allusion is to his novel, The Things We Are, published by Constable on 27 March.

[23 April 1922] [H] Victoria Palace Hotel 6/8, Rue Blaise Desgoffe Rue de Rennes Paris. 23 IV 1922. Most dear Elizabeth, I have kept on putting off writing to you until I could say that I was quite well. But that’s silly. For I think of you, wonder where you are and if you have started your journey, long to know, and miss the joy of your handwriting on the envelope. Oh dear, it would be nicest of all

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to see you and to hear you talk. I shall always miss you as one misses someone very near and dear. It would be too lovely if John and I might come to the Chalet in August – too thrilling. I dip into the idea and put it away again – as one does a beloved book. About John’s novel. I felt very much as you did when I read the Times review – almost as though the reviewer had been reading another book . . . ‘A later and a loftier Annie Lee.’1 It has been very well reviewed on the whole. Don’t you think that perhaps he lays bare the secret of many many men – the desire to walk away from their solitary job, solitary cottage loaf and marmalade and find an ideal pub with a cosy landlady. I don’t know. I had much better hold my tongue. John is by no means puffed up. He looks upon it as an experiment and having written it feels he can now swim in the deep end of the bath without fear. We are both longing to get away to that small Bavarian village and to work. I feel I have spent years and years at this hotel. I have eaten hundreds of wings of hotel chickens and only God knows how many little gritty trays with half cold coffee pots on them have whisked into my room and out again. It doesn’t matter. Really one arrives at a rather blissful state of defiance after a time when nothing matters and one almost seems to glory in everything. It rains every day. The hotel window sills have sprouted into very fat, self-satisfied daisies and pitiful pansies. Extraordinary Chinamen flit past one on the stairs followed by porters bearing their boxes which are like large corks; the lift groans for ever. But it’s all wonderful – all works of the Lord – and marvellous in His sight. John and I went for a drive in the Bois the other day. Elizabeth, it was divine.2 That new green, that grass; and there were cherry trees in flower – masses of adorable things . . . But how are you? Are you enjoying London? I don’t know why I rejoice so to hear of Bertie’s happiness and his wife’s dimple.3 But I do. The dimple is very important. No wife ought to be without one. But she sounds so pretty. I love bright eyes. How satisfying it is to write about pretty creatures. Your Lucy was so lovely, her slender legs as she lay asleep by the fire – her long lashes.4 Are you working? I would ask you what you are reading. Do you sometimes get tired of books – but terribly tired of them. Away with them all! It being a cold night, lately, John and I slept together and there we lay chaste in one bed, each with an immense Tome of Eckermann’s Conversations with Goethe perched on our several chests.5 And when my side of the bed began to shake up and down J: ‘What in God’s name are you laughing at?’ K: ‘Goethe is so very very funny!’ But it hadn’t ‘struck’ John.

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This shamelessly long letter must cease. I shall have no right to begin looking for one from you. But . . . no – it’s a curse to know one is expected to answer. Goodbye for now With much – very much love from us both, Katherine. (I still hope to be well in May. But it only wakens the Furies to speak of one’s health until one is out of their reach) Notes 1. The unsigned Times review evoked here was an article entitled ‘Freud Among the Fairies’, published on 1 April 1922. As the title suggests, the reviewer’s tone is always slightly carping and supercilious, insisting on the novel’s ‘charm’ and the author’s ‘elfishness’: ‘For of the personages in this story we can only say that fairies are “the things they are.” Fairies, no doubt, condemned for some frailty to put on houses of clay and bear for a while the ills of earth’ (p. 10). Objecting to this tone and focus, KM alludes to the anonymously authored Live to be Useful: The Story of Annie Lee and her Irish Nurse, published in London in 1872. It is a sentimental, uplifting tale of a little cripple girl, told with wistful entrancement, showing her fortitude and earnest courage when adapting to a life of disease and renunciation. 2. The Bois de Boulogne, to the west of Paris in the 16th arrondissement, is a vast park, renowned for the beauty and variety of its cherry trees, and a popular destination for walks, rides and outings. 3. Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) and Dora Black (1894–1986) had married soon after their return from China in 1921. 4. Lucy is the name of the heroine of von Arnim’s 1921 novel Vera; the episode KM refers to here occurs in Chapter 22, when the brooding, resentful Wemyss finds his wife asleep in front of a fire that ‘he hadn’t ordered’, during the day (a weakness he disapproved of sternly), having been reading Wuthering Heights instead of catering for his needs. 5. Johann Peter Eckermann’s Conversations of Goethe, first published in German in 1836–48) and translated into English in 1839, and in the full three volumes in 1848, is a detailed account of the last years of Goethe’s life, as recorded by his secretary and friend, Eckermann. It is as much a model of eighteenth-century biographical writing as Boswell’s Life of Samuel Johnson. See CW4, pp. 414 and 440.

[25 April 1922] [H] [Victoria Palace Hôtel, 6–8 rue Blaise Desgoffe, Paris] Tuesday.

Paris.

My dear Elizabeth, It was a small miracle to receive your letter this morning when I had only cast mine on the waters yesterday. Oh dear, what an enchanting

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way you have of filling your letters so full that there are little side flowerbeds as well and tufts of sweet-smelling delicious things tucked into the very corners! I revel (decently and modestly, I hope) in every word. But it’s horrible to think of you facing castor oil. And the worst of it is C.O. is such a jealous God.1 Every dose puts one into grimmer bondage. Thou shalt have none other gods but me. May I as an old campaigner suggest that a large wine-glassful of Saint [word missing] Water sipped slowly an hour before breakfast and followed by an apple or an orange is very ‘helpful’.2 Another glass of Saint [word missing] sipped slowly during the day completes the cure, I find. Old [word missing] who had the inside very much to heart used to swear by spinach at the evening repast, eaten very hot. The whole secret lay in that. I wish you would see Doctor Sorapure.3 He is a great lamb and an extremely intelligent one. In fact he is a unique human being. His address is 47, Wimpole Street. His telephone number 3146 Mayfair. And here I shall end. You will have had enough of me for the present. Perhaps my remedies are ridiculous but it always seems to be the mysterious Colon who is the villain of the piece and the one to be attacked. Take care of your precious little self, With all my love, Katherine. Notes 1. In her letter dated 24 April 1922, Elizabeth explains, ‘Do you know what I do here most of the time? Take castor oil. Really. Isn’t it absurd. My inside is forever rising up against me, and to keep it quiet I fly to castor oil, now that I’ve got no Sinner [her brother Sydney] to take it to and complain’ (H: Elizabeth Russell Papers 1480–1483). 2. On account of its exceptionally high levels of mineral salts, the French sparkling water Saint-Yorre, or Vichy St Yorre, was a classic French remedy for digestive disorders, especially drunk in the ways KM evokes here. 3. Victor Sorapure was KM’s much trusted doctor in London, whom she first consulted in September 1918. See also CW4, pp. 272, 284, 336.

[Mid May 1922] [H] [Victoria Palace Hôtel, rue Blaise Desgoffe, Paris] My dear Elizabeth I have been thinking of you ever since the first gleam of this perfect weather. I cannot tell you what happiness it was to get your letter. These last few days, in the Bois and in the Luxembourg Gardens, you have been in my mind continually.1 You are the only being I have wanted to tell that I am out of prison. Even now, it’s so like a dream that I hardly dare to write it for fear of waking up . . . I’ve hardly any cough, I’ve gained

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pounds and pounds, and the only thing that remains is a tired heart, which will of course recover now that it doesn’t get such a persistent shaking. I can’t say I’m cured for certain until the end of the second series in the autumn.2 But I feel cured. I go out alone and nobody looks at me. I sit in the Luxembourg Gardens hidden and it’s quite easy to pretend one is walking slowly just because one chooses to. I sit inside my extraordinarily quiet body and think ‘Have the Furies really left’? But there it is – I really am frightened to write about it for fear it will all prove a dream. I sit inside my extraordinarily quiet body and think ‘Have the Furies really left? Is it possible they are not coming back? Have I seen them off for the last time?’ And I feel dumb . . . Will you feel we are haunting you in your glades and groves when you know we are going to the Hotel Angleterre in June.3 John and I both have so much work to do that we don’t feel we can look for a new place or make holiday. And both of us long for that air, those mountains and the peace of it. I hope you won’t mind us, dearest Elizabeth. We won’t intrude. But it would be heavenly to come to the Chalet in August. I am in the thick of my serial for The Sphere.4 It won’t go. Paris is so lovely at the moment that one wants to throw one’s pen away and look at the trees. But the phantom of Clement Shorter haunts me and drives me to my writing table. I wonder if you will like Ulysses.5 It might have been a wonderful book. But although there are pearls the size and blackness of the swine makes it rather hard to gather them. I shrink from Joyce’s mind. He makes me remember all I choose to forget, and he seems to consider as important things that have no existence in a work of art. I really feel a fierce moralist about it but try to hide that feeling as it is ‘unworthy’. I read the Odyssey afterwards. How exquisite it is – like a fresh water river flowing into a brimming sea. Notes 1. The Luxembourg Gardens, in the 6th arrondissement of Paris, is just a short walk from the rue de Rennes, where KM was staying. 2. The Manoukhin treatment consisted of fifteen weeks of X-ray irradiation, with a three-month break midway. 3. The Hôtel d’Angleterre was in Randogne, the same Alpine village as von Arnim’s Chalet Soleil. 4. See above, p. 32. Following the successful reception of many of the stories in The Garden Party that were first published in the magazine, KM was planning, but never wrote, a follow-up series of stories for Clement Shorter, the editor of the Sphere, developing the lives of the Sheridan family in ‘At the Bay’. See CW2, p. 495, and CW4, pp. 418–19. 5. James Joyce’s Ulysses – the twentieth century’s most famous transposition of Homer’s The Odyssey into contemporary Dublin – was first published by Sylvia Beach at the famous ‘Shakespeare and Company’ bookshop in Paris on 2 February 1922. The London edition was not released until the following October.

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[Mid May 1922] [H]1 [Victoria Palace Hôtel, rue Blaise Desgoffe, Paris] My dear Elizabeth, How glad I was to hear from you! I had been thinking of you – feeling how you must love this weather. It is simply so perfect that I seem to spend the day in telling myself how exquisite it is. What else can one do? And one’s self never grows impatient, which is such a relief, but agrees enthusiastically every time . . . And then it’s so adorable of you to ask me how I am – to care about knowing. If you knew how I appreciate that! As far as I can see this treatment has been wonderfully successful. I have hardly any cough, I’ve gained pounds and pounds, and the only thing that remains is a tired heart. Which will of course recover now that it does not get such a never-ending shaking. I can’t say that I am cured for certain until after the second series, but I feel cured, Elizabeth, quite absolutely different! Of course I can only crawl like a snail, but a [word missing] snail – a rejoicing one. In fact it is so marvellous that it’s still a dream . . . Will you feel we are haunting you in your glades and groves when I say we are going to the Hotel d’Angleterre in June. We both have so much work to do that we don’t dare to look for a new place or to make holiday. But I long for that air, those mountains, the shining peace of June. There is no place more beautiful! Don’t mind us! We won’t intrude! But it would be heavenly to come to the Chalet in August. John is thinking of going to England in the autumn to give some lectures;2 we want to spend the winter in the South of France. I have never seen Paris look so lovely as it does just now. I’ve been watching this new dancing, and sitting in the haunts of the rich and great with the Schiffs.3 It has been great fun. But then the little silvery poet Paul Valery swooped down on us yesterday and began to talk so marvellously about the joy of writing and of being alive at just this moment that I felt I could never look at the Schiffs cream again.4 Notes 1. This letter, the opening paragraphs of which are identical to the above letter, appears to be another draft, with variants in the third paragraph. There is nothing in von Arnim’s responding letter, which is undated, to indicate which of the two drafts KM may finally have used. 2. As KM reported on 22 August, JMM’s plans for a lecture tour at this time quickly fell through. See below, p. 63. 3. There had been a wartime ban on public dancing in France, which, once lifted, prompted an impassioned delight in new dancing styles, especially in the cafés and dance-halls of the capital. The Brazilian samba was introduced in Paris in 1922. Sydney Schiff (1868–1944) and his wife, Violet Beddington (1874–1962), were a very wealthy Anglo-American couple and patrons of the arts, whom KM and JMM first met in the South of France. Sydney Schiff also wrote novels under the pseudonym Stephen Hudson.

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4. The French writer, philosopher and poet Paul Valéry (1871–1945) was one of the most distinguished literary and intellectual figures in Paris in the 1920s, along with André Gide, the writer and editor of the Nouvelle Revue Française.

[28 May 1922] [ATL] [Draft] Victoria Palace Hotel 6–8 Rue Blaise Desgoffe Rue de Rennes Paris 28 v 1922 My dear Elizabeth It seems so much more real now than when I last wrote to you. Then I felt that at any moment I would be whisked back into my café; and every time I went out I wondered if I would have to turn back. But its marvellous how soon one accepts blessings. Curses one never gets used to.

[5 June 1922] [BL] Hotel d’Angleterre Montana-sur-Sierre (Valais) Suisse. Monday. Dearest Elizabeth I have been waiting until we got here before I answered your last letter. Rather a disappointing thing has happened. I suppose my enthusiasm was too much for the Furies. At any rate I wish now I had waited before praising so loudly. For they have turned about their chariots and are here in full force again. It was ‘silly’ to be so happy and to say so much about it; I feel ashamed of my last letter. But I felt every word of it at the time and more – much more. However, perhaps the truth is some people live in cages and some are free. One had better accept one’s cage and say no more about it. I can – I will. And I do think its simply unpardonable to bore one’s friends with ‘I can’t get out’. Your precious sympathy, most dear Elizabeth I shall never forget. It made that glimpse of the open air twice as marvellous. But here I am with dry pleurisy, coughing away, and so on and so on. Please don’t think I feel tragic or despairing. I don’t. Ainsi soit-il.1 What one cannot understand one must accept.

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My only trouble is John. He ought to divorce me, marry a really gay young healthy creature, have children and ask me to be godmother. He needs a wife beyond everything. I shall never be a wife and I feel such a fraud when he still believes that one day I shall turn into one. Poor John! Its hellish to live with a femme malade.2 But its also awfully hard to say to him ‘you know darling I shall never be any good’. But enough of this. I want to tell you what a perfect glimpse we had of the Chalet Soleil as we bumped here in the cold mountain rain. It was raining but the sun shone too, and all your lovely house is hidden in white blossom. Only heavenly blue shutters showed through. The little ‘working’ chalet is in an absolute nest of green. It looked awfully fairy; one felt there ought to have been a star on top of the slender chimney. But from the very first glimpse of your own road everything breathed of you. It was like enchantment. We are alone in this big, very airy, silent hotel. The two ancient dames look after us and pursue me with ‘tisanes’.3 They are very anxious for me to try a poultice of mashed potatoes on my chest pour changer avec une feuille de moutarde.4 But so far I have managed to wave the pommes de terre away.5 Its peaceful beyond words after that odious, grilling Paris. John goes out for walks and comes back with marvellous flowers. He says there are whole fields of wood violets still, and carpets of anemones. We are both working but I feel dull and stupid as though I have been living on a diet of chimney pots. I never want to see a city again. We hope to stay here until the end of August. I am too much bother to have in a house, my dearest cousin. It would have been wonderful, but as it is I feel I should be a nuisance and Im frightened you would ‘turn’ against me. Fancy meeting me on the stairs, very short of puff, or seeing me always about. One can never get invalids out of one’s eye – its the very worst of them. But it would be lovely if John might spend a few days with you . . . It will be such a joy to see you! I do look forward to that. With much, much love Yours ever Katherine. Notes 1. 2. 3. 4.

(Fr.): Amen, or So be it. (Fr.): A sick wife, or woman. (Fr.): Herbal tea. (Fr.): To make a change from mustard leaves. An old-fashioned and, at the time, often recommended remedy for rheumatism or bronchitis in France was to apply a poultice of mustard for fifteen minutes, or a poultice of potatoes for two hours. 5. (Fr.): Potatoes.

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[Mid-July 1922] [BL] Dearest Cousin, I seem to have snapped up the caramels without so much as a word. And it was sweet of you to bring them to me! I am sending a Bouquet by John. You do know, you do believe with how much love I send them? Really and truly it is just what I said today – – – I get frightened of a cloud sometimes because I can’t believe in such blessed good fortune. Your devoted Katherine.

[31 July 1922] [BL] Hotel Chateau Belle Vue Sierre Monday. My dear Elizabeth It would be too marvellous if we might be men and brothers for once, and I am more grateful than I can say.1 I will pay it back the moment my book is paid for. But that will not be before the late autumn . . . May I keep it as long as that? Of course, if in the meantime my Papa shakes a money bag at me – But it is far more likely to be a broomstick. Thank you from my heart, dearest Cousin! It is on my conscience that I was odious about poor Brett the other afternoon.2 I am so sorry for her, really. But to talk to her is exactly like talking to someone for an hour for two hours over the telephone. There she is, at one end of the line, waiting & listening. One ought to feel nothing but pity and I am ashamed of my impatience. Its such a divine night. Are you in the garden, I wonder? I think to watch the moon rise is one of the most mysterious pleasures in Life. Lovingly yours Katherine. Notes 1. Von Arnim had written the day before asking KM to accept a loan of £100. Her letter ends, ‘Men do these things so simply and never give it another thought. Is it really impossible for us to be brothers?’ (H: Elizabeth Russell Papers 1480–1483). 2. The artist Dorothy Brett (1883–1977) was a former student at the Slade School of Art, where she became associated with many members of the Bloomsbury Group; she became a close friend and regular correspondent of

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both KM and JMM. She became increasingly deaf from her late teens, and suffered immensely from solitude on account of her disability.

[3 August 1922] [BL] Hotel Chateau Belle Vue Thursday Dear Elizabeth Many many thanks once more. I am so sorry to hear of your misfortunes.1 The F.O., together with the little Mam’selle in the office here is determined to find you a cook! My only fear is she may stir so many into activity that there will be a procession of white caps from the station to the Chalet. My story isn’t a bit wonderful; I wish to God it were.2 But I’m panting for new scenes, new blood – everything brand new! In fact, you’ve lent that £100 to a fearfully desperate character. Ever, dearest Elizabeth Yours lovingly Katherine. Notes 1. Elizabeth’s previous letter (undated, late July) announces ‘What do you think – the cook I had engaged for this month, on whom all my hopes were fixed, has failed me and we are cookless! Also I have a sore on my lip and feel too revolting for words – and the cook and the lip together are making me very sober’ (ATL–MS Papers 4003–37). 2. John had written to Elizabeth announcing the completion of ‘a wonderful story’, which she then cited back to KM in a letter dated 27 July 1922 (H: Elizabeth Russell Papers 1480–1483). The story may well have been ‘The Canary’, finished on 7 July. Kirkpatrick also dates ‘Father and the Girls’ as late July 1922. See CW2, pp. 498–502.

[c. 15 August 1922] [BL] [Hôtel Château Belle Vue, Sierre] Dearest Elizabeth I want so much to give you a little present before I leave here . . . And I have been casting about and Ive nothing except this brand new little jacquette which is the colour of zinnias and reminds me of them.1 Would you like it? May it hang behind your door or where such things hang in well regulated bedrooms.

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Our little tour is my dream. I hope it won’t always remain a dream. And if I was frightfully dull at lunch the other day – don’t judge me by that, dearest! Ive been out of company for so long that I feel beyond words – – shy. With my devoted love Katherine. Notes 1. Elizabeth responded to the gift on 17 August, writing, ‘How perfectly angelic of you to send me that delicious little coat. I never saw anything so sweet and so like you!’ (H: Elizabeth Russell Papers, 1480–1483).

[23 August 1922] [BL] 6 Pond Street, Hampstead NW3 My dear Elizabeth Its so strange to be writing to you from London! I feel half here, half in one of those green chairs in the Belle Vue garden, overlooking the valley. Yet events seem to have moved at lightning speed since I saw you and your lovely crocus, columbine, hyacinth, lilac hat – early Italian wild violet hat, too. John’s little grand tour died at Sierre while he was telling me the name of his hotel in Verona.1 ‘Why shouldn’t I come to London with you? (Pause) Dash it all I will come. (Pause) Ill toss for it. Heads London tails Italy. (Pause) Its tails. That settles it. I go to London tomorrow.’ But his journey is only postponed. I have decided to stay here for the next three months. There is a man who understands the Manoukhin treatment and is willing to take me. So I shant have to go back to odious Paris and hotel dusters. I have ‘taken’ Brett’s first floor;2 and John has arranged to live in a small flat next door. Brett has swept away her other lodgers, who must regard me as the cuckoo in the sparrow’s nest. But its fun to think of three months in London and, oh, such a relief to be private, not to be a number. John’s small flat is extremely romantic but so high that I shall never be able to go to tea. He will dine here in the evenings. It seems to me a much better arrangement than setting up house together. We have seen my Papa. He will live for hundreds of years, growing redder and firmer and fatter forever. As to his ‘fund of humorous stories’ it doesn’t bear thinking about. I felt I must creep under the table during lunch. I said to my sisters while we powdered our noses together ‘Dont you find his stories a little tiring’. And they cried (they always say the same) ‘Oh but the old dear does so enjoy

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telling them and he really is most amusing!’ The only reply was to cross one’s self. I saw Sydney last night who delivered a formal apology for the way he has spoken and written about John.3 But he regards me with a very mistrustful eye – He expects to find a pin in every crumb one offers; this is not very exhilarating. Bother these solemn, intellectual, superior old mind-probers. I wish I had warm hearted simple friends who had never heard of Einstein.4 Much, much love, my dearest Cousin Ever Katherine. Notes 1. KM had indicated JMM’s plans for a lecture tour earlier in May. See above, p. 57. 2. KM was renting the first floor of Brett’s Hampstead house, at 6 Pond Street. JMM’s room next door was let by the Russian artist and mosaicist Boris Anrep. 3. The exact nature of the misunderstanding between Waterlow and JMM is not clear, but would appear to concern an opinion expressed in private, rather than a published review. KM’s letter to Sydney dated 22 August 1922 refers in relatively warm tones to plans for lunch the next day. 4. Although Einstein’s Theory of Relativity was first set out in 1911, it was only in 1919 that his hypotheses were confirmed and the staggering post-Newtonian was universally acknowledged worldwide. In the early 1920s, therefore, discussing Einstein really was still revolutionary and avant-garde.

[31 December 1922] [H] Le Prieuré, Fontainebleau-Avon, Seine-et-Marne, 31 XII 1922. Dearest Elizabeth, Here is the £100 you lent me. I am sending it, as you see, at the last last moment while the old year is in the very act of turning up his toes. I wish I could explain why I have not written to you for so long. It is not for lack of love. But such a black fit came on me in Paris when I realised that X-ray treatment wasn’t going to do any more than it had done beyond upsetting my heart still more that I gave up everything and decided to try a new life altogether. But this decision was immensely complicated with ‘personal’ reasons too. When I came to London from Switzerland I did (Sydney was right so far) go through

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what books and undergraduates call a spiritual crisis, I suppose. For the first time in my life everything bored me. Everything and worse everybody seemed a compromise, and so flat, so dull, so mechanical. If I had been well I should have rushed off to darkest Africe or the Andes or the Ganges or wherever it is one rushes at those times, to try for a change of heart (one can’t change one’s heart in public) and to gain new impressions. For it seems to me we live on new impressions – really new ones. But such grand flights being impossible I burned what boats I had and came here where I am living with about fifty to sixty people, mainly Russians.1 It is a fantastic existence, impossible to describe. One might be anywhere – in Bokhara or Tiflis or Afghanistan (except alas! for the climate!). But even the climate does not seem to matter so much when one is whirled along at such a rate. For we do most decidedly whirl.2 But I cannot tell you what a joy it is to me to be in contact with living people who are strange and quick and not ashamed to be themselves. It’s a kind of supreme airing to be among them. But what nonsense this all sounds. That is the worst of letters; they are fumbling things. I haven’t written a word since October and I don’t mean to until the spring. I want much more material; I am tired of my little stories like birds bred in cages. But enough. Dear Elizabeth, I have not thanked you even for the Enchanted April.3 It is a delectable book; the only other person who could have written it is Mozart. My [word missing], from the moment they arrived in Italy had a separate blissful existence of its own. How do you write like that? How? How? Do you see John, I wonder? He sounds very happy and serene – Life is a mysterious affair! Goodbye, my dearest Cousin. I shall never know anyone like you; I shall remember every little thing about you for ever. Lovingly yours, Katherine. Notes 1. KM was writing from G. I. Gurdjieff’s Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man, based in the Prieuré des Basses Loges in Avon, near Fontainebleau. See Kimber 2017, pp. 41–65. 2. This is no mere metaphor; dance was a staple part of Gurdjieff’s method of physical activity and meditation as the path to inner harmony. See Lipsey 2019. 3. Von Arnim’s novel, The Enchanted April, had been published that autumn. Following the lives of four different Englishwomen, who leave rather drab lives in England to discover sensual joys and expanding world views in the setting of an Italian manor overlooking the Mediterranean, it was to prove the most successful of all her novels.

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Ida Constance Baker (1888–1978)

Introduction Without Ida Baker, it is hard to see how the schoolgirl Kathleen Beauchamp could ever have become the writer Katherine Mansfield. By the time the three Beauchamp sisters (Vera, Charlotte and Kathleen) presented themselves at Queen’s College, Harley Street, in April 1903, Ida Baker was well established there. She had moved up from the junior school, where she began in 1895, to Queen’s College itself in 1901 as a day girl and had become a boarder in spring 1903 only after her mother’s death from typhoid. She was a tall, awkward and reserved girl in size nine shoes, who had never been part of any ‘set’ at school, though she was acquainted with the Payne sisters, Evelyn and Sylvia (KM’s London cousins), from junior-school days. It was upon the recommendation of their father, distinguished physician Joseph Frank Payne (1840–1910), a man of enlightened attitudes who was also Annie Beauchamp’s first cousin, that the Beauchamp girls were enrolled at such a progressive establishment as Queen’s College, with its singular dedication to higher education for women. It may, then, have been because of Ida’s acquaintance with the Payne girls, as well as her reputation for being obliging, that she was asked to escort the three new girls to their shared top-floor room in the hostel next door at 41 Harley Street, run by Miss Clara Wood for some forty ‘compounders’ or boarders. One thing all these girls had in common was a colonial background. Ida had been born in Stuston, Suffolk, but spent some seven years in Burma, where her father, Surgeon Lieutenant-Colonel Oswald Baker I.M.S. (ret.), who was a specialist in tropical diseases, served as an Indian Army doctor. In 1895, however, he had settled his family – a wife, Katherine, and three children – in London and had run a successful medical practice from his Welbeck Street home until the death of his wife impelled him to move to the country. Unable to bear the country quiet, he soon brought the family back to London and their new home at 2b Montagu Mansions, Marylebone – a comfortable fifteen-minute walk to Queen’s College. He has been widely, perhaps unfairly, characterised as moody and, retrospectively by Ruth Herrick, as ‘a dried up old stick’.1 There was certainly something

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amiss: in 1918, two years after Ida had left him to return to KM in England, he shot himself. Ida was at first drawn to Vera – or so Vera told Antony Alpers many years later – though Ida herself wrote pointedly ‘Vera, I don’t remember, but Chaddie and Katherine were much alike’ (Baker, p. 22). However, it was apparently KM who surprised Ida one day by suggesting ‘Shall we be friends?’ This momentous invitation was proffered while ‘walking in the gardens of Regent’s Park’, as Ida later recalled (Baker, p. 19). Ruth Elvish Mantz, who first recorded the incident, added that Ida thought ‘But you can’t just be friends. A friend is something you become!’2 Of course, ‘Katie’ (as Ida usually called her) would have her way: she was already a shrewd judge of character and instinctively apprehended in Ida traits and qualities of character that she deemed mutually beneficial. Given their professional aspirations, at some point the two decided upon a name change: Kathleen would be ‘Katherine Mansfield’ or ‘KM’, and Ida would be ‘Lesley Moore’ or ‘LM’. Service would henceforth be the key to their relationship – what Kathleen needed and Ida yearned to provide. And that is why surviving letters to Ida sometimes uncomfortably suggest that she is being treated like a servant and why she could later be openly assigned the role of ‘wife’. One of Ida’s more ambitious efforts at independence was opening a business on South Moulton Street with Rebecca Rinsberry, ‘THE PARMA ROOMS’, which offered ‘Scientific Hair-Brushing / Facial Massage’. She had cards printed and began seeking clients through family and friends in January 1912. This venture was first advertised in the July 1912 issue of Rhythm, just a month after KM became associate editor, and regularly thereafter until the final issue of February 1913. KM asked her sister Jeanne, for example, to approach some of her ‘wealthy friends’ as potential customers (KM to Jeanne Beauchamp, 1 January 1912, pp. 260–1), and Ida did, in fact, brush Vera’s hair twice a week in late 1913 while Vera, visiting from Canada, awaited the birth of her second son (KM to Charlotte Beauchamp, 22 December 1913, p. 201). Reflecting upon Ida’s enduring devotion a decade later (CW4, p. 134) and her own culpability, the mature KM admits to herself the simple truth and articulates its nature, perhaps unspoken: ‘She gave me the gift of herself. “Take me, Katie, I am yours. I will serve you and watch in your ways, Katie.”’ Yet Ida cannot be dismissed as some empty-headed innocent with nothing more to offer than dogged devotion. Both girls were active in the debating society and Ida once bested – nay, trounced – her friend in a debate about the merits of forcing students to study Shakespeare.3 She would also prove herself a scholar of some worth by winning the coveted Professors’ Prize in 1904,4 and was as committed to music and her violin – which she characteristically deprecates as her ‘fiddle’ – as KM was to her cello. The friendship, once established at school, would survive many trials – not least the disapproval of parents and two extended periods of

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separation that might well have ended it. In late 1906, when KM was compelled by her parents to return to New Zealand with her sisters, Ida became her epistolary lifeline to a paradise lost. At first, letters and photographs reached Ida from shipboard stops, and then from Wellington ‘the outpourings of all her thoughts and experiences’ came ‘at least one a week for those two years of absence’ (Baker, p. 33). Ida – who ‘lived on Katherine’s letters’ – treasured them for many years ‘through all vicissitudes’ (Baker, p. 126), and drew extensively upon them in The Memories of LM (1971). Then, in March 1914, it was Ida who had to leave London for scenic Umtali, Rhodesia (now Mutare, Zimbabwe), where her father had relocated. She was needed to replace her disabled sister Mary (‘May’), who was getting married. Again, there was a regular exchange of letters between KM and Ida for two years, though KM was developing a variety of other relationships – not least among them Samuel Koteliansky, D. H. Lawrence, Ottoline Morrell and Virginia Woolf. By the time that Ida joined KM and JMM at 2 Portland Villas (‘The Elephant’) in 1919, then, she had accumulated ‘a very large packet, quite a foot square’ of letters (Baker, p. 126). Unfortunately, offering them to their author as an aid to her work proved a grave mistake; KM’s ruthlessness about the past on anything but her own terms provoked a command to ‘burn them all!’ and, ever compliant, Ida did so. Thus, between 1903 and 1917, only two stray letters to Ida survive: the sensational ‘Oscar Wilde’ letter, found among papers left in George Bowden’s flat, and the ‘unfinished’ letter describing KM and JMM’s disastrous and short-lived Paris venture in early 1914 that JMM kept and included in Between Two Worlds (1935). Ida probably never saw either letter – but how revealing they are to us. Just what was lost in that Hampstead garden bonfire of youthful vanities? Ida tells us that, in the first period of their separation, letters from KM in Wellington came ‘at least one a week for those two years of separation’ (Baker, p. 33) – so something approaching 100 or more. Without access to the originals, she can give us but a tantalisingly vague summary of their contents: ‘Pages and pages of her early girlish enthusiasms, hopes and visions – pictures of her own land and the England of her dreams’ (Baker, p. 127). How much more we would like to know about some of the incidents mentioned: the Beauchamp sisters bathing naked during their visit to Brussels in 1906, for example (Baker, p. 31); or KM’s visit to one of bank manager Alexander Kay’s ‘London haunts’, where he ‘gave her a glass of sherry and chatted of his latest amatory adventures’ (Baker, p. 37); or the role, if any, of Sidney Hislop – a fellow passenger in 1908 on the Papanui, ‘a rather charming man’, who fell for Katie and called her ‘Sally’ (Baker, p. 38) – in her dubious story of being drugged and molested in Montevideo. Not surprisingly, versions of Ida would find their way into KM’s fictional world. Writing from Cornwall on 3 June 1918, for example, she tells Ida: ‘If the Nation publishes a story of mine called Carnation

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get Jack to let you read it. Its about College. Ive even put you in as Connie Baker!’ No doubt this gesture was meant to please Ida but it tells us nothing about her. Far more revealing is the version of their relationship detailed in the unfinished novel Maata, where KM is ‘Maata’ and Ida is unmistakably cast as ‘Rhoda Bendall’, who, in anticipation of their reunion after a two-year separation, addresses her beloved’s picture in grotesquely extravagant terms: ‘You are perfection . . . It is my destiny to serve you. I was dead when you found me and without you I am nothing’ (CW1, p. 345). Yet in the same narrative we encounter a powerfully observed passage that captures the ‘real’ Ida with a beguiling and tender clarity: Who was it used to say that every leaf you caught meant a happy month? Rhody of course. She saw Rhody, the tall school girl, break from the ‘crocodile’ [line] when they walked in the park, and run after the leaves with big, far too big, gestures . . . Rhody used to keep the leaves in her Bible, and take them out and hold them up to the light and gaze at them in scripture lessons. And she always said she knew each one apart. Well, if she said so, she did. Just like her. (CW1, p. 364)

Even in early 1922, a conversation with Ida stimulates KM to record ‘Had a long talk with Ida, and suddenly saw her again as a figure in a story’ (CW4, p. 401). Best known, of course, is ‘The Daughters of the Late Colonel’ – a comedy of irresolution that Ida herself accepted as ‘that gentle caricature of her cousin Sylvia Payne and me’ (Baker, p. 153). The story was praised upon publication in The London Mercury, even as its subtlety and symbolism were overlooked. The two daughters, newly freed by the death of their father, Colonel Pinner – loosely based upon Ida’s cantankerous papa – are too scarred by his oppressively lingering presence to take advantage of their freedom. Fewer than a third of the letters from KM to Ida have survived. They present, none the less, a clear enough picture of the vicissitudes of their twenty-year love–hate relationship, especially when read in the context of KM’s letters to JMM and others. And though the voice heard is, perforce, KM’s alone, we can discern something of Ida’s presence behind the responses her letters provoke, as in ‘Youre not just an agency to which I apply for pills and cigarettes, free of charge – though your whole letter was trying to make me believe that’s what Ive brought our “relationship” to’ (14 June 1918). The letters are full of detailed requests – for a replacement thermos flask, for iron pills, for books, for Grenade cigarettes, for parcels of clothes, and patterns for her knickers and nightgowns, for money (code-named ‘tea’) and so on – and instructions of the sort that might be addressed to an agent or an employee: about closing up ‘The Elephant’ in Hampstead, subletting the chalet in Montana, Switzerland, and deciding the fate of Wingley, the sick and flea-bitten cat. A normal husband could have taken care of most of these tasks – but not the feckless Jack Murry, whose bungling incompetence on the journey from Paris

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to Montana in Switzerland was typical: he tendered a 500 franc note instead of a 50, and somehow managed to lose a clock, a fountain pen and the registered luggage tickets (see KM to Baker, 4 June 1922). Even as she became increasingly aware of the importance of Ida to her well-being, KM could constrain neither her demands nor her impatience with the way Ida tried to fulfil them. In one extraordinary letter of 29 August 1921 from the Chalet des Sapins, she petulantly rejects all the clothes samples Ida has just sent – ‘Id rather have nothing than these ugly dull stuffs’ – and directs her to suitable department stores (Debenham’s, Lewis’s, Evans or Selfridge’s) requesting specific colours (‘ROYAL blue instead of cornflower’) and linings (‘v. fine silver grey viyella or cashmere’). These details, however, appear only after she has reproved Ida for not dating her letters (something she herself rarely did!), and asks her to cut out ‘that kind of yearning sentimental writing’ that is made worse by bad spelling. Ida’s apparent protests are invariably dismissed: ‘I don’t believe in your shivering & shaking because of my barks [. . .] If you don’t yet know the dog I keep you never will’ (24 February 1922). Perhaps even worse than such low-level abuse was the cavalier way – the imperious way – that KM treated Ida. Friendship with others, male or female, was not encouraged: for example, ‘I only love you when youre blind to everybody else but US,’ wrote ‘horrid Katie’ from Cornwall on 16 June 1918. Fifty years later, Ida recalled Robert Gibson, the South African army officer to whom she was attracted on the voyage back to England in 1916 and might have married ‘in a different situation’, but who was, in effect, driven away by the behaviour of KM and JMM (Baker, pp. 123, 136). And no matter how far advanced Ida’s plans might be for independent living, she was expected to relinquish them at KM’s behest. During World War One, Ida was building a circle of friends around her work in a Chiswick munitions factory and at the Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA) hostel where she lived, but allowed herself to believe that going to join KM and JMM at ‘The Elephant’ in Hampstead was a good idea. It was not. Then, after committing to partnership in a tea-room with her friend, Susie de Perrot, she abruptly withdraws upon KM’s impassioned plea, ‘I feel I cannot live without you’ (7 June 1922), and joins her at the Hôtel d’Angleterre in Montana, Switzerland. Later that year, when KM retreated to Gurdjieff’s community in Fontainebleau and Ida was considering farm work in Lisieux, she advised: ‘The part of you that lived through me has to die [. . .] I prevented you from living at all. Now you have to learn & its terribly hard’ (10 November 1922). Of course, this was true. Ida made it to KM’s funeral in time to throw marigolds – long KM’s favourite flower – in the grave, returned to England to help JMM transcribe some of KM’s stories, worked for Elizabeth von Arnim for a while, and finally settled into a cottage in Wood Green in the New Forest with a smallholding and some animals, where she encouraged friends to call her ‘Lesley’. There, during World War Two, she fostered a number of children and became part of the

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community. After the publication of The Memories of LM in 1971, Ida was visited by Janet Watts of The Guardian.5 Self-effacing till the end, she claimed: ‘I had nothing to do with her literary life, I had to do with her human life.’ Her own death in 1978 earned just a brief notice locally: ‘DEATHS: BAKER – On 4th July 1978, Ida Constance, Katherine Mansfield’s devoted friend, Lesley Moore (L. M.) and beloved godmother to Helen, aged 90.’ J. Lawrence Mitchell Notes 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

Meyers, p. 17. Mantz and Murry, p. 184. Ibid., pp. 194–6; Kimber 2016, pp. 140–1. Mantz and Murry, p. 184; Kimber 2016, p. 130. Janet Watts, Guardian, 6 June 1973, p. 8.

[early 1909] [ATL] [London] Dearest – Did you ever read the life of Oscar Wilde – not only read it but think of Wilde – picture his exact decadence?1 And wherein lay his extraordinary weakness and failure? I have. In New Zealand Wilde acted so strongly and terribly upon me that I was constantly subject to exactly the same fits of madness as those which caused his ruin and his mental decay. When I am miserable now, these recur. Sometimes I forget all about it – then with awful recurrence it bursts upon me again and I am quite powerless to prevent it – This is my secret from the world and from you – Another shares it with me – and that other is Kitty McKenzie,2 for she, too is afflicted with the same terror – We used to talk of it knowing that it wd eventually kill us, render us insane or paralytic – all to no purpose ––––– . It’s funny that you and I have never shared this – and I know you will understand why. Nobody can help – it has been going on now since I was 18 and it was the reason for Rudolf’s death.3 I read it in his face today. I think my mind is morally unhinged and that is the reason – I know it is a degradation so unspeakable that – – – – one perceives the dignity in pistols. Your Katie Mansfield 09 Never to be read, on your honour as my Friend while I am still alive. K Mansfield.4

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Notes 1. Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) had only died nine years before, and only one biography was then in circulation, written by Wilde’s close friend, Robert Harborough Sherard. Sherard’s Life of Oscar Wilde was published in London by Werner Laurie in 1906. Given the vibrantly high romantic portrait, alongside the clinical fascination with Wilde’s inner life and ‘extraordinary latent madness’ (Sherard, p. 121), it seems safe to believe this was the Life KM is referring to. She had, however, also read chapters on Wilde by Symons. See below, p. 284, n. 6, and CW4, pp. 109–10. 2. Kitty McKenzie was a schoolfriend from Wellington, with whom KM attended a number of social events; her mother was also from Annie Beauchamp’s social circle. See Kimber 2016, pp. 42, 216. 3. Rudolf Bottermund was a musician friend of the Trowell brothers, whom KM had met on a trip to Brussels with her sisters in Easter 1906. He committed suicide by shooting himself shortly afterwards, probably on account of rumours of his homosexuality. KM was profoundly affected by the news. 4. The letter, written on a sheet of torn-off, lined paper, was then folded in half, with these instructions written on either side, thereby ensuring they were the first words read by the recipient, which we believe to be Ida Baker, as was the one below.

[late summer 1909] [ATL] [Wörishofen]1 Do you know my dear, joking apart, and very seriously speaking I do not think that I shall live a very long time – Heaven knows I look well enough – like a Wienerin people say here2 and they could not say more – but I am not at all well – my heart is all wrong – and I have the most horrible attacks of too much heart – or far too little. Sometimes my heart hardly goes at all – and sometimes it – does the opposite – So that is the reason why I want to get so much into a short time. And that is the reason that when I am alone the böse or gute Geist3 jogs my elbow and says – ‘Youll have so much of this sort of thing later on – Make use of a short daylight.’ Notes 1. There is no indication of who this note was written to, but the most likely addressee was Ida Baker; the letter was found by George Bowden, alongside the note figuring just above, after KM had left him for the second time, in early 1910. 2. (Ger.): A man or woman from Vienna. 3. (Ger.): The evil or good One, or Spirit.

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[24 February 1914] [tr. Scott. See also edited version, BTW, pp. 277–8] 31 RUE DE TOURNON (6ème) Last moments. Dear Ida – Everything is packed of ours – the book packer is here now & we are waiting for the man to come & take away the furniture.1 Grimy and draughty and smelling of dust, tea leaves and senna leaves and match ends in the sink – cigaret ash on the floor – you never saw an uglier place – now, nor more desolate. The clock (sold, too) is ticking desperately – & doesn’t believe it’s going yet & yet is hopeless. Jack, in a moment of desperation yesterday sold even the bedding . . . Yes I am tired, my dear a little – but its mostly mental. I’m tired of this disgusting atmosphere & of eating hardboiled eggs out of my hand & drinking milk out of a bottle – Its a gay day outside. What we shall do until the train goes I can’t think – Very little money and we both don’t want cafés. Oh, how I love Jack. There is something wonderfully sustaining & comforting to have another person with you – who goes to bed when you do & is there when you wake up – who turns to you & to whom you turn. The dear little toilet set is on the same table with me – all packed into the basin. I have been talking to the book packer. He is tall & more graceful than anyone Ive ever seen. He wears light blue woollen shoes & has never worn boots since he was ‘tout p’tit’2 – that’s why he walks so – doesn’t seem to put his feet down at all but he has a delightful sort of swaying stride. I have given Carco a few souvenirs3 – the egg timer which charmed him and some odd little pieces like that. The guitar has gone – & the candlesticks – except the dragons. I have an idea I shall find the femme de menage4 has taken something really important before I go. She was a little too gushing and grateful to be innocent, I’m afraid. (Katie, you are really revolting.) I wonder they are [word untranscribed] going down to Canterbury . . ! Notes 1. KM and JMM were leaving Paris to settle in London, initially in Chelsea but moving soon after to cheaper accommodation in Fulham. 2. (Fr.): A youngster. 3. Francis Carcopino-Tusoli, better known as Francis Carco (1886–1958), was a writer and poet from New Caledonia living in Paris, who belonged to the group known as the ‘Fantaisistes’. The group’s poetry and prose featured, in French, in most issues of Rhythm. See Freyssinet, pp. 58–72. He and KM had had a passionate love affair in February to March 1915, episodes of which she drew on in her story ‘An Indiscreet Journey’ (CW1, pp. 439–51). See pp. 514–16 below for the few surviving letters KM wrote him, which Carco published in literary works of his own. 4. (Fr.): Charwoman.

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[12 April 1918] [BL] [47 Redcliffe Road, Fulham] Friday. Dearest Jones1 The little Messenger at the door sent me back years & years . . . Thank you dearie for the ‘goods’. I am glad the box has turned up. What is the next step to take & which of us takes it? I am also glad that Stella was there as well.2 I’d like to know what the fights are – I have been wondering about you so – – – ‘Home’ looked lovely, & feels so lovely. I never want to go out again. I had to spend a long time casting up my eyes at all the ‘surprises’ and improvements. They really were many. Ribni was sitting in the window on the look out on a little box which held my letters.3 When he saw the taxi you can imagine how he began to wave & tap his toes on the glass – & then when I did come there said he was only looking to see if the milkman was coming. He has got rather out of hand & bosses me up – if I so much as move a thing out of its place. Johnny came in last night – God! – He gave me such a welcome.4 Before I knew where I was we had hugged & kissed each other & Johnny kept saying ‘this is a great success’. It really was! And you can imagine all the enjoyment he got out of a fig or two. We are dining with him tonight. I feel horribly weak & rocky now that the strain is over – blissfully happy – incredibly happy – but really ill. I phoned Ainger.5 He is away until next week – I’ll wait if I can. I weighed myself. Curse it. 7 stone 6. Ive just lost a stone, alors.6 Isn’t that annoying. But ever since I came HOME I have done nothing but eat. I am hungry all the time so perhaps my last state will be worse than my first & I will put on stones like I’ve thrown them off. But Jones – ones own fire – and lighting the gas & making tea, and oh! the hot bath which really was hot – & Jack & Jack and Jack. Does it gleam to you, too – like a little jewel beyond price – those hours on the boat when you sat on the floor in a draught & I sat on the longue & we put the red on the black & wanted a seven?7 I was so happy – – – Were you? Try & forget that sad sick Katie whose back ached in her brain or whose brain ached in her back – Its such a lovely afternoon & very warm. I would like to turn to you & say ‘Oh Jones we are quite all right, you know –’ About Saturday – Jack has got the afternoon off & we have to go & see his Mother – youll understand. Try & find a minute to write to me in – Do you want money? Yours, dearie. Katie

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Notes 1. ‘Jones’ was one of the many nicknames KM used for Baker, and also one of the most affectionate. It dates back to their school years when KM referred to the two of them as ‘Jones and Jones’. A footnote in Baker (p. 111) explains how ‘it was the name KM and LM called each other when all was well between them. KM’s mother and a friend, whose name also began with B, called each other “B”. Katherine proposed that she and LM should call each other by the same name too – and chose Jones.’ 2. Stella Drummond (1895–1982) had been one of Baker’s friends and fellow workers in an aeroplane factory in Chiswick. The ‘fights’ would probably have been conflicts at work, although Baker does look back on her months of work there with fondness: ‘women with some college background were being recruited to work as charge hands in the factories. I was taken for an intensive six-weeks’ training in metal work, then became a tool setter [. . .] I enjoyed my work there very much’ (Baker, p. 100). 3. Ribni was KM’s precious Japanese doll, named after the Japanese spy in Kuprin’s short story ‘Captain Ribnikov’, one of many Russian works cotranslated by Koteliansky, JMM and / or KM. 4. JMM’s close friend John Duncan Fergusson (1874–1961) was a highly influential Scottish painter and leading figure in the Scottish Colourists and Rhythmists movements, who had been the Art Editor of Rhythm from its inception in 1911. Once he and KM met the following year, they became good friends too, together with Fergusson’s then partner, Anne Estelle Rice, who would remain a close friend of KM’s for the rest of her life. 5. Dr William Ainger was a general practitioner then working in London but was originally from New Zealand. 6. (Fr.): Then, or, In other words. 7. KM and Baker had returned from France the day before on a boat, having been waiting for permission to travel home since arriving in Paris on 22 March. It was during this long wait, when they were staying at the Select Hôtel, place de la Sorbonne, that they experienced the terrifying bombardments of Paris that lasted for a full month from mid-March.

[14 April 1918] [BL] [47 Redcliffe Road, Fulham] Sunday. Dearest Jones I am wondering how you are spending your first Sunday. It is – isn’t it? a rather idle day – Last Sunday was our dead day – we had only to wait. . . Ive been thinking about it sitting over the fire – (What a joy these Maryland cigarettes are after the camel droppings!) Vile cold yesterday I spent looking for a medicine man who would reassure Jack until Ainger returns that I was not going to fold my tent like the Arab1 . . . Ainger had left 3 ‘locums’ but they were all on military duty. A fourth who was also ‘on his slate’ I did see eventually. And he

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was ‘quite decent’ as you would say. Gave me an order for cream & milk provisionally & told me to repose & not get excited & eat the food of a child of 8 & not go out in the evenings – etc etc – etc. My back aint as serious as I thought. I mean by that it is not spinal disease – I shant have to go about with my own umbrella as a substitute for the spinal column (which I had expected) Its due to my condition & must be rubbed & so on & rested – My left lung is pretty bad, he thinks, but that we knew. However Ive got all sorts of instructions till Ainger returns & thats all that matters. Jack looks after me as though I had broken through my shell yesterday & wont even let me carry a cup – and I just lie down & sip the air & eat & look. All seems so lovely because all is home. Oh God! how I loathe strange things & strange people! I feel so like a cat returned – And you – Jones? Have you seen Dolly?2 What about clothes? What about the work? Are you going to be interested in it again? Tell me all this – London feels to me solemn and quiet and strangely safe after Paris – The charming people persist. Kind looks and smiles seem everywhere – but its the quietness which is such a rest – Of course I only see ever such a tiny corner. I hope you are having a happy Sunday – Goodbye dearie. Katie Notes 1. The final stanza of Henry Longfellow’s ‘The Day is Done’ (1844) reads, And the night shall be filled with music, And the cares, that infest the day, Shall fold their tents, like the Arabs, And as silently steal away. 2. Dolly Sutton, one of Baker’s friends from childhood, whom she met in Burma. She was now married, and lived in Chiswick. It was through Sutton that Baker found her position in the ammunitions factory.

[18 April 1918] [BL] [47 Redcliffe Road, Fulham] Thursday. Dearest Jones I am so glad of your little notes. Please keep on sending them when you can. I am not remarried yet as the court has not sat on the decree nisi but all the same, dearie, will you please address me as Mrs JMM? If

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you hadn’t asked me which you should do I should have asked you to, but you know how devilishly contrarywise Katie is! I saw Ainger yesterday & discovered he was a New Zealand boy. That explains my feeling of confidence. But hes called away to France on Saturday – till the end of the war. What a bother! He said: Yes there is no doubt I have definitely got consumption. He appreciated that a sanatorium would kill me much faster than cure me – (Its a 2nd lunatic asylum to me) . .1 I am to try a ‘cure’ at home – Home is to be either Hampstead or Highgate or further afield. Must live in a summer house (find the summer) eat & drink milk and not get excited or run or leap or worry about anything – you know all the old wise saws. In fact repeat fortissimo with a good strong accent on the second note: ‘she must lead the life of a child of 8’. Cant you now hear the oboe taking it up & making it oh so plaintive with little shakes and twirls and half sobs? I must not borrow a handkerchief (this is serious, Betsy, for you know how they fly from me) or drink out of loving cups or eat the little bear’s porridge with his spoon.2 And so on. But you see I am ever so gay – with long beams coming from my fingers & sparks flying from my toes as I walk. (As to money – well – I keep on taking taxis for the moment – I can’t help it but I will draw in my horns the moment my wings put forth) Tell me all about the coat & skirt dearest – Most important. In fact tell me all you can about everything. Belle & Chaddie called last night in a private kerridge & brought me some oranges & dead roses.3 Fergusson came to dinner & we talked strangely enough about ‘this Art business’ & ‘what is honesty’. But how ever often I wander in that orchard I always find fresh fruits and bigger boughs & loftier trees. So its an adventure. Goodbye darling. Katie. Notes 1. Shorthand for ‘therefore’, which is found in a number of KM’s letters. 2. Deflecting the devastating news of confirmed tuberculosis, KM turns the classic hygiene recommendations given to tubercular patients into a theatrical pastiche, mixing the tones of eighteenth-century wit (such as Eliza Haywood’s The History of Miss Betsy Thoughtless) and nineteenth-century comic pragmatism (such as Betsey Trotwood in Dickens’s David Copperfield) in the first parenthesis, the romantic coyness of the two-handled marriage cup, and the whimsy of ‘Goldilocks and the Three Bears’. 3. ‘Belle & Chaddie’ refers to KM’s older sister Charlotte and their Aunt Belle, both of whom were now living in London, where Chaddie was working for the War Graves Registration Office.

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[19 April 1918] [BL] [47 Redcliffe Road, Fulham] Friday. Dearest Jones I shall be alone here in the early part of tomorrow (Saturday) afternoon. If you ‘get off’ at 12 would you come over & help me? I stand forlorn in front of the chest of drawers & cant find a thing or put a thing away. Do come & put me in order and lay your kind hands on a very tangled, knotty disgraceful Katie. If you cant come early of course come later, dear, but early as you can if you can.

[20 May 1918] [BL] Headland Hotel Looe. Dearest Jones The maid who do be terrible sorry has let fall & broken my Thermos Flask. It was an awful blow to me, too, knowing what store my darling Jack set on it & was so proud of having thought of it & filled it and so. He mustn’t know. Will you go to the stores & buy me another. This cost 8/– – it had a black cover. I suppose there is not more than one of its kind. The number is 109570. Also I had arranged with the people here to give me ½ pint of boiling milk in mine for the night & that I must go without until the new one comes. It held a pint. I cannot write about anything else my dear. I feel desperately ill, & in fiendish constant pain from my left lung. But the conditions, here, are perfect in every way & I am exquisitely cared for – But oh! the old saying: ‘There is no place like Home if you feel ill!’ And I – I always find myself – more ill in another strange hotel. No wonder that awful room at Havre depressed me so!1 Write to me – please & forget that we are not always what we sometimes so beautifully are & do keep an eye on Jack’s wellbeing. It is appaling to be torn in half again – so soon – Your Katie. Notes 1. On 8 January 1918, after a bad sea crossing to France, KM had taken a room at a hotel in Le Havre to rest until the train for Paris left later that evening.

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[21 May 1918] [BL] Headland Hotel Looe. Cornwall. Dear Jones Very many thanks for your letter. Do please go & see Jack as soon as you can and find out about his cold, also how he looks and seems. It is anguish to be away from him, but as my presence seems to positively torture him – I suppose its the better of two horrors. I feel a great deal better – & my pain is infinitely less – scarcely there. Of course mentally (here I am telling the truth again) I feel just like a fuchsia bud – cold, sealed up – hard – My hatred and contempt for Life and its ways overwhelms me – & all this beauty – far richer than the South – means – less than nothing – Id as soon – sooner in fact, hear the rag and bone man – Im being exquisitely cared for in every way. It is for all the world (& here I can see a grin on the face of life) a perfect sanatorium. But SO EXPENSIVE. So that is that – I wish I could say anything else, but I cant – and be sincere. You know the mood. I implore you dont spare me about Jacks condition. That would be too cruel. Yours as ever Katie.

[24 May 1918] [BL] [Postcard] D.J. Ticket number 109570 Received letter, parcel and flask today. Have not opened flask & as soon as can get to P.O. will post it back – Thanks for the idea. But what I wanted was one from the Civil Service Supply Association Bedford Street Strand2 – a black one – holding 1 pint – cost 8/– If these directions are not sufficient I will send the flask = (my old one) to them & get them to do it for me. Please tell me. I wont until I hear from you. But I don’t want your sisters. I can pay you as soon as can get to post office. Yours KMM Notes 1. KM’s short note is written on a postcard from Looe, showing a view of the headland. 2. The Civil Service Supply Association was a London department store on the corner of Bedford Street and 425 Strand.

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[31 May 1918] [BL] [Headland Hotel, Looe, Cornwall] Dear Jones Broken & unbroken Thermos flasks seem to be flying in the air between us – So its come to this – has it! You sent me an Extraordinarily Fine letter today. Now burn my last & lets have the Elephant if we can & try & live in Har–mon–y.1 I cant write letters just now – but I am not horrible either – simply I get stuck & cannot cannot write. So dont hate me if Im quiet. Its not because Im horrid, really not. Yours for ever Jo.2 Notes 1. ‘The Elephant’ was the name by which KM, Ida Baker and JMM referred to the house at 2 Portland Villas, Hampstead, which they wanted to lease and live in together. 2. KM’s love of the music hall is evident here as she references the then popular song ‘Darling Mabel’ (The Love Letter), with music by Bennett Scott and lyrics by A. J. Mills from 1896: Darling Mabel, Now I’m able To buy this happy home. Since they’ve raised my screw, love, I’ve enough for two, love. Will you marry? Do not tarry, Answer ‘yes’ or ‘no’, I conclude with love and kisses, Yours for ever, Joe.

[3 June 1918] [BL] [Headland Hotel, Looe, Cornwall] If the Nation publishes a story of mine called Carnation get Jack to let you read it. Its about College: Ive even put you in as Connie Baker! (Ruth Herrick is coming down here – )1 Dear Jones I cant remember whether I wrote or intended to, to say that ‘after all’ I am in favour of the Elephant & of us three being there – It can I am sure not only be arranged but be a great joy. Yes, really – And did I thank you for tea? It was a comfort – My bill for the week with my extra cream etc was £5.13.8. Pretty staggering – Jones – I don’t

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want any cigarettes – thanks dear. Virginia has sent me 6 packets of those Belgian ones from Richmond.2 I feel ever so much better – Hate life more than ever – see MORE CORRUPTION every day – & everybody seems to be evil & vile. Nearly everybody – Still, one mustn’t think – at least not aloud – But life is a sorry disappointment, you know. Yours Katie. Notes 1. KM’s story ‘Carnation’ was indeed published in the Nation on 7 September 1918. See CW2, pp. 160–3. Ruth Herrick, also originally from New Zealand, was a schoolfriend from Queen’s College. See Kimber 2016, p. 131. 2. As Virginia Woolf tells Duncan Grant in May 1918, ‘I had a most satisfactory and fascinating renewal of my friendship with Katherine Mansfield. She is extremely ill, but is going to Cornwall with Estelle Rhys, a woman painter’ (LVW2, p. 241). Regrettably, the letters Woolf and KM wrote accompanying an exchange of gifts have not survived. Woolf sent the same Belgian cigarettes to Ottoline Morrell two weeks later, noting ‘I think they’re nicer than any others, though they vary in goodness. But they only cost 11d for 20’ (LVW2, p. 243).

[8 June 1918] [BL] [Headland Hotel, Looe, Cornwall] It is not your duty, even in my ‘abnormal condition’ to tell Jack – really not, dear. Stricly Private. For you alone. Jones dear Do you know some good iron pills for anaemia? I have been taking cod liver oil & iron ever since I was here but it hasn’t done me a scrap of good – and as I have had an awful bout of Aunt Martha I feel quite bloodless.1 (Excuse this frankness. Dont shudder.) Also dead private Ive lost 2 pounds weight – I suppose thats one up to you & Gywnne & your system – but it is not really.2 On the contrary. I know quite well why it is. I could cure myself absolutely – Its because I am in an institution – not in my own house, not at home – among strangers (of course not the strangers that you & Mr Gwynne would have chucked me among) but bad enough – I do feel ghastly depressed at having lost weight – – & still to be in a Beau Rivage.3 After all my hatred of it. What a mockery! But IRON PILLS – if you know any – please Jones. Katie.

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Oh, arent you thankful you are not going to have dinner with ‘me in this mood’! Notes 1. ‘Aunt Martha’ was a popular euphemism for menstruation. 2. Mr Gwynne was the foreman at the factory where Baker was working, and was, by her own admission, ‘extremely kind to us’ (Baker, p. 100). 3. KM had briefly returned to the Hôtel Beau Rivage in Bandol in January that year. Here, however, she plays on the name – Beau Rivage means ‘Fair, or Beautiful Coast’, which can refer to the Cornish setting too, but the scenic beauty is out of keeping with her deteriorating physical condition.

[9 June 1918] [BL] [Postcard] [Headland Hotel, Looe, Cornwall]1 Would you send me another box of those Grenade cigarettes if you can, as soon as you can. Failing them the Belgian Cigarette Co, 17 Hill Street Richmond – if that is near you & possible to get at – their blue packets at 11d are so good. But the Grenades, dear, were delicious. Its a rainy Sunday. Id love to come to tea in your armoire2 . . . if you’d have Katie. Je reviens pour quelques jours le fin de Juin.3 Notes 1. This short note is written on a picture postcard showing the Looe countryside and the river. 2. (Fr.): Cupboard. 3. (Fr.): I shall be back for a few days at the end of June.

[12 June 1918] [BL] Headland Hotel Looe. Cornwall. Wednesday. Dear Jones. I have waited until this afternoons post has come and as there is still no sign from you I am very worried. You must be ill. You equally must let me know at once.

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Get Miss Oldfield or one of your friends to write if you cannot, dear.1 But do, please, let me know the full truth about what is happening – as soon as possible. I know you wouldn’t have kept silence for any other reason. Yours ever Katie. Notes 1. Miss Oldfield lived in the same London YWCA hostel, Eyot Villas, as Baker, while they were engaged as workers in the aeroplane factory during the war.

[14 June 1918] [BL] [Headland Hotel, Looe, Cornwall] Friday. Dear Jones I was very glad to get your letter this morning – very sorry to hear youve been ill. I should think it was caused by heat & rushing & bad diet. Anyhow I rather gather you’ve seen a doctor & as youre ‘out’ again perhaps the worst is over. I suppose if I hadn’t sent the letter registrée1 I should not have heard at all – Youre not just an agency to which I apply for pills and cigarettes, free of charge – though your whole letter was concerned with trying to make me believe that’s what Ive brought our ‘relationship’ to. However if it pleases you to feel it, my dear, you must feel it. Lord knows I deserve it enough, according to the WORLD. I thought you were the person I flew to with bad tempers, worries, depressions, money troubles, wants, rages, silences, everything, enfin – but the little bottles, boxes & postal orders – though God knows welcome, seemed to me to be only the trimmings – and not the feast. However you think otherwise – which is humiliating to us both – Take care of your wicked self Katie. Notes 1. KM slips between languages here – a letter sent by ‘registered delivery’ is called a ‘lettre recommandée’ in French.

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[16 June 1918] [BL] [Headland Hotel, Looe, Cornwall] Sunday. Dear Jones Thank you for the B.P.s & for the cigarettes.1 I am ‘taking’ both. Jack writes that you have been looking after him most beautifully. He has been I know dreadfully needing a kind hand, poor boy, and yours, according to him, was quite of the kindest. I sit writing to you in an armchair in front of the windows. The dreaming vacant sea dreaming by, and castles and mountains in the sky – I am wrapped up in my pink quilt & hot water bottle – for Ive an awful attack of that spinal rheumatiz, the worst Ive known so far. It has swept me completely off my feet this time. Oh, its horribly painful! Outside a crowd of children, accompanied by a fiddle & a ’cello have been singing songs for the Devon Hospital or something.2 Not hymns proper, but tunes like enough to hymns to fill one with Sunday sentiments – One wants to weep; one thinks of death; the seagulls fly into the infinite – and one wonders why on earth one should be so cursed with this perpetual ill health! It seems a mockery to be 29 and as Mrs Honey says ‘naught but a frame’ when there is so much one longs to do and be and have.3 (I wish I didn’t hear you say in a small voice: But Katie you might be paralysed or pockmarked or an amputee.) For it dont console me at all. I want to run; I want to jump; I want to scramble and rush and laugh. Ah well ––– there you are. I dont know why I write to you so intimately. For you have quite given me up & thrown me over – in such a way, too. Walking out of the house without a word – But perhaps there was some one waiting for you at the gate – Stella – Wenna – Hersey of the Eyebrow – little Mrs And So On.4 I don’t know and I am sure I dont care. Its only when you are in the house that I love you – I never – as it were recognise you when youre dressed & ready to depart. You seem so awfully like everybody else in your hat and jacket. Yes, I only love you when youre blind to everybody but US. Thats the truth. I simply hate the person who ‘met Fergusson & he recognised me. I was surprised that he recognised me for after all hes not seen me except in the dark when hes had his back to me – has he? But Im glad he recognised me. I should like him to like me – I didn’t think he even realised who I was – I never thought he’d have known me again. I wish I could see something more of Fergusson’ (ad. lib. Take all the repeats). Horrid horrid Katie. Notes 1. ‘Bi Palats’ or ‘Bi Palatinoids’ were commonly recommended for indigestion and ‘liver disorders’ (see below, p. 87, n. 8). As the war dragged on, cigarettes and tobacco were rationed to ensure adequate supplies for the military.

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2. Collections were being organised throughout Devon and Cornwall in May and June 1918 to raise money for the Seale Hayle Military Hospital in Newton Abbot (often referred to as ‘the Devon Hospital’), a specialised unit for neurological disorders which opened that month. 3. Mrs Honey was an elderly woman who worked at the hotel in Looe where KM stayed in 1918 and whose gentle attentiveness was much appreciated by KM. See CW4, pp. 245, 250. 4. KM is referring to Baker’s group of friends from the London hostel and the factory, for whom she has a series of nicknames.

[17 June 1918] [BL] [Headland Hotel, Looe, Cornwall] If you see J. before he comes down would you see that he brings my VELVET waistcoat (which ‘goes’ with my velvet skirt) – dear? Id also give my eyes for that crepe de chine ‘jumper’ made of Chaddies evening coat & the black satin pinny dress to wear with it. These will only make a tiny parcil. If he hasn’t room could you post them me? Sending small ‘factory-useful’ parcil today. Katie Notes 1. This short message is written on a postcard showing ‘The Jolly Sailor Inn, West Looe’.

[25 June 1918] [BL] [Headland Hotel, Looe, Cornwall] Tuesday. Jones dear Have you any tea to spare? It is like this. I have borrowed £8 from Jack this month & I don’t dare to ask for any more – Yet it is not enough to see me through. You see leaving here I must tip these people & get my ticket & the whole affair has been HORRIBLY EXPENSIVE. If you haven’t, darling, its all right. I will borrow some more. You understand – don’t you? I have thought of you so much these last few days. I was wondering, in bed this morning, if you think of me – often – I mean – Well – do. I am a little nicer. Yours ever Katie.

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We’re leaving Saturday. We arrive 5.20 on Saturday afternoon. Do come to 47 and be there at Six oclock if you can.1 Praps youd help me – would you? Katie. Tell me if you can. Notes 1. JMM was living at 47 Redcliffe Road in Kensington.

[26 June 1918] [BL] [Headland Hotel, Looe, Cornwall] Wednesday. Jones love Our letters crossed – and yours with the T arrived today. Thank you ever so. Don’t forget, mignonette, to tear yourself away from your admirers on Saturday & come to ‘47’ – will you?1 You sent such an astonishingly lovely letter – I am thrilled about the seeds & about your coat & skirt – equally thrilled. The seed that is coming up standing on its head is particularly engaging – I am so glad that you are seeing your people – and that they are ‘good’ – I wish you would marry Webb or Gibson & have some children.2 We do seem so very short of children – don’t we? I simply pine for some but they dont want me (small wonder). Now I feel you would be superbly successful. Lay it to heart – Jones ––– Jack has cried blessings on you ever since he came. You know, in him, whatever you may in your black moments think, you have a most loyal, utterly sincere friend. Hes for you – for you & he believes in you – really enough to satisfy even you – I thought Id tell you. These are the things which are so lovely to know. My back’s pretty fairish – not more than that. It all depends on the day – & my wings3 – well they are there – The left one is groggy – and the right one I dont know about. But I have got used to them now & take them in my stride as they are no good for my flight. I have had such a nice letter from Margaret Wishart that was.4 She heard of me through a notice for Prelude.5 I am going to see her when I come home – She has two almost grown up sons. Ruth Herrick has not come – She always ‘cries off’ at the last hour, so Eileen says.6 Her address is 53 Manchester Street. She has been ill again – & she wears her hair short – & Mrs H. is still a very great tartar – Men don’t like

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Ruth at all – that has made her very bitter. (This is the news I gleaned for you). But the reason for it is that she is ‘always in love with some woman’ – She becomes desperately infatuated with women just as she used to with Robin & Poppy Robinson7 – devotes herself to them – slaves for them – just as she did when she was a ‘little girl’ – She sounds to me rather a tragic figure – Won’t you try & see her? My writing is vile today – but my hand shakes so – I am still filling myself with shot in the shape of these Bi Palats,8 & if you held me by my heels I am sure I would rattle – They are good, I think. I don’t care a button for this place, Jones – though I suppose to the unjaundiced eye it is wonderfully beautiful. I dont care. No place is to me – Id just as soon be on the Mile End Road – sooner really.9 There are rocks & beaches & shells & pools and flowers and so on ––– but – dont you know – Id just as soon let them all fall out of my lap. In fact I dont care about the sea – or the country – or the town for the matter of that. Oh, she is very hard to please. No, dearie – I like books & fires and cigarettes & flowers & fruits still – and at this moment I awfully like you. I have had a long letter from Mack today on his way to Pekin to be crowned Emperor of China10 – inviting Jack & me to go to Canada & on to N. Z. with Vera & the boys – So kind –––– Then Ill see you on Saturday, & until then don’t forget that you have for a friend in spite of everything qui s’appelle11 Katie. Notes 1. (Fr.): Mignonette is both a fragrant-smelling flower (Reseda; see above, p. 52, n. 4) and a French term of endearment – a diminutive of the word ‘mignon’, meaning ‘favourite’, and the feminine ‘mignonne’, meaning ‘my pretty, or, my dainty one’, which KM uses in ‘An Indiscreet Journey’, for example. See CW1, p. 439. 2. Both Webb, a fellow factory worker, and Gibson had displayed an interest in Baker. Robert Gibson was a friend Baker had made during a voyage from Rhodesia in 1916 and he seemed for a while to be a most likely suitor. In Memories of LM, Baker describes a rather tense tea party that showed up the vast differences between Gibson’s world and that of JMM and KM, which left Gibson feeling bitter and humiliated. She notes that, ‘In a different situation, I might have married him and gone to Africa with him. But I was really leading a double life, my own and Katherine’s, and I should not have dreamt of leaving her’ (Baker, p. 136). 3. From an early age, KM referred to her lungs as her ‘wings’ (and especially following her diagnosis of tuberculosis in 1917), an image that may well reflect the impact on her imagination of the newly available X-ray technology coming into use. She uses the rich semantic interplay between birds’ wings and her own diseased lungs as evocative poetic figures in some of

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6. 7. 8.

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her late poetry, particularly the last poem she wrote, dated 1922. See CP, pp. 182–3. Margaret Wishart was likewise an aspiring musician, and a fellow resident at Beauchamp Lodge in 1908. KM’s ‘Prelude’, published by the Hogarth Press and hand-set in part by Virginia Woolf, was published in July 1918; it was listed in Hogarth Press advertisements for forthcoming publications, notably in The Times and the Times Literary Supplement that June. Ruth Herrick and Eileen Palliser were both New Zealanders and Queen’s College friends. See also Kimber 2016, pp. 131, 134. Miss Robinson, nicknamed ‘Robin’, was one of the matrons at 41 Harley Street, next to Queen’s College, where KM and her sisters boarded. See above, p. 83, n. 1. Bi Palats or Bi Palatinoids (also known as Blaud’s Pill) were tablets commonly prescribed for anaemia, containing high doses of ferrous carbonate. They were commercialised by a London-based pharmaceutical company and chemist’s, Oppenheimer, Son and Co., on 179 Queen Victoria Street, London E.C. The Mile End Road in the East End of London was then notorious for being run-down and over-populated; it was frequently an area to which newly arriving immigrants and refugees headed, on account of lower housing prices and established networks of help for new arrivals. KM’s sister was married to a Canadian-born geologist, James Mackintosh Bell (1877–1934), who had been an officer with the Canadian forces in France during the war. In June 1918, he embarked from Vancouver with the British Expeditionary Forces heading to Vladivostok, Manchuria and Japan, bringing military support to the White Russians scattered by the Russian Revolution. Coincidentally, it was the same mission that William Gerhardi took part in, events of which he recounted in Futility, a novel he published in 1922, thanks to KM’s help securing a publisher. Bell also wrote a number of books, including The Wilds of Maoriland (1914), recounting his geological fieldwork in New Zealand. (Fr.): Who is called . . .

[15 July 1918] [BL] [47 Redcliffe Road, Fulham] Jones dear I did not thank you half prettily enough for the lovely ‘basket of flowers’ but then I didn’t see all their beauty until this morning: they are simply exquisite – especially the wild ones. Jack cannot ‘get over’ the roses & sees himself growing a great bush in the little glass place at the elephant. Your new coat & skirt looks exceedingly well – The shoulders & sleeves have a deal of drawing in them. I am so glad to think you have it & can be a pretty girl when Gibson takes you out . . . or any of your other charmers that I am so horrid about. I don’t mean to be. I bought a teapot today – a big blue & white one & a little blue &

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white one, too – both I think very very nice. The mother was only 2/3 – the child 1/- at Liberty’s sale.1 Libertys sale made me positively swoon with covetousness – & all so cheap. I bought a duck of a perfume jar for your mantelpiece, too – a lamb. This afternoon I have been to see the builders. Oh, they are a swindling lot. Now that we have cut down the price – of course he says he cant do any of the colours. Couldn’t use cream paint at the money – nor nothing – But I beat him because I did not want what the poor middle class want – and I have had grey nearly everywhere. All the doors are to be grey & the skirting boards etc – & shutters – with black stair bannisters & black treads – In the kitchen white distemper with turquoise blue paint. On the top floor your room – lemon yellow with grey cupboards – The bathroom real canary yellow – & the ‘external’ paint for the railings gate & door – grey again. I think it will be lovely. He says it will look unfinished. I wondered afterwards if the elephant name had given me the passion for the elephant colour. Funny, odd people write to me & say how much they like my book.2 Oh, how lovely praise is – not praise exactly – but friendly waves – & did I tell you the English Review has taken that story I wrote in the south & is going to pay me £6.6 for it?3 I’ve had the proofs already – All this being so I ought to be nicer than I am. Ill try – Mally Alexandra, Jones, is living next door but one.4 This makes going out a great bore – I have to take such swerves. I must go & put the kettle on. I am so longing for some music. Arent you? Take care of yourself darling. Your, Katie. Do buy some book will you Jones? Ill be so hurt if you dont. Notes 1. Liberty is one of London’s foremost department stores on Regent Street, renowned for the main building’s mock-Tudor architecture. At this time, it was celebrated for the Art Nouveau designs of its furnishings and fabrics, and its stock of Oriental arts. 2. The hand-printed Hogarth Press edition of ‘Prelude’ had been released on 11 July. 3. ‘Bliss’ had been written in Bandol in February 1918 and was published in the August issue (no. 27) of the English Review, then under the editorship of Austin Harrison. See CW2, pp. 141–53. The monthly English Review, established in 1908 by Ford Madox Ford, had been a flagship Modernist magazine but was now shifting ‘its focus from belles-lettres to politics’ (Brooker and Thacker, p. 227), as well as social issues and sexuality. 4. Probably another schoolfriend from KM’s Queen’s College days but untraced to date.

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[1 August 1918] [BL] 47 Redcliffe Road S.W.10. Dear Jones Come in tomorrow evening if you can manage, for I may be able to lend you something for your week end – or a suitcase. Would you like Jack’s small suitcase for instance? I thought of getting you some handkerchiefs – but then you are so particular about quality I get a bit frightened of buying you ‘on the spec’: you might despise ’em. We are very unfortunate in our meetings. I dont want to quarrel, though I believe you think I do. The truth is that for the time being my nature is quite changed by illness. You see I am never one single hour without pain. If its not my lungs it is (far more painful) my back. And then my legs ache and I never can even change my position without such a creaking of all the joints as ever was. This, plus very bad nights exasperates me and I turn into a fiend, I suppose. And when you turn to me and say ‘you did have a bag of herbs if you remember’ as though those words of yours came out of an absolute cavern of HATE I realise ‘the change’. All the same, and knowing and realising this as I do I still ask you to come to Hampstead – until I am better. For the sake of all that has been I ask that of you. I know I shall get better there – quite well again – but see me through these next few months – will you? I know exactly why you talk of what you are going to do after the war – ‘Carrie’ – the ‘big house’ – ‘I may be in a factory’. That is because, untrue to my first talk about Hampstead I have never made you feel part of it, and every time you say ‘our’ I give you a vile look. This is wrong in me but at present I cant control it. Ill try and explain it a bit. You see out of all my external world only the house remains just now. Its all my little world & I want to make it mine beyond words – to express myself all I can in the small circle remaining. And so I am plagued with a wicked childish jealousy – lest my last doll shall be taken from me – dressed as I dont want it dressed – hugged by other arms. You wont understand this in me; there is no reason why you should. But you must believe, that, as we live there, things will quite change, and if only you are ‘careful for me’ it will all be quite different & we shall each other over the stairs. Oh, it is (yes it is) incredible that one should have to explain all this. I always felt that the great high privilege, relief and comfort of friendship was that one had to explain nothing. But I have sinned against friendship, that’s why. Only I do think I am the last person on earth who has undying, unbroken faith. That will really seem to you too contradictory altogether. Never – the less it is true.

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If I dont see you before your week end I hope you have a happy time, dearie, and take an old well Katie in a corner of your heart to think about if you have a moment. In this imperfect, present world we have failed each other, scores of times, but in the real unchanging world we never have nor come down from our high place. Yours ever Katie. If you buy a book for the journey the August English Review has a story by K.M.1 Notes 1. See above, KM’s letter on 15 July, p. 87.

[3 August 1918] [BL] [47 Redcliffe Road, Chelsea] Dear Jones This is just to let you know that I am better of my rheumatism again & can walk, wear a frock and sash & sit up to table to eat my egg with a spoon. Ive never never never seen such a piece of paper as yours this morning. Didn’t rolling it into that ball take as long as folding it would have? Or had you been carrying a bun in it? Or did you push it through a keyhole? I think I must keep it, all ready as it is to stop a draught with – Katie. A most extraordinary thing has happened. The Germans have stolen some of my work which the New Age published & are printing it in a rotten paper called The Continental Times as ‘studies of the English middle class mind by Katherine Mansfield’1 I have seen a copy – it is published in Berlin Stockholm & Constantinople & really to see my work taking up a whole page gave me a huge thrill. But isn’t it surprising!2 Notes 1. Written on a separate – but similar – sheet of blue paper. It would therefore appear that this note was meant to follow on from the brief letter above it. 2. KM’s ‘A Pic-Nic’ was first published in the New Age on 7 June 1917; it is written in the tongue-in-cheek theatrical style that KM had often experimented with in her earlier years, and, as passing topographical references indicate, it is set in Wellington. The Berlin-based, English-language, tri-weekly newspaper Continental Times, subtitled ‘A Journal for Americans in Europe’ and

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with an explicit pro-German slant, published it without permission on 22 July 1918. It was given a more didactic title for the occasion: ‘An English Pic-Nic, A Study of the Middle Class Mind’. See CW2, pp. 42–9.

[4 March 1920] [BL] [Villa Flora, Menton] My dear Jones1 I want to tell you a secret but I cannot when we are face to face. I feel you know what it is. But the fact is all I can tell you now. Later on, Ill laugh about it and talk about it and you can make fun of me but just at present Jones Im so sensitive that I couldn’t even bear to hear you say you had got this letter. I tremble with shyness – that is dead true, my dear. Later on, I promise it won’t be so, but for the present will you forgive me if I ask you not to even breathe a word of it to me. This afternoon when we were lying on the hills (Ill tell you all about it one day) I knew there was a god. There you are. One day (before I go back to England I hope) I mean to be received into the Church. I am going to become a Catholic.2 Once I believe in a god, the rest is so easy. I can accept it all my own way – not ‘literally’ but symbolically: its all quite easy and beautiful. But unless one really believed in a god even though it is tempting to have that great inward gate opened – it is no good. I mean to make Life wonderful if I can. Queer Jones, Ive always a longing to heal people and make them whole, enrich them: thats what writing means to me – to enrich – to give. I want to do it in Life too. I shall tell Jack this – sometime – Perhaps not for a long time. Perhaps I shall just leave him to find out. But you cant live near me & not know it & yet I could not bear you even to refer to a book I read. Do you understand this? I am so sorry to be so dreadfully secret & sensitive. But I tell you for another reason too – and thats because youre my ‘sworn friend’ as they say. Jones – I am not at all well yet – terribly nervous and exacting and always in pain – but Ill get over it. But I need you and I rely on you – I lean hard on you – yet I can’t thank you or give you anything in return – except my love. You have that always. Katie. Notes 1. KM’s letter has been annotated by Ida Baker as follows: Villa Flora. A letter left for me in her room where I went each day – About April 1920

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2. KM’s (short-lived) urge to convert to Catholicism reflected the influence of her cousin, Connie Beauchamp, and Connie’s close friend, Jinnie Fullerton. See CW4, p. 305. See also Introduction to Fullerton below, p. 544.

[8 March 1921] [BL] [Villa Isola Bella, Garavan, Menton] Tuesday. This is just a note to let you know that tout va bien à la maison.1 It is the late afternoon of an exquisite day. That heavy evening rain that made water spouts of Jack’s trousers fell like a blessing upon the garden. When I went out today the air smelt like moss, and there was a bee to every wallflower. The peach leaves are like linnet wings; the branches of the fig are touched with green, the bush of may is just not in flower. I had to lift up the daffodils & set them on their legs again and to give a finger to the reclining freezias. But nothing had come to harm. As to that white rose bush over the gate & the gas meter it is sprinkled with thousands of tiny satin fine clusters. This is a darling little garden when one can get out of ones shell & look at it. But what does it profit a man to look at anything if he is not free? Unless one is free to offer oneself up wholly and solely to the pansy – one receives nothing. Its promiscuous love instead of a living relationship – a dead thing. But there it is – And my gland is a great deal more swollen for some reason.2 The blood goes on tapping squeezing through like a continual small hammering and all that side of my head is numb. Its a vile thing. I hope you had a good journey. Will you please wire me immediately if you want any money & Ill wire it to you. I am now v. serious. Don’t go to other people first. I can so easily overdraw for now: I dont care a button. But you must feed properly in London, eat nourishing food not scones & coffee, and you must take taxis. Dont buy things in bags & eat them. Make Violet cook you porridge, bacon & eggs & toast for breakfast.3 That climate is the devil. And wear a thick scarf when you go out & change your shoes & stockings when you come in. And burn the anthracite.4 And get people to come & see you if you want to see them & make Violet cook for them. I feel you will never be sensible enough to keep warm, dry shod and fed. I have no confidence in you. I wish I were back in that Hampstead house, wafted to the top landing, allowed to linger on the stairs to look out of the windows to see if the lemon verbena is still alive. It should have been a perfect little house: it never came to flower. And the view of the willows – bare now, and the room that was mine – so lovely. The light was always like the light in a pale shell.

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Tell me what happens. Take things easy. I beg you to wire me for money without hesitating. Dont work too hard. Try and be happy; be sure to keep well5 Katherine. Notes 1. (Fr.): All’s well at home. 2. KM had a swollen gland in the neck, which her doctor punctured to release the pressure. 3. Violet was the maid at the Murrys’ Hampstead house, which Baker was then in the process of closing down, while disposing of the furniture. See Baker, p. 157. 4. Also called anthracitic coal, a variety of domestic fuel. 5. Just before this section of KM’s letters, Baker notes in her memoirs, These letters which I received while I was in Hampstead throw, for me now, a new light on this woman who living intensely in all the beauty she found around her, fought so bravely against her illness. She seemed to cut through any falseness or furry edges sharply, yet always with an underlying tenderness. (Baker, p. 157)

[11 March 1921] [BL] [Villa Isola Bella, Garavan, Menton] Friday night. Your telegram re the house arrived today. I like your habit of sending telegrams with windows in them. I saw Athenaeum.1 Speaking of windows, look out, in the evening for the little stray, will you? I feel if he’s alive he may come back on a moonbeam. A box from the Printemps came, too.2 The veil is exquisite. Thank you. Saw Bouchage today & am going to see Le Blanc, chirurgien, with him tomorrow, to get the latters advice about not cutting, but puncturing this gland.3 This is an operation as simple as an intramuscular injection. It is done with a large needle & nobody is any the worse for it. I think its a good idea. Ill let you know what they decide on. Any move is a good move if one is in prison. But one learns at grim cost that its only the prisoner who NEVER gets tired of trying to escape. There’s been a terrific East wind today. Positive scythes hurtling through the air. Good old Marie II broke a windy in her excitement.4 Can’t you imagine the unholy joy of Marie I? But M. Allasena has of course leapt into the breach.5 I shant want you to hurry for any sort of reason because of this gland. I am now serious: I mean that. P. T. O At 9. AM. today I met Bouchage at the clinic of Le Blanc the surgeon & after some consultation the gland was punctured and a large

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quantity of pus removed. It was very skilfully done. Bouchage was most kind and helpful. He saw me off the premises & even drove back with me . . . . I feel rather tired but Im glad its done. It will have to be repeated, this small operation, two or three times. But now one knows the worst, theres nothing to mind about it. Heres something for your amusement. Marie was at market, Jack ranging the streets for a voiture, I trying to dress in haste, when Jinnie came in from mass, to be with me (!) while I was alone. And of course she simply delayed me tidying up & so on. Finally she kissed me & said ‘I shall pray for you, Katie dear.’ I feel almost revolted by this. Excuse this egoism. I feel its awfully stupid to make a fuss about une affaire si mineure.6 There wont even be an honourable scar! Yours Katherine. Notes 1. Athenaeum (‘Athy’) was one of KM’s two cats, the brother of Wingley. 2. ‘Printemps’ is a department store in Paris, on the corner of boulevard Haussmann and the rue du Havre, the most fashionable shopping area of Paris, in the 8th and 9th arrondissements. 3. Dr Ambroise Bouchage was a consultant and Dr Georges Leblanc a surgeon working at Leblanc’s private clinic in Menton. 4. There were two Maries currently working for KM at the Villa Isola Bella: Marie, Connie Beauchamp’s cook, and her friend Marie. The latter became a ‘fixture’ in the household, according to Baker, and was ‘truly devoted to Katherine’ (p. 152). 5. The unidentified M. Allasena would appear to be a local handyman, but the name – Spanish- or Italian-sounding, but not registered family names – does suggest it is a nickname rather than the man’s true name. ‘Alacena’ in Spanish means wardrobe or cabinet. 6. (Fr.): Such a minor incident.

[13 March 1921] [BL] [Villa Isola Bella, Garavan, Menton] (Confidential) Sunday. I really must tell you this or jump out of bed or out of the window. You’ll appreciate it so. I paid the surgeon on the nail yesterday. That was all right. I expected to. Only 100. But Jack came down & paid the cocher.1 When I said Id paid the surgeon he replied ‘The cocher is mine. I agreed on the price 20 francs beforehand’. Just now – making out the weeks bills he asked me for 11 francs for the carriage – half, plus a 2 franc tip! I think its awful to have to say it. But fancy not paying for your wifes carriage to & from the surgery! Is that simply extraordinary

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or am I? I really am staggered. I think it is the meanest thing I ever heard of. Its not the fact which is so queer but the lack of fine feeling. I suppose if one fainted he would make one pay 3d for a 6d glass of sel volatile2 and 1d on the glass. That really does beat Father. Things are serene otherwise. My head hurts but not more than is to be expected. Cousin Lou has been in today.3 Shes infinitely kind and affectionate. In fact she lavishes kindness on me in an old fashioned family way. The old villain is being as sweet as sugar. Hangs up my dresses, puts away my hats, brings up supper for 2 into this room without a murmur. I feel like Koteliansky when he says: ‘Let her be beaten – simply – but to death!’4 I hope to hear from you tomorrow. Dont rush things. Keep well & be happy! ALL IS WELL Katherine. Notes 1. (Fr.): Coachman, driver. 2. (Fr.): Smelling salts. 3. There were two old Aunt Louises in the extended Beauchamp family; the first was Annie Louise, a younger sister of KM’s cousin Connie Beauchamp, born in 1864; the second was Emma Louise (1854–1926), Elizabeth’s cousin, and later her adopted sister. According to von Arnim biographer Jennifer Walker, the ‘Cousin Lou’ that KM refers to here is most likely Annie Louise, since the von Arnim family refer to the latter as ‘Emma’. 4. KM’s dear but sometimes prickly friend Koteliansky was renowned for his uncompromising opinions and idiosyncratic turns of phrase among KM and JMM’s circle and the Bloomsbury Group, where he was always a fringe character, albeit an essential cultural diplomat and literary go-between. KM clearly had a liking for this expression – she quotes it to JMM in a letter dated 1 December 1920, observing that the saying is ‘profound’. Koteliansky had arrived in Britain from the Ukraine in 1911, where he became a translator and literary editor, with close links to the publishing world in Moscow, via Maxim Gorky and the World Literature Publishing House. See below, p. 468, n. 8.

[14 March 1921] [BL] [Villa Isola Bella, Garavan, Menton] The apprentice just came to be paid 80 francs for the hat. Had we paid? She swore no. So I paid. But you’ll remember. Monday. This is in answer to your letter. About the house – I regret it. I often think of it but its too painful to dwell upon. If I were rich Id buy it. But I suppose that would be foolish . . . . However.

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Jacks clothes (a) He tells me they were arranged in a certain order to be called for by Arthur.1 What A. does not take had better be kept. Perhaps if there is time youd send him a list. (b) Please store furniture in my name. (c) Dont store kitchen lino or those trays. (d) Give V. the bango of course with my love. I wld like – and I think it would be right to give her all we are selling.2 No. Dont do that. We cant. Ill make it up to V. one day as soon as I can. But of course let her have what she wants for a song. (e) Shepherdess had better be thrown in the dustbin. (f) yes, I want Mother’s photograph very much. The last one of her.3 Send it – will you? I am always wanting it. (g) What the large file of papers & the typed sheets is and are I don’t know. They’d better be stored. The brown photographs are Jacks – to go with his papers. Important. If you find a Fry’s Chocolate box the one I had in Italy. For Gods sake keep it & bring it over. It is full of papers in my & Kots writing.4 Please do tell me about this. It must not be stored. As to the Athenaeums, Nations & Je ne Parle Pas5 Jack says they are to be kept. Is that possible? I detest this habit of keeping old papers. I note Brett has been up. She sent Jack a most typical letter t’other day. He was immensely charmed. It was all reverence & a kind of tender fear. ‘Master’ and a looking after their child – Arthur. You know he, Jack, will marry her one day. It would be an ideal marriage. She worships him and her flattery, reverence, adoration are just what he needs from a wife. Also he can lay down the law to her on art and life to his heart’s desire. I know they will marry. Cant you hear the proposal? And cant you see Jack with Lord Esher, his father-in-law?6 Also Brett’s £550 – which is bound to be more! I long to have this happen. Id send such a nice present & Id go and have tea with them joyfully. Roger sounds nice.7 What does he look like? Not like his Da, I hope. No, I mustn’t be horrid from afar & Ive no doubt your brother in law is being the ‘decentest sort’. However I cant bear him and thats the truth. Its fine today. I am hiding (in vain) from the house the servants & Jack. It would be marvellously beautiful if one were alone. As soon as this gland is on the way to mending, as soon as it is in control I swear I shall go away. To Sospel.8 Jack can stay here & write his lectures. He’d love it and Ill go up there for a complete change. I wonder if it can be done. This letter sounds disagreeable. Its not meant to be. I am angry with ‘people’ with Brett & Co. with Vera for writing me a false, coldhearted snobbish letter ‘so glad you are nearing normal again’. Typical! It cant be helped. I hope you go and stay with Mrs Scriven before you come back.9 I feel you ought to. Take things easy. Keep me informed when you can. Yours Katherine.

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Notes 1. JMM’s younger brother Arthur, who, in adulthood, was always known as Richard. 2. Violet, the maid at Portland Villas. 3. See KM’s last letter to her mother, Annie Beauchamp (20 January 1918), when she is expecting a photograph to arrive as a Christmas present. 4. KM and Koteliansky (‘Kot’) had been co-translating Chekhov’s letters and diaries for publication in the Athenaeum. See CW3, pp. 203–64. 5. KM’s ‘Je ne parle pas français’ had been published by JMM’s Heron Press on 15 February 1920. She is referring here to unsold copies of the little booklet and back copies of the two papers. 6. Brett’s father, Reginald Baliol Brett (1852–1930), had succeeded to the family title in 1899, becoming 2nd Viscount Esher. He was a historian and distinguished Liberal politician. 7. Roger was Baker’s nephew, the son of her sister May. 8. Sospel is a historic town, high up in the hills above Menton. 9. Mrs Scriven was an aunt of Baker’s, living in Lewes near Newhaven. She eventually adopted the Murrys’ cat, Wingley.

[16 March 1921] [BL] [Villa Isola Bella, Garavan, Menton] Thursday. I shall try and reply to your two letters. I wish to Heaven you didn’t refer some of these silly little points to me. Its really idiotic to ask me if I wish to take the advice re cleaning of Shoolbreds man.1 Of course I do. Why not? Am I an idiot? They sound all right and satisfactory. Go ahead. (a) yes (d) of course give the rabbit or any other small thing to the baby.2 (e) Let both the wooden clocks go – especially the beehive one. I mean I do not want them kept. Do you mean destroy by put away? Is that a delicate refined way of referring to the morts des objets cheris.3 I don’t know? May I put them away? What does it mean? Youd scarcely be silly enough to destroy my old blotter if it were possible to keep it, and the velvet curtain you say has only one small hole . . . its not bad enough to destroy. And does keep mean store. For I asked you to bring my Chinese skirt & yet I certainly don’t want these other things. As to the remains of that rubbishy plaid velvet – I groan with horror at the thought of its perpetuity. It is extremely confusing. I have wired you about Jack’s things. Its no good saying if you dont hear by Thursday youll do so & so. Today is Thursday & your letter is only just come.

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The weather is v. fine here. All is as usual. The house ‘goes’ & the servants are just the same. Please do not hurry back. That is my one really urgent cry. My health is also – the same. Katherine. Dont, as a result of this letter stop writing to me – please. sell mattress of camp bed. Keep mattress of grey bed. (b) Ill send a note to Broomies. (c) Arthur had better have the letter paper for scribbling paper.4 Notes 1. ‘Shoolbreds’ was a drapers and haberdashers on Tottenham Court Road, London. 2. Possibly items to be given to Baker’s nephews. 3. (Fr.): The death of beloved objects. 4. These three lines, written as a draft or insert, are on a separate piece of paper.

[18 March 1921] [BL] [Villa Isola Bella, Garavan, Menton] Friday. About the key of Broomies.1 I don’t think A.2 ought to have it. He would forget to lock the door or he’d leave the windows or lose the key. I don’t think he is reliable really. I have had rather a horrid shock about him. Hes got the family complex. When he wrote me all that about taking less money & so on Brett was giving him £50 a year and paying for all his colours etc. So be cautious with him – will you? Brett has, in fact, completely adopted him and I don’t come in at all. That I don’t mind, but I do mind his plea of poverty. Its a trifle too familiar. Ive an idea you feel rather sentimental about him & may take him out & pay for him and all that kind of thing. Thats why I warn you. I must say I loathe money but its the lack of it I hate most. If Father would settle £500 a year on me – but what nonsense! All the same Sorapure haunts me.3 I cant write to him or ask him a thing. It does seem preposterous that J. could not pay that. The serpent in the kitchen has taken to gardening.4 I hear her raking & watering now (8. AM.) The kitchen is as usual. She rakes the heads off anything in her way, too. The other Marie has been very good, lately, or so it appears. This one is going to Nice on Monday for the day ‘pour chercher le clef de mon appartement.’5 I wish shed be drowned there.

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Friday (later). I haven’t heard from you today. Again I have forgotten your letter for Broomies. Here it is. Bouchage came today & my neck was again tapped. But it was no go. He was not very satisfactory or helpful, I must say. I think he is tired of the patient for the moment. He has exhausted his not v. rich resources. But he did say most definitely that I cant stay here later than May. Positively not. This means, therefore, finding another place for four months at least. I should like to try Switzerland. Its not really fashionable & there are doctors there. Peira Cava, par exemple is no good.6 I couldn’t bear hotels for so long & I don’t imagine there is any medical man there. I feel Switzerland might be much the best place. Would you go & look at it for me? I mean – when you come back. Would you, as soon as possible, go off there & look for a v. small chalet? I shall write Marie Dahlerup to send me a list of places near Geneva.7 And perhaps there is a bureau – I am sure there is in London where you can get information. Do try & find one. The Swiss Consulate would put you on its tracks, wouldn’t it? You see there is no time to be lost. Here’s March over. Therell be nothing left if we leave it any longer. I had hoped, in a way, only not really, to stay off and on here until the end of July but its definitely out of the question. And I shant come back here until the end of September. I have a vague idea Ive seen advertised a Swiss Informations Bureau but I can’t be certain. What about going to Switzerland from – No, you have a return ticket & besides one cant talk out such important plans from afar. I think thats all. Im sorry your little neffy is ill with malaria.8 How unfair for a child to have fever. The weather has quite changed this last week. Spring has really ‘set in’ as they say. The air is different & now at night one hears, not one moustique,9 but a regular tuning up. I wish I could change too. Perhaps Switzerland will do the trick. In spite of what Bouchage says to the contrary I have a perpetual suspicion that this place is a bad place. Lovely, and dear, in a way, but bad. And it has caused these glands. For they are now plural – another having been discovered at the apex of the right lung, pressing on the bronchial tube. GOOD. I believe it may be all the fault of this relaxing climate. At any rate the climate is never helpful. You have to do all your own bracing, as it were. It clings round your neck. So help me to get to Switzerland soon, will you? And always we must behave as though J. were a ‘visitor’. Not a person to consult, or to expect from or to count on. If he comes along he comes and thats all. Fare well. Katherine. Notes 1. ‘Broomies’ was the nickname for JMM’s recently purchased cottage in Chailey, East Sussex, close to Lewes and Newhaven.

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2. ‘A’ refers to JMM’s younger brother Arthur (see above, p. 97). He was then studying art at the Slade and being encouraged by Brett. 3. Health costs were beginning to represent a constant daily worry for KM. She was expecting a bill from Dr Bouchage and still had outstanding debts to pay off to her London doctor, Victor Sorapure. 4. Once again, here and in the lines below, KM is recounting her woes over her two maids, both called Marie. 5. (Fr.): To fetch the key to my flat. 6. (Fr.): For example. Peïra-Cava is a town in the foothills of the Alps going north from Menton and Nice. It was also at the time a minor ski resort, fashionable amongst artists and actors. 7. See Introduction, p. 521. KM’s address book suggests that Dahlerup was at that time staying at the Pension Coupier in Geneva. See CW4, p. 457. 8. Baker’s nephew, Roger. 9. (Fr.): Mosquito.

[20 March 1921] [BL] [Villa Isola Bella, Garavan, Menton] Sunday. D.I. Your telegram about Wingley came late last night.1 It was very thrilling. I long to know how he was found, and even more, if possible, what was the meeting like between Athy and him. I envy you seeing that. I hope you really saw it and can tell me what happened. It is a great triumph to have found him. But now the question is – what to do with them? If we were not leaving for Switzerland I wouldn’t hesitate. But all these train journeys – arriving at hotels, and so on? Would it be torture for cats? I feel the cats’ first need is a settled home; a home that never changeth. And I know that is just what I am not going to have. At the same time the idea that they should be destroyed is horrible! . . You see, just suppose you and I hear, when we are in Switzerland, of another place & decide to try it. Or decide to make a sea voyage – Or . . . . . so much is possible. We couldn’t ever leave the cats with Jack, & to take cats where they are not wanted is cruelty. I confess I don’t see a way out. If Richard were older Id suggest asking him to mind them. Id better leave it like this. If when you have thought it over you decide it would be an unhappy life for them or impractical for you – have them destroyed. Elizabeth Bibesco has shown signs of life again.2 A letter yesterday begging him to resist Katherine. ‘You have withstood her so gallantly so far how can you give way now’. And ‘you swore nothing on earth should ever come between us’. From the letter I feel they are wonderfully suited and I hope he will go on with the affair. He wants to. ‘How can I exist without your literary advice’, she asks. That is a very

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fascinating question. I shall write to the silly little creature & tell her I have no desire to come between them only she must not make love to him while he is living with me, because that is undignified. He’ll never break off these affairs, tho’, and I dont see why he should. I wish hed take one on really seriously – and leave me. Every day I long more to be alone. My life is the same. I get up at about 11. Go downstairs until 2. Come up & lie on my bed until five when I get back into it again. So I am infinitely worse than when I left England. There’s no comparison. I wish I could consult Sorapure. Its all a great bother. I ‘note’ what you say about your Thursday letter. I’ll destroy it. I find it possible to speak to you today. I am not in despair about my health. But I must make every effort to get it better soon – very soon. You see Jack ‘accepts’ it; it even suits him that I should be so subdued & helpless. And it is deadly to know he NEVER tries to help. But I was not born an invalid and I want to get well – I long for – Do you understand? I feel every day must be the last day of such a life – but I have now felt that for years. Ida – let us both try. Will you? Bouchage has failed. Help me to escape! Later. Your Wednesday letter has come re the furniture. I’d take what they will offer. Perhaps £8 is rather too little, tho. I have decided to give up this villa for good & to really try Switzerland. I shall try & find that man Spahlinger & see if his treatment suits me.3 Jack goes to England in the first week in May. I have arranged with him not to return abroad, at any rate until the winter. But to spend the summer in the English country, with a bicycle. It would be impossible to have him in Switzerland while one was ‘looking round’ & deciding. I can imagine it too well. He is v. willing not to come. So we’ll burn our French boats & go off together. I wish you could get Spahlingers address or an address where the treatment is followed. But how can you? I don’t know . . . I must now make a real effort to make money for this. Somehow, it must be done. Take things easy – & look after yourself. I hope the little boy is better. Yours Katherine. Notes 1. Wingley, one of KM’s beloved cats and the brother of Athenaeum (‘Athy’), had gone missing, creating a domestic panic. KM had been looking for homes for the cats, having realised the practical difficulties of keeping them while moving herself so often. 2. Elizabeth Bibesco (1897–1945) was an aspiring writer who had her first publishing success later that year, and who was also a keen patron of the arts.

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The daughter of the former British Prime Minister, Herbert Asquith, and his wife, Margot Tennant, and wife of the Romanian diplomat Prince Antoine Bibesco, she was also a vivacious socialite and had become involved in a flirtatious liaison with JMM. KM’s letters to her feature later in this volume (pp. 326–8). 3. See KM’s next letter for her description of the Spahlinger treatment for tuberculosis.

[21 March 1921] [BL] [Villa Isola Bella, Garavan, Menton] Important letter explaining my telegram. Please read it carefully. Some time ago I read in the paper of the results of the SPALINGER treatment – a vaccine treatment – for advanced cases of tuberculosis. An English doctor – Doctor Leonard Williams had applied it himself with excellent results.1 I think Doctor Leonard Williams is a Harley Street man. I am under the impression, also, that he is connected with The French Hospital. It further stated that this treatment was being given in Switzerland and France, and it implied that Spalinger was in Geneva. Doctor Bouchage knows Williams personally. I am sending Jack to him tomorrow to ask if he will give you a letter of introduction, mentioning my case. I hope he will. If he does I want you to go and ask him where there is an institution or sanatorium in Switzerland where this treatment is followed & if I am likely to be accepted. Just go quietly and do this for me will you? I am willing to go into any sanatorium, of course. Katherine. Notes 1. Henri Spahlinger (1882–1965) was a lawyer who then trained as a bacteriologist and founded the Geneva-based Bacterio-Therapeutic Institute in 1911, specialising in vaccination research. In the immediate pre-war years he gained the backing of a number of respected doctors and clinics in Britain, including Dr Leonard Williams at the French Hospital (‘La Providence’) in Hackney, London, and Dr A. Croucher at the City of London Hospital for Chest Diseases. However, his methods were viewed with scepticism in Switzerland; the one exception was the Montana sanatorium for English patients run by Dr Théodore Stephani. After apparent successes with Spahlinger’s sera, a public campaign in Britain in the years 1918–20 sought ministerial backing to further Spahlinger’s research, and it was doubtless this publicisation that attracted KM’s attention. There were heated debates, reported in the press, in the years 1921–3 between, on the one hand, the Ministry of Health, recommending delays and better trials, and on the other, Spahlinger’s sponsors, public opinion and the British Red Cross.

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[26 March 1921] [BL] [Villa Isola Bella, Garavan, Menton] Saturday. Dear Ida After some days without news I received a kind of note from you this morning, which, from its tone, convinces me that something serious has happened.1 You tell me nothing. Please tell me the truth. As to all you say about Switzerland – it is out of all proportion. Thank you v. much. You misunderstood me. I am going to Switzerland myself in April or the middle of May. But I shall not need the kind of ‘taking’ that your letter conveys. However – all that does not matter. What does is – I wish you would tell me the truth. I know that it is impossible for you to be like this unless something has happened. For have we not both experienced what it is like to be without letters, news, to be ‘put off’ and told nothing – to be left in the dark. I am very anxious. Notes 1. Delays in the postal service often led KM to have anxieties of this sort.

[early April 1921] [BL] Isola Bella Dear Ida I have not written to you quite lately because I did not know how soon you intended leaving London. All your letters have come. Will you come here tomorrow at about 10.30? Then I shall be free & able to talk to you in the salon. The early morning, here, is as you know rather a distracting time. I am v. anxious to hear your news. In this month that you have been away I have discovered I am not nearly so in need of assistance as I thought I was. So will you, as far as possible, forget our relationship of the past four years and look on me not as a friend who needs looking after, but only as a friend? I mean that in all its implications. I hope you are not too tired after your journey. Yours Katherine.

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[c. 20 August 1921] [BL] What about money? Be frank! Chalet des Sapins Montana-s-Sierre Saturday. Dear I. Thank you for your letter. I would have written a card before but the Furies have been busy. I have been – am – ill ever since you left with what Doctor H. calls acute enteritis.1 High fever, sickness, dysentery and so on. I decided yesterday to go to the Palace2 but today makes me feel Ill try & see it through here. Jack is awfully kind in the menial offices of nurse & as I cant ‘take’ anything except a little warm milk E. cant do her worst!3 Its v. unfortunate because it holds up my work so. Just when I am busy. But cant be helped. If I were to tell you how Ive missed you even you might be satisfied! At the same time – this is serious – don’t hurry back – will you? The worst is over. Dont rush. I shall manage. Dont come before you have arranged – i.e. the 6th. At the same time dont, just to oblige a Glasspool,4 come later! I am glad you are safely there. Not a word about your new neffy – or haven’t you seen him yet. Oh, I would hate to be in England. If only, in the next two years I can make enough money to build something here. But my soul revolts at your pension-talk again. I suppose it gives you a trumpery sense of power to take on one job & pretend all the time you’re perfectly free for any other that comes along. A pity you can’t resist the female in you. You’re the greatest flirt I ever have met – a real flirt. I do wish you weren’t. With all my heart I do. It seems so utterly indecent at our age to be still all a-flutter at every possible glance. But – there – I still hope one day you will be yourself. I am not going to flirt back, Miss & say how I want you as part of my life and cant really imagine being without you. The ties that bind us! Heavens, they are so strong that youd bleed to death if you really cut away. But don’t – oh please don’t make me have to protest. Accept! Take your place! Be my friend! Don’t pay me out for what has been. But no more about this. Ive no doubt Ill get a card today saying your idea is to go out to Africa and so on and so on.5 I really mean it is detestable. E. is as mad as a sober Swiss can be. I think she puts all the thick soups into my hot water bottils. When you send papers – get a label the size of the paper! Otherwise the copy arrives torn, black & disgusting. Didn’t you know that? And I cant help the illustrator.6 It was so like Clive to ask who he was – so tactful!7 You can, in spite of my rages, read as much love as you like into this letter. You won’t read more than is there. Katherine.

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Notes 1. Dr Bernard Hudson was a tuberculosis specialist, and a former patient, working at the Montana sanatorium. 2. The Palace Hôtel, Montana. 3. ‘E’ refers to Ernestine, the maid they employed in Montana. According to Baker (p. 168), she was a kind and reliable Swiss woman of ‘very high birth’. Consequently, for special occasions, she wore ‘all the traditional family clothes with their elaborate embroideries, and looked wonderful’. 4. According to Baker’s memoirs, Miss Glasspool was an ‘English girl that she was to escort back to Montana’ (p. 171). 5. LM’s plans to visit her home town, Rhodesia and so on. 6. A series of KM’s stories were then being published in the Sphere, with illustrations by the Cumbrian artist W. Smithson Broadhead that KM hated, as she makes clear in a letter to Dorothy Brett (29 August 1921; see below, p. 402, n. 5). ‘Sixpence’, ‘An Ideal Family’ and ‘Mr and Mrs Dove’ appeared in the August issues. See CW2, pp. 300–7, 311–22. 7. Possibly Bloomsbury group member Clive Bell, with whom KM had a distant but tense relationship.

[25 August 1921] [BL] [Chalet des Sapins, Montana-sur-Sierre] Thursday. Dear Ida. Everything is in order here – and I am v. grateful. Really grateful! I wish I could make you feel it. Ernestine cant work for nuts but it doesn’t matter. She’ll learn in time. I send you 100 francs. Do you want more? Let me know. And please order for yourself from the chemist some Eastons Syrup.1 There is nothing like it for a tonic, and its effect is immediate. Hudson says its the best quick restorer you can have. You need it. Do get it. Surely you realise what health means! Its criminal folly to be careless. Don’t just shake your old bi-palatanoids at me.2 KM. Notes 1. Eastons Syrup was a well-known tonic for nervous complaints and physical weakness, containing iron phosphate, quinine and strychnine. 2. See above, p. 83, n. 1.

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29 August 1921 [BL] [Chalet des Sapins, Montana-sur-Sierre] Monday 29 viii 1921 Dear Ida, I shall destroy the other letter I have written. Perhaps Jack is right; I am a tyrant. But . . . look here. (a) Will you please either date your letters or put the day on the top. (b) Do you mind cutting out the descriptions as much as you can? That kind of yearning sentimental writing about a Virginia creeper & the small haigh voices of tainy children is more than I can stick. It makes me hang my head; it makes Jack play the mouth organ whenever we meet it in females. But I shall say no more. This is where the tyrant comes in. Its so much worse when the spelling is wrong, too. Brett is just exactly the same in this respect . . . . Its very queer . . . I don’t like any of the stuffs. Will you go to Lewis Evans Selfridge or Debenham.1 Number the patterns, Ill wire a reply. Miss Read won’t get them done, of course, but arrange with her to send them over.2 Try for ROYAL blue instead of cornflower. These are either 2 dark or 2 light. As for tartans – try for soft smoky checks on any coloured ground instead – like the red & black check we saw in Menton. You remember? Thats the kind of stuff I meant, too. They had both better be lined with v. fine silver grey viyella or cashmere, I think. And tell Miss Read to cut them on the big side so that I can wear my woolen jumpers underneath if necessary. Id rather have nothing than these ugly dull stuffs. I am a very MODERN woman. I like Life in my clothes. Its no good going to Liberty for plain colours – ever. Try & think of a picture in a French pattern book or a figure on the stage, cant you? Sorry to give you so much trouble. Id no idea it would be all so very difficult. My advice is to ‘concentrate more’ & not worry about the golden leaves so much. Fall they will! I am up. I am better and at work again. Cheer up! Katherine. Notes 1. John Lewis, D. H. Evans, Selfridges, Debenhams and Liberty were (and still are) all fashionable London department stores with large drapery and haberdashery sections. (D. H. Evans is now part of the House of Fraser group of stores.)

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2. Miss Read would appear to be a tailoress but no details of her identity have been traced.

[7 September 1921] [BL] [Chalet des Sapins, Montana-sur-Sierre] 7 IX 1921. My dear I. Its not possible to say all I wish to. Ill write it. Do you feel inclined to take this job – really?1 I mean to manage things for me as if I were a man. Its like this. I have gone to a new agent, he’s got me work which will keep me busy until Christmas at earliest. Then the Daily N. has asked me to do some special articles for them and so has the Daily Chronicle.2 All this is extra. I cant devote myself to it if I have to look after the house & my clothes and so on. Its impossible. At the same time I must do it without delay. I can pay you between £ 10 – 12 a month. But tho’ payment is important – its not the important thing. Can I rely on you? Can I ask you just simply to do what is necessary – i.e. what I should do if I hadn’t a profession? In a word – can I feel, payment apart and slavery apart and false pride apart – that you are mine? That you will accept this situation as the outcome of our friendship? Does it satisfy you? May I consider you as permanently part of the scheme & will you consider me in the same light? The truth is friendship is to me every bit as sacred and eternal as marriage. I want to know from you if you think the same. Yours ever K.M. As for my violence and so on I could explain all that, too, but it takes too long. Try and accept it, while it lasts. Notes 1. KM was beginning to define a plan in which she could employ Ida Baker in a professional capacity as a daily help. See below, pp. 157–8. 2. The Daily News and Daily Chronicle were popular broadsheets in the 1920s with a keen interest in social affairs and reform. For KM’s one contribution to the Daily News, see CW3, pp. 719–22.

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[14 February 1922] [BL] [Victoria Palace Hôtel, rue Blaise Desgoffe, Paris] 14 ii 1922 Dear Ida, I am writing to you so that you shall have a letter and because I want one from you. We have heard nothing from Mrs Maxwell about subletting.1 I think you’d better not even make enquiries until we do hear with Doctor H. on the spot to report to her. It is annoying. We shall look v. silly if she says ‘no’. . . A devil of a day here, a London fog outside the windows. Not a gleam of light. Perhaps to compensate immense meals have been served by the hotel. Whole eels with rings of potato round em, chickens in beds of rice. It doesn’t bear thinking about. My laundry came home. Deciding that if I were sick I could afford to pay for it they charged me 5 francs for my pantalons & 5 for my camisoles. I should think they would charge for my pyjamas by the leg. What grasping devils these frenchies are. And I have just spilt lashings of ink on one of their old sheets and theres no Ida to run off cheerfully to get me citric acid as if it grew in her garden. Jack is a tremendous shopper. There is a new teapot, bowls, terrine de foie gras, little brown loaf that looks as though it ought to have little brown legs to run away on. It is remarkable – more – how such a dreamy nature can care for another as he looks after me. He even brushed my hair last night. It was rather queer brushing but there it was. By the way: will you send the Mercury with my story in it to Romer W?2 And will you buy another coconut for the birds? I cant bear to think they look in vain. What has E. done with the newspapers? She has not sent on one & Jack asked her to. I suppose she has just thrown them away. Make her look after you properly. Please write and tell me how you found things and so on and what was the feeling of the place. I am longing to hear about everything. You mustn’t be so silly as to imagine because I am such a horrible creature I don’t love you. I am a kind of person under a curse, and as I don’t and can’t let others know of my curse you get it all. But if you knew how tenderly I feel about you after one of my outbreaks. You do know. I cant say ‘nice’ things to you or touch you. In fact I behave like a fiend. But ignore all that. Remember that through it all I love you and understand. That is always true. Take care of yourself, ma chere Katherine Notes 1. See above, pp. 133–4. 2. The London Mercury had published ‘The Daughters of the Late Colonel’ in May 1921 (see CW2, pp. 266–83). Romer Wilson (the pen-name of Florence Roma Muir Wilson) was a British writer with a keen interest in portraying

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the conflicts between traditional realms and post-war social realities; she was awarded the Hawthornden Prize for her The Death of Society: Conte de Fée Premier in 1921. KM had reviewed her war novel, If All These Young Men, in 1919 (see CW3, pp. 529–32). A fellow tuberculosis sufferer, Wilson died in Switzerland in 1930.

[16 February 1922] [BL] [Victoria Palace Hôtel, rue Blaise Desgoffe, Paris] 16 ii 1922 Dear Ida If the boxes are going to take such a long time (i.e. three weeks) to arrive I see no point whatever in sending them. They had far better come with you as your personal luggage even if you don’t return for a month. I can manage more or less with what I have here. And Id rather do that than pay vast sums to have my clothes sent by post. I shall send you the keys today. But don’t send the boxes. Let them wait until you are ready to leave Montana. I don’t think I care what Dr H. thinks of the climate of Paris . . . Please try and get the notepaper. Yours K.M. Everything is quite all right here. But why repeat such stupid remarks about the climate of Paris. Its hard enough to have to bear it without being told so and so doesn’t at all approve of it. What tactlessness! Dont you feel it! Please repeat to me NOT ONE word about what he says of the Manoukhin treatment. Id rather not hear. My dear Ida I open my letter to acknowledge yours. (1) Of course we must have references! It is absolutely essential for many reasons. (2) Ill post my keys tomorrow. Send as little as possible at that price (15 francs). (3) Will you try the Palace for selling skis. If you can get nothing they had better be stored as you suggest. (4) Blow the old crepe de chine jumper. I shall never wear it again. (5) No, why should Mrs M’s letter come there? (6) Why didn’t you send the D.N?1 (7) Why not give the address to the P.O. at once? Mysteries!

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It is serious about references, though. We are sub letting. The house isn’t ours even. We have to account for everything to Mrs M. What mugs we would be to find all so ‘simple and satisfactory’. Thats all. (8) Please call me KM. not K. I never feel like K. (9) Jack must have the parcel from Collins at once.2 It is proofs! Unpack parcel & send as printed matter & chuck out Jacks original copy. He only wants the printed proofs – not what is cut out of papers. Love to Wingley. Notes 1. The Daily News had published KM’s review of John Galsworthy’s latest addition to his ‘Forsythe Saga’, the novel To Let, in November 1921. See CW3, pp. 719–22. 2. JMM was proof-reading his essay collection Countries of the Mind, published later that year by Collins.

[18 February 1922] [BL] [Victoria Palace Hôtel, rue Blaise Desgoffe, Paris] Saturday Dear Ida, Can you tell me (1) what my boxes would cost to send by rail and (2) how long they will take. I have been thinking it over. It seems from your card today there is a chance the chalet may not be let as soon as we had thought. In that case I can’t do without my clothes. In fact I feel the need of them very much, so perhaps they had better come along as soon as you have the keys. Yes, that’s best. They had better be sent at once. If the chalet is not let I have been thinking what had better be done. These last few days have made me feel I don’t want any flat before May. I prefer to stay here. Its simpler and it would be cheaper in the end of that I am certain. Here one can tell what all costs to a ½d. là-bas1 there is food, servant, concierge and all the unforeseen expenses . . . It is not very gay here but its clean and one is independent; one soon gets into a routine and is free to work. Its a good hotel and the people are decent. But if the chalet remains unlet it will mean a loss of about £50 and that is horrible. In fact I can’t easily meet it. Also we shall have to keep it open and warmed and cared for. Here is a suggestion. What about you staying there until May, keeping Ernestine, and taking in a married couple as pensionnaires? At not less than 32 francs a day the pair. Does the idea revolt you? As far as I can make out one would then pay for the heating, lighting, E’s wages, your keep, and youd make a profit of £10 a month (that is allowing £1 a day for all expenses, i.e. food, heat, light, laundry). Id put them in the top double bedroom of course and

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ask 35 francs. Tell me what you think of this idea. It would be a terrific help if it could be done easily. No help at all, in fact a horror if you don’t care about the idea or if it sounds difficult. It is indeed only a suggestion an in case to be answered as such – to be taken ‘lightly’. As I write I am conscious I exaggerate a bit and that is not fair to you. If I have to drop that money on the chalet well I must drop it, that’s all. But I want to tell you its a little bit hard to do so. The first fortnight here I spent in all £50. And I cant earn to keep up with it. This ‘plan’ would save your fares down and up again. There is that to consider. It would also give you your £8 a month clear and perhaps a little over. I want you to believe I am not just making use of you. I am treating you as my friend, asking you to share my present minuses in the hope I can ask you to share my future pluses. Talk it over with me – will you? Yours ever Katherine If my MS will not go into the box in Esher, will you take it out of Esher & pack it separately at the bottom of the box.2 It would go then, I think. I must just ‘risk’ losing it. But don’t let go of my shawl.3 [Written on the back of the envelope] grey flowered silk off blue skirt. Would you make it into ‘top’ for me? Lower neck etc. ditto blue charmeuse sans lining.4 Notes 1. (Fr.): Over there. 2. The context suggests that ‘Esher’ is the name KM uses to identify one of her travelling trunks. 3. KM’s treasured ‘Spanish’ shawl, ornately embroidered in Chinese silk, was a gift from Ottoline Morrell in early 1918; it is now conserved at the ATL. For KM’s own description of it, see her letter below (p. 133) to Annie Beauchamp, 18 January 1918. 4. A ‘charmeuse’ was a contemporary French term for heavy silk fabric, shiny on one side and matt on the other.

[20 February 1922] [BL] [Victoria Palace Hôtel, rue Blaise Desgoffe, Paris] Monday. Dear Ida I am sorry you have had a cold. But what a good thing to have it away from me so that you could indulge yourself a little and be looked

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after. I expect you will grow healthy up there again with good air and no surprises for your nerves. I hope so. Jack is posting the keys this afternoon. Send the boxes! I am longing for my clothes. It is too warm here for this heavy underclothing. He has gone today to try and wrench away from the post the parcel you sent from Montana. Devilish difficulties! And I cant understand why. I had clothes sent from England & so on without a murmur. But here I must go in person to Heaven knows where between 9 – 11 only and so on. However, I refuse. We shall see what happens. Tell anyone who asks my book is to be ‘out’ on Thursday the 23rd.1 I dont want to lose one single purchaser. Its no secret, you know. Ive no idea what the paper cost. I would ask 25 francs for it. But there again I have not seen how much remains – haven’t been to the drawer for months. Its a glorious spring day here – quite warm. By the way your Mme de Maris is a fraud, I think.2 What utter rubbish about moving her daughter 10 yards if the daughter suffers so from the noise and discomfort of that other house! I am afraid she tried always to talk big to you. I wonder if that champagne was real at Christmas or lemonade with savon fouette.3 And – why don’t you learn to ski? Jack wonders, too. What a chance! Is the cat a pretty cat again? And my birds – are they there? K.M. Notes 1. KM’s The Garden Party and Other Stories was about to be published by Constable & Co. 2. No further information about the identity of Madame de Maris has been traced. 3. (Fr.): Frothy (whipped) soap.

[21 February 1922] [BL] [Victoria Palace Hôtel, rue Blaise Desgoffe, Paris] 21 ii 1922 Dear Ida I had a letter from you today written on Monday. I hope you have heard from me by now. The keys were sent off at long last today; I had to send them all as I didn’t know which was which. What horrible weather you are having. Here it is fine and not fine dull, silvery – not bad.

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About the chauffage.1 Isn’t it best to use electricity during the morning & part afternoon & to heat the chalet as from about 4 oclock onwards through the night. I can’t help feeling it would be cheaper and of course you must get in more coal, and keep not too big a fire. Warm you must be. Would you post Jacks M.S.S. in a registered envelope? What a man he is! The extraordinary thing is there will always be someone to find these things for him & to look after him. He is born like that. Many men are and many women are not. Mrs Maxwell has sent more bills to pay i.e. for rates, taxes, servage and so on. I have never in my life heard of tenants who take a furnished house paying these things. I think her bills are a try on. I shall copy out the card she sent and ask you to take it to your friend Mr Nantermot and ask him if it is the custom for these things to be paid by us or by her. Make him say it is her job, but please be sure to tell me as we must write to the old lady. The blue frock has been excavated. I have it on. Its a comfort to have it but I feel a bumpkin all the same. I am v. glad little Wingley is calmer. Nothing short of that amount of snow would keep him at home. How is your cold? I wish I had some money for you. Do you want some? Tell me. We are quite settled down in this hotel and might have been here for months. There are 3 spelling mistakes in your letter, Miss. One I must tell you. To lose a thing French ‘perdre’ has only one O; to loose a thing to make it free has two o’s. You never get this right. Its such a common mistake that you ought to avoid it. Chaddie always makes it. You and Woodifield seem to be having quite a courtship.2 Its a pity – but Ive said that before – – KM. Notes 1. (Fr.): Heating. 2. According to Baker, Woodifield was a patient in the Palace Clinic in Montana (p. 193). It is also, of course, the name of KM’s protagonist in her celebrated short story, ‘The Fly’ (1922). CW2, pp. 476–80.

[22 February 1922] [BL] [Victoria Palace Hôtel, rue Blaise Desgoffe, Paris] Wednesday D.I. Please do not on any account send me any more clothes by letter post. Another notification has come this morning for a second parcel &

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it means all the trouble of going off to the bureau again. But apart from that I never imagined you would send me anything by letter post. It is far and away too expensive, in fact its a most shocking waste of money. I thought you intended to send whatever you did send by parcel post. Now I understand at last why you were asked 15 francs . . . Yours K.M.

[24 February 1922] [BL] [Victoria Palace Hôtel, rue Blaise Desgoffe, Paris] Friday. Dear Ida Your Tuesday and Thursday letters have come. From them it seems you are waiting to hear from me still about the boxes. But your wire said you were sending them by G.V.1 unless you heard. I naturally kept quiet, which meant SEND. Do please get them off at once! Anyway – Grande – Petit – as long as they are here. We had better have all the bills, too, and settle them up. Yes we have decided to stay here and have entirely given up the idea of a flat. As a matter of fact I have begun to like being here in this hotel. It suits very well and the people are nice. I can work here, and am more independent than I have been for a long time. Even if the chalet were let I would not change. No, don’t turn my nightgowns into pyjamas. They’d better stay as they are, thanks awfully. Its the first I have heard of E’s ‘character’.2 But I will send her one. You must think over the pension idea, won’t you? I do not want you to do it if it is in the smallest degree distasteful to you. I feel I rather forced your hand and that was bad. My whole idea was to tide ‘us’ (you and me) over until May. Once this treatment is over I shall be able to give you some more money. I mean enough for you to live on. Until then its a little difficult. It seemed to me, it still seems, the best way out of a difficulty all round. I have just heard from Hudson too, and little Doctor Watts;3 they must be paid as I am no longer there. I am thankful the coconut is back, and to hear that Wingley is turning into a respectable cat again.4 Why does he go out! I suppose, as you put Keatings on him you have been bitten again.5 Have you? Tell me. It would clear the mystery up. I have had no sign of a bite. What a little devil he is. He brings them back in a matchbox and lets them loose. Keep the chaufFage going. See that second F? Its big, on purpose. I gather from the way you speak you have been very ill indeed. Get

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better now & keep well. Eat and sleep. Sleep is the more important of the two because it helps ones mind equally with ones body. Yours ever K.M. If there is enough of any of the wools in the house to make you a jumper give it to your Aylesburys – won’t you?6 Its such an opportunity to get a new good one. The tan thin wool would make stockings if it wasn’t thick enough for a jumper. Take any of the wool you want. I can always replace it. Its a pity you cant knit yourself a complet little cap with a pom-pom and all. But you might make something for your little neffy, surely, out of some of it. Later I have broken open this letter to say after two mornings spent at the Post Office we have managed to get second parcel & found it contained 1 belt, 1 pr stockings. If it wasn’t comic it would be too much of a good thing. Its a sight to make the wings themselves look down. There was a letter from you, too. I don’t believe in your shivering & shaking because of my barks. That is fantastic. If you don’t yet know the dog I keep you never will. . . Glad to know – very glad about the birds. Why should it be extravagance. Buy another coconut if you like. I shall look at the bills & reply in the next letter. I am ‘off’ bills for today. My boxes – mythical, tantalising boxes, I ‘note’ are packed to perfection. But oh – why don’t they come. You torment me – show them to me, & whip them away again. I freeze, I burn for my kimono, my Anne coat.7 Tell Wingley to wriggle & stamp until you take them to the post.8 Roger sounds very nice. All the more reason you should knit him something. I don’t care for John.9 I feel he was ill on purpose too, to get his parents attention away from R. That is natural enough, however. I don’t want your old money if you do keep a pension. The whole point is – it should pay for the house & E. and then pay you. Thats enough of letter writing. My hand shakes because I have been writing very fast. Its not paralysis or the family wasting. The lord be with you. K.M. Notes 1. (Fr.): Grande vitesse – GV, Petite vitesse – PV: high speed and low speed. These were taxes paid on goods sent by the Swiss postal services, depending on the route taken and the speed of the delivery. The GV service was the faster, more expensive option, the PV service the slower, economy rate. 2. (Fr): Personal profile. The ‘caractère’ was a slightly dated, seventeenthcentury term to evoke a person’s overall psychological make-up, including

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their personal morals, their mindset and their physical appearance. An employer or future employer would ask for a ‘caractère’ – as they might a letter of reference today. Dr A. M. Watts was one of the tuberculosis specialists working at the Montana sanatorium, and undertaking research into vaccination serums. The birds coming to feed on the coconut were clearly appealing to Wingley’s hunting instinct. Keating’s produced a range of household disinfectants and medicines; these included Keating’s powder, designed to kill household insects and vermin. The two Aylesbury sisters were Irish girls from Dublin who, for a while, shared the chalet with Ida Baker. They were involved in the collection of clothes for the destitute. See below, p. 123. A gift from KM’s close friend, the American artist Anne Estelle Rice (1877– 1959), married to Raymond Drey. In Walter de la Mare’s fantasy quest narrative The Three Mullar-Mulgars (1910), ‘Wiggle and stamp’ is the name given to a dance ceremony with magical properties performed by one of the monkey tribes. The story tells of three monkeys who set off on an adventure across Africa to find their father, after the death of their mother. John was the younger brother of Ida’s nephew, Roger.

[28 February 1922] [BL] [Victoria Palace Hôtel, rue Blaise Desgoffe, Paris] Dear Ida If I were you I would give up all idea of letting the chalet & if you are inclined to try the other scheme try it bang off. I feel sure the chalet will not let. Isn’t the other scheme best any way? I am sure you are being too careful about money. Theres a false carefulness in your letters. I .˙.1 send you £2. 2. 0 which I don’t want to hear of again. Don’t put it down on a list! Spend it and don’t tell me what you have bought. Also – are you having enough food? I mean by that decent meals – not bread or pudding. It is essential! You may shirk feeding properly just to torment yourself and me. Try not to. Remember what illness is like. You really have seen enough of it to impress even you. When you said you thought I might consider it ‘wicked extravagance’ to buy another coconut for the birds you were being unfair, you know. That was a make-up out of your tormented past. Thank goodness I don’t ‘recognise’ the remark as mine but neither do you really. Try not to give way to these feelings. ... Have just had your Saturday letter. I am glad it is proved about the fleas. What a young monkey he is! Yes, stay there for a bit if you can stick it; I am sure it is the best plan. I smiled at your asking about the distressed gentlewomen. I am only waiting for my boxes to come to fall on them & weed out. But I have lost my poor distressed gentlewomen. Dear knows where I can send my bundil. I thought of asking the Daily Mail. One thing

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is certain I must get rid of everything that I do not use. I cant go on carrying things all over the world that I never wear. Away with them all! But the danger is that if I do find a charity to take them I shall only be left with what I stand up in. Thats my mood today. A clean sweep of everything! What a shame about Ernestine. Who was the woman. How dreadful. Poor good creature; I hope she has recovered. Please give my compliments to anyone – to the trees if you like. About the blue charmeuse top – Quite! I agree absolutely! Most satisfactory! Quite! (That is not ingratitude. But my eyes can hardly read those directions. Take out, fill in, cut, leave, baste. I feel gizzy as Campbell used to say.)2 If you can stick it up there until the thaw and early spring I think you may be even a little bit happy. Yes, all goes well here – very well. The weather is lovely, but so warm. Those cursed long sleeved combinations! One feels like linen and ribbon bows. I must work. Yours ever K.M. Would you send me a Swiss stamp for 40? Notes 1. Shorthand for ‘therefore’. 2. Gordon and Beatrice Campbell, later Lord and Lady Glenavy, had been close friends of JMM and KM since the Rhythm years in the early 1910s. Gordon Campbell (1885–1963) was a lawyer, and his wife Beatrice (1883–1970) a professional artist and writer. Concluding a chapter of her memoirs that looks back tenderly on her friendship with KM, Campbell notes, Gordon had a way of talking about people which delighted Katherine and Murry. It was a mixture of fantasy and mockery but done without malice, they called it ‘Campbelling’. ‘To Campbell’ became almost an art; they all tried it, but its finer points were so completely an Irish form of humour that they finally left it to Gordon to indulge in alone. (Glenavy, p. 98)

[2 March 1922] [BL] [Victoria Palace Hôtel, rue Blaise Desgoffe, Paris] Send this cutting back – will you. I thought you might care to see the kind of thing they are saying. My dear Ida Your Saturday – Sunday letter gives me the impression that you are unhappy and restless. Is that so? Tell me! What do you do now.

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I suppose I hope and trust the ‘settling’ of the chalet is over. All is in order? And Ernestine capable of doing all that is to be done. Do you see your girls?1 Do you find people to talk to? How do you spend your days. I should be very interested to know. Dont focus on Wingley, tho’ he is a nice cat. You have books in plenty and wool. But books & wool don’t make life. I don’t want you to feel stranded up there – cast away. ‘At any rate’ here is March. If you feel you can’t stick it just take someone until the chaffauge is no longer necessary and then shut all up. If it must be so – it must. All is well here. I have lovely marigolds on my table. Flowers are cheap now. Reviews of my new book are pouring in.2 They are extremely favourable so far – much more so than Bliss. This is indeed surprising. I have not sent you a copy because I have not got one to send. The second ‘batch’ has never turned up. I had 2 letters today from Father enclosing letters from my cousins who live down the Sounds3 – all about hay and crops as high as the fences and perfect tirades about the spots on butterflies’ wings and the colour of foxgloves. One of these letters was from a woman who has nine children – my uncle Stanleys wife.4 The other from a woman who has about £150 a year all told to live on with her husband. Such people are the salt of the earth. The longer I live the more I realise that any life but a life remote, self-sufficient, simple, eager, and joyful, is not worth living. Cities are ashes. And people know it. They want the other thing; they feel their own ‘poverty’ in their several ways. It is sad. However the only way to help others is to live a good life oneself. Its a roundabout way but I see no other. But these Beauchamps down the Sounds are right. They are inheriting the earth. How I wish I could drive off in a little spring cart & have tea and scones with them & hear about Norman and Betty and Jess and the rest. I hope your May doesn’t go in for town life and trying to be a social success in Bulawayo.5 I hope Roger gets a real chance. Youll have to gallop off there one day and look after him if you love him. Dont you feel that? This is just a little chat with you. Now I must work. I have masses to do. Keep well! Yours ever K.M. ‘Industrials’6 continue to inform me that your shares are 30/6. If its a trouble to find that book say so at once. Its just Jack’s dreaminess – typical. But just send a card saying it cant be found. Nothing is simpler. Notes 1. Despite KM’s anxiety for Baker’s well-being in the potentially lonely Montana flat in early spring, Baker did seem to have a relatively stable circle of friends, going by her Memories of LM, one of the few surviving testimonies

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of their friendship seen from her point of view. The ‘girls’ were the Aylesbury sisters. In spring 1922, glowing reviews of The Garden Party and Other Stories featured in the British and American press, including Rebecca West’s review in the New Statesman and Conrad Aiken’s review in the Freeman. Here KM is referring to the family of her great-uncle, Cradock Beauchamp, who arrived in Picton, New Zealand, in 1862, following his brother Arthur (KM’s paternal grandfather), and who had established himself and his family on 200 acres of bush at Anakiwa, in Queen Charlotte Sound, a tiny corner of the north of New Zealand’s South Island. See Kimber 2016, p. 8. Stanley Beauchamp (1872–1959) was Harold Beauchamp’s younger brother. Ida’s sister May had gone to live in Bulawayo in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). ‘Industrials’ were life insurance policies that had been common in the late industrial era; the term was also used to denote investments in industrial revenue bonds.

[3 March 1922] [BL] [Victoria Palace Hôtel, rue Blaise Desgoffe, Paris] Friday Dear Ida Your Ash Wednesday letter is rather ashy. I confess it makes me feel impatient. Will you in reply to this speak out. Say exactly what you want. I can’t tell. I must know. (1) We can afford £2.10 to £3 a week quite well. I would greatly prefer the chalet not to be left. If it costs a little more it would be far better than leaving the keys with anyone. (2) No. While you are there please keep Ernestine. That is final. So for heaven’s sake don’t go on about it. Rubbish! I must say it all sounds dreadfully ineffectual and vague & foolish. If a pensionnaire did ‘turn up’ as you say what about your servant? You must have one. In any case theres no need for E. to go. And no earthly need to work miracles at keeping down the chauffage. Ugh! I think its extremely ungracious about the cheque. However, if you feel like that you must act like that. Its not good or right or splendid. If you had said: ‘How nice to get the cheque. I shall have a small spree on the spot’ I should have been delighted and warmed. As it is I dont feel at all warmed! Please take things a little more lightly. There is no need to go on ‘worrying’. This is what happens when you burrow undergound & suggest and think and so on. Why? Its so unworthy! Please just say out what you mean. You know what I think now and its final. I cant write every day about it.

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And I am sorry I can’t send the reviews. I must keep them at present in case I need them for America. I shall not throw them away however & later on if you care to see them I will send them to you then. If I get duplicates you shall have them. But cheer up. Yours ever KM. Did you know Captain Bernhard at the Palace is dead of influenza?1 Notes 1. Captain Arthur Bernard was a resident at the Palace Clinic in Montana. See KM’s letter to Elizabeth von Arnim, 6 March 1922, and p. 50, n. 4.

[7 March 1922] [BL] [Victoria Palace Hôtel, rue Blaise Desgoffe, Paris] Told you your shares are now 32/6. Tuesday. Warm, thundery weather. Is your red dress a success? My dear Ida Thats the kind of letter for me! Now keep that in mind as your ideal, ‘focus’ on it and Ill never be cross again. I cannot tell you how relieved I am to know what you are doing and that you are happy doing it. Thats the important thing. At four oclock this morning I had decided to write to you again and really tell you what I thought of you for keeping me for so long without any detailed news. Nothing but chauffage and money! When I wanted to know what you were doing, thinking, feeling. However, this is a noble effort and so I say no more Betsy.1 Alas! for the Distressed Gentlewomen. How can I get this vast parcil across? I shall have to write to the English clergyman in Paris if I can find his address somehow. But there is so much that they (the poor) would call fancy dress – little jackets and so on. As to woven combinations (the very height of fancy dress) I seem to have collected the things or they have bred. They are my horror and my box was stuffed with them like peas in a pod. Away they must go. All my things looked rather as though they had been washed through the customs – they are very much exhausted. But even a change is such a relief that I fully expect a low hiss of admiration when I go to lunch today in different shoes. I suppose your Miss Yates would not know of a worthy charity in Paris that would call for a bundle?2 Is it worth asking?

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Yes, large towns are the absolute devil! Oh, how glad I shall be to get away. The difficulty to work is really affecting. One gets no distraction. By distraction I mean the sky and the grass and trees & little birds. I absolutely pine for the country (not English). I could kiss the grass. Its true there is a jampot & a jug in my room full of small daffodils. But exquisite though they are they keep on making me wonder where they grow. Its wickedness to live among stones and chimneys. I keep on thinking of lying under a tree in some well hidden place (alive not dead.) But this is not a complaint. It may have the ghost of a moral in it, a ‘dont settle in a town whatever you do’. But I don’t think you will. Do let me see Olive’s letter.4 I hope your 3 girls turn up & not the family.5 I wish you could stay up there for a bit if you like it. It seems to me right for the moment. You felt the place suited you spiritually when you just got to know it & that was the right feeling, I believe. I wonder if the Palace would be tolerable? Another small barbed thrust ‘I saw you in the Palace mood’. . . . I don’t care. I do think it might be very interesting. Hudson is an extraordinary decent man – really he is. I have had quite remarkably simple nice letters from him here. He may be stupid but all doctors are that. And I always rather took to that matron. However – its a long way off. Wingley I presume would be a kind of Red Cross scout. Which reminds me. After I had unpacked the boxes I had all the symptoms of terrific bites. They have gone off this morning. But I was certain last night that Wing had carefully put in a flea for a surprise for me. Have you ever found one of the biters? Are they fleas or what? Yes, I was glad to hear from Pa. I began of course to plan a visit to N.Z. with Jack – to start this autumn, late, to return at the end of March. I wish I could work it. I should like it more than anything in the world. It would be the compensation prize of prizes. I dream of driving out to Karori in an open cab & showing Jack the Karori school.5 But I’m afraid it will stay a dream. Father will be over here in June. My ‘success’ makes a difference to him, naturally. I feel you don’t want to jump to Rhodesia just now. Well, there’s no hurry is there. You can wait & be godmother to Roger’s first. But try to keep in touch with him whatever you do. May is – all she is – I don’t know – but you can give him a great deal that she has no idea of & never will. I see her John is going to be a Vera’s John.6 He too is ugly and beyond words second fiddle to Andrew. Its very hard on the children. But warm blooded women have a passion for their first born, and always have had. I have had letters from Elizabeth, Chaddie Waterlow about the book which are a great joy.7 Letters from strangers, too, and ‘my’ undergraduate (pages from him) & Clement Shorter the ‘Sphere’ man who asked for a portrait for publication and has ordered 12 stories to be ready in July. This is no less than staggering. I enclose the Times review. Please return it.

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Jack, who read my card to you, said off his own bat hed order you a copy to be sent direct from London. He also said off his own bat ‘Of course she won’t believe it was I who did it.’ Well, it was. Thank you for the grey satin top with all its little blanket stitches. They make me smile. My writing case looks excessively sumptuous here. It reminds me of the Ida I love. Not because of what it cost. No. But the ‘impulse’ – the gesture – what you call the ‘perfect thing’. It carries me back back to Isola Bella. Oh, memory! And back I go to the Casetta8 and the olive tree before and cotton vine along the twisted fence and the red roses and big starry-eyed daisies. Menton seems to hold years of life. How hard it is to escape from places. However carefully one goes they hold you – you leave little bits of yourself fluttering on the fences – little rags and shreds of your very life. But a queer thing is – this is personal – however painful a thing has been when I look back it is no longer painful, or no more painful than music is. In fact it is just that. Now when I hear the sea at the Casetta its unbearably beautiful. I must begin working. Ill never be a Wealthy Woman. I write like this because I write at such a pace. I cant manage it otherwise. Here is some money. Be well! Be happy! Eat! Sleep! Yours ever K.M. Notes 1. For KM’s playful use of the name ‘Betsy’, see above, p. 76, n. 2. 2. See above, pp. 116–17. 3. Miss Yates appears to be directly involved in charity collections for clothes. In the immediate post-war years, a number of charitable institutions and relief societies were formed, collecting clothes to be distributed among destitute families, war veterans and refugees. There were also collections for ‘distressed gentlewomen’, which could include women who no longer had their income from wartime employment, as well as war widows. 4. Baker tells of a new friendship with ‘a young Swiss girl, Susie de Perrot, a daughter of the Suchard cholate makers, who was at Montana looking after a younger sister who had tuberculosis’. Susie had suggested that ‘she and her sister and two other Irish friends could all come and live with me at the chalet and share expenses’ (Baker, p. 182). 5. KM and her sisters attended Karori School, a few miles from Wellington, during their childhood, vividly evoked in one of her most celebrated stories, ‘The Doll’s House’ (CW2, pp. 414–21). See also Kimber 2016, pp. 54–7. 6. The second son of KM’s sister Vera and her husband, James Mackintosh Bell (Mack), born in 1914, was also called John. 7. Charlotte Waterlow (1859–1944, née Beauchamp), also known as Chaddie (like KM’s own sister), was Elizabeth von Arnim’s oldest sister. 8. Casetta Deerholm was the name of a house that KM rented in 1919 in Ospedaletti, on the Ligurian coast in Italy, very close to the border with France.

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[11 March 1922] [BL] [Victoria Palace Hôtel, rue Blaise Desgoffe, Paris] Dont send Js letter back. Dear Ida Thank you for the letters. I return them in case you want them back. Olive sounds very happy – a proper little wife.1 She might have married a young Pilgrim Father in 1624. ‘Diana’ is rather a painful name, isn’t it – awful name in fact when there are so many simple ones. But I expect by the time she gets to her youngest she’ll be thankful to take plain Anne or Lucy. Her pride in the 2 stitches amused me, too. She might have been having them once a year for the past 10 years. However, she sounds content, and how much better than wheeling the pram to Selfridges! John Suttons letter was ‘nice’, too. Honest, decent – letter of a plain man. Wherever you go children seem to crop up like mushrooms. Your old age will be black with children. If you marry you will have three at a time to serve you right for having waited so long. Why is this? About the clothes. I am afraid my bundle would not do for a jumble sale. Old combinations, knickers etc could never be displayed before the curate. You cant have a jumble sale without a curate. If the A. girls really do want a large unwieldy parcel about the size of a large pillow they are thrice welcome.2 But warn them – really warn them! And wouldn’t they perhaps bring that blue slip & post it in Paris? It would get here more quickly. My shawl mustn’t go through the post unless necessary. Its too valuable. Perhaps later on someone whom you know would deliver it here . . . The slip is just what I want, thank you. I wear it outside with my blue serge marine coat and skirt. Tell me: Does E.3 still want her character? I must send it. Is she happy? Do you need money? Please reply to these questions. Yes, I sent you a card the day before I wrote to you last about the keys of my boxes. I suppose it went astray. I feel letters must have gone astray from that end, too. But perhaps not. This letter which I send from J.4 speaks for itself! I had a terrific adventure with her dipilatory. It certainly does remove hair. It would remove anything. I think it is gunpowder. However I shall try again. I had an afternoon when I thought I was disfigured for life and should have to paint my whole face navy blue to match my upper lip. Its awful stuff to get off. What a curious, secret life one does lead to be sure! I heard from Elizabeth yesterday that the weather was wretched. She leaves for London today. You ask me about my health and so on. Ida, I find it so hard to write about such things. It disgusts me to talk about my health – it seems

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unnatural always & always will. Well – let – me see – I am in the middle of the ‘grande réaction’ which comes after the 5th seance.5 So for one fortnight I shall be more ill in every way, as I am. I get up for lunch but thats all. Everything is very satisfactory, in every way. It could not be better. We seem to have rediscovered all our old shops – Fergusson’s bread shop, Conté for petits fours – and so on. Jack prides himself very much on his shopping and on his tea. I must say we have excellent tea – the real old fashioned kind. The weather is dark, thundery, with squalls of wind & rain, then its sunny again. Very big raindrops, like stars. Pigeons scolding sweetly on the roofs, and someone playing Chopin beyond words. That is March here. So glad you see poor Woodifield. Im afraid he is really very ill, and I know he is frightened. How are you off for shoes? What are you wearing on your feet? Are there nails in your boots? Why not? Be well. Be happy. K.M. Notes 1. No information has survived giving an indication of Olive’s identity, or the others mentioned in the first two paragraphs of this letter. They would appear to be Baker’s Rhodesian relatives or friends. 2. The Aylesbury sisters – see above, p. 116, n. 6. 3. Ernestine, the maid at the Chalet des Sapins, would appear to have asked for a character reference (known simply as a ‘character’). See above, pp. 115 and 116. 4. KM’s youngest sister, Jeanne. 5. The ‘Grande réaction’ (Fr.: Strong reaction) was an expected stage in the Manoukhin treatment of tuberculosis by X-ray radiation. See above, p. 56, n. 2.

[13 March 1922] [BL] [Victoria Palace Hôtel, rue Blaise Desgoffe, Paris] 13 iii 1922 Dear Ida These cuttings must go to America next week.1 So will you have a squiz and send them back quickly? They are just a job-lot. But if you lose them Miss there will be the d – l to pay. I hear from Constable the book is well in its 2nd edition which is not bad as there is a ‘warehouse’ strike on & supplies are difficult to get. I am still waiting for mine. Reviews & letters are all I get. Elizabeth writes that it is snowing hard. She was just ‘off’ in a cow sledge and had to spend a night in Sierre, as the funicular had more or

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less promised not to run the day after – her real going-away day. Did I tell you Sir H. Lunn asked her and me to go to Muren next summer as his guests & lecture there with readings from our Works.2 Its a picture isn’t it? Elizabeth says ‘the idea of you & me going over those beetling mountains hand in hand with our little books under our little arms made me laugh for a week.’ So it did me. I had decided to call myself The Very Rev. Katherine Mansfield & E.3 was to be The Dean. The list of lecturers was thick with Bishops; I felt we would be too dreadfully out in the Swiss cold otherwise . . . I also saw At the Harmonium Mrs Arnold Lunn – and Lunns Tours chasing us while we were there in immense yellow cherry-bangs like the one in Baugey.4 Its a marvellous world. Chaddie wrote yesterday she had been gathering daffodils in the fields all the afternoon. It is a marvellous year for wild daffodils & pussy willows. I ‘note’ also that the rooks are building, the elm trees are in flower, theres a remarkable show of white crocuses in Kensington Garden, the bird-cherry is out in the hedges, the fields are bright with colts foot, the male & female catkins are out, violets are in bloom, primroses, and bluebells are pushing up – All that was in the paper last week – distributed over the week. As far as I can see the one good of newspapers is that kind of news. I wish they published a morning & evening paper devoted exclusively to such things. Really well run, well staffed, with good photographs, with no war news except the wars of the roses. How much more thrilling to read of the marriage of a Queen B. rather than a Princess M. I did happen to see one other thing which pleased me very much. In China the kettles are made with four very thin pieces of iron fastened with an air space between to the nearly flat bottom of the kettle. So that when the water heats the bubbles of steam through these slits cause the kettle to sing not like English kettles sing, but a plaintive, sweet faraway song. No house in China is complete without such a kettle.5 I hope its fine again with you. It’s a glorious day here – still, sunny, warm – cats sun – the basking kind. There are some very wicked bad little children in this hotel – one about 2, one about 4. They throw their bread on the floor, eat with both ends of the fork & stand up on their chairs when they want to drink. The head waiter is extremely nice to them & writes them out each a separate bill. They are lambs. Be well. Be happy. K.M. Notes 1. KM was sending press reviews to the States, in anticipation of the American (Knopf) edition of The Garden Party. 2. See KM’s letter to Elizabeth von Arnim above, p. 50, n. 3. Mürren is a mountain resort in the Swiss Alps, where the travel company Lunn’s had begun organising winter and summer holidays.

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3. The ‘E’ here refers to Elizabeth, not the maid Ernestine who also features as ‘E’ in many of KM’s letters in the same months. 4. A playful derivation of ‘charabanc’ or ‘char à banc’, literally a bench on a cart, referring to the horse-drawn open carriages first used in France as a popular, fashionable form of open-air transport and also for horse races. 5. The Daily News dated 4 March does indeed include a short column describing Chinese kettles (p. 17); exhibitions of industrial art, organised annually in London since 1920, had sparked an interest in the aesthetics of new household equipment.

[14 March 1922] [BL] [Victoria Palace Hôtel, rue Blaise Desgoffe, Paris] Please give this character to E. with mes mille remerciements et mes meilleurs souvenirs.1 Better put it in an envelope if you will. Tuesday. Dear Ida I have just received your Sunday letter. Don’t apologize for writing what you feel. Why should you? It only means I have to cry ‘de rien de rien’2 each time and that’s silly. Heavens! What a journey it is to take one anywhere! I prove that to myself every day. I am always more or less marking out the distance, examining the map, and then failing to carry out my plans. Its rather nice to think of oneself as a sailor bending over the map of ones mind and deciding where to go and how to go. The great thing to remember is we can do whatever we wish to do provided our wish is strong enough. But the tremendous effort needed one doesn’t always want to make it, does one? And all that cutting down the jungle and bush clearing even after one has landed anywhere – its tiring. Yes, I agree. But what else can be done? What’s the alternative? What do you want most to do? That’s what I have to keep asking myself, in face of difficulties. But you are saying ‘what has this to do with our relationship?’ This. We cannot live together in any sense until we – I – are am stronger. It seems to me it is my job, my fault, and not yours. I am simply unworthy of friendship, as I am. I take advantage of you, demand perfection of you, crush you. And the devil of it is that even though that is true as I write it I want to laugh. A deeper self looks at you and a deeper self in you looks back and we laugh and say ‘what nonsense’. Its very queer, Jones, isn’t it? Can you believe – that looking back upon our times in

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Italy and Garavan3 – even the afternoon when you were raking the garden and I was proving our purely evil effect on each other I keep on remembering that it was a lovely day or that the button daisies were ducks. How nice, how very nice it would be to bowl along in one of those open cabs with the wind ruffling off the sea & a smell of roasting coffee & fresh lemons from the land. Oh dear! Oh dear! And do you remember standing at your window in your kimono one morning at five oclock while I sat up in bed behind the mosquito curtains and talked of decomposition? No, we can’t simply live apart for all our lives from now on. We shall have to visit at least. How can we live? What is the best plan? The future is so wrapt in mystery. Until I am well its foolishness for us to be together. That we both know. If this treatment ‘succeeds’ I shall go to Germany for the summer, then to Elizabeth at Randogne and then come back here in September or October. If all goes well I shall then go back to Germany for the winter or Austria or Italy. Then – I have not the remotest idea . . . Jack wants to take a little house in the English country in Sussex and put all our furniture in it and so on and have a married couple in charge. I feel it is my duty to spend 6 months of every year there with him. The other six October to March I shall spend in either the South of France or Italy and I hope and imagine that if he has his house, Arthur, his books, his married couple, a little car, and friends coming down, Jack will not want to come with me. They will be my free months. That’s all I can see. Now my idea is that we should spend the foreign months together, you and I. You know by that I mean they will be my working months but apart from work walks – tea in a forest, cold chicken on a rock by the sea and so on we could ‘share’. Likewise concerts in public gardens, sea bathing in Corsica and any other pretty little kick-shaws we have a mind to.4 But here is a brick. Money. If I can manage to pay for those months can you get a job for the others? That’s the point. And of course the ‘arrangement’ is only in case you care to, are not in Rhodesia, are not married or living with some man. Tell me what you think. If you say ‘what the dickens could I do for six months?’ I reply ‘why not the Universal Aunts.5 Why not try them? See what kind of jobs they have . . .’ But don’t fly off and cry ‘this is very kind of you to arrange for and dispense my life like this merci pour la langouste.’6 Im not doing it. Im only talking in the dark – trying to keep you – yes, I will own to that, and trying to make things easy, happy, good, delightful. For we must be happy. No failures. No makeshifts. Blissful happiness. Anything else is somehow disgusting. I must make those six months with Jack as perfect as I can make them and the other six ought to be fearfully nice. But I know any form of life for Jack you & me is impossible & wrong. (There is all the : if this treatment does not succeed but I pass it by.)7 Now the immediate future for you. It seems you are not going to get P.Gs.8 Can you stay there until its time for the chalet to be shut? Do you want to? And then – what do you want to do? Will you go to the

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Palace this winter? But this is all far away and uncertain. And I must stop writing and begin to work. The great point is – if you can – think of happiness, work for happiness, look for it. I should like to ask you, every day between sleeping and waking, i.e. before you go to sleep & before you get up to practise this. Breathe in saying I am and out saying hap-py. Your subconscious, Miss will then take note of that fact and act according. However miserable you will be that has a quite definite counter-action. I suggest you teach Wing on the same principle to say ‘I like – stopping at home . . .’ Goodbye for now. You say don’t write letters and you lead me a terrific dance writing them. Thus it will always be – Yours ever K.M. Notes 1. (Fr.): One thousand ‘thank-yous’ and my best wishes. 2. (Fr.): Think nothing of it. 3. KM is here referring to her sojourns with Baker in the Casetta Deerholm, Ospedaletti, and the Villa Isola Bella, Garavan, Menton. 4. A ‘kickshaw’ is a word of French derivation (from the expression ‘quelque chose’, meaning ‘little something’. In the idiom of the time, it denoted special, rather decorative meals, or fancy trimmings for clothes, or light-hearted or fanciful pastimes. 5. ‘Universal Aunts’ was an employment agency that opened in 1921 in Sloane Street, London, offering work to ‘ladies of irreproachable background’ taking care of ‘children, chaperonage, home furnishings, shopping for the colonies and research’, as an advertisement in The Times, published three times a week, announced. 6. (Fr.): Thank you for the crayfish. 7. However obscure in terms of meaning, KM’s writing here is very clear: ‘all the :’. She and Ida appear to have adopted a coded form of communication that Ida would understand – perhaps in case KM’s health were to deteriorate instead of improve, or if she were to die. 8. As exchanges in the weeks to come confirm, the most likely meaning of the abbreviation is ‘Paying Guests’.

[15 March 1922] [BL] [Victoria Palace Hôtel, rue Blaise Desgoffe, Paris] x Latest. Final Decision x Yes, please ask them to call for parcel. Wednesday. Touching photographs of Wingley. They look as though they were taken on the deck of the steamer on the way to Rhodesia. Prophetic, perhaps . . . Would you photograph the chalet & a room or two if the

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weather is fine & you are not busy! I don’t think I shall have a parcel for the A’s. Many thanks all the same for their offer. Most grateful if they bring shawl. Please ask for me – anytime after mid-day. Re my letter yesterday. Did I make it clear that I should not be ‘free’ until this autumn twelve month, at earliest, i.e. 1923 . . . I think you left a page of your letter out. Yours ever K.M. Just tell the A’s I have made other arrangements about the clothes in the meantime.

[16 March 1922] [BL] [Victoria Palace Hôtel, rue Blaise Desgoffe, Paris] Thursday. Dear Ida Did you pack my File – a cardboard, concertina arrangement with a cloth strap round it. I had thought it was in ‘Esher’. Jack says it was on my shelves. Please tell me by return of post whether you packed it. If not please send it on at once. And if you can find the small green Tchekhovs make them into a parcel & send them to me will you?1 I need them badly. K.M. Notes 1. Anton Chekhov (1860–1904) had always been one of KM’s favourite authors, but her passion was boosted in the last year of her life, when she reread his letters and many short stories, and also wrote about him, and almost to him, in her diaries. Many reasons account for her reawakened passion, among which her developing (epistolary) friendship with William Gerhardi, a renewed intimacy with Koteliansky, her identification with Chekhov’s own failing health on account of tuberculosis, and her Russian encounters in Paris, via Manoukhin.

[17 March 1922] [BL] [Victoria Palace Hôtel, rue Blaise Desgoffe, Paris] Thanks for letters today. I am amazed that you are still waiting to hear from England. Why not fix the other arrangement immediately. And

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with regard to that make it a business arrangement. Dont go on the principle you must give them all that you gave me. The point is to save money. As it is we have to pay out £4 a week for the rent and we cant afford any more. Are you sure about the butcher not being included. Please look again. It seems impossible that we missed out so large an item. It came over me today that Switzerland is still costing us nearly £7 a week. It is a great deal. K.M

[21 March 1922] [BL] [Victoria Palace Hôtel, rue Blaise Desgoffe, Paris] – Im glad my book has turned up. Please note the little b. Otherwise I feel youre talking about the Bible. – – How is Woodifield? I have a bad presentiment about him. – – Isn’t my name in the file? In large letters? = Is Wingley behaving? Tuesday Dear Ida, I have been waiting for an answer to my last letter, I think, before I wrote to you. It happened on the night I sent it I had a peculiarly odious and typical dream about ‘us’, and though that did not change my feelings, au fond,1 it made me feel that perhaps I had been premature in speaking so definitely about the future. You felt that too? Rather you were wiser than I and simply did not look so far. I think that is right. I think its best to leave the earth alone for a bit, i.e. plant nothing and try to stop cultivating anything. Let it rest as it is and let what is there either grow or die down or be scattered or flourish. By the earth I mean the basis the foundation of our relationship – the stable thing. Let it rest! Depend on me, though even when I don’t write. Don’t get fancies, will you? I am just the same whatever is happening. In the host of indefinite things there is one that is definite. There is nothing to be done for me at present. And whenever we do meet again let it be in freedom don’t do things for me! I have a horror of personal lack of freedom. I am a secretive creature to my last bones. Whether that is compatible with asking you to make me some pantalons2 in April I don’t quite know. Brett asked me what Id like for April – Easter and

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I said some fine linen. But if you feel it is not part of our compact for you to sew for me from afar I must go about with a paper ham frill on each leg instead. Its a glorious day here – cold again but sunny – fresh – the day, when one wants to be living in rather a small seaport and watching a large French sailing vessel come riding into the harbour. The climate of Paris is very remarkable. The air is really good and its nearly always dry – not like that disgusting London. Try not to gravitate towards London. I have a real horror of it – I feel its a bad dangerous place – a plague spot and nothing would get me there. I think I hate everything about it. By the way tell me if you’d like to go to Rhodesia any time. I could get the money if you tell me early enough. What would a 2nd class fare cost? And you’d want £20 for clothes before you went. I hope your pensionnaires turn out well. It seems devilish little to pay – less than the Valpini even.3 They are in clover in one of the best chalets in Montana for 13.50 and I suppose you will give up every moment of the day & ½ the night to caring for them. I can’t see how you can do it at the price – but you know best. I must get up. These last days have been very busy. So many letters to write & so much business to attend to. Ive sold the Scandinavian rights of the book & the Continental & North African of this new one – and it all means agreements and so on – cursed business!4 However, according to plan this is my last really bad week. After this next Friday I begin to go up the hill again. This has been that second bump on the switch back. I feel more at home in this hotel than I ever did in Switzerland. One blessed thing about Jack is he does ignore one completely – in a good way – in a way that is necessary if one is a writer. He is there and not there. Give me warning of the Aylesburys won’t you? Their parcel grows & grows. I mentally put on another brand for the burning each day. I shall be left stripped to my last leaves. Oh, how I am longing to be in the green country though – with a block and a pen! Oh, for that German village in its nest of green and the hay meadows and the lilac bushes. I shall leave here the first moment I can! Goodbye for now. Forgive an odd letter. Im in bed still & rather vague. Love from Katherine. K.M. Every letter I forget about the small electric iron. Can you send it? Jack has decided to do his and my small washing & burns to do some fine ironing.5

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Notes 1. (Fr.): Deep down. 2. (Fr.): Bloomers, knickerbockers. 3. Beyond the context of this letter, implying that the Valpini is a cheap hotel in Montana, no other information has been traced. 4. KM is referring to Bliss and Other Stories (1920) and The Garden Party and Other Stories (1922). 5. Postscript written in the left-hand margin, rising vertically up the page.

[22 March 1922] [BL] [Victoria Palace Hôtel, rue Blaise Desgoffe, Paris] X. No, I return your letter to Mrs M. And you must write direct to her and tell her the real truth at once. You have made this muddle, by considering these horrid Belgians, you must try & put it right. I cant explain to Mrs M. The affair of sub letting until June had nothing to do with Mrs M. It was my affair purely. & unsuitable tenants cannot be considered. You do understand that the Belgians are to be refused at once and finally on my behalf. Wednesday. Dear Ida I have received your letter & the one for Mrs M.1 I shallX send it on.2 I am simply astonished that you should consider such a woman as our tenant. My dear Ida! I asked you to stay up there in our interests because I did not trust the people to know what kind of tenant would be suitable. You say to me a ‘horrid coarse dirty looking woman who might leave the house in a disgusting state’. To Mrs M. ‘I didn’t much like her.’ But consider what a horrible breach of faith & even decency that is with Mrs M! What are you thinking of? As to my not being responsible – nonsense! Of course I am by any honourable canon responsible . . . ‘Not even gentlefolk’ & knowing that little woman you entertain the idea of letting them have it. I feel too bitterly ashamed to write about it any more. I would not have believed it. Either your letter to me is a greatly exaggerated account or yours to Mrs M. is a shamefully understated one. –––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– You have NOTHING to do with letting the house for a year, or selling it. Your one affair was to let it to suitable tenants until June 27th. Thats your whole concern. You are not there as Mrs Ms agent. Nothing else is any concern of yours.

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The Swiss affair is simply maddening. What have they to do with us? We are not responsible after June. Why worry about them & whatever they may intend. Its simply confusing. Again I say if you can get P.Gs leave it at that. If you cant get them you’d better leave the place as soon as the chauffage can be left safely rather than make these muddles. K.M. I have asked Jack to write this for me. We are responsible for the chalet till June 27. We want to find a suitable sub-tenant until then; with what happens after we have nothing whatever to do. You are acting in our interests, not in Mrs Maxwell’s. You ought to have said to the de Perrots that the house was, as far as you knew, to let only till June 27. For anything after that they must address Mrs Maxwell directly. You should have said the same thing to the Belgians. It is not in our interest that the chalet should be let from June 1. It does not profit us in the least, but only Mrs Maxwell. We are morally & legally responsible for the character of any tenant who takes the chalet up to June 27. You should have told the de Perrots that we had no interest in letting the house from June 1 – June 27 and that naturally in our own interests we should prefer a tenant who would take it now, or very soon. That would have been quite clear & straightforward and would have avoided all these unnecessary complications in which we have no interest, and for which, unless you are very careful, you will engage our responsibility. K.M. Notes 1. The muddles and misunderstandings about ‘the Belgians’ becomes clear over the course of KM’s letters to Baker; the latter does not mention the affair in her memoirs, nor does KM comment on it in her other correspondence. Baker appears to have been too zealous in her determination ‘to do something on my own with the chalet to make it pay for itself and so save Katherine the rent’ (Baker, p. 181), and thus accepted a Belgian family as tenants, while admitting they appeared totally unsuitable and unreliable, necessitating further correspondence with the owner of the chalet, Mrs Maxwell. 2. The ‘X’ refers back to the note added at the top of her letter.

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[25 March 1922] [BL] [Victoria Palace Hôtel, rue Blaise Desgoffe, Paris] Of course Jack entirely agrees with you that the one thing is to let. He was all for your Belgians, and in spite of all you said wanted them taken on at once. £10 would cover damage. This makes it very nice for me as I have ‘dropped’ £50 according to him! Saturday. Dear Ida Your letter has come. But first, Ive just made £20 out of the blue so tell me how money is – send me the bills that remain & Ill let you have a cheque. Do – please! I felt after I had sent you my letter that perhaps I had not explained enough. I was fearfully busy and rather indisposed. Im glad you have given the Belgians – will give them – their congé.1 No, its not that I think you foolish. I still absolutely and entirely disagree that the behaviour of such a woman as you described & said even E. didn’t think she would work for could be put right in a few days. That may be because you don’t think imaginatively of what she could do to the linen, the carpets, the few kitchen things, Mrs M’s china – and so on and so on. On your showing any tenant is a possible tenant – ‘all can be put right’. But that really is not true. Its childish, surely. You know a dirty coarse untidy woman can ruin a house in a week – or you ought to know such things by now. It makes me feel despairing that I have to write these things to you. Do you think I like writing them? I hate doing so with all my heart! Must I go on and say a dirty carpet is a damaged carpet, a broken breakfast set can be replaced – true – but at what a cost! Oh, its all infinitely boring and unpleasant. And don’t you see that if Mrs M. knows you are there, she will accept the woman as much because you have seen her and not really objected as because of her references. No, I still think as I did! And I still feel from your letter that I am beating the air as you alone can make me feel. Its so exasperating that I cant get past it – I can only go on – then I think of you, imagining you saying ‘But if the expense is so dreadful to you surely it doesn’t matter much what the Belgians do. You won’t be paying any more.’ And again I read in this letter, ‘untidy rather dirty quite uncared for’ – only that and nothing more. Thats quite enough for me, however. Id rather pay till the last day of June than act as if I were morally irresponsible. This doesn’t mean that I am not intensely anxious to be rid of the expense. Please understand that – I am.

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Ill write again in a day or two and say no more about it. My fatal habit of not being able to forget and ignore as I should is still a habit. By the way why don’t you use the writing paper in the house? There’s heaps of it. Why not use it? Dont worry about your young P.Gs! I didn’t realise your young people were so young. What a horrid man Muralt2 must be. But was one a boy? And was he attached to the girl? How mysterious! In that case perhaps Muralt was right. A boy and a girl alone in a chalet doesn’t sound a good idea at all. In a first floor apartment Rue de Presle, Avenue Suffren, a woman who has just taken a flat there has been found dead in the kitchen with her head cut off.2 The magistrate said it was an endroit3 (the Ave) where people went to find a place for the night. A nice escape that! Well, let this blow over. Do be moderate in your desires to let the chalet! Is it clear now that the tenants must be gentlefolk – quiet, clean, decent? No others will do. Yours ever K.M. Notes 1. (Fr.): Given notice to leave, dismissed. 2. As the context later makes clear (pp. 136–7), Muralt was a doctor then in Montana. However, the surviving records from the clinic make no reference to a Dr Muralt working there; he may have been on a temporary appointment. There was, though, a well-established von Muralt family based in Switzerland with a family tradition as medical practitioners going back generations. Ludwig von Muralt, who died in 1917, had been a pioneering researcher into tuberculosis treatment who worked in the Davos sanatorium. 3. The rue de Presles (spelt Presle in 1922), intersecting with the avenue Suffren, is in the 15th arrondissement of Paris, close to the Eiffel Tower. 4. (Fr.): Area.

[28 March 1922] [BL] [Victoria Palace Hôtel, rue Blaise Desgoffe, Paris] Dear Ida I had a letter from you today. Its winter here, too – devilish weather. Am prepared for the As – with a whopping great parcel. Glad to know your Plans are settling again. Thats an obscure way of saying it. When and How do you send the Tchekhovs. File received but no books. Yours ever K.M.

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[29 March 1922] [BL] [Victoria Palace Hôtel, rue Blaise Desgoffe, Paris] Wednesday. Dear Ida Your As have just been and gone. I thought they were nice girls. What skin hair teeth the young one has! Youth itself is beauty – and health. Theres no other beauty I feel after feasting on that smiling creature in her white felt hat and big coat. They delivered the parcel. I was v. thrilled by the oatmeal bags & the honourable wounds in the stockings were miracles of fine surgery. I feel much richer. I shall be able to change my stockings once a fortnight now instead of once a month. And where did the knickers come from? Such good quality too. The blue slip looks very pretty & nice. I’ll put it on when winter goes again. The girls babbled away about that strange person called Miss Baker. She’d been with them to the station, sat on their boxes, packed them, got her P.Gs and was ever so pleased to have them. They thought she might stay up there; she liked it so. And spring had come & gone & they’d had to give away ½ pots of jam and whole coat hangers at the last. It was a dear little flat – it was indeed! But the mosquitoes in Venice were awful. One saw nothing but woke a fright. And the Mystery was the girl with us wasn’t touched. Picnics in the summer were also very nice but Edith wasn’t there then. And it seemed from her letters she had a little second hand shop. If you had a jumble sale there was such a rush from miles around you had to have the police. Very fond of Wingley. And the balcony was lovely, too. Doctor Muralt had even asked what her age was. Well – not personally, but he had asked. There was no room the first night but Miss Yates sent them to a quiet little hotel and it was cheap at all events . . . I could go on with this indefinitely. I spent weeks & weeks with them in 20 minutes. They had just had tea thank you very much. And they didn’t care in the least about carrying the big parcel. Paris wasn’t Dublin, after all. Yours ever K.M.

[2 April 1922] [BL] [Victoria Palace Hôtel, rue Blaise Desgoffe, Paris] Sunday My dear Ida Your full house may be amusing but where are you sleeping? I hope the de Perrot girls do not stay. Five is too many for comfort. I cannot see where they all are. Besides feeding five and so on must be a bore in

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that little house. Dont forget stuffed nouilles and plats1 like that, they go farthest and are easy to make. The weather is still devilish here. Friday was fine but now it pours again. However one cant get over the fact that its April. Once it is fine it will be very very fine. And all early spring plants and so on are extremely hardy. It is not they who come to harm. Bitterest cold, east wind, and storm won’t hurt violets or hawthorn buds or daffodils or primroses. They seem to have some special resisting power in these months. Even half open leaves can stand snow. Or so Beach Thomas tells me – and he’s a very fine honest naturalist, Tomlinson’s great friend.2 Its a relief to know this. If you want to know how I am my grande réaction will go on for another week. Then Manoukhin says peu et peu3 I shall begin to get better. My book is in a 3rd large edition which is more important, & the reviews still roll in – still the same – and letters. Do you remember Mrs Belloc Lowndes?4 Wrote me at Baugy? Shes coming over in May for ‘ten days talk’. So are Chaddie & Jeanne, so is Brett, Anne, Drey, Richard.5 The Schiffs are here. But I wrote saying I couldn’t see them. I shan’t see the others either if I can escape in time. I have a horror of people at present. As it is one never has enough time to oneself. If you can manage without the money – good! For my teeth are beginning to give me gyp. I shall have to start with Heppwell in May.6 And if I don’t get my hair washed next week I shall commit suicide. There is a good shop in the rue de Rennes that specialises in henna. I shall go there and come out shining like a chestnut, I hope. I am very insincere in my horror of people for the Russians here, writers like Bunin, Kuprin, Merejkoski and his wife and so on I am longing to meet.7 Manoukhin has asked me to his flat to see them. It will be really thrilling. But it’s the English and French ‘crowd’, always the same, so ashy, so gossipy, so tiring that I don’t want to see. Horrible ingratitude I know! Forgive a dull letter. I ought to be working. But I wanted you to know I was thinking of you. All goes very well here. Have you really time to sew? And have you patterns of my knickers and nightgowns? In case Brett sends the stuff? Yours ever, KM, Love to little Wing – the sweet boy! [Written on envelope]: Is the P.O. still paid for sending on our letters? Notes 1. (Fr.): Stuffed noodles and dishes like that. 2. William Beach Thomas (1868–1957) was a British author and journalist who had been acclaimed in France and Great Britain for his press reports

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during the war as an accredited correspondent. His life-long passion for the rural world was reflected in a number of pre- and post-war publications, and later fed into popular columns in the Observer and Spectator, which began in 1923. Major Henry Tomlinson (1873–1958) had also been a war journalist posted in France, before working for the Nation. He became a close friend of both JMM and KM, as a note in her diary in early 1922 confirms (CW4, p. 406). See also KM’s glowing review of his memoirs published in 1919 in the Athenaeum (CW3, pp. 450–2). (Fr.): Little by little. See KM’s correspondence with Marie-Adelaide Belloc Lowndes below. The planned guests for the month of May were KM’s sisters Charlotte and Jeanne, plus Dorothy Brett, the artist Anne Estelle Drey and her husband, the art and theatre critic Raymond Drey, and JMM’s brother Richard. No dentist called Heppwell has been traced. However, there was a Doctor Abraham-Lander Hipwell registered as a dentist in Paris in 1922. Koteliansky had first introduced KM to the writings of Ivan Bunin, the future Nobel laureate for literature, whose acclaimed short story, ‘The Gentleman from San Francisco’, had been published just three months earlier in the Dial, translated by Koteliansky and D. H. Lawrence. Bunin emigrated to Paris in 1920, where an émigré circle soon formed around him, which included the writers Aleksander Kuprin, Dmitry Merezhkovsky and Zinaida Gippius, wife of Merezhkovsky. KM finally got to meet them in May but, expecting detailed literary discussions, especially about Chekhov, was terribly disappointed by their more mundane preoccupations. She gives details of their meeting in her letters to Koteliansky (see Volume 2).

[3 April 1922] [BL] [Postcard] [Victoria Palace Hôtel, rue Blaise Desgoffe, Paris] Dear Ida Will you find one of ‘my photographs’ of Jack (preferably the one which has a merry look – not the one reading) and, having enclosed a card with ‘A photograph of Mr Middleton Murry’1 on it send it to The Editor The Bookman St Pauls House Warwick Square E.C.4 Thanks most awfully. Please register it. The Tchekhovs have turned up. Love from K.M.

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Notes 1. KM was asking for the photograph because the May issue of the literary monthly review, The Bookman, was going to publish an interview with JMM discussing his most recent novel, The Things We Are, alongside the photo.

[5 April 1922] [BL] [Victoria Palace Hôtel, rue Blaise Desgoffe, Paris] Dear Ida It is no use writing to you when you are too tired to reply! And please do not write to me after 10.30 o’clock p.m. You know what I think about your incredible folly in sitting up after midnight. Its more; it really will ruin your mind and memory and understanding. But you only do it to attract attention to yourself. Even to attract yourself to yourself. Nobody admires it. I send my Mrs M’s letter as I daresay you have not made a note of the address. No, I shall not write to her. Why should I? She has not written directly to me. Yours ever K.M. Wednesday. This letter is colder than I mean it to be. I have read all your letter. I understand what you mean. Look upon it, our time apart, as something that never is permanent. Its just like a long interval between the acts. It had to be. The irony is I should never get well with you who wish me well more than any other being could. But you were always ready to help and the consequence was I didn’t have to make those efforts which tire one and at the same time drag one back into the normal world. I don’t know – its difficult and mysterious. But having tried the one way and found it a failure one must try the other way. We gave the one way a good run nearly four years – over four years in fact. About where my writings appear – really they are not worth digging out. I’ll send you a couple of stories. But I’ll have to ask for them back as I have no other copies. Sorry for the blots.1 Notes 1. This postscript on a separate sheet, was inserted after the 30 April letter in the BL manuscript collection but placed after the letter on 21 March by Baker. However, KM’s ink and paper (blue, first used on 2 April), suggest a slightly later dating.

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[8 April 1922] [BL] [Victoria Palace Hôtel, rue Blaise Desgoffe, Paris] Saturday Dear Ida, You have missed my point. Where do you sleep? When do you go to bed? These two important questions you hedge away from. If you omit to put the time why the devil should that put my mind at rest. It doesn’t in the least. I still hear midnight strike through the pages. You are a peculiarly maddening character to have to do with. (1) Now I will answer your letter. I enclose the note you asked for in case Dr M. continues his annoyance. Would you like Jack to write to him direct, very briefly, merely asking him to ‘discontinue his interference with our sub-tenants?’ Reply to this. Jack can write a very cool letter, very on his dignity, if you’d like one. (2) What about giving Wingley for always to the de Perrots. If they would take him would it not be a good plan? As regards Jack and me we shall not be settled anywhere for over a year. I hate to think of the cat being pulled about – from pillar to post. He’d be much happier with kind friends – the dear. I’d rather not have him than have him after an interval of suffering. I think it would be in the long run kinder to destroy him than to let him be with strangers. Jack’s Mother would be perfectly gentle with him, but Jack’s Father might kick him. Or so I feel. Will you decide this? Dove that he is I feel I have said goodbye to him, and that it would be very cruel and sentimental to deprive him of a good home if the de Perrots would like him –– When you wrote Thursday with icicles, it was warm, really hot here and sunny. I had a most extraordinary afternoon. Got ready to go to Cox’s & lost my cheque book.1 Spent an hour with Jack turning the whole room into a haystack. No sign. Went off to Coxs to stop all cheques. I had to wait to explain to see my entire account, to go to the intelligence department where my name ‘Mansfield’ was cried like a vegetable & finally escaping prison by a hair we went off to the Bon Marché to buy a very simple light hat.2 Have you been there? Its one of the wonders of the world. Having fought to the lift we got out on to an open gallery with about 5,000 hats on it, 10,000 dressing gowns, and so on. But the gallery looked over the entire ground floor & the whole of the ground floor was taken up with untrimmed ‘shapes’ & literally hundreds & hundreds of women – nearly all in black – wandered from table to table turning & turning over these shapes. They were like some terrible insect swarm – not ants more like blowflies. Free balloons were given away that day & fat elderly women with little eyes & savage faces carried them. It was exactly like being in hell. The hats were loathsome. Jack as usual on such occasions would not speak to [word

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erased] and became furious. If I said ‘Do you like that?’ he replied ‘No. Horribly vulgar!’ If I timidly stretched out a hand he hissed ‘Good God!’ in my ear. We got out of the place at last. Then while waiting for a taxi a woman tried to commit suicide by flinging herself at his umbrella with which he was prodding the pavement. He was violently angry. I ran away to where a man was selling Easter chickens that cheeped when you blew a whistle. The taxi came & Jack had by this time lost me. Finally both of us raging we got in, drove to the hotel, got out, got in again, and drove to another hatshop. ‘Get this damned thing over!’ was Jack’s excuse. There a quiet shop we both knew. We found only about 25 people and hats flying through the air. One woman put on another woman’s old dead hat with the pins in it & walked off to pay the cashier. The owner dashed after her with a face of fury & snatched it off her astonished head. My one stipulation was I didn’t mind what kind of hat I bought but it must have no feathers. And I finally decided on a little fir cone with 2 whole birds on it! So now you know what city life is like. Pour changer un peu.3 The little tight chestnut buds that Jack stole from the Luxembourg Gardens have – in warm water and salt – swelled, or burst of themselves & turned into the most exquisite small dancing green stars. Too lovely for words. I went to the clinique yesterday. Since I came here I have gained 5 pounds; we begin dining downstairs on Monday. I simply do not dare to think this is going to be a success – or rather I cant write it. Dont mention it. It makes me so terribly – frightened. But so far all has happened exactly as Manoukhin said. The reaction is over. From now on I am supposed to get ‘better & better’. I’ll tell you as much as I can. I am beginning to go for short walks. But I get terribly tired and breathless. Thats natural however: its my legs that get tired because its so long since I have used them. However . . . in another 2 weeks Ill know much more. Yours ever Katherine. P.S. re. chocolate shop & tea room.4 I believe theres an awful lot to be made out of a good tea room at the seaside, with morning buns after bathing and so on. But Id make it really very original, very simple – with a real style of its own. The great point is to be ‘noted’ for certain specialities & to make them as good as possible. That means ever so much less work and it’s far more interesting. If you go in for chocolates, have the very latest thing in chocolates – and so on. As you realise I could write a book on such a scheme. But when you are in the mood tell me your plans. Your shares dropped to 29/3 and are at 30/6 at present. The revolution in Johannesburg had a very bad effect on all African trade for the time.5

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Excuse writing. I am in the devil of a hurry as usual, with a story to send off today. But I thought you’d better have a chat with me or you’d be beginning to make me feel guilty. KM. [On a separate sheet] Victoria Palace Hotel 6/8 Rue Blaise Desgoffe Rue de Rennes Paris March 25th 1922 Dear Miss Baker, I am delighted to let the little chalet to you, Madamoiselle de Perrot and your friends for four pounds (£4) a week, for as long as you may wish to have it. I hope you will be comfortable. It is a charming convenient little home. Yours very sincerely Katherine Middleton Murry.6 I understand the arrangement is to date as from March 27th Notes 1. Cox & Co. was a deposit bank, whose Paris agency was in the 2nd arrondissement. 2. ‘Au Bon Marché’ had been the very first of Paris’s fashionable department stores; the vast elegant premises were, and still are, in the 7th arrondissement. It was particularly noted for its women’s clothing. 3. (Fr.): To ring the changes. 4. Baker explains the origins of the teashop plan in her memoirs: ‘Thus it was that I let my friend Susie Suchard talk me into starting a tearoom with her in England since she needed someone of English nationality to make her venture possible’ (p. 189). Susie Suchard, also referred to in Baker and KM’s correspondence as Susie de Perrot, was the daughter of the Swiss chocolate magnate Philippe Suchard. 5. The Rand Rebellion, or Rand Revolution, started as a white miners’ strike in the Witwatersrand region of South Africa in December 1921, after a slump in gold prices, but by March it had escalated into armed uprisings in a number of cities where interracial and class tensions were rife. It was violently crushed by the Prime Minister, Jan Smuts. 6. This letter, enclosed in the first, has been antedated, presumably to help protect Ida Baker from being questioned about the legitimacy of her subletting the Chalet des Sapins.

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[19 April 1922] [BL] [Victoria Palace Hôtel, rue Blaise Desgoffe, Paris] 19 IV 1922 Dear Ida I was v. glad to hear from you today. I had begun to wonder how things were going. When you write again tell me – will you? about money. What is the situation. We have had awful weather lately, with the exception of Vendredi Saint.1 I have not been well for the past ten days as a result, I expect, and work has accumulated to such an extent that Im afraid Im no good as an advisor to you about your T House. If not Brighton, I’d try Eastbourne long before Sheringham (which is a most horrid place). But I have heard of a place called Frinton, very chic – Winston Churchills, Gladys Cooper, Sir Gerald du Maurier & Dora Morley and family.2 I know nothing more about it but I should imagine it would be more your affair. About a name. I don’t think the title is at all a good idea. People with ozone appetites don’t care a button if its Lady Diana Manners3 or plain Jane who satisfies them. In any case I doubt if it ever pays to pander to snobs. But you’ll bring this off much better on your own, you know. When Im in England Ill come and admire. Don’t bother to send me flowers. Ill look at them from afar. What a beautiful feast Easter is. There is not another to compare with it. Its very ancient, of course. The Christians only adopted it. In fact it dates back as far as anything does. There is a deep mystery in it. Forgive a short note. Ill write again. But just at present Im hard at it with rather a difficult story. Give my love to that spoilt little cat. Yours ever K.M. Notes 1. (Fr.): Good Friday. 2. The word ‘Frinton’ is also printed in capital letters in the left-hand margin of the writing paper. The towns cited as potentially suitable for the teashop reflect a certain vagueness in the project: Brighton and Eastbourne are in Sussex, Sheringham in Norfolk and Frinton in Essex. As KM’s list of celebrities known to frequent Frinton implies, the coastal resort had become quite fashionable in the early twentieth century. Winston Churchill (1874–1965), who was Secretary of State for the Colonies at the time, rented a holiday home there, and his family stayed each summer for some years; Gladys Cooper (1888–1971) and Gerald du Maurier (1873–1934) were popular West End actors; Baker recounts that ‘both Katherine and I had a great admiration for

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[him], whom we had often seen on the stage’ (Baker, p. 134). He had a house not far from Portland Villas and, on occasion, the women caught sight of him and his wife in the neighbourhood. Lady Dorothy Henderson-Morley (1891–1972) was a fashionable aristocrat, married to the son of the former governor of the Bank of England. 3. Like Dorothy Morley, Lady Diana Manners (1892–1986) was a fashionable, rather unconventional socialite and the wife of the fast-rising politician and playboy Duff Cooper (1890–1954).

[24 April 1922] [BL] [Victoria Palace Hôtel, rue Blaise Desgoffe, Paris] Monday afternoon. My dear Ida The Flowers arrived in the most perfect condition, so fresh they might have been gathered ½ an hour ago. I have made a most exquisite ‘garden’ of the moss, little violet roots, anemone roots & crocus blades. Its like a small world. The rest are in a jug. They are supremely lovely flowers. But please do something for me. I beg you. Tell me (1) where they grew (2) how they grew – (3) was there snow near (4) what kind of a day was it (5) were they among other flowers or are they the first? Don’t bother about description. I only want fact. In fact if you can send me a kind of weather & ‘aspects’ report as near as you can you would earn my deep deep gratitude. By aspects I mean the external face of nature. If E.1 had anything to do with the gathering mille remerciements.2 If W. had a paw in the matter pull his tail for me. K.M. Notes 1. ‘E’ here refers to Ernestine, the maid, rather than KM’s cousin Elizabeth. 2. (Fr.): One thousand thanks.

[30 April 1922] [BL] [Victoria Palace Hôtel, rue Blaise Desgoffe, Paris] Sunday Dear Ida Thank you very much for answering my card so carefully. It was just what I wanted to know. The flowers, by the way, died at once but

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the moss & the violet plants in my little terrine is – are – fresh as ever. I think the violet plants are growing. About the chalet. As soon as your girls leave would it not be a good idea to close it? Put it in order, have Mrs M’s agent go over it with you & ‘certify’ as to its condition and then leave it – with E. to go in once a week and air it until our tenancy is up. In that case I must have notice at once & would you kindly have boxes made for the books by your carpenter. He must come & measure for them. And all being packed they had better be dispatched to Popes Hammersmith where our other furniture sleeps. They can be sent of course by the longest way round. It doesn’t matter if they take a year getting there. Can you see about this? Then when I hear from you as to money Ill send a cheque settling everything with £10 for yourself. Or tell me what you need and so on? Will you go to Esmond R.1 until you start the T. room? It would be a good idea if we met on your way to England and talked over this money business. And again what about Wingley once you get to England? I suppose he’d better go to a vet. He can’t then be left with the de P’s? Its very confusing. But we must thoroughly discuss money. That is most important. Suppose I give you £10 a month until your T. room pays? Or until you are in a paying job. Would you be able to manage on that? Or would you prefer a lump sum of £50. I ought to get that from America soon & I could hand that over to you instead. Answer me quite frankly please. There is no emotion in all this. My position is as always. Im hard up for the moment because of the expense here. I am living (with the treatment) at not less than £12 a week. Its terrible. As soon as the treatment ends I begin the dentist. Also Im in Paris; I must buy a dress for outdoor wear and so on. I hope to recover some of this money by going to Germany this summer & living more cheaply, however. But I can start giving you £10 a month as soon as you need it. Don’t hesitate to be as frank with me as I have been with you, will you? It worries me not to know how your affairs are and you say so little. Since I wrote you that last letter Ive had flue. The weather has been really appaling, never the same for ½ an hour. I feel better today however and shall get up for lunch. Im rather glad to have had influenza; it has been such a dreaded thing to me. My agent has sold every single story of my new book in advance & I have not written one.2 That’s pleasant! But once we get away we shall be able to work without end. My book has been a complete success, really. It has made it possible for me to publish stories anywhere I like, it seems. I even get column reviews from the Tribuna – the Italian ‘Times’.3 I intend, next spring, to go to London, take the Bechstein Hall and give readings of my stories.4 Ive always wanted to do this and of course it would be a great advertisement. Dickens used to do it. He knew his people just as I know old ‘Ma Parker’s’ voice and the Ladies Maid.5 I heard from Connie. Poor little Alice fell down those marble steps at the Louise, double fractured her thigh and put her backbone

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‘out’ – I think it was – something like that.6 Of course ‘we have done all we can – X rays, Le Beaux & Rendall7 (as though other people would have only had the gardener to help her) but she is not well yet. Jinnie & I find it so “surprising” that she has not healed!’ Poor little Alice, how our Lord loves her! Connie had seen a photograph of me in The Court Journal & the Queen.8 Which accounted for the letter. Elizabeth has never recovered from that toboggan ride to Sierre. She says her insides have turned against her and she has to live on castor oil.9 I have begged her to go to Sorapure. We shall both be at the Chalet Soleil in August – tell Ernestine. Rally10 had been spending a long evening with Elizabeth who said ‘Your fame has soaked through even to him & he speaks of you with awe.’ I tell you this nonsense to amuse you and because you know the past, not because I am puffed up. On the contrary. Ive just read a new story in The Nation & feel disgusted.11 Well, if Im going to get up for lunch up I must get. Another gritty, heavy tray on this bed and I shall scream. Terrible lessons in patience are needed to be ill in an hotel. But the people mean to be so very kind. They are certainly a remarkable set of servants – I shall always come back here with pleasure. They will do anything for one and one can keep canaries or cover the walls with pictures or have 13 vases of flowers as one little china man has (according to my maid) and the servants like it! Goodbye. Write again when you have a mind to. I am always astonished you write so seldom. But I think you do it with intent. It seems to you best. That first long gap including Easter amazed and worried me. I couldn’t believe it of you, after I had so earnestly begged you to keep in touch. I nearly wired Hudson in my anxiety. And then along came your letter with the days fly by & painted eggs and so on. After that no silence will surprise me. So never feel bound to write. Letters aren’t everything, but I have always found it a trifle difficult to understand how people keep in touch without them. But people do. I expect you’d have a ‘spiritual’ reason. Ever K.M. My deep sympathy with the little wounded lion.11 Notes 1. Esmond Road, London, W.4. 2. KM’s agent, Eric S. Pinker, had written on 22 April confirming details of her next planned volume of stories, to contain ‘about 60,000 words, of which the English serial rights of 24,000 are already sold to “The Sphere”’. Constable was planning to publish the work. 3. A review had been published in La Tribuna Illustrata on 14 April 1922.

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4. As a letter to Garnet Trowell, written in early November 1908, confirms, KM had indeed cherished the dream of giving dramatic readings of her stories in a concert hall, concentrating on ‘tone effects in the voice’; ‘I should like to do this’, she writes, ‘and this is in my power because I know I possess the power of holding people. I would like to be the Maud Allen of this Art.’ The Bechstein Hall in Wigmore Street, London, had been opened in 1901 with the express intention of holding piano recitals to showcase the outstanding quality of Bechstein pianos. It was officially renamed the Wigmore Hall in 1917 but the name change took more than a decade to catch on. 5. Two of KM’s short stories: ‘Life of Ma Parker’ (CW2, pp. 292–6) and ‘The Lady’s Maid’ (CW2, pp. 261–5). 6. Connie Beauchamp, owner of the Villa Flora, the Villa Louise and the Villa Isola Bella in Menton. She lived with her close friend, Jinnie Fullerton. Alice was their maid. 7. The context would seem to imply that these are two Menton doctors that Connie had to call to attend to the injured Alice. 8. Founded in the nineteenth century, The Court Journal: Court Circular and Fashionable Gazette published a short review of The Garden Party and Other Stories on 24 March 1922, underlining KM’s originality as a short story writer. On 25 March 1922, The Queen, The Ladies Newspaper and Court Circular included a detailed review by World War One poet and literary critic Edward Shanks. 9. See above, p. 55, n. 1. 10. Ralph (or Rally Beauchamp, 1857–1941) was Elizabeth von Arnim’s elder brother. 11. Presuming the press was circulated in Paris on exactly the same day as publication in London, the reference is most likely to KM’s story ‘Honeymoon’, published by the Nation on 29 April 1922 (see CW2, pp. 488–93). The same paper had published ‘The Fly’ two weeks previously, on 18 March (CW2, pp. 476–80). 12. KM’s cat Wingley had a cut, which later became infected, prompting treatment by a local vet. As subsequent letters reveal, Baker kept KM up to date with his progress.

[5 May 1922] [BL] [Victoria Palace Hôtel, rue Blaise Desgoffe, Paris] Dear Ida, You will send me the bills in good time, won’t you? So that all can be settled up there. With regard to Jacks possessions. Will you please pack his breeks, his cricket shirts, all socks or stockings, his summer underclothes, and in fact anything he may need this summer –in his large suitcase & bring it with you? Is that possible? Fur rug & striped tick blanket & so on must go into another box.1 Blue serge suit please throw away. He’d like his white trousers please. And will you bring his camera?

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M. says there are people in every station who deliver bags, if you don’t want to come straight here. I should think you’d better come here for the day. But I don’t know your plan. I could see you at eleven & suggest you stay to lunch & tea. I think we ought to write a kind of official letter to Mrs M. too. Send me her address will you? You seem quite dotty about money. Unless you have learned to make it at the Regina.2 Ill send you £10 for yourself there & we’ll talk it over when you come. People still use money, you know. You can’t pay your way with biscuits. Poor little Wing. He must be terribly conceited by now. Ether too?3 I see him bandaged to the eyebrows. Yes I am terribly terribly busy. Its worse every day. And the letters. Oh these letters. They stream in & have to be answered. I ousted my flu finally with ½ bottle of champagne. I felt really awful first few days & then one day ordered champagne for lunch & it did the trick. Its worth knowing. Its not an extravagance. It saves hundreds of bi palatonoids & their kind. This a note written on the arm of a chair with the room not done – & Jack looking for something in old copies of The Times. Heaven help us all! K.M. Notes 1. The expression ‘tick blanket’ was rarely used in Britain, but was in more widespread use elsewhere in the English-speaking world to refer to a featherfilled bedspread. 2. The Baedeker guide to Switzerland for 1928 lists the Regina Hôtel as a health resort and was presumably where Baker had previously worked. 3. Ether was commonly used as an anaesthetic or lighter sedative, in veterinary practice, dental surgery and general medical operations.

[10 May 1922] [BL] [Victoria Palace Hôtel, rue Blaise Desgoffe, Paris] Confidential. Dear Ida As far as I can tell this treatment has been (I hesitate to use this big word) completely successful. I hardly ever cough. I have gained 8 pounds. I have no rheumatism whatever. My lungs have not been reexamined yet nor has the sputum. Ill let you know about these things. But so far – it seems I am getting quite well. My voice has changed back. I take no medecines. The only thing that remains is that my heart is

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tired and weak. That means I get breathless and cannot walk yet except at a snail’s pace with many halts. But I have no palpitation or anything like that. And of course now that I don’t cough or have fever my heart will gradually recover. Manoukhin says I ought to be able to walk for an hour in June, even. I put confidential to this letter because I don’t feel its fair to tell anyone who may ask you until I have the facts like X ray & analysis. Should anyone ask – just say I am infinitely better & that Ive gained 8 lbs. I mean Hudson or Woodifield. Jack told you – didn’t he – we are coming to the Angleterre.1 If you have time would you run down & see a couple of rooms? It would be very nice if you could as you are so near. I look forward beyond words to the early summer there for working. Any other place would take up too much time. We can settle in there in a day and start off. Both of us are behindhand. And its harder & harder to work here. The weather is really divine. I spent yesterday in the Bois at a marvellous place with the Schiffs. I think I should begin to dance if I stayed here long. You can’t imagine how beautifully these women dance in the open under flowering chestnut trees to a delicious band. All the very height of luxury. I do like luxury – just for a dip in and out of. Especially in Paris because its made into such an Art. Money buys such really delightful things. And then all is managed so perfectly. One has tea out of doors but its so exquisite. One’s cup & saucer gleams & the lemon is a new born lemon and nobody fusses. Thats the chief point of money. One can buy that complete freedom from fuss. But what nonsense I am writing. I must get up & go have my wool washed. The shutters are ½ shut & through them gleams a red azalea that Jack bought at Poitiers.2 It looked a poor thing then but it has turned into a superb creature in this blessed oh how blessed heat and light! Ida – can you take a parcel for me?? If not you & I will tie up one here & you’ll nip out to the post with it. I must get rid of these old skins. Short of digging a hole in the carpet I cant with Jack about. Jack has accepted more or less a lecture tour in England this autumn. I go to Bandol when my time is up here – to the Beau Rivage.3 I hope to get a maid before I leave here. But I haven’t done anything about it yet. Someone I must have. But really as long as the sun shines nothing is urgent. It is as hot as San Remo.4 I have slashed the sleeves off my blue charmeuse. Sleeves are intolerable. At 10.30 last night I paddled in the bath. But they still feed me on puree de lentilles and saussices.5 I had strawbug tartlets with the Schiffs yesterday. Can you make them? Forgive a very silly letter. Ever K.M. My deep sympathies for Wingie. Ether too! Is he better? I think you’d better call your Tea room The Black Cat. Why don’t you send the Bills?6

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Notes 1. In Baker’s words ‘the Hotel d’Angleterre in Randogne [was in] the village just below Montana, not far from Elizabeth’s house’, adding, ‘but it was a poor place, unaccustomed to out-of-season visitors, with bare rooms and little staff left’ (p. 194). KM and JMM arrived there on 4 June. 2. A florist’s shop on the rue de Poitiers, five minutes’ walk from the rue de Rennes. 3. KM and JMM first stayed at the Hôtel Beau Rivage in Bandol, on the Mediterranean coast near Toulon, in 1915. 4. KM visited San Remo on the Italian Riviera in 1919, before moving to Ospedaletti. 5. (Fr.): Lentil purée and sausages. 6. See KM’s draft of this letter, which includes details finally excluded from the version she sent, in CW4, pp. 419–20.

[11 May 1922] [BL] [Victoria Palace Hôtel, rue Blaise Desgoffe, Paris] Thursday My dear Ida I hasten to reply to your letter. Jack is writing Mrs M. today and asking her to reply to you direct. Ida, I don’t see how you can leave until you get that reply! You were up there, I thought, to settle up the ‘leaving all in order’. You can’t leave it half done – surely? Why this rush now with Susie de P. So like you! Shes the one bright star. But how maddening! I do beg you to stay there & see all is arranged. We shall tell Mrs M. about Ernestine going in once a week. I have already wired about the boxes. Of course it would be folly to have lids at that price if the others are strong. I beg you – its so utterly absurd! – now that you have been up there for nearly 3 months to see to settling up the house not to rush off before its done. I send you a cheque for £10 for yourself. If you want more, tell me. That is for your own personal expenditure. Send us the bills for the boxes. But I have faithfully believed I could leave this matter of the chalet to you. If you are going to let me down wire at once. It is absolutely distracting. You must go through the inventory with Mrs M’s representative & get him to sign that all is in order and that the house is in order. I have no reply whatever, otherwise, to what Mrs M may say. Yes, I think your idea of a Swiss hotel is the best. But there is another thing. If the cat is ill would not the doctoress put it out of pain painlessly? Its terrible cruelty to carry about a sick cat. I am absolutely certain Jack’s mother wouldn’t take it. But I can’t judge at this distance. This letter is scribbled in great haste. I wish to Heaven you did not so throw one into confusion. Now you must run after Susie de P!2 And

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all else is nothing to you. ‘Youll manage somehow’ about the house & leave Ernestine to go through the inventory. That you really cant do. What a relief when the whole business is over and there are no more waving strands like this. It would kill me to live like you. You do understand – do you? This £10 is for your journey and your personal expenses. Its no good my writing any more. I can only repeat that I do think in this matter Susie de P. ought to consider you. Surely she knew why you were at the chalet? Extraordinary! K.M. Why muddle? Why rush? Why fuss? Why kill yourself? Its your own fault. I didn’t ask you to go at 60 miles an hour. But I see plainly you’re the willing slave of the new ‘person’. It really is humiliating. Notes 1. In the margin, next to this underlined sentence, KM adds: ‘Read this carefully please’ and underscores her annotation. 2. Susie de Perrot. See above, p. 142, n. 4.

[13 May 1922] [BL] [Victoria Palace Hôtel, rue Blaise Desgoffe, Paris] Dear Ida Thank you for your letter. Here is the cheque. Does it matter its 10/short? Not my fault. Tell me if that will do for you. Yours K.M. Allright about the box.

[18 May 1922] [BL] [Victoria Palace Hôtel, rue Blaise Desgoffe, Paris] Dear Ida You are waiting to hear from me about the various arrangements – are you? I will try & reply. But if l leave anything unsaid you must just use your discretion. I am so busy. Yes, leave E. the revolver – un loaded!1 No, we don’t want the fur rug. It would be a good thing to have the rug case up there at the hotel. Yes, please leave the iron there. The address for the boxes is Pope’s Furniture.

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I think that is all. How soon are you coming? Have you heard from Mrs M? We heard this from her yesterday. It doesn’t sound v. satisfactory. I mean I am afraid she is taking her time. So sorry to write at such haste. Many thanks for your letter. Jack who is reading off of this cant understand a word. I suppose you can’t either. Stand on your head & try it through a looking glass ––––––––––– I think that is all. I can’t think. Goodbye for now. The little house must be v. spick & span. I expect it will be horrid to leave it. Yours ever K.M. Notes 1. The revolver dated back to KM and Baker’s stay in Ospedaletti, when antiBritish feeling was rife on account of the war. After a burglary in their very isolated home, the Casetta Deerholm, when KM was present but unaware of intruders, ‘she always kept a small revolver in her sitting-room which was near the front door’ (Baker, pp. 142–3).

[27 May 1922] [BL] [Victoria Palace Hôtel, rue Blaise Desgoffe, Paris] Saturday My dear Ida I was so infinitely relieved to get your wire & to know you had arrived safely. It was kind of you to send it. My heart was wrung at the last moment of parting from you, as you must have known.1 I could not believe it. It seemed solemn and wrong. But dont lets call it or consider it a parting. We shall make some arrangement sometime that will make it possible for us to be together. Aren’t you certain of that? I am. Dont let S. de P.2 tire you. Don’t send me back any money. Spend your money! If you knew what that little account book made me feel. I could have howled for misery like a dog. And then they snatched £5 from you & left you hard up! It is too bad. I don’t seem to have said anything to you at all. But the heat was overpowering and my tooth added to it. Perhaps it doesn’t matter so very much. But oh! how I hate to see you travelling. I feel your fatigue and I know you will hurry and wont eat enough and your hat will hurt and so on for ever. When I am rich, my dear Ida, I shall buy you a house & ask you to keep a wing & a chicken wing & a Wingley for me in it. In the meantime I wish you could stay with Mrs Scriven and eat Easter custards or play with Dolly’s babies.3

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It is nice to know the poor little cat is out of its basket. Awful to love that cat as one does. I suppose you imagine I don’t care a bean for him because I keep on talking of having him destroyed. To say that and see his little paws dodging in and out of the wool basket, & see him sitting in the scales or returning from his walk with paw uplifted stopping now and then . . . In fact I shall one day write a cat story which will be heart breaking! In the meantime I do hope he will not die & that you will give him an occasional sardine tail . . . Its less fearfully hot here. There is a breeze. It has been terrifically hot until tonight (Saturday.) I went to the Louvre this afternoon & looked at Greek sculpture – wonderfully beautiful.4 The difference between the Greek and the Roman stuff is extraordinary; the Greek lives, breathes, floats; it is like life imprisoned except that imprisonment sounds like unhappiness and there is a kind of radiant peace in the best of it. . . Scraps of the Parthenon frieze – figures greeting, and holding fruits and flowers and so on are simply divine. I never realised what drapery was until today. I had a good stare at the Venus de Milo with all the other starers. And she is lovely as ever – the balance is most marvellous. Its intensely fascinating to see the development of that perfection – to trace it from heads that are flat as flatirons with just one dab for a nose – then to the period of tree worship when all the bodies are very round and solid like the trunks of trees, then through the Egyptian influence when they begin to have stiff and terrible wings, and at last that perfect flowering flower. It makes one in love with the human body to wander about there all the lovely creases in the belly and the roundness of knees and the beauty of thighs. The Louvre is a superb place; one could spend months there. We hope to leave here next Friday evening. Next week will be a rush. We have so many engagements, lunches, dinners and I must go to that dentist every day. I feel we are only just leaving Paris in time; one would be swept away. And these little social affairs take up such an amount of the day – preparing for them, seeing to ones gloves & brushing ones coat and skirt and so on and cleaning shoes. It takes me hours to get ready. But I shall speed up later. Already we are putting off engagements until the autumn . . . I sound rather smug and as tho I liked it – all – don’t I? No, its not that. As one is here its the only thing to do. Serious work is out of the question in a city. One simply can’t feel free enough. So one accepts distractions; thats all. Its half past eleven. Jack is still ‘dining out’; I suppose he’s gone to a cafe. As usual, as I lie here I have got very hungry. Oh for a cup of tea and something to eat! Its just the hour for it. And theres a jug full of old fashioned moss rosebuds on my table smelling of years and years ago (I bought them from a little street boy last night). Well, this is the awful kind of a letter you get from me. I can only make the pen move; it wont really run, or show off its action. Not that I am in the least tired. Only my hand is. How is everybody? Tell me! I had better end this letter quickly for the old feeling is coming back – an

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ache, a longing – a feeling that I can’t be satisfied unless I know you are near. Not on my account; not because I need you – but because in my horrid odious intolerable way I love you and am yours ever K.M. Notes 1. Ida Baker was on her way back to London, but stopped briefly in Paris to say goodbye to KM on 11 May. 2. Susie de Perrot. See above, p. 142, n. 4. 3. Mrs Scriven, Baker’s aunt, lived in Lewes, close to Newhaven, where her boat docked on arrival from Dieppe. 4. This visit to the Louvre’s vast Classical collection prompted KM’s most extended engagement with the art of sculpture and monumentality, in stark contrast to her more customary attention to the miniaturist arts. See Zimring, in Davison and Kimber 2016, pp. 209–22.

[end May 1922] [BL] [Victoria Palace Hôtel, rue Blaise Desgoffe, Paris] Dear Ida Just to say we leave here on Friday for Switzerland. I was so glad to hear of your safe return & to know that you had spent two peaceful days – would they were twenty! I am anxious to know whether you get into touch with Miss Franklin again.1 She always sounded a delightful woman – different in kind to the others. Do let me know as much as you can of what happens. Dont for goodness sake take thought when you write to me. Why should you, my dear? I am not as horrid as you think. Ill write from la bas.2 Its so terribly hot here – as hot as ever & my dentist is really a terrible trial. That, and engagements & packing & so on have taken up all my energy for the moment. But I’ll send you a real letter from Switzerland. Dont send me any more money. You ought not to have sent this. Though I won’t deny it was most terribly useful as Ive had to pay out rather a lot. But spend the £20 without a qualm. Ever your loving K.M. Notes 1. KM and Baker had met Miss Franklin in Baugy. She was ‘a delightful, sincere woman on holiday from India, where she was working at a mission hospital’ and even tried to convince Baker to join her on the mission. They exchanged letters for a long time after this summer (Baker, p. 165). 2. (Fr.): Over there.

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[4 June 1922] [BL] Hotel d’Angleterre Sunday. My dear Ida, I am at last on the balcony overlooking the same mountains. Its hot with a small wind: grasshoppers are playing their tambourines & the church bells of old Montana are ringing. How we got here I shall never know! Every single thing went wrong. The laundry didn’t come back in time. We were off late. Brett was laden with large parcels which we could not pack & which she promised to store for us – until when? And only when we got to the Gare de Lyons we remembered it was Whitsun. No porters. People wheeling their own luggage. Swarms & thousands of people. Fifteen thousand young Gymnastes de Provence arriving & pouring through one. Poor Jack who had my money gave away a 500 note instead of a 50. And at last arrived at the Couchettes we found ordinary 1st class carriage with 3 persons a side. No washing arrangements – nothing. It was the cursed Fête de Narcisse at Montreux1 yesterday so conducted parties crammed the train. What a night! And the grime! At Lausanne we both looked like negroes. Then came a further rush for the Sierre train (registered luggage tickets lost) & finally two hours late we arrived at the Belle Vue, starving, as we had no food with us & there was no food on the train. But that enchanted hotel was more exquisite than ever. The people so kind and gentle, the wavy branches outside the windows, a smell of roses and lime blossom. After a very powerful wash and an immaculate lunch – why do the glasses & spoons shine so? – I lay down & went to sleep & Jack went out. The next thing was: ‘La voiture est là Madame.’2 Heavens! Nothing was packed. Jack had not come back. The bill was not paid and so on. I am quite out of the habit of these rushes. Finally we found Jack at the post office & just got to the station in time. Then at Randogne there was no room for our luggage in the cart. So we went off without it. (Last bulletin de bagage lost3 Jack simply prostrate) and we’d scarcely left the station when it began to pour with rain. Sheets, spouts of cold mountain rain. My mole coat & skirt was like a mole skin. We got soaked and the road which hasn’t been remade yet after the winter was exactly like the bed of a river. But the comble4 was to get here & see these small pokey little rooms waiting us. We took the ground floors three as you said they were so big and so nice. Good God! Whatever made you tell such bangers. They are small single rooms & really they looked quite dreadful. Also the woman told us she had no servants. She & her sister were alone to do everything. I thought at first we’d have to drive off again. But that was impossible. So I decided to accept it as a kind of pic-nic ‘the kind of place R.L. Stevenson might have stayed at –’ or ‘some little hotel in Russia’.5 Jack looked much happier then. But there wasn’t even an armchair or a glass in my room. No wash table in his. I made the old woman get us these

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things. She is amiable & kind and poor soul – very frightened. And before supper the luggage arrived; we unpacked and my room looked much better. We were just settling down when I found Jack had left the dear little square clock in the train. I was devoted to that clock & he found he had lost his only fountain pen! However, wild horses wont drag me away from here for the next two months. I think we shall be able to get decent food. At any rate they have excellent eggs & good butter milk & their own vegetables. I felt inclined to cry when I saw how hard they had tried to impress us last night at supper with their cooking – even to a poor little boiled custard that floated airy fairy with little white threads in it. But at last it is peaceful. This balcony is perfect. And the air – after Paris – the peace – the outlook instead of that grimy wall. Cities are too detestable. I should never write anything if I lived in them. I feel base, and distracted. And all those dreadful parties. Oh how odious they are. How I hate the word ‘chic’. C’est plus chic, moins chic, pas chic, très chic.6 French women haven’t another note to sing on. And the heat! It was frightful. And the stale food. I had to give up my dentist at last until a more propitious moment. I couldn’t stand it. Well, thats enough of Paris. I shant mention it again. Write to me when you get this. All my underclothes are in rags. Shall I ever have time to mend them. All the tops of my knickers are frayed & the seams of my ‘tops’ are burst & my nightgowns are unsewn. What a fate! But it really doesn’t matter when one looks at the sky & the grass shaking in the light. What are you doing? What are your plans? How is Wing? How is ‘everybody’? Yours ever K.M. Notes 1. The annual ‘Fête des Narcisses’ (Narcissus Festival) in Montreux was a major international event, held in late May or early June when the late spring narcissi were in full bloom along the river. Throughout the Belle Epoque, it was marked by street processions, vast, decorated horse-drawn carriages, concerts, operas and dance events, and even attracted the Ballets Russes one year later. 2. (Fr.): Your carriage is here, Madame. 3. (Fr.): Receipt for pre-expedited luggage. 4. (Fr.): The last straw. 5. Like KM, Robert Louis Stevenson spent years on the move, often between the Swiss Alps and the French Riviera, looking for a climate more suited to patients debilitated by tuberculosis. Although enchanted by the natural environment, Stevenson wrote letters that contain witty accounts of some of the more lugubrious or unexpectedly grim, poky hotels – which doubtless inspired KM and JMM. Russian writers that JMM and KM were intimately

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familiar with at the time included Gogol and Dostoevsky, who had memorably depicted sordid hotels and rented lodgings. 6. (Fr.): It’s more chic, less chic, not chic, very chic.

[7 June 1922] [BL] [Hôtel d’Angleterre, Montana-sur-Sierre, Valais] This is short hand & the result of weeks of thinking. Ida If you are not finally fixed up for the summer – listen to me. Its no go. I am almost as ill as ever I was, in every way. I want you if you can come to me. But like this. We should have to deceive Jack. J. can never realise what I have to do. He helps me all he can but he can’t help me really & the result is I spend all my energy – every bit – in keeping going. I have none left for work. All my work is behind hand & I cant do it. I simply stare at the sky. I am too tired even to think. What makes me tired? Getting up, seeing about everything, arranging everything, sparing him, and so on. That journey nearly killed me literally. He had no idea I suffered at all, and could not understand why I looked ‘so awful’ & why everybody seemed to think I was terribly ill. Jack can never understand. That is obvious. Therefore if I can possibly possibly ask you to help me we should have to do it like this. It would have to come entirely from you. Ill draft a letter & send it on the chance. If you agree, write it to me. Its not wrong to do this. It is right. I have been wanting to for a long time. I feel I cannot live without you. But of course we’ll have to try & live differently. Dear Ida, I can’t promise – or rather I can only promise. If you cannot ‘honourably’ accept what I say – let it be. I must make the suggestion; I must make a try for it. Yours ever KM. Forgive me for saying all these things bang out. Theres no other way. I shall understand of course if its out of the question and if you think my letter – my ‘draft’ horrid – throw it away. The truth is I cant really work unless I know you are there. I havent got the strength. But Ill manage some sort of compromise if we can’t arrange this. This is a black moment because Ive got pleurisy badly & it always affects my spirits. Dear Katherine, Ive been thinking over what you said to me about a maid, and Id like to suggest something. So far I have not found anything that just suits me. Would you be inclined to take me on in a really professional capacity this time – lets call it companion – secretary. I do

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feel I would help you more than any one else if we manage to keep things on a proper footing. For instance would you pay me £6 a month – I don’t think I could do with less, and keep me? You see I am being quite frank. I want to leave sentiment quite out of it. This is what you would call a practical proposition. And I only suggest it until you have finally settled down – wherever you do settle down. Afterwards we could see. Surely we would each have a life apart and yet be of use to each other. Cant we ignore what was so unsatisfactory in the past and start afresh. Pretend you haven’t known me & try me as a companion – secretary? Give me a six months trial even. You can always say you don’t think it works & there will be no harm done. Let me know as soon as you can – will you? I have thought this over a long time. Yours ever Ida.

[11 June 1922] [BL] [Telegram] [Montana] Better Thanks

[12 June 1922] [BL] [Hôtel d’Angleterre, Montana-sur-Sierre, Valais] My dear Ida I sent you a wire yesterday c/o Dolly in case you were with her and en train1 to fix up any negotiations. I wish I knew how firmly you and Susie were united. I observe that you should have just found the ideal spot & that you answer me in immense haste with one eye on your first baking. But I am a little bit tired of getting my deserts & so I shall hope still that my plan is possible. Its not bad here. The place is too high for me. But then I always knew that. There was nothing else to be done, however. Make a strange journey & arrive at a strange place alone with Jack was out of the question. But I can not move about at all so far, and my heart thuds in my ear just as it did and bangs twice as fast all day. It is hateful to again have to give up baths, to again have to dress sitting down & sipping water and so on . . . But what the devil can one do? If you were here we would go to Lake Maggiore.2 There’s no point in writing, however, until I get an answer to my letter. Re Wing. Don’t you think he had better be doctored? He fights too much. Im glad you have bought one or two ‘bits of things’. No, I don’t want anything in that line. Yours ever K.M.

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Notes 1. (Fr.): In the process of. 2. KM never got to Lake Maggiore but, in a fictional sketch written at exactly this time, depicts a family’s visit there. See ‘Father and the Girls’ (CW2, pp. 498–502). It is the largest lake in southern Switzerland and marks the Italian border; it would have been at least a full day’s journey at the time to reach there from Montana, being about 200 km away.

[14 June 1922] [BL] [Hôtel d’Angleterre, Montana-sur-Sierre, Valais] No, perhaps its best if you let me know what money you want. I still find it rather hard to understand how you can so cheerfully lend my hardly earned pennies to anyone who asks. You have a right to them & youre welcome. But thats not at all the same. Dear Ida, Your ‘letter’ came and had precisely the effect it was intended to have. Thank you. I believed in it myself as I read it. It sounded so real. I have had your telegrams. I understand about Susie. Do as you think best. Dont tire yourself by rushing. I don’t think the little lady needs too much consideration, though, after the very casual way she has treated you. Miss Franklin is the person I like & your Mrs Scriven. They both sound delightful women. About plans . . . . Do you want any money? I will send you a cheque for £7 to buy yourself any odd clothes you may need. I mean – stockings and so on. England is the only place for them, and to pay for your journey. I don’t know what it costs. About the cat. Where can you leave him? Do you know of anywhere? Would Mrs S. have him if he was doctored?1 That wld mean hed be a quiet cat & not a fighter. Its impossible to have him here. For my plans are so vague. At the moment, too, I cant write letters. I haven’t the time. Im late now for the Sphere & its a difficult job to keep all these things going.2 I write to nobody. Please forgive this, understand it & don’t get anxious & dont telegraph unless you have to! I have such a horror of telegrams that ask me how I am!! I always want to reply dead. Its the only reply. What, in Heaven’s name, can one answer? And then this poor silly old girl spelling it out over the telephone Barkeer. Bettre zee lettre – ‘c’est bien, c’est bien, c’est anglais – ça? Ah – voilà.’3 And so on, while I sit smiling & the unseen me fells her to the earth. And listen to the old Adam in me for a moment will you, my dear? Dont take advantage of me because I have begged you to come & say

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I can’t do without you. I havent turned into a grateful angel. Im at heart a distraught creature with no time for anything for the moment. When this work is done Ill be better. But try & believe & keep on believing without signs from me that I do love you & want you for my wife. And come as soon as you reasonably can. Let me know when you arrive & Ill send the cart to the station. Elizabeth has come. I am glad for it frees me from the worry of Jack, a little. I am a bit better physically but the labour of getting up, tidying, brushing clothes, carrying cushions & so on is so great that mentally I confess I feel absolutely exhausted! But it must be got through somehow. Theres no help for it & I am bound to deliver the goods by the end of this month. Yours ever K.M. Poor Roma W. is getting worse & worse, she says.4 She is spending what she calls a ‘last spring’ in Italy. Thank Heavens her surroundings sound just what she would wish & she is being really well looked after. This is a cursed disease. Notes 1. Baker’s aunt, Mrs Scriven, did indeed finally provide ‘a permanent loving home for our dear, brave little cat Wingly’ (Baker, p. 197), thereby putting an end to ongoing concerns about his well-being. 2. A series of stories were planned for the Sphere, depicting the lives of the characters portrayed in ‘At the Bay’, but these were never completed. See KM’s plans in CW4, pp. 418–19. 3. (Fr.): ‘That’s it, that’s it, is that English? Ah, here we go.’ 4. For Roma (Romer) Wilson, see above, p. 108, n. 2.

[16 June 1922] [BL] [Hôtel d’Angleterre, Montana-sur-Sierre, Valais] Friday. Dear Ida, After your detailed letters I quite understand the situation as between you and Susie. I hope you will not be too distressed at the thought you ‘cannot’ help her. Was she quite within her moral rights (legal rights don’t count) in fixing up a place without you having seen it? That seems to me a trifle queer as between partners but then I don’t know. I hope you will be able to come to me fairly soon. I need someone very much for many reasons.

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But whatever happens please don’t think of bringing Wing. It would be absolutely impossible. I shall not stay here for any length of time; I shall be in Paris in the autumn (I expect) and then I rather think of going to Italy instead of the S. of France for the winter. Jack goes over to England at the end of August for the autumn – perhaps until the spring. But the cat we cant have. Imagine my temper if you had that poor creature in a train. I should get out of the train. Besides no decent hotel will take a cat & the cruelty is really abominable to drag about a helpless animal. Wing would be happy with anyone who gave him food and a warm corner. If you can’t find anyone what about your writing to Jeanne? The trouble is she has her beloved dog Kuri. But is it impossible to keep a cat & a dog? Her address is Woodhay, Lyndhurst, Hants. I shall write to Koteliansky today. But I fear the Farbmans, with whom he lives would not feed Wing well.1 They’d give him old bits of shoe leather or anything that was to thrown away. Still, perhaps thats a libel. Yes, I am sure it is. I send you back £1 note. Would you buy me a pot of face cream – a food for the skin – you know what this climate does. With the rest buy your Mrs S. a little something for herself from of course yourself. I expect you won’t feel you have the money for presents. Do this, please. Yours K.M. I hope Henley is not too dreadful. It always sounded to me a very very ‘Swiss’ idea. Dont you think it rather a mistake to take so many peoples advice – to listen to so many people and to discuss your private affairs with everybody? I mean why must the whole of Montana have known what you intended to do – servants and all? That seems to me very dreadful. If ever you discuss my future plans, Miss, I shall deny them absolutely and at once. But please dont do it. Refrain from telling all & sundry what WE intend to do. I cant bear it! To hear Ernestine discussing you and your ‘thee raom’2 & her fear it would be trop cher!3 . . . I know you long for intimacy with people but intimacy isn’t giving them the right to interfere. These are only my personal views, of course. I don’t mean them to sound arbitrary. Im afraid they do – Im sorry. Notes 1. Grisha (Michael, or Gregory) Farbman and his wife, Sonia Grzhebin, were writers and journalists of Ukrainian–Jewish origin, living in London but with direct ties with the World Literature Publishing House, sponsored by Maxim Gorky. Grisha Farbman was the author of several influential books on contemporary Russia published in Britain at the time. The Farbmans had been leasing KM’s former home at 5 Acacia Road, London, since November 1915 and were living there with their compatriot, Koteliansky.

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2. ‘Tea Room’ – KM is imitating Ernestine’s bad pronunciation in English. 3. (Fr.): Too expensive.

[20 June 1922] [BL] [Hôtel d’Angleterre, Montana-sur-Sierre, Valais] In reply to your Friday letter. Don’t wait for me. Come when you are free. Do you want money for the journey? Please wire if you do. I am only too anxious for you to be here. But please accept this as final. As soon as you can leave and come out here I shall be happy to see you. Your room is taken. It is indeed now that I am so greatly in need of someone. But of course you must realise that. I have told you so often how desperately pressed for time I am & how hard it is to look after things as well. But I have said as much in every letter to you; I can’t say more. K.M.

[23 October 1922] [BL] Le Prieuré Fontainebleau.Avon. Seine et Marne. Dear Ida, This is the address. I have had no post so far. Perhaps its all got lost. Thank you for the things. The warm petticoats vest and scarf are a joy. It is cold here when one stops working. Cold – but lovely. I am glad your toothache1 is better. Thank you. I am happy. KM Whatever warm clothes the 1000 francs will buy please send. Especially a warm jacket for the evening or a big soft scarf. Notes 1. In her memoirs, Baker notes that this is their private shorthand for ‘emotional trouble, not physical’ (p. 215). Two pages later, she notes, ‘I now realised fully the emptiness of my days, and my very soul ached; Katherine called this “toothache”’ (p. 217).

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[24 October 1922] [BL] [Le Prieuré, Fontainebleau-Avon] D.I. All the parcels arrived safely. Please send the cloth one. No, I dont want another petticoat or knickers. Don’t send the book. Why should you? I don’t want any books at present. Id like another sleeping jacket – a very warm one, and a Tuteur1 for teaching the ’cello & a book of quite elementary exercises – for teaching. This is urgent. I am staying here indefinitely. I feel better. But as a precaution I shall send my will to the Bank in case of accidents.2 I hope your toothache is quite cured. Write to me from time to time won’t you? Jack seems to have toothache too. If you go back to England I hope you’ll see him. Ever K.M. Notes 1. (Fr.): Method. 2. The Bank of New Zealand in London. See Baker’s account of how KM drew up the will, and its main provisions (pp. 206–7).

[28 October 1922] [BL] [Le Prieuré, Fontainebleau-Avon] Dear Ida Send the green skirt. But please dont write to me any more about clothes. I do not want any and I do not want to talk or think about them at all. I can’t tell you about the other things either. Let me give you Mr Ouspensky’s address.1 It is 38 Warwick Gardens. If you are in London why do you not write & ask if you may attend his lectures? I shall not write again just now. I do not want to hear about Miss Beach.2 K.M. Notes 1. Pyotr Ouspensky (1878–1947) was a Russian mathematician and philosopher who worked for a while with George Gurdjieff. Ouspensky had fought in the White Army during the Russian civil wars, then moved to London, where he established a theosophical group that greatly influenced KM’s onetime friend and editor, A. R. Orage. 2. Sylvia Beach (1887–1962) was an American-born publisher and bookseller, founder of the famous bookshop ‘Shakespeare and Company’ in Paris (see above, p. 56, n. 5). The shop included a lending library, which attracted many expatriate Anglophone intellectuals and artists, as well as English-speaking French intellectuals. Records show that KM herself borrowed a number of

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volumes there during her last months in Paris, which Baker very probably collected and returned on her behalf. For an analysis and reproductions of KM’s borrowing card see Thacker 2019, pp. 163–80.

[28 October 1922] [BL] [Le Prieuré, Fontainebleau-Avon] D.I. Everything has come. I am so grateful for the red scarf. It is just what I wanted. Here is the pattern. And can I have a pair of galoshes and a pair of garters. I love being here – I am perfectly looked after & I feel one of these people. My only fear is that I may have to go away for a few weeks later on (thats a little ambiguous. Of course Mr Gurdjieff would send me and so on.) I don’t want to miss a day. The weather so far is perfect. But terribly cold. All the fountain basins were frozen this morning & we have not a flower left. The leaves fall all day & the grass smells good. We are making a Turkish Bath which will be very comforting. I don’t do any ‘work’ just now except – well, its hard to explain. I hope you are happy. Haven’t you used that 1000 francs? Shall I send you another? Please ask me. And remember you can always get a job at Selsfield, doing chickens for Locke-Ellis.1 Excuse my writing. Its on the corner of the table under rather awkward conditions. Ever K.M. Alas! I gave my plaid skirt away. But I have the plain panne velvet.2 Notes 1. Vivian Locke Ellis (1878–1950) was one of the ‘Georgian’ poets, who also translated Classical Greek plays, had a small publishing press and ran an antique shop. His home at Selsfield House, East Grinstead, in Sussex, of which KM was particularly fond, had a smallholding that employed a number of farmhands. 2. Panne velvet is a variety of fine crushed velvet, creating a shimmering effect.

[30 October 1922] [BL] [Le Prieuré, Fontainebleau-Avon] Dear Ida, So it goes on. I have not received the green skirt. I want it. I dislike very much the coral coat & can never wear it. It looks so vulgar.

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Please send no skirt. I dislike also v. much the jumper you bought for the tricot coat1 & skirt & if I am sincere the coat & skirt itself. I look like a skinned rabbit in it. Please stop buying & stop asking me questions about clothes! K.M.

[2 November 1922] [BL] [Le Prieuré, Fontainebleau-Avon] Dear Ida Forgive my harshness. Of course I have thought better of it & am ashamed. The galoshes & garters have come so has the black coat. Thank you v. much. The green skirt never came. I should indeed have liked it. Nor did the coat & skirt. I am all coats & no skirts – most awkward. What good soap! Thank you for it. Dont forget to let me know where you go after the hotel. These letters came for you. The weather is glorious here, too, like late spring. Still, I am so thankful for the galoshes. Do please tell me by return what I owe you. Excuse this note. It is written in such haste. I do want one other thing. A perfectly plain chemise frock to wear without a petticoat to do exercises in the evening. You know the kind of thing. Cashmere would do – I mean a thin gabardine or anything like that – dead simple, though & preferably dark blue with as little lining as possible. But it mustnt show ones legs through. Shall I send you 500 francs? Yours ever K.M.

[6 November 1922] [BL] [Le Prieuré, Fontainebleau-Avon] Dear Ida Here is 500 francs. How long will the Gay-Lussac address be yours?1 Let me know in time. Sometimes letters get delayed here for a day or two – very rarely, but just in case, I give you warning. I am so glad to have the green skirt. The black coat is like most of the other things much too small – two sizes too small, arms too short. And I have one black velvet jacket – why a black plush? I wish I could send it back to you. I so hate hard things that stand out, like plush. Will you tell me just what money you have? How much more than 1000 francs have you spent is what I want to know. The mouth pastilles you sent me are also useless. They do not dissolve in either hot or cold water. I terribly need a good mouth antiseptic, a good toothbrush, and some toothpicks. Also

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water softener, & an antiseptic like Condy.2 I think & hope that will be the end of my needs. Of course I take back my words about the tops & knickers. Yours ever K.M. Notes 1. The rue Gay-Lussac, in the 6th arrondissement in Paris, is very close to the Luxembourg Gardens. 2. Condy’s disinfectants in fluid and crystal form were a well-established range of household products.

[7 November 1922] [BL] [Le Prieuré, Fontainebleau-Avon] Dear Ida I wrote to you at the Select Hotel1 & the letter was only posted on Saturday, I believe. I sent a cheque with it. Let me know if you have not received it. The coat & skirt has come; it looks very nice & very useful. The coat is a little small for that kind of coat. I wish you could understand it is part of your ‘illness’ +2 to believe I eat nothing and am the size of a pin. I hope you like your farm.3 Yours ever K.M. + in the sense we are all of us ill Notes 1. KM and Baker had previously stayed at the Select Hôtel in March/April 1918, awaiting permission from the authorities to cross over to England. 2. The ‘plus’ sign indicates the link to the P.S. at the bottom of the page. 3. Baker had found work on a farm at Le Val Richer near Lisieux in Normandy, on the estate of ‘Madame von Shlumberger’ and managed by a ‘Madame Dubois’. See Baker, pp. 220–1. It was a choice setting for rural work: the estate was then owned by Paul Schlumberger (1848–1926), a wealthy industrialist, philanthropist and patron of the arts; his wife, Marguerite de Witt (1853–1924), was one of the most outstanding French suffragists of the era and an outspoken defender of women’s rights. One of their sons, Jean (see below, p. 172, n. 2), was a reputed writer and editor.

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[10 November 1922] [BL] [Le Prieuré, Fontainebleau-Avon] Dear Ida I do not think Lisieux is a good idea.1 It is too isolated. You need people & interchange of relationships to take you out of yourself. You will only get depressed and dull at the farm, I should think. That is my opinion. Would not the Palace at Montana be better? Or that V.A.D. place at Menton?2 Or why not write to Jinnie F?3 She might have an idea. I think it would be worse than folly to live a lonely life. Surely you know your need of people! Any kind of isolation is only possible for very great strong people. Why are you so tragic? It does not help. It only hinders you. If you suffer, learn to understand your suffering but don’t give way to it. The part of you that lived through me has to die – then you will be born. Get the dying over! But remember you will teach yourself nothing alone on a farm. You are not the type. No, it makes no difference to me if you are in Paris or not . . . How I am? I am learning to live. But I have not ‘disappeared’. Later I may go to Paris or London or Berlin or anywhere & we could meet and have a talk. I am far less disappeared than ever I was. I meant the cheque to be 500. Please cash it and use it. As for the clothes – later – I shall alter them myself. But do you see that our relationship was absolutely wrong now? You were identified with me. I prevented you from living at all. Now you have to learn & its terribly hard. Keep my keys, please. Write to me whenever you wish to. Yours K.M. If you loved as you imagine you do how could you make such a moan because I was no longer helpless. Try & look at it like that. Notes 1. Despite KM’s fears, Baker’s memoirs make it clear that she loved her time at the Lisieux estate. Her incipient sadness was the result of her growing despair at KM’s condition and the additional anxiety of being separated: ‘I loved the farm. I felt at home in it and I could have been very happy working there looking after the animals, had it not been for the immense hidden weight of sorrow’ (p. 221). 2. See above, p. 52, n. 6. The Voluntary Aid Detachment had been established during the war to provide auxiliary nursing support in military hospitals. There were two major military hospitals in the Menton area – Michelham House for Convalescent Officers, and Field Hospital 52, reserved essentially for Senegalese soldiers. 3. Jinnie Fullerton. See above, p. 147, n. 6.

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[11 November 1922] [BL] [Le Prieuré, Fontainebleau-Avon] My dear Ida I am hoping this may reach you before you leave Paris. A major– minor misfortune has happened to me. I have had stolen 3 weeks laundry including as you must know nearly all my underclothes. Pyjamas, crepe de chine nightgown, tricot de nuit,1 3 pantalons, 3 ‘tops’ (my best, of course), 3 stockings, wooly petticoat, knickers, 18 handkerchiefs & so on. If you are in Paris will you please go to the Galeries2 or anywhere you think and fit me out again? Ill make a list of what I want. As regards the woolen petty & knickers they are best bought at the Magasin Jones,3 Avenue Victor Hugo or 24 Rue de Villafranca where you buy cream woolen chemise & knickers at 20 francs the set. Quite plain, little closed shape knickers bound in cream silk. The other things I want are 3 tops (can you make them? Quite plain crepe or anything, bound with silk – cream I think for the colour of the tops.) 3 knickers (buy them. You can’t make them. Quite plain again as I shall have to wash & iron them plus tard.)4 1 tricot de nuit (cream if possible). 3 pairs woolen stockings (grey & not thick. There is no difference between thick & thin wool.) 1½ dozen handkerchiefs – quite simple. 1 crepe nightgown. The others I have are too thin. The pyjamas I must let go. The nightgown I would prefer to be just a hole cut in the middle, the sides sewn up and a ribbon from the sides to tie at the waist at the back like I did my tops. You know that red shawl you made me. Can you make me a cream one embroidered in cream? Thats all. Its quite enough. Everything else has come. Send me the whole amount please & I will send a cheque by return. If you can’t do these things, tell me and I will attack the shops. Its an awful curse to have had this loss but there you are and I am not alone in it. I shall never send another shred out of any kind. I hope you are feeling better – The weather here is very good. Yours ever K.M. Notes 1. (Fr.): Night jacket. 2. The ‘Galeries Lafayette’ is one of the best-known and very fashionable department stores in Paris, situated on the Boulevard Haussmann in the 8th arrondissement.

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3. ‘Jones’ was a reputed chain of department stores, whose main store on the avenue Victor Hugo in the 16th arrondissement was nicknamed ‘le Palais des Parfums’ (the Perfume Palace). 4. (Fr.): Later.

[13 November 1922] [BL] [Le Prieuré, Fontainebleau-Avon] Dear Ida I have forgotten your Lewes address. Please send it me. And tell me how long you will be in England, will you? I have asked Jack to give you some stockings to bring me. Id like another wrap, too, like my red one, but cream & another pair of slippers from Lewis1 just like the ones I have. But Ill let you know, later. Jack seems v. well & v. happy. Do see him! I am so grateful for my toilet accessories. They are a comfort. The blue dress is about 2 miles too long. It trails. I shall have to take it up about ½ a yard for dancing. Dont make me woollen tops please or woollen knickers. I don’t need them. Id rather have a few thin crepe tops – I need them urgently, & some ribbons for head bands. Why did I ever throw away what I have thrown away! Bon Voyage. Yours ever K.M. Notes 1. The department store John Lewis on Oxford Street also had a small number of other London branches in the early 1920s.

[20 November 1922] [BL] [Le Prieuré, Fontainebleau-Avon] Dear Ida, Here is the size of the shoe. Can you bring me also my eiderdown? I wish I had waited for a woolen coat & skirt from London – I mean a knitted one or a frock. For the beige you send is useless – and warm & so narrow & I have my very navy serge. I do wear the green skirt, certainly. But . . . Do you remember a black charmeuse dress that I used to wear with chiffon scarves and little coat? It had a longish body, a full skirt, & was

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very soft. That, with long sleeves is the perfect dancing dress. I wonder if Miss Reid has the pattern. Would you ask her? Jack will give you the stockings. I cannot think of anything else, unless you rescue my my little red blue velvet coat with black collar edging & my purple velvet one. Oh yes. I badly need 3 aprons, coloured ones, as easy to wash as possible – not clumsy – and three coloured handkerchiefs for my head. And – more urgent – will you post me a copy of each of my two books. I shall ask Jack to send you a cheque for £10. I hope you enjoy your visit. Yours ever KM I would also like a handful of coloured ribons from Marshalls1 to tie round ones hair – Ill give them to my friends for Xmas. Notes 1. Marshall and Snelgrove was a department store with a vast haberdashery section, on Oxford Street.

[23 November 1922] [BL] [Le Prieuré, Fontainebleau-Avon] Dear Ida I hasten to answer your letter. Please buy me NO dress of any kind and NO shoes. This is final! I cant risk the wrong things again & I prefer to go without. Please understand I am absolutely fixed in my mind about this. No dress, no shoes, no material for dresses! As from this week I have no more money so I can’t buy any more clothes. I don’t want them, either. The coats were in the Paris box, I am sure. Please pack that small silky blanket of mine as well, if possible, with the eiderdown. Excuse a hasty note. I am busy and my pen is not good. I hope you like seeing Jack & that all goes well with you. Thank you for your letter with the snapshots of the cat. When I say I have no money I do not mean I have not always money for you when you need it. I have. You have only to ask – so ask please. Yours ever K.M. What a pity you and Jack could not start a small farm together. Why don’t you suggest it if you like him enough.1

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Notes 1. The idea that JMM and Baker might enjoy working on a farm together clearly appealed to KM, however outlandish it may appear retrospectively. Looking back on the scheme decades later in her memoirs, Baker herself comments: Nor did she realise how much I would like the farm and that essentially I was happy with animals and simple people lower down the scale of intelligence. She perhaps never understood the strain for me of constantly trying to live up to people of higher intellectual capacity. For this reason too, it would have been impossible for me to care for JMM on a farm. (p. 218)

[2 December 1922] [BL] [Le Prieuré, Fontainebleau-Avon] Dear Ida In case this letter reaches you in time & you have the money, please buy me the warmest skirt and jumper & knitted coat you can find in a darkish colour – the coat a large size. Its against the cold. Yours ever, K.M.

[12 December 1922] [BL] [Le Prieuré, Fontainebleau-Avon] My dear Ida Many thanks for your two letters. The postman has told me this morning that my 6 colis1 are awaiting me at the post office. I’ll send you a line when I have ‘examined’ them. I am sure they will be very nice. I will also send you a cheque for 300 francs for the coat & skirt in the course of a day or two. If that suits you. I hope you like your farm. Jean S.2 is a very good youngish writer, I believe. You ought to try & get hold of his books in your library. Thank you for telling me about Jack. He sounds happy. I dont think I can talk ‘fully’ about my suggestion that you should join him in a farm. It seemed to me for many reasons a very good idea and I suppose I had deep reasons. But such explanations are futile. He wrote as though he liked the idea but you were not very keen, & mentioned the fact that beautiful hand weaving is done at Ditchling which might interest you to learn.3 I think it would be very well worth while for you to know Dunning.4 I am sure Dunning knows how to live. However, its as you please. And you may find Lisieux absorbing. I would be very glad if you would tell me your financial position. Will you? Quite frankly?

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It is intensely cold here and very damp. Very rarely the house is heated. I have a fire in my little room though. I live now in the workers quarters & have the kind of bedroom Gertie Small might have.5 Bare boards, a scrubbed table for the jug & basin etc. At about 10.30 p.m. we start work in the salon & go to bed at about 1 – 2 a.m. The corridors are like whistling side streets to pass down – icy – cold. My hands are ruined for the present with scraping carrots & peeling onions. I do quite a lot of that kind of kitchen work. But I shall be glad to exchange a very grubby washing up cloth for an apron or an overall. This life proves how terribly wrong & stupid all doctors are. I would have been dead 50 times in the opinion of all the medical men whom I have known. And when I remember last year & that bed in the corner week after week & those trays. Here there is no more fine food. You eat what you get & thats the end of it. At the same time I have wonderful what shall I call them? friends. When you leave Lisieux come to Fontainebleau for a few days. I will arrange to meet you there. Not before the late spring though. Ill write to you again at Xmas – a long letter instead of a ‘present’. For I haven’t one for you. And tell me all you care to about your new life. I am sure I know a great deal more about cows than you do. I spend hours every single day with them. Goodbye for now dear Ida. Yours ever K.M. Notes 1. (Fr.): Parcels. 2. Jean Schlumberger (1877–1968), eldest son of the Schlumberger family, who owned the estate where Baker was working, was a respected writer, playwright and poet, and co-founder, with his close friend André Gide, of the Nouvelle Revue Française. His wife, Suzanne Schlumberger, was an artist and staunch defender of women’s rights. 3. The village of Ditchling is in East Sussex, very close to Lewes. The sculptor Eric Gill, who lived there, had founded the Guild of St Joseph and St Dominic in the village one year before, a community of artists and craftsmen working in the spirit of the Arts and Crafts movement. The community remained there for over sixty years. 4. Millar Durroch Dunning (1884–1982) was a fellow New Zealander and an acquaintance of Ottoline Morrell, with a vivid interest in mysticism and Eastern spirituality; he lived for a time at the Ditchling community and had become good friends with JMM in recent years. He also lent books to KM, which encouraged her interest in theosophy. 5. Gertie Small figures in KM’s address book, living at 5 Golden Square, Hampstead. She would appear to be the same Gertie that Baker refers to as ‘a tall Cockney girl’, who worked as a daily domestic helper at Portland Villas in Hampstead. See Baker, p. 129.

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[15 December 1922] [BL] [Le Prieuré, Fontainebleau-Avon] That, the ultimate remark in this letter was what I was driving at when I suggested you should join Jack. I felt then I’d be sure of you. Dear Ida, Forgive this paper. The parcels have arrived and are extremely satisfactory, thanks very much. Why are you still so awfully tragic? I feel you must be very ill physically. Tell me your physical health. I am not dead though you persist in pretending I am. And of course I shall not be here all my life. ‘Connected’ with this work and these ideas, yes, but that is different. As soon as I am cured I shall leave here and set up a little place in the South and grow something. You can come and talk over the fence if you like and are not too mournful. Come and stay with me if you promise to smile now and again. Dear Ida! Thank you for the tops and for everything. As I have said I’ll write again at Christmas and provided you are a happy nature I shall beg you to join forces with me when I leave here, if you care to, of course, in some kind of farm. So learn all you can for goodness sake. With love. Yours ever KM

[24 December 1922] [BL] Le Prieuré. Dear Ida This is to wish you a happy Xmas. I meant to have something for you. For the moment I have nothing & can’t get anything. I can’t give people commissions nor get to Fontainebleau myself. So take whatever you please that I happen to have and that you think you would like. What about the green cardigan par exemple? Especially as you probably paid for it yourself. In the course of a week or two I shall send you the sleeping vests you bought me. I cant wear them. That kind of wool next to my skin brings me out in a rash . . . I presume of course, it doesn’t you. We are going to Fêter le Noel1 in tremendous style here. Every sort of lavish generous hospitable thing has been done by Mr Gurdjieff. He wants a real old fashioned English Xmas – an extraordinary idea here! – & we shall sit down to table 60 persons to turkeys, geese, a whole sheep, a pig, puddings, heaven knows what in the way of dessert, & wines by the barrel. Theres to be a tree, too & Father Xmas. I am doing all I can for the little children so that they will be roped in for once. Ive just sent them over coloured paper & asked them to help to make flowers. Its pathetic the interest they are taking – –

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Our pudding was made in a babys bath, stirred by everybody & Mr Gurdjieff put in a coin. Who gets the coin gets our darling new born calf for a present. The calf – 1 day old – was led into the salon to the beating of tambourines & to a special melody composed for it. It took it very quietly. But two minute baby pigs which were also brought in & allowed to play squealed & shrieked terribly. I have been v. interested in the calf. The cow didn’t seem to mind the affair. She only lowed faintly & when a leg appeared Madame Ovstrovsky & Nina2 put a rope round it & pulled & presently a tall weak feeble creature emerged. The cows eyes as big as saucers reminded me of Charles.3 I wish we gave our cows apples. Some of the names are Equivoqueveckwa, Balda Ofim, Mitasha, Birofet. Our mule is Drabfeet. My existence here is not meagre or miserable. Nothing is done by accident. I understand v. well why my room was changed & so on, and to live among so many people knowing something of them, sharing something, that is for me very great change & ca donne beaucoup.4 I shall be glad though when the spring comes. Winter is a difficult time. You know you must not worry about me or say you do or don’t. Its exactly as though you took a piece of my flesh and gnawed it. It helps neither you nor me. Worry is a waste of energy; it is therefore sin. And to see you waste energy destroys energy in me, so you sin in two ways. Thats surely easy to see. As to starting dear why don’t you begin taking photographs of yourself – take them all day. And look at them. Then begin to decide which are ‘good’ and which are ‘bad’ ones. Then try & sort the work bag in your mind before you begin to learn to think & direct your thought. Open your mind & really look into it. Perhaps you wont mind what you see. I mind. I must end this letter. If youd like me for a friend as from this Xmas Id like to be your friend. But not too awfully serious, ma chère.5 The whole difficulty in life is to find the way between extremes – to preserve ones poise in fact to get a hold of the pendulum. Jack said he would be delighted to have you whenever you felt like it. He sounds different in his letters, much simpler. Yours ever K.M. Notes 1. (Fr.): Celebrate Christmas. 2. Julia Osipovna Ostrovsky or Ostrowska (1890–1926) was the wife of George Gurdjieff (1877–1949) and the head housekeeper at the Institute. She also played a lead role in dance practice and performance – thereby enchanting KM, as ‘Olgivanna’ recalled in her article ‘The Last Days of Katherine Mansfield’: ‘If only I could have just a little place in that group, if I could sit in front

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of Mrs. O. with my arms crossed on my breast. I would listen to the beautiful music, I would feel Mrs. O’s marvelous arms raised above me in prayer. How grateful I could be for it.’ KM, in a letter to JMM dated 27 October 1922, describes Nina as Madame Ostrovsky’s ‘chief helper’, ‘a big girl in a black apron – lovely too – pounds things in mortars’. 3. Baker notes, ‘The cat at Portland Villas [Charles Chaplin], mother of Wingly and Athenaeum’ (p. 224, n.) 4. KM’s slight misuse of French here makes her meaning obscure. She could mean ‘That makes a lot [i.e. to cope with]’ or ‘It’s very rewarding.’ 5. (Fr.): My dear.

[Early January 1923] [BL] Le Prieuré Fontainebleau-Avon Seine-et-Marne My dear Ida1 I have purposely not written to you before because I felt you wanted me to disappear . . . for a little. I was right, wasn’t I? But you have been in my mind today. How are you? How are your cows? As you see I am sending you 100 francs. Play with it. I don’t want it. Until your financial position improves its no good minding taking any small sums I can send you. And as I have lost my money complex you can take them quite freely. Very much is happening here. We are in the throes of theatre building which ought to be ready by the New Year (Russian style) on January 13th. Its going to be a most marvellous place. Mr Gurdjieff has bought 63 carpets for it & the same number of fur rugs. The carpets which were displayed one by one in the salon last night are like living things worlds of beauty. And what a joy to begin to learn which is a garden, which a cafe, which a prayer mat, which l’histoire de ses troupeaux2 and so on. My thoughts are full of carpets and Persia and Samarkand and the little rugs of Baluchistan.3 Do you kill pigs where you are? It goes on here. Two were stuck yesterday and their horrid corpses were dissected in the kitchen. They are frightful things to watch and to smell. The worst of it is until their heads are cut off they are still so pig like. But we kill them outright. That is one comfort. I am looking for signs of spring already. Under the espalier pear trees there were wonderful Xmas roses which I saw for the first time this year. They reminded me of Switzerland, and somebody found four primroses the other day. I have moods when I simply pine for the S. of France or somewhere like Majorka. When this time is over I shall make for the South or the East & never go North again.

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My blue work dress is in large holes. Those cashmir cardigans look as if rats have gnawed them. As to my fur coat – its like a wet London cat. The last time I was in the stable I caught one of the goats nibbling it. How are you off for clothes? Would you like brown corduroys? That big woman Miss Marston whom you took such a fancy to, wears them.4 She got them from Barkers – outsize – 35/- They are breeks and a smock & long plain coat. Very practical. Write and tell me how you are will you? Dear Ida? Our calf is still allowed to be with its Mother. I can’t understand it. Its a huge creature now. We had great trouble with the mother who had to be massaged daily. Do you massage your cows? Will you tell me how your stable is kept? What is the condition of the floor. I’ll tell you about ours in my next letter. It worries me. With love from K.M.5 Notes 1. See Ali Smith’s attentive and engaging close reading of this letter in ‘SIGNES OF SPRING: A Letter from Katherine Mansfield’, originally a talk given in London in June 2018, and published in Gasston, Kimber and Wilson, 2020. 2. (Fr.): The story of his herds. 3. Gurdjieff had travelled widely in Afghanistan, Turkestan and Balochistan in the 1890s, even living in a monastery there, which inspired some of the visions and illuminations that went on to inform his own spiritual teachings. Later, he had traded as a carpet seller in Moscow and would appear to have woven the stories of both adventures into his tales at the Institute. 4. Baker notes that Miss Marston was ‘one of the community, who was put to gardening’ (Baker, p. 226, n.). Barkers was a department store in Kensington High Street, London. 5. As Baker poignantly records, this letter was never posted, but instead ‘found inside [KM’s] blotter’ after her death (p. 225).

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Amy Barkas

Introduction Little is known about this correspondent. The letter from KM was discovered in the ATL in early 2016 (MS-Papers-2491–39), in a scrapbook titled ‘Some Letters from my wife 1913–1939’, from the collection of Frederick Barkas, 1854–1932: ‘Barkas family scrapbooks and papers’. Between pages 142 and 143 of the scrapbook is glued this hand-written letter from KM to Amy Barkas, Frederick’s wife. The ‘Mary’ referred to in the letter is Amy and Frederick’s daughter, born in Christchurch in 1889 and who died in 1959. She was a female psychoanalyst in Great Britain from about 1919 until 1932, when she returned to New Zealand following the death of her father, Frederick. As noted above, the scrapbook in which KM’s letter has been glued contains typescripts of Amy’s letters to her husband from 1913 to 1939. In the letter dated 17 November 1915 to her husband in Timaru, New Zealand, sent from Hampstead in London where she was then staying, Amy records the following: I was delighted to get a note this morning from Kathleen Beauchamp on whose track I have often tried to get – Mary discovered in the ‘New Age’ that she was ‘Katherine Mansfield’ – but till now had failed. I have always felt a little to blame about her, for she was always very fond of me, and had I seen more of her, I should probably have made her see that no man in the world is worth wrecking your life for, as I can speak from experience of 1866 & 77, when my married lover died. However, she is probably having a much more interesting life now in the wide world, than she could ever have had in the cramped, narrow life of Wellington.

KM’s letter was written on Tuesday, 16 November 1915, because she left for France on Wednesday 17th, needing to escape painful memories of her brother, who had died in Flanders on 6 October 1915, and who had spent time with her and JMM before going to the Front. There were just too many memories of him in their house at 5 Acacia Road and KM needed to escape them. Mary Barkas (given that she was born

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in 1889 – and therefore almost the same age as KM) might have been a schoolfriend of KM’s, or perhaps KM became acquainted with the family during the eighteen months she spent back in New Zealand during 1907–8, after her schooling in London, or perhaps they had met whilst travelling. There is no mention of a Mary or indeed an Amy Barkas in KM’s life at this time, though of course she knew many people who are not mentioned in the manuscripts that still exist. Nevertheless, Amy Barkas does seem to have been aware of KM’s troubled life prior to her relationship with JMM, as is clear from the letter to Frederick. Gerri Kimber

[16 November 1915] [ATL] 5 Acacia Road St. John’s Wood – Tuesday night Dear Mrs Barkas, Thank you so much for your kind letter – yes, I am ‘Kathleen’ & I should have liked so much to come and see you but I am leaving for France tomorrow (Wednesday) morning & I shall not be back for at least six months – But I shall keep your address & perhaps I may come & see you then – It would be a great pleasure – Please remember me to Mary Yours sincerely Katherine Mansfield.

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Annie Burnell Beauchamp (1864–1918) (née Dyer)

Introduction The few extant letters from KM to her mother, dating from four distinct periods of KM’s life, provide scant, and not uncomplicated, evidence for understanding their relationship. Now dispersed between the ATL and Newberry Library, this small, neat body of correspondence is marked by emotional reticence. The first letter dates from 1907: KM wrote during a camping holiday in the central North Island to Annie who, in a grand new Wellington home, was playing hostess to the colonial elite. Annie had been born in Sydney to Joseph Dyer, who worked in insurance, and Margaret Mansfield, whose family were publicans. She had married Harold Beauchamp in 1884, and through his professional success had risen to the select ranks of colonial society (Kimber 2016, pp. 19–20). By the time Harold was made Chairman of the Bank of New Zealand in 1907, he and Annie were socialising with the families of the highest officials in the country, including the Premier and Governor of New Zealand.1 Annie’s children, who referred to her affectionately as Janey, recalled that she was ‘very delicate’, having suffered rheumatic fever as a girl.2 However, by 1907, Annie had raised five children past childhood, relished several energetic boat trips to England and was pursuing a busy social life within the upper echelons of Wellington society. Her daughters concurred that she modelled a fastidious sense of refinement, but as a young mother also eagerly entered into the enjoyments of her children:3 in 1907, she and her daughters were frequently hosting concerts and ‘At Homes’, which were reported in society columns of local newspapers, where Annie’s stylish floral arrangements and elegant dress were ubiquitously praised.4 KM’s letter to Annie from this time is carefully torn from the Urewera Notebook, the journal she kept on her camping holiday.5 While the rest of the camping notes are chaotic and untidy, she wrote neatly when addressing her mother.6 Annie was known for conjuring vivid portraits in her written correspondence and KM’s letter shows similar purpose:7 with its

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sharp-eyed descriptions of people and places, the letter remains an exquisite record of colonial class distinction, the lives of indigenous Māori, and the changing landscape of New Zealand in 1907. The quantity of objective description in the letter seems calculated to support her final assurance to her mother that she was ‘very happy’: KM did find much of her holiday stimulating, yet the letter invites debate as to whether KM was providing a transparent, or somewhat crafted, representation of her emotional state. Certainly, this letter bears little of the frustration that KM expressed to other correspondents, or in private writing, about life in New Zealand at the time. The next correspondence between mother and daughter dates from two years later, amidst the turmoil that had resulted from KM’s desire for a different kind of life in England. KM had strenuously petitioned her parents to be allowed to return alone to England, and after she did so in 1908, sent her family minimal information about her activities.8 Then, in early 1909, news reached Annie of KM’s intended marriage to George Bowden. Annie sailed to England; by the time she arrived, KM had married and then abandoned Bowden, and was also pregnant to another man (Garnet Trowell). Following private interviews with Bowden (who had no idea that KM was pregnant) and Colonel Baker, which may have aroused Annie’s suspicions of an ‘unnatural friendship’ between KM and Ida Baker, Annie removed her daughter to a convent in the Bavarian spa-town of Wörishofen. Within two weeks of her arrival in England, Annie sailed back to Wellington for the wedding of her eldest daughter, Vera. On arrival, in August 1909, she cut KM her from her will.9 This treatment appears pitiless, but her contemporaries and subsequent biographers disagree about what Annie knew and intended. Ida Baker believed that Annie did not know KM was pregnant and took her daughter to Bavaria to sever the two girls’ friendship, which she deemed ‘not [. . .] “wise”’, as indicated above (Baker, p. 49). It was only in 1933, long after Annie’s death, with the publication of Mantz’s biography, that the truth was revealed to KM’s family, to the astonishment of her father, Harold Beauchamp. This period of KM’s life, and her mother’s role in it, are thus shrouded in euphemism and conjecture. The postcard that KM sent to Annie five months after her mother’s return to New Zealand – one of the few literary relics of the period – is starkly enigmatic, describing the buildings on the photograph. Whatever the truth, the tumult of KM’s life at this time must have caused both women personal upheaval. Why, in this context, did KM send a message that, except for the affectionate sobriquet ‘Janey dear’, was so emotionally unforthcoming, and why did Annie keep it? Annie lived for another nine years. Between 1911 and 1912, she, Harold and two daughters, Chaddie and Jeanne, spent fourteen months in England, during which time she and KM met often and amicably enough, although KM still divulged little of her life to the rest of the family (see Baker, p. 49). Back in Wellington, Annie’s life was genteel:

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she played croquet, attended fashionable afternoon teas, and in 1913 oversaw Chaddie’s marriage.10 Yet this final decade was blighted by the death of her only son, Leslie, while on military duty in Flanders in October 1915, and her own recurrent bouts of serious illness. KM’s letters from this final decade were all prompted by news of Annie’s poor health. One dates from the cheerless period when KM and JMM were living near D. H. Lawrence and his wife, Frieda, in Buckinghamshire, and KM’s own health, financial situation and personal relationships were causing her unhappiness. The others date from 1918, when KM, living in Bandol, was afflicted by pleurisy and was soon to suffer her first tubercular haemorrhage. Yet all these tidily written letters are buoyant: they expose increasing tenderness, a determination to minimise personal suffering, a shared sense of refinement, and a delight in creating character cameos, yet betray none of the deep anxieties of KM’s life. It is thus poignant that KM’s few surviving letters to her mother (considering that, during her lifetime, hundreds must have been written) offer fugitive evidence of her relationship with the woman she was to evoke so sensitively in her fiction – and which, in many instances, say more of the mother–daughter relationship through what they leave unsaid. Anna Plumridge Notes 1. See, for instance, ‘A Brilliant Ball’, Evening Post, 4 September 1907, p. 2, which notes Annie’s attendance at the Governor’s ball, or ‘Ways of Wellington’, New Zealand Times, 19 October 1907, p. 2, which identifies the daughter of the late Premier as one of Annie’s party guests. 2. See Owen Leeming (Producer) (1962), The Sisters of Kezia: Katherine Mansfield Remembered [sound recording]. Available at (last accessed 1 February 2019). 3. Ibid. 4. See, for instance, ‘Women’s Column’, New Zealand Times, 4 May 1907, p. 4 and ‘Daughters of Eve’, New Zealand Mail, 18 October 1907, p. 26. 5. ATL, Wellington, qMS-1244. 6. For a detailed textual description of the notebook and this letter, see Mansfield 2015, pp. 23–43. 7. Sisters of Kezia, echoed in Baker, p. 67. 8. Sisters of Kezia. 9. Archives New Zealand, Wellington, AAOM 6029 357/24163. 10. Annie’s croquet membership is, for instance, recorded in ‘New Croquet Club’, New Zealand Times, 28 September 1914, p. 3, and her social rounds referenced in ‘Reception for Mrs. Gladding’, New Zealand Times, 19 September 1913, p. 5.

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[20 November 1907] [ATL] Dear my Mother –2

Waipunga Riverside1 Wednesday –

I wrote you my last letter on Monday – and posted it at Pohui3 in the afternoon – I continue my doings – We drove on through sheep country – to Pohui that night – past Maori ‘pahs’4 and nothing else – and pitched our camp at the top of a bare hill above the Pohui Accomodation House – kept by a certain Mr Bodley – a great pa-man5 with 14 daughters who sit & shell peas all day! Below the hill – there was a great valley – and the bush I cannot describe – It is the entrance to the Ahurakura Station6 – and though we were tired & hungry Millie, Mrs Webber7 & I dived down a bridle track – and followed the bush – The tuis8 really sounded like rivers running – everywhere the trees hung wreathed with clematis – and rata9 and miseltoe – It was very cool & we washed in a creek – the sides all smothered in daisies – the ferns every where, and eventually came to the homestead – It is a queer spot – ramshackle & hideous, but the garden is gorgeous – A Maori girl – with her hair in two long braids, sat at the doorstep – shelling peas – & while we were talking to her – the owner came & offered to show us the shearing sheds – You know the sheep sound like a wave of the sea – you can hardly hear yourself speak. He took us through it all – they had only two white men working – and the Maoris have a most strange bird like call as they hustle the sheep – When we came home it was quite dark & how I slept – Next morning at five we were up & working – and really looking back at yesterday I cannot believe that I have not been to a prodigious biograph show – We drove down the Titi – o ’Kura10 – and the road is one series of turns – a great abyss each side of you – and ruts so deep – that you rise three feet in the air – scream & descend as though learning to trot – It poured with rain early – but then the weather was very clear & light – with a fierce wind in the mountains – We got great sprays of clematis – and Konini,11 and drove first through a bush path – But the greatest sight I have seen was the view from the top of Taranga – Kuma12 – You draw rein at the top of the mountains & round you everywhere are other mountains – bush covered – & far below in the valley little Tarawera13 & a silver ribbon of river – I could do nothing but laugh – it must have been the air – & the danger – We reached the Tarawera Hotel in the evening – & camped in a little bush hollow – Grubby, my dear, I felt dreadful – my clothes were white with dust – we had accomplished 8 miles of hill climbing – So after dinner – (broad beans cooked over a camp fire and tongue & cake and tea –) we prowled round and found an ‘agèd aged man’14 who had the key of the mineral baths – I wrapt clean clothes in my towel – & the old man rushed home to seize a candle in a tin – He guided us through the

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bush track – by the river – & my dear I’ve never seen such a cure15 – I don’t think he ever had possessed a tooth & he never ceased talking – you know the effect? The Bath House is a shed – three of us bathed in a great pool – waist high – and we of course – in our nakeds – The water was very hot – & like oil – most delicious – We swam – & soaped & swam & soaked & floated – & when we came out each drank a great mug of mineral water – luke warm & tasting like Miss Wood’s eggs16 at their worst stage – But you feel – inwardly & outwardly like velvet – – This morning we walked most of the journey – and in one place met a most fascinating Maori – an old splendid man – He took Mrs Webber & me to see his ‘wahine’17 – & child – It is a tropical day – the woman squatted in front of the whare18 – she, too, was very beautiful – strongly Maori – & when we had shaken hands – she unwrapped her offspring from under two mats – & held it on her knee – The child wore a little red frock & a tight bonnet – such a darling thing – I wanted it for a doll – but in a perfect bath of perspiration Mother couldn’t speak a word of English & I had a great pantomime – Kathleen – pointing to her own teeth & then to the baby’s – ‘Ah!’ Mother – very appreciative ‘Ai’! Kathleen – pointing to the baby’s long curling eyelashes ‘Oh!’ Mother – most delighted ‘Aii’ – And so on – I jumped the baby up & down in the air – and it crowed with laughter – & the Mother & Father – beaming – shook hands with me again – Then we drove off – waving until out of sight – all the Maoris do that – Just before pulling up for lunch we came to the Waipunga Falls – my first experience of great waterfalls – they are indescribably beautiful – three – one beside the other – & a ravine of bush either side – The noise is like thunder & the sun shone full on the water – I am sitting now on the bank of the river – just a few bends away – the water is flowing past – and the manuka flax19 & fern line the banks – Must go in – goodbye – dear – Tell Jeanne I saw families of wild pigs & horses here – & that we have five horses – such dear old things. They nearly ate my head through the tent last night. I am still bitten & burnt – but oil of camphor – Solomon solution20 – glycerine & cucumber – rose water – are curing me – & I keep wrapt in a motor veil. This is the way to travel – it is so slow & so absolutely free – and I’m quite fond of all the people – they are ultra-Colonial but thoroughly kind & good hearted & generous – and always more than good to me – We sleep tonight at the Rangitaiki & then the plains & the back blocks – Love to everybody – I am very happy – Your daughter Kathleen. Later Posting at country shed – can’t buy envelopes – Had wonderful dinner of tomatoes – Ah! he’s given me an hotel envelope. K.

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Notes 1. A number of draft letters that KM sent or planned to send home, including the Monday one mentioned here, are to be found in CW4 or in Anna Plumridge’s fully annotated critical edition of the Urewera notebooks, which provided the source explanations for much of the information below; the editors would like to renew their thanks here to Anna Plumridge for making this possible. The ‘Waipunga Riverside’ was reached after miles journeying through mountainous bush. ‘After many miles, the road descended to the Waipunga Falls, where the Upper Waipunga and Waiuru Rivers converge and drop 600 feet in two distinct torrents’ (Plumridge, p. 53). 2. ‘This letter is neatly written on pages clearly torn from the “Urewera Notebook” [. . .] It is completed and folded as if for insertion into an envelope, but was never sent: it fell into Murry’s possession following Mansfield’s death’ (Plumridge, p. 113). 3. Pohio (Te Pohue) was ‘a saw-milling settlement twenty-six miles from Napier. The small town, which comprised a storehouse, a blacksmith, a post office, a school, accommodation houses and several timber mills, stood amidst native bush’ (Plumridge, p. 50). 4. (Māori): A variation of ‘pa’, a fortified Māori village or stockade (Plumridge, p. 91). 5. A ‘Pa-man’ was an idiom coined by the Beauchamp family to designate male members of the family who were celebrated for their larger-than-life personalities and pioneering spirit, the most celebrated of whom was Arthur Beauchamp, KM’s grandfather. 6. ‘Upon arrival, Mansfield expressed a wish “to see some real N.Z. bush before leaving for England”, and so Elsie Webber led her and Millie Parker to some “pretty parts” following a track that led from the main road through the Ohurakura Bush, to the homestead of the Ohurakura Station’ (Plumridge, p. 53). The station was managed by the trip organiser, Eliza Ebbett’s, brother-in-law. 7. Millie Parker and Elsie Webber were members of the camping party. Parker, to whom KM sometimes refers affectionately as F. T., or Fellow Traveller, was a musician who had secured KM’s invitation on the trip. See CW4, p. 60. Many years later, Webber evoked their trip. See ATL-MS Papers-4010. 8. The tui (also known as kōkō or parson-bird) is a black and white tufted bird native to New Zealand; it is highly valued by the Māori. In myths and folklore it is often presented as a spirit that protects the forest. KM uses the bird’s striking presence and call, as well as its mythopoetic connotations in her poetry cycle, The Earth Child (1909). See CP, pp. 124–5. 9. The rātā is a tree in the myrtle family, native to New Zealand. It is particularly well known on account of its dazzling red flowers, especially since the tree does not flower annually. 10. A mountain linked to the mutton bird, a kestrel, regarded by the Maori as a great delicacy for eating (see CW4, p. 62). 11. The edible berries of a local tree fuchsia with purple flowers. 12. The mountain road leading to the vista KM describes. 13. ‘This little settlement had been one of the “old constabulary camps in the time of the Māori war”, but in 1907 it boasted only a postoffice-cum-hotel and a permanent population of 19’ (Plumridge, p. 53). There was a natural hot spring within walking distance from the hotel.

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14. An echo of Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass (1871). The White Knight’s tale begins, ‘I’ll tell thee everything I can; / There’s little to relate. / I saw an aged aged man, / A-sitting on a gate’ (Carroll, p. 225). 15. (Nineteenth-century slang): an eccentric. 16. A recollection of meals at the boarding house where KM lived when enrolled at Queen’s College, London, from 1903 until 1906, under the supervision of Miss Clara Wood. 17. (Māori): ma, woman, wife. 18. (Māori): house. 19. Manuka (Leptospermum scoparium), also known as the tea-tree, is a hardy bush native to New Zealand, well known both for its rich red flowers and its honey. 20. Solomon solution was ‘a panacea for all skin irritations, distributed from Melbourne’ (Plumridge, p. 115).

[29 November 1907] [ATL] Rotorua –

Friday1

Mother dearest Thank you for your wire which I received today and for Chaddie’s lovely letter – So Vera has definitely left,2 I can hardly realise it – What a strange household you must be feeling – You sound most gay at home – I am so glad – I wrote to Chaddie on Wednesday Yesterday was very hot indeed – A party of us went a Round Trip to the Hamurana Spring – the Okere Falls across Lake Rotoitii, to Tikitere,3 and then back here by coach – I confess, frankly that I hate going trips with a party of tourists – they spoil half my pleasure – don’t they yours? You know one lady who is the wit of the day and is ‘flirty’, and the inevitable old man who becomes disgusted with everything, and the honey moon couples – Rotorua is a happy hunting ground for these – We came back in the evening grey with dust – hair and eyes and clothing, so I went and soaked in the Rachael bath4 – The tub is very large – it is a wise plan to always use the public one – and there one meets one sex very much ‘in their nakeds’ – Women are so apt to become communicate on these occasions that I carefully avoid them – I came home, dined, and went into town with Mrs Ebbett – We ended with a Priest Bath – another pleasant thing, but most curious – At first one feels attacked by Deepa’s friends5 – the humble worms – The bath is of aerated water, very hot, and you sit in the spring – But afterwards you Notes 1. A draft letter, the final version of which (if sent) has not survived. See CW4, p. 70.

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2. Vera had left to stay with Beauchamp relatives in Sydney, Australia. 3. The ‘round trip’ from 4 until 7 December was part of the classic tourist trail, a government reserve where European style dominated. ‘[T]he principal attractions were the large geysers, silica terraces and hot pools that sat amongst the dwellings, pathways, washing lines and outhouses of a Ngati Tohourangi settlement. Roratu itself, home of the celebrated sanatorium, was situated on the shores of Lake Roratua’ (Plumridge, pp. 67–8). 4. Like the Priest bath mentioned just below, the Rachael bath (or ‘Pool’) was a spring near the sanatorium, which had been used for centuries by the Māori. See Plumridge, p. 101. 5. KM’s paternal great-uncle and Elizabeth von Arnim’s father, Henry Herron Beauchamp, was known affectionately to the family as ‘Deepa’; he was a keen agriculturalist. See also CW4, pp. 5, 285.

[24 August 1909] [N] [Postcard] [Wörishofen, Bavaria] The Church & a little white tower of the convent you can see, Janey dear.1 The large building opposite is the Kurhaus.2 Notes 1. Both KM and her cousin, Elizabeth von Arnim, would refer to their mothers as Jane, Janey or little Jane. Von Arnim’s biographer, Jennifer Walker, believes this could have been a Beauchamp way of referring to mothers, going back to the ancestral aunts known as the Worcester aunts, Jane and Charlotte Beauchamp. Jane (1792–1871) bought parcels of land in New Zealand, hoping that one day her seven Beauchamp nephews might settle there. KM’s grandfather, Arthur, and his brother, Cradock, did just that. 2. (Ger.): Spa, sanatorium [literally, ‘cure house’]. See notes on Wörishofen in the next letter, p. 186, n. 1.

[24 August 1909] [N] [Postcard] [Wörishofen, Bavaria] And here the statue of Pfarrer Kneipp,1 & the fountain of Wörishofen water.2 Thats the Kinderasyl behind and the Kneippianum.3 Notes 1. The Bavarian town of Bad Wörishofen owed its contemporary renown to the work of a local Catholic priest, Sebastian Kneipp (1821–97), who became passionately interested in the traditional virtues of hydrotherapy after contracting tuberculosis in the 1840s. His pioneering work as a healer and as a

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theorist of the water cure using the healing properties of the local water was being challenged by early psychoanalysts and traditional doctors by this time, but the cure – prescribing baths, strict healthy diets, exercise and traditional plant remedies for a variety of complaints, including neurasthenia, listlessness and sexual ‘inversion’ – remained highly fashionable. 2. The fountain in the spa gardens bears a commemorative plaque in honour of ‘Father Kniepp’ and the water cures of Bad Wörishofen. 3. (Ger.): Children’s asylum; the Kneippianum was the spa institute itself, named after its founder.

[15 December 1914] [ATL]

December 15th 1914.

Rose Tree Cottage1 The Lee Great Missenden Bucks.

My darling little Mother, How terrible that you should have been ill again, and so severely ill. Do you know I have had an extraordinary presentiment that something was happening to you. Every evening when my work was done and I sat down by the fire I felt your nearness and your dearness to me and such love for you in my heart and such a longing to hold you in my arms that I could have cried like a baby. The only way to cure my sadness was to talk about you to Jack and make him see you, too. I really believe (with all the ‘going into the silence’ nonsense aside) that you and I are curiously near to each other. I feel through you so much and I dream of you so vividly. Oh, my little precious brave Mother, if my love can help you to get strong you are better now. My heart yearns over you. I see you in bed with your pretty hands crossed and your springy hair on the pillow and I cannot bear to think that we are far away from each other, and that I cannot come in and ask you if you feel inclined for a little powwow. I am quite well and strong again, but I pray that you are better and that you are going to have a happy xmas and a New Year full of the blessings that you deserve. I have just written to Father thanking him for his munificent Christmas present to me. You can think what it means and how it oils the machinery. I feel very ‘chirpy’ and I have engaged a pleasant decent body to come and do the strenuous work of this cottage in consequence. I mean the scrubbing, my dear, and lighting fires, cleaning stove etc. Scrubbing when one runs it to earth really doesnt seem to me to be a human occupation at all. Id rather keep the floor moist and grow a crop of grass on it. It is the one thing that I really do jib at and yet my new woman Mrs Herne2 attacks it like a lamb and I sit very snug in my little sitting room and listen to her.

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It is very cold. We have had several falls of snow and the ground is frozen hard, but I love such weather at Christmas time. We are having a Christmas party at our friends the Lawrences on Christmas Eve,3 and the Cannans are giving a dinner with charades to follow on Christmas day4 and some friends of theirs a party on Boxing Day. So Mary Cannan has asked us to go and stay with them from Christmas Eve until the festivities are over. It will be great fun, I expect. Mary Cannan is a charming woman; I wish that you had met her. I feel sure that you and she would get on beautifully. Their house is rather like Aunt Chaddies was at Eastbourne,5 just the same type and I shall enjoy the lap of luxury for a little – and not having to think about meals. Poor Mrs Lawrence was the daughter of a german baron and her position at the present crisis is a little delicate, but she has been making marzipan all the week and talking with extraordinary german cheerfulness about her cousins ‘Otto and Franz’ who are ‘sure to be killed in this war – if not dead already’ and it is only we who feel her position, I suppose.6 The Germans are a very curious people. I suppose this war is as hideous to them, poor souls, as it is to us. Its the fault of the Prussians and not those simple warm-hearted bavarians, after all. Of course I cannot understand why somebody doesn’t shoot the Kaiser, but I suppose these deeds are more difficult than they appear to the female eye. Christmas this year in London is a farce except from the military standpoint. Everything is given over to the soldiers. It is strange to see all those enormous windows in Oxford Street full of khaki and wool and pots of vaseline and marching socks. Wherever one goes women are knitting – the girls in the shops knit, the women in the buses and tubes. I cant help wondering what the results are like. I heard of one old concierge in Paris sending a beloved son a pale blue balaclava helmet with a tassel on the top! I was talking the other day to Miss Royde Smith7 (a woman on the Westminster Gazette.) Her sister has been helping in a house full of refugees, but she said her experience was unfortunate as nearly all the inmates were ladies and all of them had brought dogs, and nice little metal trays that one had to keep strewn with clean sand so that the dogs could pay their debts to nature without going into the street and getting their paws wet. She said she spent her whole day flying from one room to another to attend to these little creatures and her enthusiasm suffered a very severe temporary eclipse after a week of it. These were of course, wealthy refugees. I travelled the other day with a very different variety – a woman and her husband, quite ‘poor class’ people, but very neat and clean and pleasant looking. They could not speak a word of english, and they had been staying in the north of England in quarters improvised for them out of the public baths.8 They had not a penny between them but the woman said never – no never had she dreamed of such hospitality. All the people in the little town – none of whom could speak a word of french had asked them to tea in turn. Every day they had been out

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to tea – always in silence – and the only way to get over the lack of conversation was to press them to eat. The woman told me that ‘my poor husband, Madame, whose stomach has been very small from childhood is a changed man.’ ‘Pork pies, ham, tinned apricots, five sorts of jam, cakes, bread, puddings, Madame, at five o’clock in the afternoon.’ Can’t you imagine the spread – and the silent expressive gestures of the hosts and guests and the horror of the poor little belgian pa man9 with an eye upon his waistcoat. I gathered from what she told me that the people in the town had looked upon them as a kind of circus – of course, all in the kindest way. But whenever life grew a little dull they were off in parties and ‘had a look at the Belgians.’ ‘Never alone for one moment, Madame’, said the little belgian, turning up her eyes at me. ‘They sat round us [in] circles – from morning till night – smiling so beautifully, Madame, but never leaving us alone.’ My dear darling. Here is a little handkerchief which looks like you, to me. Bless you always. I simply devoured your letters. I am always your own devoted child. Notes 1. KM and JMM had moved to Rose Tree Cottage in Buckinghamshire in October 1914, and were therefore living just three miles from D. H. Lawrence and his wife, Frieda. 2. Mrs Herne was their charlady. 3. In a letter to Amy Lowell, written one week before, Lawrence writes, ‘We shall have a little party at Christmas Eve. I at once begin to prick up my ears when I think of it. We shall have a great time, boiling ham and roasting chickens, and drinking Chianti in memory of Italy. There will be eight of us, all nice people. We shall enjoy ourselves afterwards up in the attics – You wait’ (Lawrence 1979, p. 243). The eight ‘nice people’, aside from Lawrence and Frieda, consisted of KM and JMM, Gilbert and Mary Cannan, Koteliansky and Mark Gertler. 4. The novelist and translator Gilbert Cannan (1884–1955) and his wife, former actress Mary Ansell (1861–1945), previously married to J. M. Barrie, lived at the Mill House, Cholesbury. Their Christmas party was rather melodramatic, according to JMM’s recollections when, having ‘all drank more than was absolutely good for us, [we] began to act plays’. JMM and KM began performing a dramatisation of their own marital tensions (JMM admitting that, by then, she had decided their three years together had been ‘a charming but irrelevant idyll’), with Gertler playing JMM’s successor. The tensions ended in a collected ‘psychological explosion’ (Murry 1935, pp. 321–2). 5. Elizabeth von Arnim’s eldest sister, Charlotte, known to KM as Aunt Chaddie, lived in Eastbourne, Sussex. 6. Most remembered as the fiery wife of D. H. Lawrence, Baroness Emma Maria Frieda von Richthofen (1879–1956) was a powerfully independent-minded intellectual, born into an aristocratic and multi-lingual Prussian family. At the age of twenty, she broke with her rather precarious home life by marrying Edward Weekley (1865–1954), an English professor at the University of

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Nottingham and eminent philologist, convinced, as she puts it in her memoir, Not I But the Wind, that it would make her ‘very happy, happier than she had ever been’ (p. 28). This doubtless says more about her difficult childhood years than about the marital bliss to follow; although she worked actively as a literary translator and raised three children, Frieda found life as an earnest academic’s wife living in a mining city stultifying. In 1912, she was introduced to D. H. Lawrence, marking the beginning of a passionate but also distressingly painful relationship; the couple eloped within months but Frieda was forced to leave her children behind, the emotional pain of which haunted her for the rest of her life. The couple married in 1914, and upon the outbreak of the war, settled in England after two years on the continent, where Frieda was made painfully aware of her doubly unorthodox identity as a divorced German. After the Armistice in 1918, the couple seized the first opportunity to return to the Continent, living in Italy, and then moving on to New Mexico. After Lawrence’s death, Frieda embarked on a high-profile, adulterous affair with a former Italian officer, whom she eventually married in 1950. Although the Lawrences’ marriage was stormy and even violent, Frieda was fiercely protective and supportive of her husband, in terms of both his failing health and his prolific editorial life. While her own independent life as a writer was sidelined, Frieda is to be found at the heart of many overlapping Bloomsbury circles, and also proved a prolific letter writer, providing fascinating insights into London’s intellectual world from the perspective of an outsider. The few surviving letters from KM to Frieda are to be found in Volume 2 of this edition, along with a more detailed biographical sketch. 7. Naomi Royde Smith (1875–1964) was a playwright, journalist and novelist, who, in 1912, became the first woman to edit the literary pages of the Westminster Gazette, an influential and much-respected London-based daily newspaper, renowned for the quality of its editing and its literary coverage. The Gazette published poetry, reviews and short stories by KM during Royde Smith’s literary editorship. 8. A number of public buildings, including swimming pools, village halls and theatres, were requisitioned to accommodate what was then the largest refugee movement in British history. By late 1914, tens of thousands of Belgians had arrived in Britain, inspiring a huge expansion of voluntary operations to take care of them. One and a half million Belgians in all are believed to have fled invasion and devastation in the first year of the war. 9. See above, p. 184, n. 5.

[18 January 1918] [N]

January 18th 1918

Hotel Beau Rivage Bandol (Var.)

My precious little Ma, Although I have not yet received the home letters of which Mr Kay1 makes such prodigal mention in the enclosed note I did get

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this morning your buffet to Chaddie & Belle2 which arrived by the same mail. And, much like you and Jeanne,3 upon receipt of the Bath Tablets I sat up in bed and very nearly ate them. Who writes such a witty, pointed admirable letter as you? After the war, my dear, when we are all on our lean beam ends you will have to regather them from your children, and publish them as a kind of second ‘Rosary’ and wait for the guineas to come spinning up the Wadestown Hill . . .4 But they always leave me with the regret that we are so peppered about the earth. What talks we could have, if we were all together. How we could sharpen our friendly claws upon each other. Chaddie and I are always saying ‘if only the little Ma were here to join the joke.’ (Just an aside before I go on to a full retailing of my past and present adventures. You mention Jack, love, as though he were a kind of flower in a bath chair or as though he walked abroad clad in complete jaegers with one or two abdominal and cholura belts over his patent weskit and a respirator soaked in creasote for final trimming.5 Do please believe this is not so. He is not consumptive. I cannot go so far as to say that he is twin brother to Belles quondam admirer in the tiger skin – the Sydney dentist – wasn’t he? But otherwise he is full of fire and though he is a lean bone he is a very sound one. Talking about lean bones. Farewell to my portliness. For I, who weighed 10 stone 3 at the age of fifteen now weigh 8 stone 6. At this rate I will be a midget tooth pick at fifty.) Well dear (as the precious brother used to say) I have had some very strenuous times since last I wrote. My studio is a thing of the past, I have spent three days with Chaddie at her Club6 and finally have come all this way. I much regretted giving up the studio, but its day was over. While its contents were moved to Jacks flat I went down to Garsington7 and was very much spoilt and coddled by my good friends there – coming away with, for final ‘goo’ the most exquisite spanish shawl which Ottoline’s father, the Duke of Portland had given her.8 I said to Chaddie when we had both admired it until we were full fed: ‘Of course I shall have to give it to Mother when I see her again, but she must then lend it to me for state occasions and christenings.’ It is a heavy black silk crepe (here I see Papa begin to ask if it has any gussets and if not would not a tuck or two be advisable) embroidered very thickly with flowers and fruits and birds in the most lively yet delicate colours imaginable. Even your indian daughter with her nine packing cases full of silk carpets and brass instruments was taken aback by it. To continue. I then puffed up to London and spent three days with Chaddie as her guest at the Club. You can well imagine how much I enjoyed this. She had engaged a very snug room for me with instructions as to fires which were most ‘reckless and bold’, and we saw of course more of each other than we have for months and had great talks. Jack came in to dinner and I of course spent most of my time with him. Chaddie has promised to keep a sisterly eye upon him while I am away: I know she will. At the last moment the French* Authorities refused to

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allow Ida to come. This was rather a blow, but if she did come it would have meant her giving up the factory finally, for nobody is allowed out of England for less than four months and of course she could not have expected such extended leave. However on Jack’s suggestion and as I assured them I was well enough to go alone I took first class all the way, booked a room in Paris at a good hotel and a sleeping car on the train to Marseilles. He provided me further with such luxuries and comforts that I felt like a foreign princess ‘en voyage’ – even down to a good John Pound travelling bag,9 a little electric torch and a flask (the last named was a perfect boon). In fact he behaved as though money flowed, not that he was extravagant, but he did do me very proud indeed and I hate to think what a hole my wing-bother10 has made in his savings. However as he is perfectly cheerful about it and is hard at saving again I suppose I must not bother. I had, on the whole, a wonderfully comfortable journey as far as Paris but after that it was pretty warlike! France is, I realised then, very different to England at present. Her railway system and organisation simply does not exist – really. The trains are hours late, often unheated, with broken windows and unimaginably filthy carriages – and this is endured so without protest that I presume it to be an accustomed state of affairs. I, also, in my final train got into a very nasty fight between a body of soldiers who rushed the train and the civilians whom the soldiers attempted to turn out. This was not in at all the good old english spirit, but very violent and ugly. I hope I never see the like again or at any rate that I am not in it. However, thanks to some serbian officers who were in my carriage, I managed to stick it – and finally steamed out of Marseilles station leaving a howling mob and no regrets behind me. Since then I have been going slow and getting back my puff. Staying in bed till midday and going back to that very uncongenial spot at eight oclock in the evening. But by the time this reaches you I shall be a tower of strength again and thinking of spreading my wings for Blighty again,11 I fondly hope. It is a great pity, things being as they are that you and I are not neighbours. We might build a kind of neutral ward, a very fair and gay place with two beds and suitable trimmings, so that when we were seized with the desire to put up our toes we could do it in company and cosiness. I sadly miss a partner in my present condition and have cursed the michaelmas daisies on the wall paper far more roundly than they are worth. By the way, my dear, re, again, your letter to Belle and Chaddie this talk of woolen jackets really does begin to make my mouth water. If you can toss them off your knitting pegs like positive pancakes – why cant your poor little K. have one? It is mean; Im older than Jeanne. This dear little port is greatly changed since we were here before. The people look yellow and thin. Their gaiety has gone and the only ones left full of fat and go are the coal black nigger soldiers in full french uniform who strut up and down bulls eying the girls. I have a horror of

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black men even though Deepa12 declared them my weakness, and the sight of these particular ones, in their spruce european clothes gives me an unpleasant turn. If I were queen they would never be allowed to escape from their cotton fields and coconuts. Well, darling I will stop here and wait to see if tomorrow’s post brings me my letters so that I can comment on them. I wish I had not become such a very great baby about missing Jack. As far as my practical side is concerned, for all your references to me as a kind of mild ‘dotty’, I feel extraordinarily more practical and capable and settled since I knew him, but as regards my loving side I seem to have turned into a sort of child and can’t feel really happy without ‘my little mate’. Don’t laugh or be cross. Im sure you understand really, because if the truth were known I believe you understand every one of us in a way that nobody else does. But you do know what I mean don’t you dear? I miss quite absurd things, like just having him under my eye and hearing all that has happened to him during the day, down to what he had for lunch etc – and then telling him in detail all that has happened to me, and enjoying to the full that confidential ‘give and take’ which people who love each other enjoy and yet can’t explain. I try to tell you this, because I always want to confide in you, and to feel that you know me through and through. See? If you don’t like it make a curlpaper13 of the page, my dear and say no more. * The word French is smudged by ink, and at the bottom of this page KM has written: not my fault. It is war blotting paper. Notes 1. Alexander Kay was KM’s bank manager and financial adviser at the London branch of the Bank of New Zealand in Queen Victoria Street. He remained a trusted source of advice for KM. 2. KM’s sister Charlotte (Chaddie; see Introduction below, p. 198) and her Aunt Belle, sister of Annie Beauchamp. 3. KM’s younger sister, Jeanne (see below, p. 257). 4. KM’s parents now lived in Wadestown, a suburb of Wellington. 5. Beneath the comic hyperbole, KM’s depiction of clothing reflects the fashions and medical practices of the time. The clothing company Jaeger, founded in 1884, was heralded for its ‘sanitary woollen system’, a feature then incorporated into the company’s full name. They had originally specialised in woollen long-johns for men, and became army suppliers during the war. It was not until the 1920s that they branched out into the more characteristic jumpers and jerseys for which they are still known today. The ‘patent weskit’ (waistcoat) refers to a medical garment worn to protect the upper abdomen as part of tuberculosis treatment, sometimes known as a ‘collapse waistcoat’. Creosote – either wood-tar or coal-tar – was commonly believed to have therapeutic and antibacterial properties favouring the treatment of pulmonary tuberculosis.

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6. KM’s sister was a member of the Empress Club on Dover Street close to Piccadilly, London; it was a very grand ladies’ club, founded in 1897 and offered drawing rooms and dining spaces to its wealthy members, as well as accommodation, study facilities and modern communication systems. 7. Garsington Manor was the country home of Lady Ottoline Morrell (1873– 1938) and her husband, the Liberal MP Philip Morrell (1870–1943), situated near Oxford. During the war, its working farm provided employment for conscientious objectors, as well as becoming a haven of peace offering many artists, soldiers and refugees the time and leisure to rest. 8. The Duke of Portland was actually Ottoline’s half-brother, William Cavendish-Bentinck (1857–1943), who inherited the title in 1879; it was on this account that Ottoline was granted the title ‘Lady’. Her father was Lieutenant General Arthur Cavendish-Bentinck (1819–77), who died when Ottoline was just four. For the Spanish shawl, see above, p. 111, n. 3. 9. John Pounds was a maker of leather military equipment, dressing cases, travelling bags and travel accessories in Regent Street, London. 10. See above, p. 86, n. 3. 11. Blighty was a nickname for Britain, first coined in British India to refer to visitors from Britain, and later used in the Boer Wars to refer to white Europeans; usage became far more widespread during World War One, even being adopted as the name of a magazine for troops. 12. See above, p. 186, n. 5. Deepa was the family’s affectionate nickname for Henry Herron Beauchamp, KM’s paternal great-uncle. 13. The most common way to curl hair was to wind locks of hair around strips of paper. The embarrassment of being found in one’s curl-papers provides comic relief in many nineteenth-century novels and plays.

[20 January 1918] [N] [Hôtel Beau Rivage, Bandol] Book II Sunday afternoon. January 20th 3.15 My precious Mummy, Three letters from you two pounds from Papa and a note and two handkerchiefs from Jeanne enriched my morning’s mail. I am writing separately to Father and Jeanne, so now I will reply to yours. I have just sent Belle a note and the receipt – rather a copy of it for the brown bread that you sent me. Alas! I cannot make it over the gas jet here, but as soon as I get back I will bake a loaf. My dear! The illustration of the jam tart in your letter made my mouth water; especially did my eyes pop at the button of sugar on the top. I hope you will not have lost your cunning when we meet again. I am afraid you took my mention of sausages and stout, a meal partaken of in company with my dear sister & Jack, too much to heart, and have a dreadful fancy that I live almost exclusively upon these highly seasoned comestibles. Nothing could be further from the truth. I am just as simple in my tastes as you. A cup of

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good old fashioned tea, bread and butter – jam – and eggs plain or in any disguise satisfies me at any time and for any time. Having inherited from my mother a light and courageous hand I own that I am tempted to flights higher than these – and love sometimes to go a trifle mad dog in the kitchen, but on the whole nobody could be fonder of simple home made fare than Jack and I. I had, exclusive of my home budget today, eleven letters on my breakfast tray, including one from my good little doctor in reply to a note I had sent him thanking him for his care of me. I agree with you about doctors. Unless one wants a check action and a spring balance put in or to be jewelled in two holes1 they are not very helpful, and I shall always give them as wide a berth as I can. But this little man of mine was very modern and professional and cheery. It is rather a comfort to feel he is there in case one requires glueing or darning together. I am so glad that our Christmas presents arrived and eagerly look forward to your photograph. I shall have as good a one as I can taken in April for you – I don’t mean life-size by that or with mother-of-pearl eyes but a good postcard. Chaddie’s are perfectly excellent and the image of her present self. Mummy I shall have to wait until I get back to Paris before I can send you a sachet. I will try and get you a ‘special’ one there. Your love of sweet perfumes is another gift that you showered on me . . I can never have enough of fine sweet smells such as sachets and powders and soaps. In fact the customs officials on my way here came across so many small coloured sweet smelling bags in my yellow trunk that they became quite suspicious and I was half afraid they would borrow the bayonet from the sentry at the door, slit them open and have us all wading in lavender verbena and rose. I don’t think it is a vice or even a vanity, but backed up by old Dean Swift2 I think ‘it is a virtue in a woman to be exquisite and discreet in her person and of a delicate perfume’. Do you remember that bottle of Indian Hay in your corner drawer at 75? I think you got it in Sydney. This little village smells of nothing but shellfish, jonquils, a whiff or two of goat and burning charcoal and bluegum wood.3 Which isn’t a bad mixture but difficult to capture for you and not to be relished far from its native soil. I feel so much better today. For the first time for weeks I felt really hungry for lunch. The party at the next table to me are a trifle hypnotising. A mother with her two little boys. The mother is very thin, dresses in woolen jackets tied with ribbons and trimmed with swansdown, with short sleeves (the provincial french lady’s idea of a sports coat) One little boy whose back is turned to me seems a dear little fellow, but the bébé, who sits next to Mamma, and cannot be more than five, is a terror. I am always catching him making the most dreadful faces at me or gazing at me through his wine glass, as though I were a ship on the horizon and could only be seen with artificial aid or else he slaps a slice

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of bread on his head, puffs out his cheeks and rolls his eyes at me. And his manners! Whenever there is fish he seizes his prey by the head and tail and devours it as though he were playing a finny mouth organ – as to fowl or cutlet bones he is almost a professional performer upon those and ripe to give a concert on either instrument at the Queens Hall.4 You can imagine how anxiously we are waiting for yours and Father’s answers to the letter we sent about getting married! I know you believe in happiness, and that you think it is ones duty to be happy. If I could only tell you how happy I shall be to have my darling Jack for a husband. We are both great believers in the power of happiness and I know that our friends love to be with us because they feel we are happy and have enough and to spare to give to them, too. Just four o’clock. I wonder what time you have Sunday tea, and if the kettle would be on if I were to turn up now. Its a great comfort to feel that dear old V. will be with you so soon. I am longing to write to her; but I hope to hear from her and she will tell me where she may be caught with a letter. I wonder what Mack’s plans are?5 I was so delighted to hear from Jeanne. She is the sister whom I know least but from her letters to Chaddie I get many a glimpse. Poor little Godmother.6 Would you convey to her my loving remembrances and most sincere sympathy. I hope she does build on her section so that you and she may walk in each others parlours. Well, Mother dear I must bring this letter to a close, light my fire and make myself at least a glass of hot water. As old Minnie7 would say ‘Mrs Beauchamp might whistle for a cup of tea here.’ My devoted love to you. I cannot thank you for all the riches that your letters heaped on my heart, but you know how warmly it beat for you under them – don’t you, dear? Ever your devoted little child, Kass. Notes 1. In this playful extended metaphor, KM compares the doctor to a watchmaker or jeweller, meticulously assembling and mending parts. 2. The eighteenth-century satirist, Jonathan Swift (1667–1745), or ‘Dean Swift’ as he was frequently called in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, was, as KM knew perfectly well, hardly noted for his generosity towards women, especially when evoking questions of cleanliness, fashion and beauty. Her playful reference here is therefore all the more satirical. She is not quoting Swift; rather, this is an ironic pastiche of a Swift-like recommendation, since in works like Strephon and Chloé, Letter to a Young Lady on Her Marriage and The Lady’s Dressing Room, he rails against the use of false fragrances to disguise an unclean body, along with other deceptive arts of refinement. 3. KM uses the Australasian term here to designate the eucalyptus trees.

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4. The Queen’s Hall in Langham Place was one of London’s foremost concert venues, reputed for its fine coverage of contemporary composers as well as its rich classical repertoire. KM attended many concerts there, especially during the 1917 season. 5. KM’s brother-in-law, her sister Vera’s husband, James Abbott Mackintosh Bell. See Introduction to Vera Beauchamp below, p. 273. 6. KM’s godmother was Laura Bright, who would go on to become Harold Beauchamp’s second wife in early 1920. 7. Identity untraced. Minnie would appear to have been one of the Beauchamps’ servants.

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Charlotte Mary Beauchamp (1887–1966) (m. Perkins / m. Pickthall)

Introduction Charlotte Mary Beauchamp was born on 9 July 1887 in the Wellington suburb of Wadestown, where Harold Beauchamp first bought land and built a house. She was called ‘Chaddie’ as a girl, but later became ‘Marie’ to KM and other family members because of her reputed likeness to the singer and actress, Marie Tempest. Together with KM and Vera, she began school in Karori when the family moved to Chesney Wold in 1893, and completed her schooling at Miss Swainson’s, a private school at 20 Fitzherbert Terrace, close to the future family home there. Then, the entire family took what Harold Beauchamp called ‘a glorified yachting cruise’ to England on the SS Niwaru.1 There, Chaddie, together with Vera and KM, spent three years (1903–6) at Queen’s College, Harley Street, London – a unique institution devoted to the higher education of women. But it was by no means the mere ‘finishing school’ Harold Beauchamp anticipated.2 Chaddie shared a spacious bow-windowed room with her sisters at the Queen’s College boarding house, located at 41 Harley Street, and she continued her musical education with voice lessons at the London Academy of Music. Just a year older than KM, she was far more easy-going than her tempestuous sister. In a self-indulgent and comically spiteful poem reflecting their affinity, KM set ‘Chaddie and me’ against the more seriousminded Vera: ‘our sister – with her face all red / Has gone to see her Ma instead’ (Kimber 2016, p. 159). Their parents returned to England in April 1906, and the family made the voyage back to New Zealand on the White Star Line’s SS Corinthic, reaching Wellington on 6 December 1906. There was one more extended family trip to London in 1911 for the coronation of George V, by which time the gap between KM’s non-conformist lifestyle and her family’s unshakable middle-class conventionality had long become painfully apparent. On 26 May 1913, at St Paul’s Pro-Cathedral in Wellington, Chaddie married the much older Lieutenant-Colonel John Charles Campbell Perkins, D.S.O., Controller of Military Accounts for Western Circle,

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India. After she was unexpectedly widowed on 27 February 1916 (her husband was only fifty), she left India and settled in England, in ‘Woodhay’, a house purchased by her father, near Southampton, Hampshire, where she was eventually joined by Jeanne. On 10 October 1923, she married again, to Cecil Marmaduke Pickthall (1891–1945) of the Foreign Office, whom she may have met through her relative, Sydney Waterlow. Apart from a single incomplete draft letter sent during her camping trip to the interior of the North Island in 1907, KM’s surviving letters to ‘Marie’ begin well after her much-anticipated return to London in 1908. None the less, these letters are often enlightening – if noticeably infrequent until 1922 – when read in the context of family dynamics. The first dates from late December 1913, written in Paris, where KM had just moved with the newly bankrupt ‘Jack’. Even as she thanks her sister for the ‘lovely rug’ from India, then, she exposes what a foolish, indeed disastrous, decision she and Jack had made that even the beauty of Paris could not conceal – the horrific Channel crossing, the unanticipated difficulty in finding and furnishing a flat, and the reliably unreliable Jack ‘prostrate with a chill’ (22 December 1913). There is an astonishing five-year gap before the next letter in August 1918 – presumably many letters were lost – and, by then, the world had changed profoundly for both sisters. Their mother had died earlier that month, the widowed Marie was working in London for the War Graves Registration, KM’s consumption had been definitively diagnosed in April, she had been married to Jack since May, Prelude had been published by the Hogarth Press in July, and KM was preparing to move yet again – this time from Fulham to 2 Portland Villas, Hampstead. Her curious ambivalence about possessions is here reflected in regret about not keeping more of her mother’s letters, on the one hand, and ‘having a rare tidy and burn up’ before her move, on the other (17 August 1918). Marie might well have had reason to wonder about the fate of ‘the lovely rug’ she had sent. The next time she hears from her compulsively peripatetic sister, the letter comes from Menton in the South of France; it was written at the end of January 1920, soon after KM has been rescued at the instigation of Connie Beauchamp, her father’s cousin, from what had become the Italian nightmare of her five-month stay in Ospedaletti, less than 40 km away. Back in Hampstead in late April 1920, KM’s situation would seem quite stable – she has visited her sisters at Woodhay, she could boast of her own home with Ida Baker as official housekeeper and a maid, Violet, to cater to her needs, and her husband, Jack, was happily preoccupied with tennis. Yet, impelled by her dissatisfaction with the English weather and her weight loss, KM is already planning a return to Menton – ‘real home to me’ (23 August 1920), and thus the abandonment of apparent domestic stability. In fact, she spent a fairly productive seven months

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at the Villa Isola Bella in Menton before moving on in May 1921 to her next way station and new promised land, the Chalet des Sapins, Montana, in the Swiss mountains, which, she avers, is ‘a perfect place to live in [. . .] All my tap roots are fixed here’ (21 August 1921). This letter, addressed to both Marie and Jeanne, also brings to the surface KM’s suspicions that seem to have been expressed before: ‘I have an idea that you write to me as one writes to a sick person [. . .] You are a little specially cheerful as one is at bedsides and sofas. Is that not true? Am I being “too sensitive” – Marie?’ (21 August 1921). However, KM developed a warm friendship with her second cousin, Elizabeth von Arnim – now Countess Russell and living nearby, and the months she spent there were enormously productive. But the unwarranted optimism that prompted KM to take a year-long lease, with an option for a second year, proved misguided because, by the end of January 1922, she was lured to Paris for four months to try Dr Manoukhin’s new X-ray treatment for consumption. In that fateful and final full year of her life, KM’s correspondence with Marie increased dramatically, almost as if she knew how little time remained to her; there are eight letters to Marie alone and two that include Jeanne. From the Victoria Palace Hôtel in Paris in early February, KM announces that she has left ‘my mountains’ to begin the new treatment, believing that ‘it is my only chance’ (5 February 1922). Subsequent letters chart her progress – ‘in the throes of my two worst weeks’ (11 March 1922) – but also the pleasure she takes in ‘domestic details in a letter’ that make her feel ‘as though we still shared part of our lives and that is a precious feeling for me’ (26 March 1922). By early April, KM declares she is ‘marvellously better,’ encourages her sisters to visit, and tries to explain her hesitation about sending her new book: ‘because you may think it “personal” – like old V[era] did’ (8 April 1922). This is the last extant letter, although among KM’s papers after her death there was a resolutely down-to-earth fragment addressed to Marie and Jeanne from Le Prieuré, where she reported ‘leading a very particular kind of communal life’ (31 December 1922). J. Lawrence Mitchell Notes 1. Beauchamp 1937, p. 87. 2. Ibid., p. 86.

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[25 November 1907] [ATL] [Draft] Petane Valley1 – Monday morning – Bon jour2– Marie dearest –Your humble servant is seated on the very top of I know not how much luggage – so excuse the writing – This is a most extraordinary experience – Our journey was charming – a great many Maoris on the train3 – – in fact I lunched next to a great brown fellow at Woodville4 – That was a memorable meal – We were both starving – with that dreadful silent hunger – Picture to yourself a great barn of a place – full of pink papered chandeliers and long tables – decorated with paper flowers – and humanity most painfully en évidence5 you could cut the atmosphere with a knife. Notes 1. This draft letter, from KM’s second notebook (ATL-qMS-1244), evokes an episode near the beginning of the Urewera camping trip, when the travellers set out along the Hawke’s Bay section of the Napier–Taupo Road. The Petane Valley was still within the boundaries of a government confiscation. However, KM’s sense of venturing beyond familiar territory is tangible, expressed, above all, by the dominant presence of Māori packed in side by side with the travellers, and the ‘barn’-like, gaudy dining carriages packed with people. 2. (Fr.): Good morning. 3. Māori were heavy train users by 1907, receiving concessions to attend ‘tangi’ (Māori: funeral ceremonies) and Native Land Court hearings (Plumridge, pp. 6, 90). 4. Woodville was one of the first stops on the train journey to Hastings, from where the group began their camping trip. 5. (Fr.): Conspicuous.

[22 December 1913] [N] 22. XII. 13. Hotel de l’Univers 9 Rue Gay-Lussac Paris. My dearest Marie – It seems a long time since I have written to you but indeed dear, I have been so busy and there have been such countless things to do before we were able to fold up our tents, and ever since we have been in Paris the days have flown. It was much more difficult to get a flat here than we anticipated and then the locality and manner of renting them was quite strange.

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Now, dear my apologies & explanations over I want to thank you for the lovely rug. It arrived two days before we left and it is going to look lovely on the floor of my new room, I know. Jack and I were simply charmed with the colouring & design. If your John1 had, indeed, any part in the choosing of it – please convey to him my sincerest and most cordial thanks for the lovely gift. Jack will be over in England every three months & I hope thus to have news first hand of Vera.2 That was my real reason for regretting that we should have come just at this time to Paris – I had wanted to be in the same city with V. when her baby came. She was, poor darling, dreadfully upset last time I saw her at the sudden and inexplicable illness of Andrew, but thank goodness he seems quite himself again now. Ida is brushing V’s hair for her twice a week. I am sure that will do her good. Indeed there seems some idea of Ida going to Ontario3 to start business there! I expect she’d do very well. Jack & I had endless worries at the last moment, letting the flat, and having the furniture packed etc. and our journey was one of the real and oldfashioned horrors by sea. I was prostrate in five minutes & Jack – – very nearly. It was bitterly cold this side in the train, too & we arrived to find there had been some mistake at the hotel & they had reserved us 2 tiny rooms on the 6th floor. However life gradually swung to its new pendulum, and now that we have found a dwelling – 31 Rue de Tournon Paris VI – I think we will be very happy. We have to wait another week in the hotel while the present occupier moves away her Spanish furniture (!) and then our chairs & table which Cooks are keeping will be set out and the flowers bought and the kettle on the gas stove & Jack & I will be happy. We are both wretched without a home & without our own particular creature comforts. The weather is icy, but Paris looks beautiful. Everything is white & every morning the sun shines & shines all day until it finally disappears in a pink sky. The fountains are just a bubble in their basins of ice – And now the little green Xmas booths are lining the streets – I am going to enjoy life in Paris I know. It is so human and there is something noble in the city – Then the river is so much more a part of it than the Thames. It is a real city, old and fine and life plays in it for everybody to see. Jack and I are dropping into speaking French together and leaving English alone until we have really mastered the other. Once ‘at home’ I shall study hard. Marie, what a wonderful time you have had on your travels. I envy you all that you have seen of India, and you have seen it in such a splendid way. If you come home from India this year I suppose you will come via and that will mean Paris. Won’t it? I have not really seen the shops yet at all. I have not yet had a moment to myself, because added to everything Jack has been prostrate

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with a chill. He begs me to thank you for your Xmas card & to send his love & greetings. This is an unsatisfactory letter I feel, darling. My best wishes to you & John for the New Year. And my fondest love to you now and always. Take care of your precious little self. Always your devoted sister K. Notes 1. Charlotte’s first husband, John Perkins. 2. KM’s oldest sister, whose two children were called Andrew and John. 3. Vera lived in Ontario with her Canadian husband, and appears to have encouraged Baker to think of moving out there as well.

[17 August 1918] [N] 47 Redcliffe Road S.W.10. Saturday. Dearest Marie, Here are the letters you asked me to send back to you. I wish I had kept more of Mother’s letters; they live and breathe. These last are so radiant and they give such a picture of her – don’t they?1 Thank you for having let me see them. I had rather thought that Father would have cabled again before now – Hadn’t you? I do wish he would – and yet what is there to say? But it seems so long to wait for letters . . . I hope, dear, you have been enjoying this perfect weather which has ‘turned’ today. It is quite chilly this morning & my 11 oclock tea is peculiarly grateful. We are moving, definitely, on Monday week and I am already making all fair before that happens – having a rare tidy and burn up. However careful one is ones possessions seem to shed themselves in untidiness as a tree sheds leaves and the new house is so spick and span that I feel everything that goes into it must shine like a jewel. Before the end of next week, dear, will you let me know of the train which you consider is the best and goes furthest? I am sending you a letter from Ellie Payne.2 Ottoline sent me, with her letter a most exquisite bouquet of bright flowers – ‘gathered for your mother’ – wasn’t it a perfect thing to do? With fondest love Your own Katie

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Notes 1. Annie Beauchamp had died in Wellington on 8 August 1918. 2. Evelyn Payne, KM’s second cousin, was the daughter of Annie Beauchamp’s first cousin, Frank Payne, a Wimpole Street doctor. See Kimber 2016, p. 98.

[31 January 1920] [N] This is a crimson rambler of a letter. Its written on an empty stomach & I feel slightly drunk – do you know? . . . . . . Hermitage Menton 31 1 1920 My precious Marie, At last I have time to sit down for a chat. I don’t know whether you have received my last letters from Italy or not. Before I arrived here I had received no news of any kind for a fortnight, neither was it possible to send a letter or a telegram! There was a complete postal strike with the office guarded by the military and a complete railway strike – which meant no supplies arriving of any kind. Plus that, my child we were attacked by bad men in the middle of the night – plus that your little sisters heart nearly gave out – well, everything happened. Just before the strike began I wrote to Jinnie & explained my position – My dear, words cant describe what that woman has done for me. She found me rooms, arranged everything here – all on the spot, don’t you know – got rooms for Ida – and sent a car from Menton to fetch me. Getting here was like the war all over again. The day the car came through an order was published forbidding all motor traffic between Italy and France. Our man managed to get there & then we made a run for it – among the mountain roads at the back of the towns to avoid the police. It was pretty horrid & cost £6 and 25 francs for the driver! Just as a last straw my nice thick overcoat was stolen from the Casetta the day I left! Stolen out of the hall by a beggar while I was getting him some bread. Viva Italia.1 However we got here at last & Con & Jinnie were here. They had filled my rooms with flowers, bought cigarettes – an ash tray, all those small things which mean so much – and there was Jinnie – She opened her arms and said ‘Well darling you’re safe, thank God!’ My child, I never was so near turning R.C. on the spot! ‘Here’ is a very large exquisitely clean and most sumptuous maison de cure climatique.2 Its not a nursing home. One is absolutely free and ones own mistress but at the same time there is a very nice Swiss masseuse on the premises, the food is particularly good & nourishing – one has heaps of butter & milk & so on and the bedrooms are most comfortable with large windows, chaises longues, good beds, and

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central heating. Theres a gorgeous garden and view – A doctor lives on the premises & keeps an eye on one if one wants an eye kept – don’t you know? But at the same time no serious cases are taken – people are just here to rest and so on – Its really ideal. I sometimes feel I died in Italy & have gone to Heaven! Its fearfully expensive but drat the expense as Mummy would say. I can do twice the work in this comfort & Oh Marie Im getting better – coming back to Life! Connie & Jinnie come in nearly every day with their baby Peke which is to be mine if we can get it back to England. They are going to try through some friends who have a car. Heaven knows why they should be so sweet and dear & friendly. I simply bask in their family affection – ‘Well, Con, how do you think the child is looking?’ ‘Very sweet my dear!’ Cant you hear them? Ida is very happy. She comes every day – does my little odd jobs & so on. I am to walk next week & the baby Peke whose name is Chin-chin is to give me a lunch party. Well, thats enough about this child. And you are? Marie – love – how are your feet? Are they massaged away? Do sparks come out of your toes? Do tell me just how you are. Jeanne, my child, where is your John Brown?3 How is he. Will you lui serre la main from me?4 Kay says hes very doubtful about you both & wouldn’t break a bottle of fizz on it either way. Did you see my book advertised in the Times? I can’t ask you to buy it because it costs 10/6 but there it is out and on the market. Grant Richards4 is coming here next week & we are going to fix up a new one then. We are still looking for a house – The Lacket was too small.5 What a bother it is. Jack writes of nothing but houses. But in May I am coming to stay with you am not I? I shall bring you both a mug with Souvenir de Menton on it, of course – Oh, you darlings – how I shall love to pop eyes on you again – Pa wrote to me from Freemantle.7 He sounded very chirpy and full of bees. Dearest the gong has sounded. I must go to dinner – Heaven bless us all. Do write soon to your devoted Katie. Notes 1. (It.): Long live Italy. 2. (Fr.): Health resort. 3. Captain John Brown was the famous American anti-slavery activist who was tried for treason and hanged for his leading role in the armed insurrection against the Federal Armory in West Virginia. KM is alluding playfully to her sister Jeanne’s fiancé, Captain Charles Renshaw. 4. (Fr.): Give him a friendly handshake from me. 5. The writer Grant Richards (1872–1948) was also the founder of the Grant Richards Publishing House, based in London; in 1919, he offered to publish a collection of KM’s stories but the contract went to Constable instead. It was Richards who put KM into contact with the rich arts patrons Sydney and Violet Schiff. 6. The Lacket was a cottage in Lockeridge, near Marlborough, owned by Edward Hilton Young. It was where Lytton Strachey had lived in 1914–15,

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and begun writing the short biographies of Cardinal Manning and Florence Nightingale, which were later to form part of Eminent Victorians. 7. Freemantle, Australia, was one of the many stops Harold made on his long voyage to Europe.

[23 August 1920] [N] [2 Portland Villas, East Heath Road, Hampstead] Tel: 1277 Hampstead* Monday. My precious Marie I am up today and lying on the sofa in my room. Its such a joy to feel dry land under one’s feet once more instead of the heaving bed. Have you ever known anything to equal this weather? It is winter in Hampstead – a pale red sun, deep misty mornings and china asters in the vases. I think this is the final summer England will ever have – Its been just a lick and a promise. Next year it will be a promise only. Why not bow down to it & all dress in rabbit skins and not attempt anything less substantial than long sleeves and high necks. The gooseberries at Woodhay1 and the raspberries and the beautiful springing bunches of sweet peas & those lovely lilies in the corner were (in spite of the rain) my real summer this year – – We have taken tickets for September 7th subject to my teeth – feet etc . . . And I have really rented Jinnies small villa the Isola Bella which she is having made ready – The darling woman came in the other day & we had a pow-wow about our plans. I hope to be able to help her about things until she can get out there – give an eye to her villa & its arrangements. It will be perfect joy to be ‘over there’ just in time to put in all the Christmas flowers – Menton is real home to me: I love the little town – and the idea of pottering in it – making my Isola Bella really as pretty as I can, buying little spotted curtains for its windows and cups with lemons painted on them for its breakfast is very delightful after cold London. I shant come back here next year. Its useless. Ive lost 5lbs. of very valuable flesh – stolen – nipped away – so I shall stick to furrin parts until I am really mended. Do remind me of this when I write wicked letters wailing to you about Hampstead – darling. How are you? How is everything going? Are your plans advanced? Are you happy? I wish I could pop in & find out these and many other things. I am always thinking about you – as you know. Jack is so full of fire and health that I feel I have married a prize fighter. He plays tennis every day for hours – and even started at 7 AM. one morning! I never seem to see him except in a white woolly sweater clean white flannel trousers & wet hair after a cold bath. Men whose names Ive never heard of – names like Mr Funnel and Mr Nutt ring up & ask if he will be ‘at the Courts this morning’ as though he

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were in a perpetual state of being taken before a magistrate. Its very good for him – I feel just like his Mother – sitting up in bed and saying ‘run along dear & put on your jacket if you get over heated’ . . . . I am so sorry I have not sent the paper this week. I am sending it today – Did you see your dear sister was mentioned in The Times last week? It was funny to hear the solemn old Times call me ‘K.M.’, tout court.2 Better than ‘Kassie’, tho. Well, dearest here comes lunch – grilled sole, cream cheese & grapes – It’s borne by the faithful Violet who came back from her wedding last night.3 I have had to admire the photographs today – can’t you see them – Pa, Ma, and relations so complicated that ones brain whirls – ‘Thats Roger’s sister’s niece-by-marriage with her stepbrother by her Father’s first wife’ – ‘Oh, yes, Violet – I see!’ Goodbye darling. Give the Little un my best love. Do let me hear from you. Your own K. * Above the telephone number, KM has drawn a tiny picture of herself sat at a desk working, with the following words written above: ‘I cant draw working.’ Notes 1. Woodhay, the house bought by Harold Beauchamp in Lyndhurst, Hampshire, for Charlotte and Jeanne. For KM’s memory of a visit to Woodhay, see below, p. 216 . 2. (Fr.): Nothing else. One of KM’s Athenaeum reviews (see CW3, pp. 558–60) had been mentioned in a Times advertisement by the publisher Grant Richards. 3. Violet was the maid at Portland Villas.

[. . . and to Jeanne Beauchamp, 21 August 1921] [ATL]* Chalet des Sapins Montana-sur-Sierre (Valais) Switzerland. 21 viii 1921 My dear Sisters, I meant to write to you last Sunday but when the day came I couldn’t take a holiday after all as I was overdue with work for the old ‘Sphere’. I have been awfully busy lately with various commissions; please excuse me.

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You sounded so very cheerful & gay and happy that I expect you won’t notice. How jolly for you to have a small car. Who makes the wheels go round? And how far do you go. I shall soon forget just what they look like as our tops & peaks could never support one. The carts here are funny even, rather like open appolinaris cases1 on wheels & the CAB is one of the first cabs I imagine, the true original vehicle. If ever I go out in it the driver to be really chic, flings the floormat over the seat! But Montana is a perfect place to live in. It could not be more beautiful. All my tap roots are fixed here. We have sold Broomies even & when my furniture comes out of store it will be to come up here. This our present chalet is ideal for the two years we have it. It is extremely comfortable in every way – snug & cushioned & warm & if one doesn’t want to play the piano one can have a real shower bath – just to hover between two luxuries. I find I cant do without Ida. But she doesn’t live or feed here. She runs the little house & maid and is in fact an exact ‘Universal Aunt’ – and she lives close by. Its a very satisfactory arrangement. We have settled down here as we never did in the South of France. I don’t know why it seems so easy to live here – to fit into this life. Squirrels, rainbows, troups of white goats, flowers, these are our real neighbours. And even real live people come & go. May2 is here of course for all the summer. We see a great deal of each other. We have had Hugh Walpole3 here too, & a party of Wells4 arrives next month. That is our Socierty gossip . . . It has been tremendously cold lately. Even now I am writing with the radiator on & a fur rug. Snow fell and one tasted winter. I expect winter will be very fierce . . . Do you really think you will come, my dears? I quite know what you mean about staying with us; I expect you’d be happier on your own, too. Ida will of course find you a pension or an hotel. But I can’t help wondering if it wouldn’t be too cold to spring up to – – suddenly. It is 5000 feet, you know & it hasn’t a really gay winter season like some of the other places. But you will decide. I have been having a beastly time with my gland. (Like your dear Aunt Agnes.5) But it won’t go. And it is attacked with needles at least once a week as I can’t have an operation. However, I hope to live this final thorn in the flesh down, sooner or later. I wish the Lord loved me less. I’ve also had the most horrible nightmares about Mrs B.6 She haunts my slumbers. I feel she must be on my path. What a bother! How are you both? Are you seeing many people? Are you looking after your garden? England feels far away – and I have an idea that you write to me as one writes to a sick person – you know – not quite all. You are a little specially cheerful as one is at bedsides and sofas. Is that not true? Am I being ‘too sensitive’ – Marie? Thank you very much for the photographs (which I buried immediately!) & the letters you sent me. I loved seeing the photographs but one doesn’t show such awful things outside the family. Our clothes, my dear and our hats. I don’t see why we were made such little guys. And why was I stuffed – why wasn’t I given lean meat & dry toast – so that I looked less like the Fat Girl from Fielding.7 Even my curls were like

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luscious fried sausages. We had a really hard and unflattering childhood, I must say. And it can’t have been ‘the fashion’ only. For Marion Ruddick8 looks a charmingly dressed child. Old V’s lapels brought Miss Reading9 back to me. The only precious little unspoilt dear was Chummie.10 Well, dear sisters, I hear the tea party has arrived downstairs & I must go & greet it. Old Mrs Maxswell (a great friend of a General Aeneas Perkins out in India)11 and Doctor Hudson who wears sandshoes. Both dears, though. We have made excellent greengage & apricot jam on our electric toaster and are preparing to make plum & quince. Is life easier in England now? Goodbye for today. With much love to you both, Ever your devoted K. * Note across top of letter: ‘My darling V. I thought this letter I had recently from K. would interest you. I am writing to you soon dear, this is just to send you all my love. Ever your C.’ Notes 1. Apollinaris was a sparkling spring water from Germany, often referred to as the ‘Queen of Table Waters’, sold in striking earthenware bottles and delivered in stylish crates. 2. KM’s cousin Elizabeth von Arnim, whose first name was Mary, was known to family members as May. 3. The novelist Hugh Walpole (1884–1941), a former contributor to the shortlived Blue Review, was a life-long friend of von Arnim (and a former tutor to her children); he visited her frequently at the Chalet Soleil. 4. H. G. Wells and his family were close friends of von Arnim in Switzerland. 5. Annie Beauchamp’s sister, Agnes, who married Val Waters, KM’s much-loved uncle and the inspiration for her character, Jonathan Trout, in ‘At the Bay’. 6. Mrs B is unidentified. 7. Possibly a reference to someone the Beauchamp sisters knew in Feilding, New Zealand, a town north of Wellington. Alternatively, in Henry Fielding’s picaresque novel, Joseph Andrews (1742), a sickly baby Joseph is in taken from his cot and exchanged for the ‘fat thriving child’ who grew up to be Fanny. This might be the ‘fat girl’ that KM alludes to. 8. Marion Ruddick had been one of KM’s closest friends as a child. See Kimber 2016, pp. 67–78, for details of their friendship. 9. Unidentified figure from their childhood. 10. ‘Chummie’ was the Beauchamp family’s nickname for KM’s brother, Leslie. See Introduction below, p. 268. 11. General Aeneas Perkins had had an active career in the Indian subcontinent, serving in the Indian Mutiny, during the Siege of Delhi and in the Afghan Wars of 1879–80. He died in 1901. His surname, of course, is the same as the distinguished military officer John Perkins, Charlotte’s first husband, who died in 1916, after they had been married for only three years. See Introduction above, p. 198.

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[2 January 1922] [N] Chalet des Sapins Montana-sur-Sierre Valais 2 Janvier 1922 Darling Marie, I am relieved you liked my humble little bag. I was afraid it looked like an offertory bag at the last moment. The handles were so intensely black they almost looked fit for sacred purposes. My mocassins still hang on the willow tree but I shall take them down and dance to the tabors and cymbals ere long.1 I don’t know why I feel so old Testament today. A man came to see us yesterday who had been to church. The flavour must still cling. Fancy Annie & Jacks departing.2 I like all changes really when they come I mean of that kind – don’t you? I am all for clean sweeps occasionally! especially in the case of servants. One gets tired of the peculiarities of even treasures. No, they are scarce here and poor dumb cattle when you do get them. Mine is honest, good, faithful – sober – in fact she has all the virtues and her ankles are like this* – Poor soul! It is dreadful to have virtuous ankles as well. But thats the worst of very good people. They don’t know where to stop. You never told me who got the ring in the pudding after all. We had a pudding, too, in fact a whole Christmas dinner sent complete from England. And did you get nice presents. I was rich in presents this year – My most surprising however was a cable from Pa. Wasn’t it awfully sweet of him. Its the first cable of the kind he has ever sent me – I feel indeed touched. Do you really expect old V.3 this month. How I should like a peep at you all. Fancy – it is eight years since I have seen her – I expect it will be eighteen before I do – Do tell me about your meeting! How long is V. staying? We shall be in Paris in April but I expect she will be gone before then – Paris always seems to me a good centre to meet people – with such lots of places to sit down and talk. Well dear, I envy you your primrose. My room is full of carnations & mimosa & violets at present, titbits left over from the New Year – but Id prefer the primrose – With much love, darling Marie Ever your fond K. Wingley kisses his paw to Kuri.4 * On the same line, KM has drawn a pair of very thick ankles.

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Notes 1. Dances of praise and thanksgiving are often performed to the accompaniment of tabors (also translated as timbrels, tambourines or tabrets, depending on the version of the Bible) and cymbals. See, for example: ‘David and all the house of Israel played music before the Lord on all kinds of instruments of fir wood, on harps, on stringed instruments, on tambourines, on sistrums, and on cymbals’ (2 Samuel 6: 5 King James Version). And ‘Miriam the prophetess, the sister of Aaron, took a timbrel in her hand; and all the women went out after her with timbrels and with dances’(Exodus 15: 20 King James Version). 2. This couple has not been identified. 3. Their elder sister Vera was visiting from Ontario, Canada, where she had settled with her husband in 1912. 4. Kuri was Jeanne’s ‘precious dog’ (see above, p. 161).

[5 February 1922] [ATL] Victoria Palace Hotel 6–8 Rue Blaise Desgoffe Rue de Rennes Paris Sunday. Darling Marie, Do send me a line and say how you are. As you see I have left my mountains. I came here to see a specialist and I shall stay here until the second week in May taking a course of X ray treatment. A Russian doctor1 here has discovered a method of treatment of consumption by X raying the spleen (which lives next door to your heart my dear & in the same street with your liver.) It sounds very wonderful. It is terribly expensive. Each treatment costs 300 francs. But I was doing no good in Montana, really and I have been ill nearly 5 years now. Anything rather than go on with a sofa life. Besides which it is my only chance, which makes a great difference towards what one can try to afford. By the way (a strictly family question, my dear) do you know a good depilatory. I wish you would tell me. I foresee the day is not far distant when I shall have to start using one. But above all do let me hear from you. Its like spring in Paris – so mild. Always your devoted sister K. Notes 1. The Russian doctor was Ivan Manoukhin. See above, p. 44, n. 1.

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[10 February 1922] [N] Victoria Palace Hotel 6–8 Rue Blaise Desgoffe Rue de Rennes Paris 10 ii 1922 My darling Marie, You do write the most satisfactory letters! One seems to get so much out of them; they’ve such a flavour, if you know what I mean. All the difference between very dull cold mutton and very excellent lean beef with chutney & a crisp salad! I start with an appetite and end with one. It must be fun to be shopping. Its rather hard to realise that ‘V’ doesn’t care a great deal about clothes. I should care if I were on a desert island & had to try on my hats & see the effect in the lagoon. Perhaps though, Mack doesn’t take them very seriously. That makes a difference. Jack is like a brother in that respect: I mean he talks them over and criticises them just as a brother does. Poor Ida, has been flattening her nose against the windows in the Rue de la Paix1 and is completely demoralised for the moment. She can only talk about garments that appear to be moulded on, with heavy embroidery, russian backs & the fascinating new boleros. Fancy boleros coming back! Its such an absurd word too, isn’t it – I expect by the time we are old dolmans will be all the rage again and I shall meet you – where? – flashing with jet bugles. Yes, I do miss the chalet. Hotels are odious places, and I hate restaurants. But with this hope of getting better I can put up with anything. I don’t dare look ahead, Marie. I feel just like a prisoner must feel who’s been told there is a chance of his release. Its too much happiness to think of walking along by myself with nobody handing me a chair or offering me an arm or coming to meet me with a hot water bottie in one hand and a glass of milk in the other! If you have a small private God, say a prayer for me! I wish I had seen J.B.2 It would have been a pleasure. I hope you will run across in April. Paris is no distance. One is at Charing X at ten oclock & here for dinner – My friend Anne Rice whose baby is my godson is coming over in March for a long pow wow and Brett is coming over for the weekend. But don’t ever feel you must come my dear. Its awful to do things for that reason. Many thanks for the address. I shall send to Canada as I feel sure one couldn’t get the preparation here. Its strange how difficult it is to find anything; it seems to be always ‘wrapt in mystery’ – I wish I did know a cure for chilblains. The worst of it is I am always reading infallible cures, deciding to remember them in case I know anyone who wants one, and then forgetting. They must be agonising things. Doesn’t

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it mean that one’s blood needs a tonic? I am sure they ought to be tackled from within. By the way I have discovered the most marvellous secret of growing hair where one wants it to grow. And that is – damp the head with rose water every night and fan it dry. I have twice the amount I had a few months ago. Well, darling, I must end this letter. Forgive the writing. My block has no back and its against my knee. I hope this treatment is one of the marvels of X rays. If its not I shall go and hide among mountains for the rest of my short days. I enclose two little bits of ‘goo’. Do you ever see the Saturday Westminster? I have a serial in it, but its only going for 4 weeks – a small run. My book comes out on the 23rd. Give my love to little J. and big V. with very much for yourself. Ever your devoted K. Notes 1. The rue de la Paix runs through the 1st and 2nd arrondissements on the Right Bank in the very centre of Paris, leading from the place Vendôme to the opera house. During extensive redesigning and reconstruction in the mid- to late nineteenth century, it became one of the most reputed sites for exclusive fashion and jewellery shops. 2. The identity of this mutual acquaintance has not been elucidated.

[19 February 1922] [N] Victoria Palace Hotel 6–8 Rue Blaise Desgoffe Rue de Rennes Paris. 19 ii 1922 Dearest Marie, I am so sorry to have had to send that wire. To think you might be here now! But for the first week or two I did not have much reaction from these X rays. Now I do. Ten minutes after a séance I am so dead tired I feel as if I had swum across Wellington harbour in the wake of the Duco.1 And that feeling goes on until Saturday evening. It is a mysterious business and my doctor (whose name is Ivan Manoukhin) says it will go on getting worse for five weeks. After that one begins to get better and by May he promises one will feel quite well! I feel as though

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I were about to faire un enfant.2 All my plans begin in May. But if it does all come true it will be little short of a miracle after these nearly five years. When you come over in May you could not do better than come to this hotel. It is excellent. Very clean, very quiet, with boiling water day and night. And one can eat on the premises – which is a point – if one wants to. Jack and I seem to have been here for months. We always drop into a routine. That is the best of having regular work. One has to arrange ones life round it. Ida is back in Switzerland trying to sub-let the chalet and looking after Wingley. I foresee that Wingley’s travelling days are not over. Poor little chap! He will have to write his Memoirs later on. Has V. returned to Canada? Is it this summer she thinks of bringing her boys over? Woodhay must be quite a family seat. Are the bulbs up yet? Do tell me how your garden grows. Every year I feel more impatient to hear that the crocuses are really out and that the daffys are lifting their spears. I read in the paper the Dog’s Mercury is in flower. But what is Dog’s Mercury. And does the dog know? Is he pleased about it or does he just look at it and bolt it stem and all. Ask Kuri from his aunt Katherine. 1 have been cosseting four yellow tulips all this last week and they are still radiant. Oh, how I love flowers! People always say it must be because I spent my childhood among all those gorgeous tropical trees and blossoms. But I don’t seem to remember us making our daisy chains of magnolias – do you? Well darling I have to finish a story for the good old ‘Sketch’ before tea.3 They have asked me to write them a series. The Sketch always reminds me of the morning room at ‘47’.4 . . With so much love Ever your K. Notes 1. The Duco was a steamer, used first as a tug, then as a trawler, which sailed from Clyde Quay in Wellington harbour. It sank in 1909. 2. (Fr.): To give birth. 3. The only story published in the Sketch that year was ‘Taking the Veil’, which appeared in the 22 February issue (and had therefore been finished before the day when KM wrote this. See also her letter to Brett, p. 440). In all likelihood, KM refers here to the series of stories planned to appear in the magazine, but which she never completed. See above, p. 56, n. 4. 4. In May 1907, the Beauchamp family had moved to a very grand house at 47 Fitzherbert Terrace in Wellington, which had its own ballroom, croquet lawn, extensive gardens and grand pillared entrance. It even had its own smoking room, which KM used frequently, developing that strong habit that would remain with her till her death.

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[late February 1922] [ATL] [Victoria Palace Hôtel, rue Blaise Desgoffe, Paris] Dearest Marie In case you should think I am rather a little pig of a sneak not to send you a copy of my new book1 – its because I can’t get copies over here for the moment – I mean extra copies. All I have had I have been obliged to send to journalists. Thats why. Would you pass this first review on to Pa? It sounds very powerful – doesn’t it. But it is rather my eye. I thought people would say I was rather sentimental! What is the weather like in England. Here it is Spring – really Spring, sunny, absolutely warm and the kind of weather that makes one long to put out new leaves at any rate one new leaf in the shape of a hat. Don’t you know that mood when you keep on imagining spring hats – curled and crisp and light after these substantial winter ones? Forgive writing. I am in bed & my block has no back bone. I feel so much better – its almost frightening. Tell J. not to forget me. Ever your devoted K. Notes 1. KM’s The Garden Party and Other Stories had just been published by Constable.

[. . . and Jeanne Beauchamp, 1 March 1922] [N] March 1st

Paris

Darling Marie & Jeanne, Will you accept a double letter this time? I can’t tell you how I appreciated yours. Praise from other people is all very well but it is nothing compared to ones family. And you always have believed in me so generously Marie that I am more than glad I have repaid a little of that belief. It is only a little – a drop in the ocean. Ive got an awfully long way to go before I write a book that counts. I marvel at the kindness of the papers. But I expect some are saving up to give me a whacking. So old V. has gone back to Canada. I wonder if I shall see her and her boys. She feels further away from me now that she has been over here and we have not met. Has she changed much? But thats hard for you to say for you have been seeing her during these years; we haven’t met since John was new-born.1 Elizabeth says Mack is very prosperous. I always thought he would be. I hope V. has her share of it – I mean takes her share. She always erred on the too generous side.

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Your crocus border fills me with envy. How I love them! Its strange we should all of us Beauchamps have this passion for flowers. I shall never forget the large glass vase of sweet peas in my bedroom at Woodhay when I spent that weekend with you nor the easter lilies in the drawing room. They sit in my mind, fresh and lovely for ever. At the moment I have a large bunch of the good old fashioned marigolds on my table, buds, leaves and all. They take me back to that black vase of ours at 75,2 one that you used to like to put mignonette in. It was a charming vase and well in the van of fashion, wasn’t it. By the way do you remember the brown china bear on the top of the black what-not?3 I can see it! And I happened to read in the Daily News the other day that the ‘latest fashion’ was a china mustard pot – very chic in the shape of a tomato. This was one of Aunt Kittys wedding presents at Clifton Terrace.4 So wags the world.5 I expect all her mustard pots have been sterling silver long ere now not only with the lion on them, but shaped into roaring lions with their tails for spoons – Oh, dear, having got so far I do wish I could go further and find myself with you two dears, in your own home. I hope your weather has improved. It is still warm here. All the puddings have changed into little ices in frills and I was quite glad of the electric fan playing on my fried whiting at lunch! We shall have very special tea parties when you come in May. Jack has discovered a marvellous shop for cakes. Not those fat Jewish cakes with a bird’s nest in icing on the top and a chocolate bird sitting on plaster of Paris eggs but short crisp delicious tiny ones – all kinds, little whiffs. These with his pate de foie sandwiches are a tea for the Duchess of Devonshire.6 But I keep on planning what we shall do in May. I am so glad this hotel is so good. You and J. can have a very large double room with your private bathroom etc. for 25 francs a day. A most sumptuous bathroom and ones own little hall door shutting one off from the outside world. Such a point in an hotel. I do hate the feeling that everybody is running past ones very toes as one lies in bed. I am sure you will love Paris. It is a beautiful city. So airy, on such a noble scale. The taxi drivers range like lions seeking whom they may devour.7 But the way to avoid that is to get into a taxi yourself and there you sit singing like Jonah (who must have been an optimist at heart) in the tummy of the whale.8 I must end this letter, my dears. I am so busy and the old rays are working hard in my joints and bones. Would you let me have Papa’s frisco address on a card?9 Jack wants to write to him. So do I. I look forward to the little pot. Thank you J. dear. With very much love to you both Ever your devoted grateful K. Dear little mother’s birthday month; I thought of it when I woke this morning. Notes 1. Vera’s son John was born in February 1914.

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2. In early 1898, Harold Beauchamp made the decision to move his family back to town, from Karori. He acquired a fourteen-room, two-storey mansion at 75 Tinakori Road, with formal gardens and tennis court, just up the road from number 11, where KM had been born. Memories of this house feature in KM’s story ‘The Garden Party’ (CW2, pp. 401–14). 3. A whatnot was a small wooden shelving unit intended to display a variety of objects, such as ornaments and curiosities. 4. Edith Amy Dyer (‘Kitty’) was one of Annie Beauchamp’s sisters, who lived with the Beauchamps for a short time before marrying and moving to a house in Clifton Terrace, Wellington. 5. See As You Like It. While in the Forest of Arden, Jaques recounts his meeting with a ‘motley fool’, who declares, ‘It is ten o’clock; Thus we may see,’ quoth he, ‘how the world wags; ’Tis but an hour ago since it was nine; And after one hour more ’twill be eleven; And so, from hour to hour, we ripe and ripe, 920 And then, from hour to hour, we rot and rot; And thereby hangs a tale.’ (As You Like It, II, vii, 916–22) 6. KM is doubtless referring to history’s most illustrious Duchess of Devonshire to date, Georgiana (1757–1806), the socialite, author and Whig activist, renowned for her sumptuous (and highly influential) receptions. 7. The image comes from the grim warning in 1 Peter 5: 8: ‘Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour.’ 8. Although the Bible does not specifically evoke Jonah singing in the belly of the whale, his prayer – which takes up the whole of the second chapter – is traditionally presented as the psalm he sings of praise and thanksgiving in books of sermons and Bible study. 9. Harold Beauchamp’s long voyage from New Zealand to Europe included a stopover in San Francisco.

[11 March 1922] [N] Should you ever need it Tel. address here is Victorpal Paris.1 Paris 11 iii 1922 Marie darling After sending off that wire I remembered you had the telegraphic address of this hotel. It was too late to do anything. I feel horrified at my

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carelessness and especially when I received your reply . . . Please accept these five shillings and forgive me. I think my letters to you must have been storm bound & as I was particularly anxious to catch Pa at Frisco it seemed to me a wire was the best idea. Please thank J for her letter & cuttings. I was much amused to read of the Silver Weddin’.2 What grandeur! I saw it all, especially Franks buttonhole. Fancy Uncle Sid (from Napier) there and old Aunt Aggie. It was too marvellous. Lulu’s letter, too in the paper made me laugh. Her comment re the hotel late dinner ‘no trouble with servants here’. I suppose she was thinking of Maud. Phoebes appearance, uncurled feather, crystal drop earrings and all – what a picture! I always think of her with curling pins, red flannel dressing gown and jockey club perfume. Its a queer world. I suppose you saw no sign of them at Buckingham Palace – did you? I wonder Luls didn’t book a young Prince . . .3 I am in the throes of my two worst weeks – After that the improvement really begins. I seem to have taken very powerfully which is all to the good. Two weeks only while one feels like a worm and then – one creeps up on deck and smells land again! Jack is looking after me so beautifully. He really is a marvellously unselfish and sympathetic ‘companion’. Well, I must finish this and put the kettle on. With warmest love to you both Ever your fond K. Notes 1. Victorpal Paris was the telegram address of the spacious (120-bedroom) Victoria Palace Hôtel, 6 rue Blaise Desgoffe, Paris, in the 6th arrondissement. 2. In 1897, Annie Beauchamp’s brother, Frank Dyer, had married Phoebe Seddon (1871–1944), daughter of Richard John Seddon (1845–1906), who served as Prime Minister of New Zealand from 1893 to 1906. 3. Frank Dyer’s daughter, Lulu, had recently returned to Wellington from London, where she had been presented at Buckingham Palace.

[26 March 1922] [N] Paris. 26 iii 1922 My Darling Marie One blessed thing about Paris is there is a Sunday post. It brought me your most welcome letter today, and I am answering bang off because I particularly enjoy a chat with you on Sundays. I don’t know why,

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exactly. It seems the day for it. Perhaps its a reminiscence of the old ‘41’ days.1 We have been having just the same due East weather – too fierce for words. Snow – hail – a bitter wind – and that quite peculiar wet slate pencil coldness which I hate above all other varieties. I am waiting until the weather changes before I show any new leaves. As soon as I do I’ll let you know, dear. But this temperature keeps me very tied up. A great bore. Marie I love domestic details in a letter. After all one tells the other items of news to the outside world. But when you say you’ve just made your second batch of marmalade I feel as though I had run in & were watching you hold the bottle up to the light, or waiting to see the result of a fresh cooking experiment! Its as though we still shared part of our lives and that is a precious feeling to me – Rosie’s letter was a gem of the first water, my dear!2 When I came to the bee stinging her leg I jumped up and down in bed like a baby in its pram. It was too pa for words. And the bit about all the washing put away except the starched things. I read it aloud to Jack who thoroughly appreciated it, too. He has adopted all my memories of people to such an extent that its quite hard to believe he does not really know the people. I hope your little maid turns out a success. Why do all little maids have their moments of stupidity. Never shall I forget my Cornish Hilda3 whom I used to discover in the kitchen – just looking at the kitchen table – dazed – at times. Never shall I forget the sight of her leaping over the stiles either on her way home with legs that took ones breath away. I am sure tho’ its a good idea to catch em young if possible – I had a letter too from old V. written in the Freight sheds while waiting for her luggage to be put through – Poor child! Wasn’t that typical. Fancy the strength of mind that must have needed to ‘concentrate’ as she would say at such a moment – Did you like Mack more this time? Do they have fun together? I mean – does he love her as much as she loves him? Its poor fun otherwise. I am so glad you made her buy some charming clothes. But what a trip across. Its awful to think such an experience still lies in wait for travellers. One feels that by this time the sea ought to have been tamed – and not allowed to run wild any more – Im sending you a few cuttings. But the best shoots have gone to my foreign publishers and some to Pa. I have had at least twice as many and as long reviews this time and my book went into a second edition in a fortnight. Ive also sold the Swedish, Continental and African rights as well as the American. But best of all are the letters from unknown people – not from my friends though I cherish those, too. But other people write just as though it was all real –talk over the stories just as though they had happened. This is such a joy. But I have so much work to do as a result of all this that I shall have to spend a very secluded summer somewhere. Its almost impossible to write anything long in a hotel. I can’t. One feels so conscious of people round one – don’t you know.

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Fancy Elizabeth and I were invited to lecture this summer with readings from our works.4 It might have been very amusing, but I should have got the giggles, Im afraid. I can’t believe Papa is on his way. I hope he has a happier visit this time – finer weather. Its bound to be happier though because he’ll so tremendously enjoy Woodhay. I can see him looking at the vegetables and feeling that he mustn’t make you both too proud – he mustn’t show his admiration too much. Can’t you? By the way do coloured anemones do well with you? One never seems to see them in English gardens and they are so decorative and last so well when they are cut. I have beauties in my room now and they are a week old. I should think they’d grow well in your climate – where its warm and sheltered. Well darling, this pow-wow must end. I send bad reviews as well as good ones to give you an idea. I hope they will amuse you and dear little J. Give her my love. Yes, I thought of you both, first thing, on Mother’s birthday.5 I am sure that Mother’s spirit lingers, so lovingly, so content, over Woodhay. Bless you both, my precious sisters. Ever your own K. Notes 1. KM is referring nostalgically back to their time at Queen’s College, where the Beauchamp sisters had been boarders at 41 Harley Street. 2. Rosie has not been identified. 3. KM and JMM were in Cornwall from April to August 1916, staying first at Higher Tregerthen with the Lawrences for a few weeks, before moving away to a cottage in Mylor, near Falmouth. 4. KM and von Arnim had been invited by the tourism pioneer Arnold Lunn to give a series of talks at his Montana resort, but nothing came of his idea. See above, p. 50, n. 3. 5. Annie Beauchamp had been born on 24 March 1864.

[8 April 1922] [N] Saturday. Paris. Darling Marie, I was so delighted to hear from you. Fancy your leaves not out. We are as green as can be in Paris – no – not really ‘out’ but all little crumpled new born leaves – most lovely. And we had that fine day you spoke of. It was a joy after the fierce ones there have been lately.

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I am so wondering if you and little J. are coming in May. Are you? We both hope so. I must say it seems as though my reaction is over and for the last three days I am marvellously better. I don’t dare to say too much about it. But Ive been out, walking, bought a sweet-pretty-hat for a song, had my hair cut, and altogether I feel absolutely a different human being. I shall be able to tell more in another week. But the doctors at the clinic were delighted yesterday and since I came to Paris I have gained 5 pounds! But if things go on at this rate, my darlings, we ought to have fun in May. The hat shop I found is a treasure – very cheap and very original. Tomorrow we are lunching with the Schiffs – South of France friends – and I shall cull addresses from Violet Schiff who always looks exquisite, in case you do come. You would really like this hotel immensely. Double room with private bath 25 francs a day – without food. Meals to be had on the premises – too much meat and not enough trimmings but we might dodge out for our meals in May. Its so warm then and the evenings are so exquisite in Paris. I want to lure you across. Brett and Jack’s brother1 are coming for Easter, but only staying for a week. Of course you will have to be on the spot for Papa. Perhaps you’d rather wait until after his coming (it sounds as though he was a celestial person out of the prayer book!) Of course, in spite of my saying do come – you know don’t you that I would understand perfectly if you didn’t, if it was in the least inconvenient. Dont ever feel bound in any way as far as I am concerned. Jack says of course he will send you a copy of his book but he is afraid you won’t like it. He doesn’t think much of it himself. His next will be much better. And I hesitate to send you mine because you may think it ‘personal’ – like old V. did. Thats so difficult to explain. You see the Daughters of the Late C. were a mixture of Miss Edith & Miss Emily, Ida, Sylvia Payne, Lizzie Fleg, and ‘Cyril’ was based on Chummie.2 To write stories one has to go back into the past. And its as though one took a flower from all kinds of gardens to make a new bouquet. But this is a thing which no amount of talking can change. One either feels it, or doesn’t feel it . . . About writing a novel – I am going to write a kind of serial novel for The Sphere this summer – to start in August. You right, my dear, one is kept very busy. But one wouldn’t have it otherwise. My love to little J. and to you. Ever your devoted K. Notes 1. JMM’s brother Arthur (known as Richard). See above, p. 97. 2. ‘The Daughters of the Late Colonel’ appeared in KM’s collection The Garden Party and Other Stories (1922). Aside from Ida Baker, identified figures from the past whom she cites as forming part of the inspiration for the characters include her cousin Sylvia Payne and Lizzie Fleg, a schoolfriend from Wellington.

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[ . . . and Jeanne Beauchamp, 31 December 1922] [ATL] [Unsent] Le Prieuré Fontainebleau-Avon Seine et Marne. 31 xii 19221 My dearest Marie & Jeanne I am seizing the last moments of the old year to write to you, for I cannot let it depart without a letter from me. I have been such a very bad correspondent lately. I am only too painfully aware of it. But it was awfully difficult to write. There seemed nothing to say. Were I to attempt to describe my present surroundings and way of life it would all sound like a dream, and I have for the moment no interests outside it. As you know I came here for a ‘cure’ but its not a ‘cure’ in any ordinary sense of the word. The cure consists in leading as full and as different a life as possible, in entering into as many new interests as possible, in taking up all kinds of new things of every sort and description. Purely medical treatment there is none, as we understand it, or not enough to mention. We are about 50 – 60, mainly Russians established here in a colony, and leading a very particular kind of communal life. Notes 1. This letter, found amongst KM’s papers after her death, was sent on to Charlotte and Jeanne by JMM.

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Sir Harold Beauchamp (1858–1938)

Introduction KM’s surviving letters to her father, which range from December 1914 to New Year’s Eve 1922, are full of gratitude, affection and family news and references. Sir Harold Beauchamp was a hard-working, largely ‘selfmade’ man of business. While, in some ways, a patriarchal emblem of the bourgeois colonial respectability she sought to escape, he enabled KM’s career by continuing to provide financial support to her throughout her life, which became especially crucial to her as her illness developed. The inspiration for fictional ‘Pa-men’ (Beauchamp family lingo for a quirky, old-fashioned, paternal figure) like Stanley Burnell in ‘Prelude’, KM’s father was alternately the object of her rebellion, respect and ridicule. KM’s enterprising heritage is illuminated in her father’s biography. Born in 1858 in the goldfields of Ararat in the then colony of Victoria, Australia, and moving to Picton in New Zealand with his family at the age of two, Beauchamp left school at fourteen to work in his father’s general merchant and auctioneering business. He moved to Wellington in 1876, and at eighteen began working with the importing company W. M. Bannatyne and Co., where he remained for his entire career, becoming a partner in 1889. Beauchamp married KM’s mother, Annie Burnell Dyer, in 1884. Together, the couple had six children, of which five were girls, and KM the third born. After KM’s mother died on 8 August 1918, following a long illness, Beauchamp remarried in 1920 to Laura Bright, a close friend of Annie’s and KM’s godmother. Over the years, he became increasingly influential in the business world; he counted New Zealand Prime Minister Richard Seddon among his friends, and after joining the board of the Bank of New Zealand in 1898, he served as Chairman for several years from 1907. In 1923, the year of KM’s death, he was made a Knight Bachelor for public service in the field of finance. Beauchamp was proud of his achievements – he sent his regular Chairman’s reports for the Bank to KM to read, and she in turn pressed JMM to read them and correspond with his father-in-law on New Zealand finances. Her compliment to her father in a letter of 21 June 1922, that these reports were the ‘cornerstone of the entire business’, makes clear KM’s own pride in her father – and her lasting desire to please him.

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Some of Beauchamp’s decisions were decisive in the formation of KM’s writing aspirations and career. Perhaps most important was sending her, along with her sisters, to finish her schooling at Queen’s College in London, in April 1903. This period only fortified KM’s inherited sense of London and Europe as a second, more sophisticated home, and was the seed of her desire to return and become a writer. After finishing school and returning to Wellington in December 1906, KM spent close to two years living in the family home, trying to convince Beauchamp to allow her to return to London to pursue her writing career. While reluctant to let her go, Beauchamp seems to have taken KM’s aspirations quite seriously, in his paternalistic businessman’s fashion. He asked Tom Mills, a journalist of his acquaintance, for an assessment of her talent and prospects,1 and notably interceded on her behalf to reassure E. J. Brady, the editor of the Australian journal Native Companion, that some stories she had recently submitted to him were the genuine work of an eighteen-year-old of ‘very original character’ from a family with talent for writing (citing the name of his cousin, Elizabeth von Arnim).2 KM also made use of the typing skills of her father’s secretary, Martha Putnam, in preparing those pieces, and others, for submission. Beauchamp must have been eventually convinced of KM’s determination as well as her literary potential, as in August 1908 she finally returned to London, supported by an allowance from her father of £100 a year. This paternal allowance, gradually increased over the years to £300 by 1921, was to sustain KM and her career throughout the remainder of her life. Beauchamp’s monetary support was not without its emotional and familial complications, as her surviving letters to him show – see especially that of 1 November 1921, describing her ‘horrible depression’ at the idea that Beauchamp ‘mind[ed] looking after’ her, and his opinion that her ‘husband was the one who ought to provide’ for her (pp. 230–1). With a notable awareness of the interest that this letter might have in posterity, Beauchamp annotated the original letter to refute the idea that he begrudged supporting KM or any of his children financially. A letter from KM to JMM of 16 May 1921 further illuminates KM’s anxieties about both her financial situation and her relationship with her father. It encloses an unopened letter from Beauchamp and asks JMM to report on the contents, as she is afraid it will announce the cancellation of this essential financial support. The act of sending this letter to her husband to open also suggests that the idea that it was JMM who should have been supporting her may have been hard for KM to shake, too, and indeed her father is often held up as a model husband – a man who, for example, found time every day to write to her mother when he travelled – which, over their many strained separations, JMM did not. Sir Harold Beauchamp was a man concerned with his legacy: in 1937, the year before his death, he published his Reminiscences and

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Recollections.3 In 1923, the year when KM died and he was made Knight Bachelor, he established a fund for purchasing art for what would become the New Zealand National Art Gallery (today the Te Papa Museum of New Zealand). The first painting was acquired by the Harold Beauchamp Trust in 1936. He was also concerned with preserving the legacy of his famous daughter, and his own place in her story. It is notable that the surviving letters from KM to him are surprisingly few for such an important figure in her life – there is a five-year gap in the record at one point – and those that do survive are often motivated by gratitude for his support. KM’s last letter to her ‘dearest Father’ opens with well wishes for the New Year and the hope that in the following one she ‘shall be fortunate enough to turn towards home and to see [him] at the Grange’ (pp. 254–6). That dream was not to be realised, but in 1933, Beauchamp established a Memorial tram shelter (since removed) to his third daughter on Fitzherbert Terrace, Wellington, where they once shared a home. Helen Rydstrand Notes 1. See Tom L. Mills (1933), ‘Katherine Mansfield – How Kathleen Beauchamp Came into Her Own’, New Zealand Railways Magazine, 8: 5, 1 September. Available through the New Zealand Electronic Text Collection, at (last accessed 15 March 2019). 2. See Stone, p. 17. 3. Beauchamp 1937.

[15 December 1914] [ATL]

December 15th 1914.

Rose Tree Cottage The Lee Great Missenden.

My dearest Father, I have no words with which to thank you for your wonderful generosity. If only you were not so far away from me so that I could thank you as I long to – with my arms round your neck. Mr Kay summoned me by a mysterious note to the Bank and handed me your letter and when I had read it he chuckled and said ‘What do you think of that. Bit of a surprise – eh?’ and he rang the bell for the messenger – you know his manner. ‘Just bring me five sovereigns – will you’. When they were

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handed him he put them in a row in front of me on the table. ‘There you are,’ he said. ‘Run away and buy yourself some fish and chips for your Christmas dinner.’ And he kept saying – ‘thats wonderfully good of your Father – you know.’ I did not know what to answer. I felt quite what the French call ‘bouleversé’1 by my sudden riches. Father darling, you have made me feel happy and free. I thank you with all my heart. The wheels of my life are going round beautifully in consequence and the check action the spring balance and the jewels in two holes are all intact.2 I hope that my small parcel to you arrives safely. The man in the shop was anxious for me to buy you a tie with the flags of the allies embroidered upon its breast or a bulldog with its forefeet on a flag, but I remained firm. As you may imagine I have felt dreadfully anxious about Mother.3 Chaddie wrote to me by the last mail that she had received an answer to a cable and that ‘Mother was better’. I had wished to cable myself. She has been in my thoughts and in my heart continually. I hope that by now she is up and out again. Mother’s courage is a lesson to all her children; there is no one like her and she makes me feel ashamed of my little illnesses and weak moments. Forgive me for not having written as often as I should have to her and to you Father. I pledge you my solemn word that I will turn over a new leaf from this Christmas and send news regularly – whatever it is. Your two dear letters – I read them again in the tube from the Bank to Oxford Circus – the tube packed with people – city pa men and soldiers for the most part. I squeezed your letters inside my muff and had great difficulty in refraining from beaming at everybody like a little girl, out for the day with her Papa. When you write suddenly – ‘What a bother – isn’t it?’ I hear your voice so plainly that I cannot believe you are far away – and then, too, you convey so much of your personality in your handwriting. Do you remember – those horses you used to draw on the back of envelopes with very over developed ears and under developed stomachs? Nothing is talked of at present but the latest development of the German culture-war – namely the East Coast raid.4 I am sure the Kaiser will not be satisfied until Zeppelin has flown over London and dropped a few bombs into the palaces and baby carriages there. I have ordered for you from the ‘Times’ a copy of the french ‘yellow book’ which I found awfully interesting giving their official account of the developments.5 It is a sister ship to the English ‘white book’ and almost more interesting, because the french people cant keep the human interest out of their government even. Diplomacy seems to be a difficult trade to put a lad to in these days. A day or two ago I was talking to a young man who has just returned from the front wounded in the foot. He has been acting as interpreter and general rouse about. He says that in the trenches in France the most remarkable thing is the frightful boredom

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that the men feel. They don’t feel excited or ‘up guards and at ’em’ they spend days and nights simply waiting – very cold, very wet and with nothing on earth to do. And he tells a story of a tommy wiping his bayonet with a wisp of grass and saying – ‘Well, I suppose we’ll ’ave ter give the blighters ’ome rule same as we did in Sarth Africa.’6 This same young man got his foot wound while being reproved by his colonel for not having shaved that morning. ‘We were standing in the street,’ he said, and the old man was going for me. ‘Why haven’t you shaved sir,’ he roared, when a shell whistled over our heads and exploded in the market square and caught me in the foot.’ (Whereupon I heard you saying – ‘I suppose that was about the closest shave you ever had in your life.) I had hoped to get a small job not far from the fighting line last month, but now it has been postponed until January, when D.V.7 I shall go to France and write some human documents for a newspaper syndicate. I am very keen to do so. At present I am working hard and ‘cuddling my cards’. With the extra money I feel able to afford a servant to come in and light fires and do the hard work which is an immense saving of energy. It is very cold on the top of this hill, but we have chopped down a damson tree in the back garden and the side of the fireplace is stacked with logs. I have been doing a lot of digging in the garden, too, but the natural soil seems to my maiden efforts to be almost entirely concealed by large stones, primeval dog bones, ossified remains various, and pieces of broken soup tureens – Very little nourishment to be got out of that. Goodnight, Father dear. A happy New Year to you, and all the love and grateful thanks of your devoted child Kass. Notes 1. (Fr.): Overwhelmed. 2. The metaphorical usage here is a fine example of how KM reproduces sections of letters, and her most memorable images of the day, in letters to a variety of correspondents. For this vivid image of doctors as jewellers and watch-menders, see above, p. 196, n. 1. 3. Annie Beauchamp had long suffered from ill health and a heart complaint. 4. There were two heavy raids by German battlecruisers on the east coast of England in the first months of World War One: Yarmouth, on 3 November, and Scarborough and Hartlepool on 16 November. There is therefore a poignant irony in KM’s evocation of east coast raids to her father just twentyfour hours before the most extensive attack. 5. The French ‘Yellow Book’, subtitled How Germany Forced the War, was an authorised translation by The Times for the French government containing diplomatic documents relating the lead-up to the declaration of the war by Germany to Russia (1 August 1914) and France (4 August 1914).

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The Introduction also provides the key for KM’s follow-up in the letter to her father: In this Yellow Book the French Government offers its contribution of diplomatic evidence upon the origin of the War and the negotiations which preceded it. The British, German, Russian and Belgian Governments have already taken a similar course in their respective White Papers, White Book, Orange Book, and Grey Book. Not all of these collections of documents are of equal value. The German White Book, in particular, is singularly incomplete. The French Yellow Book will be found to contain, not only the fullest record of the efforts made by the Allies to preserve peace and of the persistent determination of the German Government to thwart them, but a striking analysis of the psychology of Germany and of the deliberate policy of aggression pursued by Germany for months and years before the actual outbreak of hostilities. (p. v) 6. After the Transvaal Rebellion and the Boer Wars of 1880–3 and 1899–1902, the South Africa Act of 1910 created the Union of South Africa, granting home rule for Afrikaners, whilst maintaining British dominion. 7. (Latin): Deo volente: God willing.

[6 March 1916] [ATL]

March 6th 1916.

Villa Pauline Bandol (Var) France.

My dearest Father, This morning I received a letter from you telling me that you had instructed the manager of the Bank to pay me £13 a month instead of £10, as formerly. I scarcely know how to thank you for yet another proof of your unexampled generosity to me, darling. It puts my finances on such a secure and easy footing at a time when so many are in want and it gives me a very real feeling of security and added comfort. Thank you a thousand times, my darling Father: I am deeply grateful. Two days ago I received from you a copy of the Free Lance.1 Like a book which Mother sent me it had been much detained by the censors and it arrived in a perfect wrapping of various labels signifying that it had been ‘opened and examined’. I was very much interested to read the contributions by ‘little Ethel’. She must be quite a leading light of Picton City.2 I remember her as a little pale girl, very thin, with flaxen hair in the charge of Cousin Ethel who always seemed to wear a mackintosh and a sailor hat tied on with a white silk motor veil! I am extremely glad to think that you and Mother and Jeanne are going to Canada to spend some time with dear old Vera.3 She wrote

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to me the other day, full of delight at the prospect. I hope you have a successful peaceful voyage, darling and I do pray that later in the year we may meet in England. I wish I could tell you, Father, how I long to see you. Our dear one,4 when he was with me even, seemed to bring me so near to you, and talking of you with him I realised afresh each time how much I love and admire and how very much you mean to me. Forgive my childish faults, my generous darling Daddy, and keep me in your heart. I feel that we shall have so much to talk over when we do meet. If only this war would end and make the Atlantic safer. It is a terrible, tedious calamity, and the end seems still far away. As I write the papers are full of the news of the awful battle of Verdun and they seem to agree that the german offensive is only beginning!5 I had a wonderful letter from Mother this morning to which I have sent a reply to Almonte. Her courage and faith is very beautiful. I am afraid you will miss her and Jeanne very much in those eight weeks when you are alone. I wish I could ‘house keep’ for you and give you your slippers in the evening! At present we intend to return to England in the second week in April and as our small house will still be let we are staying with friends for the time. I shall be very glad to be ‘home’ in England, although I am thankful for this experience here and it has by no means be wasted. I shall make it my duty to call upon Mr Kay at the Bank as soon as I arrive. He wrote me today, telling me the good news. ‘Extremely generous of your Father’. . He is awfully kind in sending on all my letters promptly and always with a cheering little note and a very large, powerful signature. Father dear, I do so reproach myself for writing you a sad letter from Marseilles and thereby adding even a little to your sorrow.6 But by now, I trust that you have had other letters from me and that I have made it plain that I am happier. Not that the loss of our darling one is any less real to me. It never can be, and I feel that it has changed the course of my life for ever but I do feel very strongly, that I fail in my duty to his memory if I do not bear his loss bravely, and I could not bear to fail him. I often think of you and of him together and I remember the way he used to look at you – a kind of special loving look that he had for you – it is unforgettable. It is truly marvellous how many people were influenced by him and how many people mourn him. I should much like to have seen the copies of the letters that Mother sent to Belle and I hope to do so on my return to England. Chaddie and I write frequently: she is a sweet nature. We are just as natural together as when we were girls and shared the same room together. Do you remember, at Johnsonville, I think it was, coming into our room in the middle of an earth quake and carrying us out into the garden?7 I can see Chaddie now, who was very ‘weedy’ at the time and only had a wisp of hair tied up with a piece of pink wool for the night. It must be a long time ago but I remember Johnsonville very well, even to the smell of it. Like Chummie, I always remember by smells.

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Well, dearest and best of Fathers, I must end this letter. Again, from my heart I thank you. I think of you every day and I long for the time when we shall meet again. God bless you darling. Always your own child Kass. Notes 1. The Free Lance was one of New Zealand’s most popular illustrated weekly newspapers, published in Wellington; conservative and mainstream, it devoted considerable coverage to royalty and the social life of high society. It was also renowned for the quality of its cartoonists. 2. KM’s description of the volume, including a contribution by her cousin Ethel, granddaughter of her great-uncle, Cradock Beauchamp, indicates that it was the 15 December supplement that her parents had sent, continuing ‘The Cruise of the Lizzie’ by ‘Miss Ethel B. Beauchamp of Picton’. 3. KM’s sister Vera had emigrated to Canada with her Canadian husband in 1912 and had settled in Almonte, Ontario. See above, p. 211, n. 3. 4. The person alluded to here, and below, is KM’s youngest brother Leslie (known to the family as Chummie), who had been killed in a hand grenade accident during military training in Belgium on 6 October 1915. 5. The Battle of Verdun was one of the most devastating and large-scale offensives of World War One. It lasted from 21 February until 19 December 1916, and cost the lives of over 300,000 men. The total number of casualties, taking soldiers, civilians and prisoners of war into account, amounted to over 700,000. 6. This letter has not been traced. 7. If the earthquake was indeed Johnsonville (7 km to the north of Wellington), as KM notes, this would be a memory of visit to family friends or relatives, since her family did not live there themselves.

[1 November 1921] [ATL] Chalet des Sapins Montana-sur-Sierre (Valais) Switzerland. Confidential. 1 XI 1921 Father darling, I must get over this fear of writing to you because I have not written for so long. I am ashamed to ask for your forgiveness and yet how can

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I approach you without it? Every single day I think and wonder how I can explain my silence. I cannot tell you how often I dream of you. Sometimes night after night I dream that I am back in New Zealand and sometimes you are angry with me and at other times this horrible behaviour of mine has not happened and all is well between us. It is simply agony not to write to you. My heart is full of you. But the past rises before me, when I have promised not to do this very thing that I have done and its like a wall that I cant see over. The whole reason for my silence has been that, in the first weeks I was ill and waited until I was better. And then events conspired to throw me into a horrible depression that I could not shake off. Connie and Jinnie made me understand how very much you considered you were doing for me. They made me realise that for you to give me £300 a year was an extreme concession and that as a matter of fact, my husband was the one who ought to provide for me. Of course I appreciate your great generosity in allowing me so much money. And I know it is only because I am ill in the way I am that you are doing so. But it is highly unlikely that I shall live very long and consumption is a terribly expensive illness – I thought that you did not mind looking after me to this extent. And to feel that you did – was like a blow to me – I couldn’t get over it. I feel as though I didn’t belong to you, really. If Chaddie or Jeanne had developed consumption husbands or no husbands they would surely have appealed to you. One does turn to ones father however old one is. Had I forfeited the right to do so? Perhaps . . . There is no reason, Father dear, that you should go on loving me through thick and thin. I see that. And I have been an extraordinarily unsatisfactory and disappointing child. But in spite of everything, one gets shot in the wing and one believes that ‘home’ will receive one and cherish one. When we were together in France I was happy with you as I had always longed to be but when I knew that you grudged me the money it was simply torture. I did not know what to say about it. I waited until I saw if I could earn more myself at that time. But it was not possible. Then I had waited so long that it seemed impossible to write. Then I was so seriously ill that I was not in a state to write to anybody. And by the time that crisis was over it seemed to me my sin of silence was too great to beg forgiveness, and so it has gone on. But I cannot bear it any longer. I must come to you and at least acknowledge my fault. I must at least tell you, even though the time has passed when you wish to listen, that never for a moment, in my folly and my fear, have I ceased to love you and to honour you. I have punished myself so cruelly that I couldn’t suffer more. Father don’t turn away from me, darling. If you cannot take me back into your heart believe me when I say I am Your devoted deeply sorrowing child Kass1

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Notes 1. This letter clearly had a strong effect on Harold, whose annotations pepper the manuscript, explaining his actions, including the following, written across the top: I can emphatically say that in thought, word & deed I have never begrudged any of my children the amounts I have paid them by way of allowances. On the contrary, I have always considered it a pleasure and a privilege to do everything possible for their comfort, happiness & worldly advancement.

[13 March 1922] [ATL] Paris. 13 iii 1922 Dearest Father I only send these few reviews as it is tiring to read many.1 They are – I may say –representative of the reviews I have had so far. I thought May’s and Chaddie Waterlow’s letter might interest you!2 My letter under separate cover. Your ever loving Kass. Notes 1. KM’s letter presumably included reviews of her latest collection The Garden Party and Other Stories, which had been very warmly reviewed. 2. The letter she forwards was from Harold’s cousins, Elizabeth von Arnim (Mary, usually known to her family as May) and Elizabeth’s elder sister, Charlotte.

[18 March 1922] [ATL] Victoria Palace Hotel 6/8 Rue Blaise Desgoffe Paris 18th March, 1922. My darling Father, I can’t express to you my feelings when I read your letter.1 How you can possibly find it in your heart to write like that to your undeserving

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little black sheep of a child only God knows. It wrings my heart to think of my ungrateful behaviour and I cannot understand how I have been the victim of my fearfulness and dread of misunderstanding. You have been – you are – the soul of generosity to us all. Then how – loving you as I do – feeling your sensitiveness and sympathy as I do – can I have made you suffer? It is a mystery. I sometimes wish that we could have been nearer to each other since I have been grown up and not the intolerant girl who returned to New Zealand with you years ago. But fate has willed otherwise. Believe me, I am not, and never shall be, unmindful of what it must have cost you to write that letter to me. Perhaps one day I shall be able to express my gratitude and love. My darling, it is such a joy to think we may meet this year. My letters from the girls at Woodhay are full of your coming and the preparations for it. Everything they do seems to have the same end – Chaddie’s last batch of marmalade. And they seem to have done wonders with their garden. My plans for the immediate future are very uncertain. I knew that in spite of the considered opinion of the Swiss doctors, Montana was too high for my heart. My lungs appeared to improve, but my heart got so much worse that I could do nothing whatever except lie in a chaise longue. However, I decided the only thing to do was to give the Swiss treatment a good trial. But with the advent of the snow I went to bed and there I remained. If I got up I’d be attacked by congestion at once and I don’t think I should have seen the winter through. For some months previously we had been hearing of a new treatment for tuberculosis – an X ray treatment which was practised by a Russian doctor in Paris. It was endorsed by the Lancet: we heard of definite cures.2 And as my Swiss doctor had promised to do no more than patch me up on the best showing, I decided to make all enquiries re the X ray man. I did so. The more I heard the more satisfactory and ‘sound’ it seemed to be. Finally, in January, I came to Paris and saw the doctor, who promised me a full and complete cure. After – as you may imagine – a great deal of consultation, I decided to put myself in this man’s hands. Jack fully agreed. The course of treatment is to last until May, then there is a break of two–three months, and then I must have ten more ‘treatments’ in the Autumn. According to this doctor, and to his partner, I shall then be as well as ever. It sounds rather too much to believe. The method is to X ray the spleen. This doctor, who has been working for some years at the Pasteur Institute, Paris, has discovered that the spleen is the spot where the blood changes –that if the spleen is fed with X rays the blood is likewise fed. What a frightful bother, isn’t it, darling? I don’t think I’ll go into the question. I’ll supply you with literature if you are inclined to know more about it. But the fact is my spleen is lapping up these X rays and I have gained four lbs., and have never had fever since I started. So the future looks rosy. Its too early in the day to say more. We are living in a quiet very satisfactory hotel. Jack

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looks after me in every way. He is very keen on this treatment; so am I. But I have had so many disappointments that I can’t quite believe fully until I am further along the road. The girls, who stayed in England for Vera’s sake, hope to come over to Paris in April and see the sights under Jack’s escort. He is a very powerful guide. I have found it almost impossible to do any work so far, as the treatment is exceedingly tiring. But my new book has been a success and that is a comfort. It went into a second edition after a fortnight’s publication and I really must have had nearly a hundred reviews and notices. They are still coming in. It is to be published separately in America, Africa, Sweden and the Continent. It is extraordinary the letters I receive from strangers – all kinds of people. I have certainly been most fortunate as a writer. It is strange to remember buying a copy of The Native Companion on Lambton Quay3 and standing under a lamp post with darling Leslie to see if my story had been printed. I was so interested in the letters from Aunt May and Ethel Anderson.4 What a good letter Aunt May’s was. She seemed to be leading such a satisfactory life, too, with her growing children and the farm. The more I see of life the more certain I feel that its the people who live remote from cities who inherit the earth. London, for instance, is an awful place to live in. Not only is the climate abominable but it’s a continual chase after distraction. There’s no peace of mind – no harvest to be reaped out of it. And another thing is the longer I live the more I turn to New Zealand. I thank God I was born in New Zealand. A young country is a real heritage, though it takes one time to recognise it. But New Zealand is in my very bones. What wouldn’t I give to have a look at it! Chad sent me two cuttings you had sent her – one describing Miss Lulu Dyer’s sensations in the Suez Canal – the other Mr and Mrs F. Dyer’s reception.5 I was amazed at the richness and splendour of the latter – all described down to Phoeb’s earrings. The only thing missing was Frank’s buttonhole. Can’t you see Uncle Syd’s frock coat, too, and Aunt Aggie’s parasol. I had such a laugh over it all. I wonder Phoeb didn’t capture one of the young Princes at the Royal Garden Party for Lulu. Well, my dearest, dearest Father, I could go on talking for pages more. I hope you are having a really favourable voyage and enjoying the rest and change. I look forward with all my heart to our meeting this year, either on the Continent or in England. Jack, I know, has written to you. He and I are equally interested in the Bank of New Zealand reports you send us. In fact, Jack seems to have adopted my country more than I have adopted his. God bless you, darling, I am, ever your loving and grateful child, Kass.

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Notes 1. The letter, unfortunately, does not survive. 2. The Lancet, still in circulation today, is the oldest and most famous weekly medical review, published in London. The first article it published on Manoukhin’s X-ray treatment appeared on 2 April 1921. 3. The Native Companion was an illustrated Australian magazine based in Melbourne; it published KM’s first stories, an evocative series of vignettes, from October to December 1907. See CW1, pp. 78–89. Lambton Quay is in the heart of Wellington, and one of the oldest parts of the city. For an alternative, part-fictionalised, evocation of the area, see KM’s ‘Almost a Tragedy: The Cars on Lambton Quay’, CW1, pp. 140–2. 4. Ethel Anderson was the granddaughter of Cradock Beauchamp, brother of KM’s grandfather. Ethel also developed a talent for writing but this was soon suppressed, as the family feared she would go the way of KM, who, by then, had already become something of a black sheep among her Beauchamp relatives. Ethel recorded her early success getting stories published: ‘I think the family was slightly impressed, but Kathleen’s shadow darkened their orthodox lives.’ Nevertheless, Harold would remain close to his cousin Ethel well into adulthood. A prolific letter writer, she kept him in touch with the goingson of his various Beauchamp relations. See Kimber 2016, pp. 9–10. 5. For KM’s evocation of the event to Chaddie, see above, p. 218.

[21 June 1922] [ATL] [Telegram] [Montana] Beauchamp autocracy London Welcome To England Love From Kass And Jack

[21 June 1922] [ATL] Hotel d’Angleterre Montana-sur-Sierre (Valais) Suisse. My dearest Father, I cannot tell you how much you are in my thoughts to-day. I keep picturing your arrival at Southampton, your meeting the girls, and the arrival in chief at Woodhay! How I wish I were with you all. I cannot imagine a more happy little reunion. Welcome once more to

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England, darling. I hope with all my heart that your stay will be a very happy one. We were so delighted to hear from you at San Francisco. Since then much seems to have happened. I will try and give you my news in brief. The treatment I underwent in Paris was successful on the whole – not quite as miraculous as depicted by the doctor. But that was to be expected. Just as I was feeling the benefits of it, however, (this sounds so like my dear Aunt Ag) the heat wave descended on Paris and laid me low with an attack of pleurisy. It was rather a fierce attack while it lasted. But we got away from that gridiron of a city at the earliest possible moment and migrated here – to a very simple hotel about 700 feet below Montana proper. Here, as my Papa might say, we seemed to fall on our feet. For the hotel is kept by two excellent elderly sisters, who look after me splendidly.1 I am well round the corner again, pulling up the hill in fact at a great rate and able to get out and stay out all day under the pines. We intend to stay here until the end of August. Then, before my second course of treatment in Paris, I had the idea of coming over to England for a week or ten days to see you (Jack is going to spend this Autumn in England). But, of course, dearest, these plans are subject to yours. I could strike camp here at an earlier date and meet you wherever you proposed. I feel very strongly it would be a mistake for you and the girls to come here. Of course, you may have no thought of doing so, but I write this just ‘in case’. Montana is depressing for those who are not ill. There are too many signs of illness; too many sanatoria. And there is no escaping them. It is different in the Winter. Then there is a ‘floating population’, which arrives for the sports and the whole place changes its appearance. But Summer is the time for les malades2 to show themselves; one is rather conscious of them here. While I am on this doleful and none too cheery subject, darling, may I be allowed a personal detail. I am myself no longer actively consumptive, i.e. no longer infectious in any way. My present condition is merely the result of 4½ years severe illness, but active disease there is absolutely none. The Paris doctors assure me that after the second course of treatment the healing process will be very advanced. Indeed, they go so far as to say I shall be as good a man as I ever was. But experience teaches me to put a large pinch of salt on the tail of these flyaway words. I wanted to tell you this to put your mind at rest, however, as I know what one feels about such matters. I long to see you. You will tell me how you would like us to arrange it. Would England be the more satisfactory rendez-vous? There is a through train from here to Calais. And by the end of July, even, I shall not think anything of the journey. Perhaps Chaddie will tell you I have attached Ida B. to me as a kind of body guard. Its not possible to get on without some one and ‘she is faithful, she is kind’, as no one else could be.

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Jack and I are very busy working. I am hard at a short novel which is to appear serially in the Sphere this Autumn. I am rather behind hand and am making up for lost time in these favourable circumstances. After that, I am bound by contract to hand over a new book this (late) Autumn. Thank God for work, say I! We were very interested to read in the New Zealand papers the news of your retirement from the Bank.3 I cannot imagine how they will get on without you; I feel that your reports were the cornerstone of the entire business. Well, dearest, I will end this egotistical letter. It comes to you with much love and the deepest truest gratitude for your last letter to me. If only I could be with the three of you in spirit as you walk round the garden at Woodhay. There is nothing to equal an English Garden, and I am sure the girls have done wonders. Jack is writing himself in the course of a day or two. He begs to be remembered. With much, much love to you from me, dearest, I am, Ever your devoted and grateful child, Kass. Please excuse the jagged outline of this paper. It refuses to be torn from the parent block. K. Notes 1. See above, pp. 155–6, for KM’s own evocation to Ida Baker of the two sisters who ran the Hôtel d’Angleterre. 2. (Fr.): The sick. 3. A short news bulletin announcing Harold Beauchamp’s retirement, issued by the Press Association, appeared in most of New Zealand’s regional dailies on 28 March. Far more detailed, laudatory coverage of his career featured in two national dailies – the Evening Post (28 March, 8 April) and the New Zealand Herald (29 March).

[9 July 1922] [ATL] Hotel Chateau Belle Vue Sierre (Valais) 9th July 1922 My dearest Father, I was greatly delighted and relieved to hear that your doctor reported favourably on your health. Thank you for letting me know so soon.

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I am sorry that my letter re Sorapure came too late. But should you ever feel inclined to consult another opinion I hope you will give him a trial. Cousin Sinner1 thought extremely high of him. And that is rare in doctors in that quarter of London. He is a Big Wig without the manners of one. Very much like dear little Frank Payne2 in that, whose appearance always reminded me of the man in Cole’s Book Arcade Annual (do you remember it?) of whom it was said that ‘the birds of the air made a nest in his hair’.3 What awfully bad luck you have had as regards weather! One can, at a pinch, put up with the English winter in the winter time, but in July it is a most horrid infliction. So disappointing for the girls too, and their garden. I do feel for them after the way they had looked forward to showing it to you in all its perfection. I found mountain conditions plus cold, mist and rain too much for me once more. And shifted to this small town, which is in the valley. Here I shall stay until I return to Paris. Jack has, however, remained up aloft and only comes down for week-ends. This is an excellent really first rate hotel – the pleasantest I have ever known. It is simple but extremely comfortable and the food is almost too good to be true. Sierre is only 1700 feet high, which makes a great difference to my heart, too. If one had no work to do it would be a dull little place, for apart from the hotel there is nothing much to be said for it. But another great point in its favour is there is a farm attached, where the faithful old Swiss gardeners allow me to explore. This is all complete with cows, turkeys, poultry and a big rambling orchard that smells already of apples. The damson trees are the first I remember seeing since those at Karori. After all, a country life is hard to beat. It has more solid joys than any other that I can imagine. I thank heaven and my papa that I was not born a town child. I was much interested in the photograph of yourself taken with Andrew and John. It is not good enough of you, really. But it is a delightful record of your visit. John’s likeness to Vera at that age is remarkable. He looks a very taking little chap – very sensitive. I should think Andrew was like Mack. They are both ‘getting big boys now, Eliza’. Vera must be very proud of them. Yes, indeed, I too wish that I were taking a trip home with you. It would be a marvellous experience. The very look of a ‘steamer trunk’4 rouses the old war horse in me. I feel inclined to paw the ground and smell the briny. But perhaps in ten years time, if I manage to keep above ground, I may be able to think seriously of such a treat. Dearest, would it be all the same to you if I fixed our rendezvous in Paris for August 23rd? If that is agreeable to you, I shall regard it as a definite arrangement, and shall be there, D.V.,5 by the Wednesday morning, August 23rd. If, on the other hand, you prefer the former date, of course I shall keep to that. You may rely upon me not to make another change, or to suggest another. But the latter date would give

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me another week to finish up my work here – always supposing it suits you equally well. This morning I received two reviews from America, where my book was published recently by Knopf of New York.6 They may amuse you. So I send them along. I am glad the Americans appear to be taking to it. I have just finished a story with a canary for the hero, and almost feel I have lived in a cage and pecked a piece of chick weed myself.7 What a bother! Well, darling, I must bring this letter to a close and write Marie a line for her birthday. I do hope you are having sunshine and fair winds at last! With my fondest love, Ever your devoted child, Kass Notes 1. ‘Sinner’ was the family’s nickname for Elizabeth von Arnim’s brother, Sydney Beauchamp. 2. Frank Payne was Annie Beauchamp’s brother. 3. Cole’s Book Arcade was a vast bookshop and publishers, based in Melbourne, Australia, and founded by Edward Cole in 1883. They published two albums in the series Cole’s Funny Picture Book in 1879 and 1909 (and the collection continued into the twentieth century). 4. A steamer trunk was a large rectangular packing case designed for storage on large steamships. 5. (Latin): Deo volente: God willing. 6. KM’s The Garden Party and Other Stories was published in the USA by Knopf on 26 May 1922. 7. ‘The Canary’ was the last story KM completed. See CW2, pp. 511–15.

[28 July 1922] [ATL]

28th July 1922

Hotel Chateau Belle Vue Sierre (Valais)

Dearest Father, The days seem to whisk away here so fast that I don’t think the farmer’s wife would be in time to chop off their tails.1 I spend a large part of them tapping out my new long story or short novel on my little Corona.2 But I have been thinking of you so much, dearest, and hoping that your climatic and physical conditions are both more settled. I heard from Chad that you had been to see my good Doctor. I hoped

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he satisfied you and that you did not think I had over-praised him. It would be very nice to know from you what you thought of him. Since I last wrote we have had every variety of weather from Winter to Spring. To-day, for instance, began with a cold downpour, gradually changed until it was a damp tropical morning, and now its a sharp Autumn evening. Its very difficult to adjust one’s attire to these lightning changes. The only safe recipe is to start with flannel next to the skin, and build up or cast off from that. What a frightful bother! But judging from the reports in the Times, England has turned over a summer leaf again. Long may it remain fair. I hope you have enjoyed your time in London and that you have not found it too tiring. I suppose dear little Rally is just the same.3 And have you listened to Lou’s rattle?4 She seems to run up conversation as if with a sewing machine. I have never met any one so incessant. I get quite dazed after a time, and don’t even try to pipe above the sound. But her courage and good humour are amazing. There is a remarkable old talker here at present – an American, aged eighty eight – with his wife and daughter. The daughter looks about sixty five. According to the ancient gentleman, they have been on the wing ever since he retired at the age of seventy five, and they intend remaining on the wing for another fifteen years or so! He is full of fire still, dresses every night for dinner, plays bridge, and loves to start a gossip with ‘In the year 1865’. Its very interesting listening to his memories of early Noo York and of American life generally ’way back. I think he mistook me for a young person home for the holidays. For he introduced himself with the words ‘Boys seem skeerce here. May be you wouldn’t mind if I tried to entertain you a li’ll’. When he said boys, I thought at first he must be alluding to farm labourers, but then memories of American novels ‘put me right’, as they say. Jack is still in his lofty perch among the mountains. At the weekends, whenever the weather is wet, we play billiards. There is a splendid table here and we are both very keen. Its a fascinating game. I remember learning to hold a cue at Sir Joseph Ward’s,5 and I can see now Rubi Seddon’s’ super-refinement as if she expected each ball to be stamped with a coronet before she would deign to hit it.6 Jack is extremely keen on all games. I often think of what an enthusiast he would become on board ship. Dear little ‘Elizabeth’ has been spending the afternoon with me. She is on the eve of a very large house party at her chalet of which Jack is to be a member. Alas, I cannot fly so high. But mountains are nothing to her. She flies up and down them as if they were flights of stairs. I shall never forget the sight of her in the Winter in little black breeches and gaiters, like a minute Bishop. She has just finished her new book and is resting on her oars – a very enviable state to be in! Well, darling, I must bring this fragmentary letter to a close. I have underlined the date of our rendezvous in my diary as well as in my

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memory. It will be a very joyful occasion for me. We shall both be at the station to meet you. With fondest love, dear Father, I am, Your devoted child, Kass Notes 1. KM’s allusion here is to the classic nursery rhyme, ‘Three Blind Mice’. 2. KM took classes in typing in 1908 in Wellington, whilst waiting for her parents to agree to her returning to England. The ‘little Corona’ was a ‘Corona 3’, a very popular model of portable typewriter, that reflected and impacted on the rise of professional secretaries in the early years of the century. It has survived to this day and can be seen at the Alexander Turnbull Library in New Zealand. See below, p. 290, n. 5. 3. ‘Little Rally’ is Elizabeth’s brother, Ralph Beauchamp, known to the family as Rally. 4. An unidentified Beauchamp relative. 5. Joseph George Ward (who became a baronet in 1911) was one of New Zealand’s foremost politicians and, for many years, the leader of the Liberal Party; he was Prime Minister in 1906–12, and a member of the coalition government during the war. 6. Rubi Seddon was the daughter of Richard Seddon and his wife, Louise Jane. Richard Seddon was one of New Zealand’s most revered Liberal politicians (forming what the press acknowledged as a powerful triumvirate with John McKenzie and Joseph Ward). He was Prime Minister from 1893 until his death in 1906.

[10 August 1922] [ATL] Hotel Chateau Belle Vue Sierre (Valais) Switzerland. 10th August, 1922 My dearest Father, I have delayed answering your letter – which I was most happy to receive – because I felt there was a possibility that I might be forced, for reasons of health only, to make a little change in my plans. I hoped this would not be necessary, but it is. To ‘come straight to the horses’ – my heart has been playing up so badly this last week that I realise it is imperative for me to see Doctor Sorapure before I go on with my Paris treatment. As I am due to begin this Paris treatment on September 1st, I have decided that my best plan is to come straight to London next Tuesday, arriving Wednesday, 16th. Until I have had an opinion on the

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present condition of my heart I am really a thoroughly unsatisfactory companion. I could neither go about with you and the dear girls, nor add to your enjoyment in any way. And to sit with me in the bedroom of a foreign hotel would be extremely small beer indeed! And I could not forgive myself if my disquieting symptoms became aggravated in Paris and caused you uneasiness. You know what a heart is like! I hope this trouble is something that can be corrected easily. I feel sure it is. But until I know just what it is there is always the feeling I may be doing the very thing that will send me on my last journey before my work is anything like finished here below! That’s what I have been feeling all this week. I should not dream of worrying you with all this, my dearest, if it wasn’t that we had arranged to meet in Paris, and that I have upset your plans. Do believe it costs me a great deal to have to do so. Nothing short of necessity would induce me to. I shall go straight to my good friend, Miss Brett, on arrival. My address, therefore, will be:c/- Hon. Dorothy Brett, 6, Pond Street, HAMPSTEAD. I shall try and see Sorapure on Thursday. If you are in London, would you telephone me, or let me know where I may write or telephone you. If you are at Woodhay, perhaps it would be best if I write you a report of proceedings after my interview with Sorapure. Please don’t be cross with me for being such a bothersome child. I feel it with my whole heart, even though it a ‘sickly’ one. In any case, darling, I will communicate with you on arrival, and we can, I hope, arrange to meet then. Will the girls forgive me, too? With my fondest love, Ever your devoted child Kass

[15 August 1922] [ATL] Sierre, Switzerland 15 viii 1922 Dearest Father, I shall not arrive in London before Thursday evening, as I cannot get a sleeper before then. It is like mid-Autumn here, cloudy and cold.

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I do hope you are having very different weather in England. A little real August heat would be very comforting. I so look forward to hearing from you that my change of plans has not too greatly inconvenienced you. With fondest love, Kass

[18 August 1922] [ATL] [Telegram] [Knightsbridge] Beauchamp Woodhay Lyndhurst Seen Sorapure quite satisfactory writing love Murry

[18 August 1922] [ATL] 6 Pond Street Hampstead. N.W.3. Friday. My dearest Father, Upon my arrival here yesterday, I was more than glad to receive your dear letter. Many, many thanks for it. I still feel guilty at having so disarranged your plans. My only consolation is that travelling on the Continent, at this moment, is very poor fun. Even when one has reserved seats on all the trains and so on the immense crowds intrude. First class carriages are full of third class passengers, and the boat absolutely swarmed with ladies and babies all in an advanced state of mal de mer!1 However, travelling never tires me as it does most people. I even enjoy it, discomforts and all. And we arrived here to find all kinds of thoughtful preparations, down to the good old fashioned Bath Bun with sugar on the top – an old favourite of mine. It made me feel I was anchored in England again. I saw Doctor Sorapure this morning and went over the battlefield with him. As far as one could say from a first view, it was not at all unsatisfactory. He says my heart is not diseased in any way. He believes its condition is due to my left lung, and its tied up with the lung in some way for the present. Its all rather complicated. But the result of the interview was that there is nothing to be feared from its behaviour. I mean its tricks are more playful than fierce. And the more exercise I take in the way of walking and moving about the better. It may stretch

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it. Sounds rather rum, doesn’t it. But the point is, darling, Jack and I can meet you any where in London, any time. This house is rather hard to find. Its a queer nice little place, but on the Bohemian side i.e. I would trust its teas only – not its lunches or dinners. I am not in the least an invalid in my appearance or my ways and require no special consideration. If the girls would put us up for a night, would you like to see us at Woodhay – you see I propose this sans façons2 as one of the family. But except for another appointment with Sorapure on Monday afternoon, I am free as yet. And free I shall endeavour to remain until I hear from you. Sorapure thought I looked amazingly better, of course. Everybody does. One feels a great fraud to have a well built outside and such an annoying interior. What appalling weather it has been for you, dearest! The country looked an absolute swamp from the train yesterday. And I had a fire in my bedroom last night. This is the famous August! With fondest love, dearest Father. Its so delightful to feel you are so near and we are all to meet so soon. Ever your devoted child Kass. Notes 1. (Fr.): Sea-sickness. 2. (Fr.): In a very relaxed way.

[19 August 1922] [ATL] [Telegram] [Mayfair] Suggest Stewarts lunch one o’clock or Pond Street tea at five Love. Kass.

[22 August 1922] [ATL] 6 Pond Street Hampstead NW3 22 viii 1922 Dearest Father Just a note to say how very very happy I was to see you yesterday and how much I enjoyed our lunch and talk! I only hope you feel as

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young as you look and that your bout of ill health is a thing of the past. The girls looked so well and charming, too. Wee Jeannie though looks almost too young to have a real live husband.1 She ought to be married in a daisy chain with the Wedding Service read from a Seed Catalogue, as it used to be when we were children. It is a sad pity that New Zealand is so far, dearest Papa. How nice if we could all foregather more often. By this same post I am sending you a copy of my book. With fondest love Ever your devoted child Kass. Notes 1. KM’s sister Jeanne had recently become engaged to Captain Charles Mitford Renshaw. They would get married on 17 October 1922, at St Margaret’s, Westminster. JMM attended the wedding alone, as KM was in Paris and about to enter Gurdjieff’s community in Fontainebleau.

[23 August 1922] [ATL] 23rd August 1922

6 Pond Street Hampstead. N.W.3.

Dearest Father, Many, many thanks for the excellent photograph of yourself, which I received this afternoon. It could not be a better likeness, in my opinion, and I am so happy to have it. People talk so easily of a speaking likeness, but this really is one. I think it is by far the best photograph you have had taken. I shall try and ‘return the compliment’ in a small way by having some taken at Swains next week.1 They have asked me to sit to them more than once, but I have put it off so far. As you know from experience, dearest, I do not ‘take’ like my Papa. Jack is quite delighted with your portrait, too, and thinks it could not be better. Please excuse a hasty note. I wanted to acknowledge so welcome a gift immediately. With so much love, Ever your devoted child Kass Will you please thank the girls for the lovely flowers. They are much appreciated. Such a lovely country box full of small surprises!

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Notes 1. John Swain and Son was a highly reputed photographer’s and engraver’s business based in Farringdon Street, London, E.C.

[28 August 1922] [ATL] 6 Pond Street Hampstead N.W.3 Monday. Dearest Father, I cannot understand why you have not received my book. I gave it to Ida to post days ago. As far as I can make out, she seems to sit on the books and parcels I give her rather like old Amina (of Pelorus Sounds fame)1 used to sit on the peaches to ripen ’em. I meant to draw your attention, if I may, to one little sketch, ‘The Voyage’, which I wrote with dear little Grandma Beauchamp in mind.2 It is not in any way a likeness of her, but there are, it seems to me, traces of a resemblance. Here we are tasting a good old fashioned London fog: it’s very nearly dark (11.30 a.m.) I am thankful to be in Hampstead and not down in London proper. I wonder where little Jeanne will settle down finally? I suppose intensive bulb and mushroom growing or any novel form of farming of that kind, to be practised in England, would be too tame for her. I feel there is more money to be made out of new ideas on a small scale nowadays (especially when followed up by some one with little J’s brains) than in large and more risky schemes. Poultry, according to Ida, is fascinating, especially if blended with the illusive runner duck. But I expect nothing smaller than a full-sized gee-gee will satisfy her. I am all for concentrating on brains rather than physique if brains are the strong point. But its no business of mine, as the little dear would no doubt tell me, gently. Jack and I have a very busy week ahead, seeing people who are very kind but rather embarrassing. I’d rather not talk about what I have done until the achievement is of more reasonable size. It’s like making conversation about a new-born baby, and ‘a very little one’ at that. What fun your motor jaunts must be when it doesn’t rain. It is a splendid way of really getting to know the lay of the land. Much love, darling Father, Ever your devoted child, Kass

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Notes 1. The Pelorus Sound is the largest of the Marlborough Sounds, a series of waterways at the north of New Zealand’s South Island. 2. ‘The Voyage’ is one of the short stories included in KM’s collection The Garden Party (CW2, pp. 371–9); it depicts the child Fenella and her grandmother on board the Picton ferry, and evokes similar holidays to the ones the young KM spent with her Beauchamp grandparents.

29 August 1922 [ATL] 29th August 1922

6 Pond Street Hampstead, NW3

Dearest Father, Very many thanks for your letter. It is dear of you to ask me to tea so soon after your arrival in London, but would any other afternoon next week suit you equally well? On Tuesday evening we have a longstanding engagement to dine with the Literary Editor of the Times. Business and pleasure combined, don’t you know. And just at present I don’t feel up to afternoon and dinner engagements on the same day. Do not trouble to reply to this dearest. If one of the girls would ’phone me here on Tuesday, we might, if agreeable to you, fix up something then. I think I’ll dine alone this time and keep our pow-wow ‘en famille’. We shall be delighted to lunch with you at Bath’s Hotel on Thursday, September 4, at one o’clock. I have made a note of the date. Another dull March morning. I heard from Elizabeth, who is basking in radiance from dawn to dark. But I have noticed people take rather a delight in gloating over the kind of weather one is not enjoying here! Its a pity we cannot all settle in Florida and found a little Sunshine Colony. With very much love, in which Jack joins me, Ever your devoted child, Kass

[1 September 1922] [ATL] 6, Pond Street, Hampstead, N.W.3 September 1st, 1922. Dearest Father, I am so sorry to have made that foolish mistake about the date – writing 4 for 14. It was right in my mind and wrong on paper. I shall be

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delighted to take tea with you at Bath’s Hotel next Monday afternoon at 4 o’clock, thank you, darling. This afternoon Jack and I are going down to East Grinstead for the week-end to ‘see a man about a house’. It sounds a very nice one and in the pink of condition. His idea is that we shall share it with him. But I will not enter into detail here. If anything comes of it, I shall be able to tell you on Monday. How extremely unfortunate that poor Renshaw should be afflicted so seriously with malaria! More especially that he should be in for a bad bout of attacks just now. It is a complaint I know very little about. I wonder if it responds to inoculation? I know Ida’s father, who specialised in these matters, used to say it was a thirteen years’ infection but unless one became reinfected it disappeared. But there’s no great consolation to be derived from that. I can imagine poor little Jeanne’s distress. Yes, isn’t the weather past praying for. There has not been one out and out fine summer day since we came back. With fondest love, Father dear, Ever your devoted child, Kass

[27 September 1922] [ATL] 27th September, 1922.

6 Pond Street Hampstead, N.W.3

My dearest Father, Yesterday, with a box of late flowers from Woodhay, came a letter from you written to the girls, and posted, I think, at Marseilles. I was so very interested to hear of your news, and, oh, how I envied you the sun and fine warm weather as I looked out of my window at the cold, murky regular wintry day! Once I get through with this treatment, I shall certainly fold my tent like that famous Arab.1 England has so many charms – friends, for instance, and the real charm of being in a country where one’s own tongue is spoken. But the climate spoils everything. It is a perfectly infernal climate. I have such a cold that at this moment I feel more strongly than ever on the subject. But, literally, since you left we have had in London one fairly fine day with a piece of blue in the sky. I shall be glad when little Wilfred is settled in the sunshine of Otaki or thereabouts.2 I am sure she is not suited to the raging elements. Chad’s letter, which accompanied yours sounded very cheerful and busy. Fancy a dance at the Trinders!3 Quite an occasion.

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I wondered whether Captain A., Charles’ friend, had an eye on Chad.4 That’s the worst of matchmaking. Once it is started one sees an interesting meaning in every simple statement. But I so much dislike people who do that, that I shall curb my imagination. Dearest, what very bad luck that your indigestion should have returned. Also that your hand should be giving you gyp. I hope you give that hand and finger sun treatment on the way out – keep it exposed to the sun. I am sure there is nothing more powerful. Perhaps, I do sincerely hope, your indigestion will disappear as you are more rested. Poor Jack’s neck is giving him a very bad time. The boil developed into a carbuncle, and now another has declared itself at the very back of the neck. Sorapure seems to think he is in for a series. In the meantime, Jack, with his neck swathed in a large silk handkerchief, looks like a depressed burglar. They are very painful things, though. Last Sunday Charlotte came to tea with me.5 She looked so like Granny, white kid gloves, faint violet perfume and all. She is going on to Switzerland to ‘fetch Elizabeth home’ in a week or so. Those two are most devoted sisters. Charlotte, in fact, is quite fierce in her loyalty. I cannot quite imagine what Charlotte does with her life. She sees very little of her family. She seems to have no interests, if one excepts an exquisite small house. And just as Granny clung to Bertha, so she clings to her maid, Mary. But her life has been rather a broken one, I fancy. I see that Hutchinson has sold 140,000 copies of ‘This Freedom’.6 Very comfortable for him. I read it out of curiosity. But it seemed to me no end of a wallow. If the Mother’s knee is absolutely essential, how did it happen that Anne, who was brought up on it, came to grief and committed suicide? No one could have had a more unlimited range of it than she had. Indeed, she was pure knee according to the book. What a bother! Also, I got so tired of that perfect man saying ‘Mice and Mumps’ that I had no sympathy left for him. Its easy to understand his popularity, though. I shouldn’t mind a little of it if I could get it by honourable means! I am racing on with my next book, which I have promised the publishers to deliver at the end of October. I think I shall call it ‘The Dove’s Nest’. I’m rather tempted to call it ‘The New Baby’. That seems to be a selling title. But perhaps it is not quite serious enough. Well, darling, I must go off to Cavendish Square to have a dose of X rays. The man here seems to know his job, but he had not the Paris specialists’ experience. I wish I could have gone through with the original inventor. Even now, if things do not go well, I am tempted to borrow £100 and go off to Paris with Ida. It seems so like spoiling the ship for a ½d of tar (a rather expensive ½d though).7 I have sent my little baby book back to Princess Louise this week.8 I believe the books are bound exquisitely in leather with gilt edges. I should like to see it complete.

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Dearest, I do look forward to hearing from you. You will send me a copy of the newspaper with your interview in it?9 I shall be deeply interested. It was ‘simply lovely’ to see you again. I really do mean to try and come to New Zealand in the near future. The trip would be such pleasure, and how I should like to walk into the office and ask for Mr. Beauchamp! With much, very much love, darling Father, Ever your devoted child, Kass Notes 1. From the final stanza of Henry Longfellow’s poem ‘The Day is Done’, also quoted above, p. 75, n. 1. 2. Wilfred was the family nickname for Jeanne, and Otaki is a town in the North Island of New Zealand, 70 km from Wellington. 3. Harry Trinder was the husband of KM’s Aunt Belle, her mother’s sister, and the inspiration behind Aunt Beryl in ‘Prelude’, ‘At the Bay’ and The Doll’s House’. They lived in Surrey. 4. Captain A., identity unknown, was a friend of Jeanne’s fiancé, Captain Charles Renshaw. 5. The elderly Charlotte Beauchamp (1859–1944), now Waterlow, was Elizabeth von Arnim’s elder sister. 6. The Indian-born Scottish writer A. S. M. Hutchinson (1879–1971) was editor of the Graphic; some of his short stories, like KM’s, were published in the Sphere. His novel, This Freedom, was published in 1922, and although successful, provoked controversy on account of its retrograde, condescending portrayals of modern women. ‘Mice and Mumps’ is the closest the supposedly near-perfect male protagonist Harry Occleve ever gets to an expletive, before becoming a playful code word between Harry and the earnestly intellectual heroine, Rosalie, whom he converts to romance and conventional gender roles. 7. A common proverb from the heyday of the shipping industry, deriving from the older saying ‘Don’t lose a sheep for a ha’pence of tar’; in either case, the implication is that unreasonable economies are counter-productive. 8. KM here implies that she was one of the authors contributing short prose or poetry pieces to be printed as miniature, leather-bound volumes as part of the library in the famous dolls’ house conceived by Princess Marie Louise and built by the British architect Edwin Lutyens, as a gift to Queen Mary. It was first displayed at the Empire Exhibition at Wembley in 1924 and is now kept at Windsor Castle. KM’s place among the 170 contributing authors would hardly come as a surprise – as the catalogue reveals, a number of her peer group also took part in the venture: Edmund Blunden, Mrs Belloc Lowndes, Walter de la Mare, Clement Shorter and J. C. Squire. However, the original exhibition catalogue makes no mention of KM’s name; nor do other associated publications that year (see Allison and Squire, pp. 58–60). Her words here, therefore, are something of an enigma. Despite KM’s claim that she had sent her piece off, she may never have completed her composition; it would not have been the first time she had embellished her achievements to garner

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favour in her parents’ eyes. Furthermore, the most likely contribution would have been the already finished story ‘The Doll’s House’, since authors were allowed to submit already published work. Given her state of health by this time, it may be that she never completed the contribution procedures and was thus excluded. In an incomplete biographical work, Mantz suggests that KM discussed with de la Mare the poem that he submitted for the Dolls’ House Library (‘Beauty Passes’) and even possibly chose it for him (see Mantz 1972, p. 103). 9. Both the Evening Star and the Evening Post published Harold Beauchamp’s accounts of his travels in the USA and England. The longest, most evocative pieces are ‘A Business Man’s Notes’ in the Post (15 August 1922) and ‘Land of Big Things’ in the Star (18 August).

[30 September 1922] [ATL] 6 Pond Street Hampstead. NW3. 30 IX 1922 Dearest Father Just a note to inform you that for the first time, I think, I have drawn my next months allowance in advance. I hope you will not mind. My reason was this. I went off to have my first treatment by the London man here and it was, to put it mildly, not at all satisfactory. It seemed to me all the appliances were different and the whole thing was of so experimental a nature that it made me feel very uneasy. Ever since I have not been well. Unpleasant internal symptoms manifested themselves at once. And the long and the short of it is that feeling rather ‘skewed’ I have decided to return to Paris at once and to go through with it there, on the spot, by the same original pa X rayer who did me so much good before. It seems such folly and more to spoil the ship for a ha’porth of tar,1 even though the ha’porth is an expensive one . . So the faithful Ida and I shall go straight off on Monday, look for a cheaper hotel than last time and there I shall remain until I am pronounced cured when I shall wing my way to the South while the winter lasts. What an upheaval! But you know the very unpleasant feeling it is to be experimented on, for that is what the London treatment came to. The radiologist was most kind and anxious to do his best but there it was – he didn’t know the exact spot even, it seemed to me, and I am sure he started wandering blue rays in my liver. A great bother! My faithful Cave steamer trunk and hat box, good as ever after all these years are on the carpet again, eyeing each other, almost walking round each other, all ready for the fray.

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But to return to my New Zealand bank moutons.2 As my funds were rather low, darling, I sent a cheque and a note to Mr. Mills asking him if he would oblige me with the money. He thereupon telephoned me from the Bank and said he would be delighted. I must say I don’t look forward to hotel life again. Mais que voulezvous?3 Anything to get quite well again and to be an independent human being who doesn’t need any special attention. This is not a letter. I will write fully from Paris. With fondest love, dearest Father Ever your devoted child Kass Notes 1. A common proverb from the heyday of the shipping industry, which KM had used in the previous letter to her father. See above, p. 249. 2. (Fr.): Sheep. KM’s wordplay implies that she is familiar with the origin of the popular saying discussed above, which derives from the older saying ‘Don’t lose a sheep for a ha’pence of tar.’ 3. (Fr.): What choice is there? (Literally, ‘What do you want?’)

[2 November 1922] [N] Le Prieuré Fontainebleau-Avon France ii II 1922 Dearest Father, I have been thinking of you so often this month as it is your birthday.1 I hope you have a very fine day for it; I can hardly imagine a more enjoyable gift. It was most delightful to hear from you at Port Said and to know that your voyage, as far as climatic conditions were concerned, was so far successful. I only hope the blue sky and sea continued. I have a minor misfortune to relate in connection with my second series of X ray treatment. This time almost immediately my heart began to play up and after two applications I could hardly move at all. I felt extremely ill and disappointed, but it was out of the question to continue. But my black cloud showed what is apparently its silver lining quite soon. I got into touch with some other Russian (Russians seem to haunt me) doctors who claim to cure hearts of all kind by means of a system of gentle exercises and movements. They are established at Fontainebleau where their method is put into practise. So down I

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came to concentrate (as old V would say) on my heart for the next few months and then to see what I can do with my wings.2 Its very unlucky that I always have these chapters of accidents to recount but, you know, dearest, I feel they are in the picture for me for the moment. I am as confident as ever as I was that my lean years will be followed by fat ones. The one great thing, I believe, is to keep on trying. Not to give up, and not to accept the life of an invalid. I am determined to regain my health; but it may take a little longer than I had hoped. All is very snug here, and I feel my general condition is a great deal better already. That is enough of me and illness. I heard from Marie yesterday that she & little J and man3 intend to spend the winter in town. I am still sorry that little J. has married her Charles at this stage of the proceedings. It seemed to me an unwise move, as looked at from the outside. Jack, who was at the wedding, said she looked exactly like a child with tears of happiness in her eyes and that Charles looked very much the triumphant young man! Well he might, too, to have gained such a treasure. I find it difficult to feel for Charles as I should like to, but perhaps he will turn up trumps, and I am hardly the person to criticise such affairs of others. This has been, so far, the most beautiful autumn. Today it was as clear and as dry as Switzerland. I am living here in a large Chateau which has been taken and is being run by the Russians.4 The rooms are most lovely and to the picturesqueness is joined central heating and hot and cold water – Most important at this season of the year. I am so longing to have your first letter from New Zealand. Was the Grange looking lovely?5 What a joy to feel one is turned towards summer again . . . I receive the happiest letters from Jack who is as busy as usual. My ‘busyness’ is revealed in my hand writing which, bad at the best of times, is far worse owing to an attack of writers cramp. It is a most annoying complaint because it is so unimportant, and comes ‘off and on’ when one least expects it. I heard from Doctor Sorapure last week. Not the letters I much care for, but an account for my London visits. I can’t help feeling that doctors earn their money a great deal more easily than the rest of the world. I wonder if you have seen Elizabeths new book?6 I received it from her this week & read it immediately. My private opinion is it is very tame and even tiresome. I think she works her jokes about husbands and God far too hard. I am thoroughly bored by her comic husbands and equally bored by their wives. But perhaps I was not in the mood for that kind of thing. I shall find it very difficult to write to her about it. I wonder if you happen to have come across a novel called ‘The Brimming Cup’ by an American woman. The name of the writer is Dorothy Canfield.7 It seemed to me a most charming book and extremely clever. I read Hutchinson’s ‘This Freedom’, too.8 It seemed to me the most fearful twaddle. But no doubt it has brought him in about £15,000. Very nice for him.

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Well, darling, I must finish this letter & try & waggle my thumb into action again. One very pleasant thing here is that I have to speak Russian consistently and shall I hope, get as fluent in it as I am in French and German. After that I should like to rub up my Italian. Languages fascinate me. Goodbye for now, my darling Father. I do hope your health is good, that all is well with you in every possible way. You are in my thoughts so often. I shall always wish we were nearer. Ever your devoted child Kass. Notes 1. Harold Beauchamp was born on 15 November 1858. 2. KM’s poignant and poetic image when referring to her tuberculosis-damaged lungs. See above, p. 86, n. 3. 3. KM is referring to her sisters, Chaddie and Jeanne, and to Jeanne’s husband, Charles Renshaw. 4. The Prieuré des Basses Loges in Avon is an eighteenth-century manor house, built on the site of a fourteenth-century hospital and travellers’ lodge. It was rented and subsequently bought by Gurdjieff in 1922. 5. The Grange was the name of Harold’s home in Wadestown, Wellington. 6. Von Arnim’s latest novel, The Enchanted April (1922), tells the story of four women holidaying on the Italian riviera. While one of her most popular works, it is also the most light-hearted. 7. The American author and educationalist Dorothy Canfield Fisher (1879–1958) was a prolific novelist and writer for children, as well as a committed activist for social reform. Her well-publicised support for women’s rights and universal suffrage lends additional weight to KM’s implicit comparison between Canfield and Hutchinson. Like The Enchanted April, The Brimming Cup, published in 1919, is set in the northern Italian Campania region and explores the emotional and experiential coming-of-age of two modern women. 8. See above, p. 250, n. 6.

[31 December 1922] [ATL] Le Prieuré Fontainebleau-Avon Seine-et-Marne 31 XII 1922 My dearest Father, I am writing you this letter when the old year is at his last gasp and in the very act of turning up his toes! May the New Year be full of happiness for you. I wish I could imagine we might meet in it, but perhaps

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in the one after I shall be fortunate enough to turn towards home and to see you at ‘The Grange’. It is a dream I would love to realise. Since I last wrote I have been leading a very tame semi-existence here. My heart, under this new treatment, which is one of graduated efforts and exercise, feels decidedly stronger, and my lungs in consequence feel quieter too. It is a remarkable fact that since arriving here I have not had to spend one entire day in bed – an unprecedented record for me! I feel more and more confident that if I can give this treatment a fair trial – as I intend to do – and stay on for six months at least, I shall be infinitely stronger in every way. More I do not venture to say. Did I tell you in my last letter that the people here have had built a little gallery in the cowshed with a very comfortable divan and cushions, and I lie there for several hours each day to inhale the smell of the cows. It is supposed to be a sovereign remedy for the lungs. I feel I must look a great pa-woman, perched up aloft. But the air is wonderfully light and sweet to breathe, and I enjoy the experience. I feel inclined to write a book called ‘The Cowiness of the Cow’ as a result of observing them at such close quarters. We had a very quiet Christmas here, as the Russian Christmas is not until January 6th. Their New Year is on January 13th. What a frightful bother! Christmas, in any case, is no fun away from ones own people. I seldom want to make merry with strangers, and that particular feast is only enjoyable because of its childish associations. I remember us all going to St Paul’s and Mother’s enjoyment of ‘Hark the Herald Angels Sing.’ And that makes me think of darling Leslie still a child, enjoying everything. Such memories do not make for gaiety. I see by the papers I have received that my last book is nominated for the Vie Heureuse French Literary Prize as the former one was. It has no chance of success, for the French never take short stories ‘seriously’.1 However, it is a good advertisement and costs nothing. Jack still sounds very happy and busy, dividing his time between the country and London, with a strong bias in favour of the country. I do wish the English climate were more temperate and that I could look forward to settling down there. But the idea of settling is to me what it seemed to be to grandpa Beauchamp.2 Only I am driven where he went willingly. My new book will not be out before the spring. I am still a little undecided about the title. I feel the choice of titles ought to be studied as a separate art. Chaddie and Jeanne write very happily. I have no idea of what Charles does all day, though. Of course Jeanne will make the best of it and find happiness, but I don’t think it can be much fun living in a hotel in South Kensington. Chaddie sent me a handkerchief for Christmas (her invariable present) and little Wilfred a morsel of ribbon that looked like her doll’s sash.3 I still cannot imagine her a married woman.

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Well dearest Father this letter is very fragmentary. I so look forward to hearing from you. I expect you found everything in apple pie order and I am sure you had a very warm welcome. How I envy you summer weather, though there is little to complain of in the winter so far. If I began asking you questions about Wellington ways there would be no end to it. Forgive this handwriting, dearest Father. My constant plea! But as usual my letter case is balanced on my knee & at a rather groggy angle. The New Year is already here. I must leave the fire and go to bed. God bless you darling Father. May we meet again at not too distant a date. Ever your devoted child Kass. Notes 1. KM’s Bliss and Other Stories was shortlisted for the Prix Femina – Vie heureuse prize alongside Rose Macaulay’s novel Dangerous Ages and F. Brett Young’s The Black Diamond. See above, p. 37, n. 3. 2. KM refers here to Harold’s father, Arthur Beauchamp (1827–1910), whom KM always spoke of with great affection as a real ‘Pa-Man’. 3. KM’s nickname for her youngest sister, Jeanne.

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Jeanne Worthington Beauchamp (1892–1989) (m. Renshaw)

Introduction Jeanne was the second youngest of the five Beauchamp children who survived into adulthood. She was born on 20 May 1892 at 11 Tinakori Road, Wellington, where the family moved in 1888 and where Harold had once again built a house. After some five years in nearby Karori, the family returned to 75 Tinakori Road, a spacious house in Wellington. Jeanne remembered bowling green apples down the large garden there and told a friend, ‘I can see myself and Leslie running about there with Kathleen and calling to the boy over the neighbouring fence.’1 But it was not until she was eight that she would begin school, along with younger brother Leslie, at Miss Swainson’s private school on Fitzherbert Terrace in June 1900. She recalled their first-day initiation vividly: ‘We were shown into Miss Swainson’s drawing room and asked to kneel on two hassocks. Prayers were said over us.’2 However, she would never benefit from the kind of education that her sisters enjoyed at Queen’s College, thanks in large part to what her father perceived as its negative effects, particularly on KM. In later years, Harold’s views had mellowed: ‘Perhaps it was natural that after their lengthy stay in England during their most formative years, they should not seem to take root again in New Zealand.’3 It was not until 1919 that Jeanne left New Zealand for good, settling in Woodhay, the house near Southampton that her father had bought for her widowed sister, Chaddie. On 17 October 1922, she married Charles Mitford Renshaw (1891–1957), a retired Captain in the South Persian Rifles, and bore two children, Anne Beatrice (1924–) and Richard Beauchamp (1926–1990s). She visited New Zealand for the last time in her eighties and died in Cirencester (Gloucestershire) on 23 November 1989. KM kept in closer touch with Jeanne in the early years than she did with Chaddie. Of the eight letters exclusively to Jeanne, four date from before October 1913. The first from London, however, is a joint letter

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in early November 1908 to both Vera and Jeanne, encouraging them to write – ‘Your letters do so satisfy me’ (5 November 1908) – and mentioning a family letter that does not survive. Though there is no mention of KM’s involvement with Garnet Trowell, her seeming self-identification with a line from the popular music hall song ‘Shabby Genteel’ – ‘Too proud to beg, too honest to steal’ – must have provoked curiosity, if not alarm. Circumstances have changed dramatically by the time of the next letter to Jeanne in early November 1909: KM is now officially Mrs George Bowden; has left her husband to tour with Garnet; has become pregnant by him; has been spirited away by her mother to Bad Wörishofen, a Bavarian spa town; has suffered a miscarriage; and has become entangled with Floryan Sobieniowski, a Polish translator. It is unlikely that Jeanne knew anything of her sister’s activities, except for the marriage, but the need for a Polish dictionary would have required some plausible explanation, now lost.4 When Annie Beauchamp, together with Charlotte and Jeanne, returned to London in May 1911 for the coronation of George V, they, of course, met with KM but did not include her in their social circle. However, the warm critical reception for In a German Pension, when it appeared in December 1911, gave her undeniable status. Only two short family letters survive from this period – both to Jeanne, in January 1912. KM hopes that Jeanne can help drum up business among her ‘wealthy friends’ for Ida’s new hair-brushing business and mentions two letters from their father – evidence that he, at least, was keeping in touch (1 January 1912). There is now a dearth of extant correspondence before KM writes jointly to ‘Marie’ (Chaddie) and Jeanne in August 1921 from her mountain retreat in Switzerland, reminiscing in a light-hearted way about some childhood photographs and letters she had been sent. But in her October birthday thank you letter to Jeanne, the ‘memory game’ is central – both a performance to be admired and, sadly, almost the only way she can now bond with her sister. By conjuring up the golden past, too, she can avoid having to confront the bleak future. Clearly, she is also anxious to hear Jeanne’s reaction to a story in the London Mercury – that, ‘just for once’, suggests that her work is normally treated with polite silence (14 October 1921). The story was probably ‘The Daughters of the Late Colonel’ in the May 1921 issue, but it might just have been ‘The Stranger’ in the January issue, a story from the family’s past – their mother’s 1909 experience aboard ship of having a stranger die in her arms. KM’s letter to Jeanne of 2 January 1922 shows a continuing sensitivity to a certain falseness she detects in letters from her sisters. Indeed, in a diary entry for 26 January 1922, she is more explicit: ‘I feel they are so absolutely insincere. What on earth would I do at Woodhay? It doesn’t bear thinking about’ (CW4, p. 408). J. Lawrence Mitchell

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Notes 1. 2. 3. 4.

Crone, p. 19. Ibid., p. 22. Beauchamp 1937, p. 89. For a possible explanation, see Kimber 2015, pp. 59–83.

[2 December 1907] [ATL] [Draft] In Bed Monday Night Dearest Baby – This will, I think be my last letter to you – before I reach home – I wrote last to Chaddie from Rotorua1 – I must say I hated that town – it did not suit me at all – I never felt so ill or depressed – It was, I Notes 1. This draft note was written during KM’s camping trip to the Ureweras. For her detailed evocation of this day, see CW4, pp. 73–5.

[10 November 1909] [N] Snowed In! Worishofen Bayern

10 XI 09

My Sister; This is just to greet you this Xmas, to wish you for the next year – knowing you as I do – your heart’s desire and for every day of the year and every ‘Aunt Charlotte golden minute’ blessings and Happy Realities.1 Will you take all this in your sweet hands and hug it close against your heart? Your birthday gift, little Sister is here beside me on the table – it is a fat Polish dictionary2 with a green leather binding, and an air, already, of great weariness with life – in fact it goes about with me every day, and is such good company too, for the brass pig now is attempting to learn the new language which is manifestly absurd at his age and bristle losing condition. But thank you! Last night, sitting working here, the great jug of scarlet blackberry vine threw a twisted shadow on the wall – rather, my lamplight, more than a little fascinated, stencilled for me the trailing garlands with a wizard finger. And so I thought of you. Did you get the thought. Did you find it hanging on to the edge of your skirt (‘Good gracious, is that

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a cotton . . . . Where can I have picked it up’. . . . .) ‘My dear, allow me to present you with a Bavarian mind wave!’ Will Chummie take this share here of Xmas love and greetings. Give it him your sweet self and I know he will then understand. Bless you, my darling, and remember you are always in the heart – oh tucked so close there is no chance of escape – of your sister Kathleen Bowden.3 Notes 1. While the precise reference is unclear, this would appear to be a saying treasured in family memory, referring back to the words of old aunt Charlotte (1793–1877), one of the Beauchamps’ ancestral ‘Worcester aunts’ and a greataunt of Harold’s. The Worcester aunts were the pioneers who, after settling in Worcester and buying shares in a New Zealand company, and then encouraging their nephews to move out to the Southern Hemisphere, launched the Beauchamp adventures in what were then the far-flung colonial territories. 2. KM’s keen interest in the Polish language coincides with the months of her involvement with the artists and intellectuals from Central Europe then staying in Germany, and her love affair with Floryan Sobieniowski, who spent Christmas in Warsaw. 3. KM had married George Bowden on 3 March that year; they remained officially married until 29 April 1918, but they lived together only briefly, in early 1910.

[1 January 1912] [N] [Clovelly Mansions, Grays Inn Road, London] 1912 January 1st

‘69’

Dearest Jeanne: Have you or has Leslie the copy of a book by Frank Harris called Macteague?1 I do not think it was returned to me & it does not belong to me & is wanted immediately by its true and lawful owner. If you have it may I beg for return; if not for a card from you just telling me? I’ll be so grateful, dear. I had a letter from Father today: a very charming letter. Ida starts business this week. Do, of your kind heart, try and interest some of your ‘wealthy friends’ in her hair-brushing.2 Wouldn’t, for instance, Eileen Russel be keen – or her set? Ida has had cards printed and she was wondering if Jane would take one or two.3 I wonder if you saw the old year out & the New Year in? I became pious as the night waxed and went into the highways and byways to

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search for a church – but not finding one open I had to offer up my prayers to the Lord in the open street with nothing but the cold comfort of pavement for a Mother’s knee – Trouble with MacTeague is that I wanted to have news of him before Wednesday noon – if possible. Time for my ‘bye’. Bless you, dear – and may the New Year hold all manner of sweet treasure for you. Ever your loving K.M. Notes 1. KM appears to be muddling Frank Harris, the Irish writer, journalist and publisher, whom she was to meet later in 1912 (a meeting he also recounts in his memoirs), with the American journalist and writer Frank Norris. Norris’s novel McTeague: A Story of San Francisco, published in 1899, is a harsh portrayal of a romance and marriage that soon deteriorate into poverty, betrayal and murder. 2. Ida Baker had recently started earning money by offering ‘scientific hairbrushing’. In June 1912 this would eventually expand into a full-blown business venture with her friend Miss Good, operating as ‘The Parma Rooms’. Their advertisement in Rhythm read: ‘Specialists / Scientific Hair-Brushing / Face Massage / Hours: 9 to 6 / 59 South Molton Street’ (Rhythm, no. 6, July 2012, p. iii). The venture would last for two years. See also Baker, p. 74. 3. Annie Beauchamp (‘Jane’), together with Chaddie and Jeanne, had arrived in London in May 1911, for the coronation of King George V on 22 June 1911. Both Vera and Chaddie were presented at court but KM, as a married woman, was not invited. They returned to New Zealand – and Harold – in March 1912. During this trip they socialised in grand circles, as KM was well aware.

[3 January 1912] [N] [69 Clovelly Mansions, Gray’s Inn Road] Wednesday. Dear Sister: Many thanks for your letter: Macteague must be in hiding chez moi1 and I’ll search him out this morning. Yes, I like those rose windows in The Abbey.2 Do you know the Guildhall Museum?3 There is some delicious roman glass there – colored like the breasts of pigeons. I heard from Father again last night: he sounds better. My miserable book refuses to end itself at all: I begin to understand the Lord’s delaying of the final trump!4 God bless Everybody K.M.

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Notes 1. (Fr.): At my house. 2. Westminster Abbey. 3. The Guildhall Museum, now part of the Museum of London, had been founded in 1826, and housed Roman and medieval archaeological remains and material relating to the history of trade in London. 4. KM was not completing a book at this time but was writing short stories: for example, ‘A Marriage of Passion’, which was published in the New Age, on 7 March 1912. The biblical echo here collates St Paul’s words in 1 Corinthians: 15 (‘In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed’) and Revelations 10: 6–7, announcing the day when ‘there would be no more delay’: the seventh angel will sound his trumpet and the final mystery of God will be fulfilled.

[11 October 1913] [N] October 1913 8 Chaucer Mansions Queen’s Club Gardens West Kensington. My darling sister J. Thank you for the pink sachet. It is quite exquisite. I appreciate every stitch, dearest, and every little daintiness, and the initial looks most regal! Mother’s jacket has not yet arrived but the sachet is kept apart for the purpose – It is like winter already – This morning there was a fog & I am sitting by a fire with michaelmas daisies and chrysanthemums in the room. I have been rather seedy and not got over it, Im sorry to say. However by the time this reaches you I shall be alright again. It started with excema and then I got a small attack of flue and then – familiar ailment – a touch of congestion. It is this last which ‘clings so fond’.1 But its really ‘very small beer’ as Deepa would say. I have had 3 birthday presents already. Marie sent me some indian work and John (my John) has given me an ivory shoe horn and a little ivory backed hand mirror – he picked them up in an antique shop – and Ida has given me two little button brooches. My birthday is not until next Tuesday. But I set great store by birthdays, still and count the days as though I were only a baby and not nearly a quarter of a century old. My dear, I wrote a story called ‘Old Tar’ the other day, about Makra Hill, and sent it to the Westminster who accepted it.2 I’ll send you a copy as soon as it appears which will be next Saturday, I hope. Don’t leave the paper on the Karori road or I shall be taken up for libel. They have asked for some more New Zealand work so I am going to write one on the Karori School.

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The prospect of seeing Vera and our one and only nephew is quite exciting. She will be here in a week or two; and Chaddie talks of England at the New Year or shortly after. I expect we shall all sit in Vera’s house pull down the drawing blinds, turn the table upside down and start playing Coras and Evas.3 Tell me about yourself. What are you doing? How do you spend your days and who do you know? Let me have a long letter one day, will you, sister – The sachet, when I opened it, still smelled of you, so sweet and fine. My love to everybody. I am always your devoted sister, K. Notes 1. KM alludes wittily here to Thackeray’s The Memoirs of Charles J. Yellowplush (first published as a magazine serialisation in 1837), her familiarity with which sheds an interesting light on her attention to idiosyncratic and approximately transcribed speaking voices as a stylistic device, as well as her delight in rendering odd details of foreign lands observed from a singular perspective. In a letter to his son, Lord Crabbs remarks how ‘We were all charmed with your warm remembrances of us, not having seen you for seven years. We cannot but be pleased at the family affection which, in spite of time and absence, still clings so fondly to home.’ While the sense of distance from home would have been all too familiar, KM shifts the metaphor to imply that ailments are familiar, home territory for her. Writing in 1912, even she cannot have been aware of how fitting the image would prove to be in the years to come. 2. See CW1, pp. 340–4. The story was initially subtitled ‘A Karori Story’, which is how it also featured on 11 December that year in the New Zealand Times, announcing in the introduction, ‘This sketch [. . .] might well have been written specially for this Old Wellington issue’ (p. 17). It appeared in the Westminster Gazette on 25 October 1913. 3. While the reference is clearly to a children’s game of make-believe, it has not been possible to establish whether the girls are acting out a scene from a favourite story, or whether ‘Cora’ and ‘Eva’ are figments of their own imagination.

[14 October 1921] [ATL] Chalet des Sapins Montana-sur Sierre (Valais) Switzerland 14 X 1921 My little sister, Your handkerchief is such a very gay one – it looks as though it had dropped off the handky tree. Thank you for it, darling. I remember

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the birthday when you bit me! It was the same one when I got a dolls pram & in a rage let it go hurling by itself down the grassy slope outside the conversatory. Father was awfully angry & said no one was to speak to me. Also, the white azalea bush was out. And Aunt Belle had brought from Sydney a new receipt for icing. It was tried on my cake & wasn’t a great success because it was much too brittle. I can see & feel its smoothness now. You make me long to have a talk with you, in some place like the corner of the lily lawn. Ah, Jeanne, anyone who says to me ‘do you remember,’ simply has my heart . . . I remember everything, and perhaps the great joy of Life to me is in playing just that game. Going back with someone into the past – going back to the dining room at 75 to the proud and rather angry looking selzogene1 on the side board, with the little bucket under the spout. Do you remember that hiss it gave & sometimes a kind of groan? And the smell inside the sideboard of worcester sauce and corks from old claret bottles? But I must not begin such things. If we are ever together down the Kenepuru Sounds2 come off with me for a whole day – will you? – – And lets just remember. How Chummie loved it, too. Can’t you hear his soft boyish laugh and the way he said ‘oh – absolutely!’ Im sending you a copy of The Mercury in case you didn’t see this story.3 Tell me if you like it. Just for once – will you? Im also slipping inside it my new press photograph in case you’d care for it. Haven’t you got a photograph for me? I have such a lovely one of Marie. Its excellent. But the last was you & uncle Sid! Ever your sister K. Notes 1. The Selzogene, also known as a Gasogene, was one of the earliest soda water-dispensing bottles, produced in the mid- to late 1800s. Shaped like a figure of eight, its two globes contained water and a mix of bicarbonate and digestive salts, which, combined when poured, creating a sparkling drinking water. 2. The Kenepuru Sound is, like the Pelorus Sound evoked above (p. 246), one of the waterways that make up the Marlborough Sounds at the top of New Zealand’s South Island. This is where the Beauchamp siblings spent a number of holidays staying with Beauchamp relatives. 3. KM presumably sent a copy of ‘The Daughters of the Late Colonel’, published in the May issue of the London Mercury. The journal published no other story by KM later that year. It is likely that her memories of the late nineteenth-century Beauchamp family home and its décor prompted her to send the story, which pays such attention to the domestic objects that define and even rule the daughters’ home environment.

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[2 January 1922] [N] Chalet des Sapins Montana-sur-Sierre Valais 2 1 1922. Dearest J, I am so glad the boudoir cap goes with the robes de nuit1. . . I hope your party was a success. My game always is Musical Chairs, but it is so terribly thrilling that perhaps its better left unplayed. I want to begin screaming when the chairs are being arranged even . . . Very vivid recollections of being rather good at this game and last in with George Nathan!2 I should think you and Marie would give a lovely party – I wish you would ask me one year. Jack is extremely good at lying on the floor and letting people jump up and down on him, also at making faces. Your weather sounds too good to be true – We have 3 feet of snow here but at present it is pouring with rain. Just the moment for snow pies. It is horrible! But Christmas was fine. We had a tree, an exquisite little thing. There is enough German blood in the Swiss to make them have the most lovely small objects for hanging on trees – birds with glass tails and toad stools with candles in them and spiders webs of silver with liqueur chocolate spiders inside. These last are too realistic for me. Its horrifying to bite into the spider and taste what must be spiders BLOOD. My poor new book3 has been so boomed in the press before its born that when it does hatch out I know everyone will be disappointed to find its only a baby small; & will quarrel with its nose. It is terrifying to give birth to books. I wish one could do it in private. Im still in bed. But I don’t care. I defy Life. I shall win the battle after all and then you will be able to say all the cross things you want to without feeling that perhaps when your letter arrives I shall have taken a Bad Turn. Will you bite me as you used to, little dear? I shant bite back. I feel full of love. We are expecting our Elizabeth any day now – It will be a joy to have her. Write again. May I say without offence your hand-writing is exactly like a white kitten’s.* Yours ever ‘K.’ * Here KM has drawn a tiny little kitten. Notes 1. (Fr.): Night-gowns.

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2. The Nathan family were the Beauchamps’ next-door neighbours at 11 Tinakori Road. They were memorably transposed into fictional characters as the Samuel Josephs in ‘Prelude’ and ‘At the Bay’. See CW2, pp. 56–93 and pp. 342–72. 3. KM’s The Garden Party and Other Stories was indeed announced well in advance of publication in the British press.

[19 February 1922] [ATL] Very Sunday afternoon.

Paris.

Jeanne dearest Many thanks. It is rather funny we should have to send all the way to the li’l Canadian village from London and Paris! Almonte must be a most useful spot to have beyond one’s park walls. I shall be deeply grateful for the little pot and shall abide by your instructions. Its a mysterious operation isn’t it. Unhappily I shall have no one to roll their eyes at the marvellous result. But it can’t be helped. I am so awfully sorry to have put off you and Marie. Do come in May – Paris is perfect then and we shall be able to walk about and do a little (what Jack always calls) nose flattening. As far as he has flattened he says the shops are marvellous, especially the china shops. I have a special passion for china shops. Have you? He has bought already a very light grey teapot covered with tiny blue flowers for 1/6 which pours perfectly and would have cost at least 7/6 in Heals, my dear!1 So save your pennies for May. There is a whiff of some kind of exciting secret in your letter. Or do I dream it? I feel certain there was something in the air. Perhaps its only spring. And I do feel too that this year is going to be a lucky one. It has begun well which is half the battle. Yes, I am terrified to say my book is due on the 23rd. It is like waiting in the wings to come on to the stage. I wish I could learn my part all over again, but there is no time. I am so glad you like DelaMare. He is a wonderful person as well as poet. Do you know his book The Three Mullar Mulgars? It is the story of three monkeys – very nice monkeys – not like the ones in McNab’s Gardens.2 I am awfully fond of it. Forgive this groggy writing. My fountain pen has failed me. Why do fountain pens always die so early. As soon as one has become really attached to them they curl up their nibs and spit their last. It is very sad. Your devoted K. (I shall not forget Tuesday)3

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Notes 1. Heal and Son was (and still is) one of London’s foremost furniture and home furnishings shops, situated, as it still is today, on Tottenham Court Road. 2. McNab’s Tea Gardens were a highly popular pleasure garden and children’s zoo, situated in Lower Hutt, near Wellington, where the Beauchamp children loved going with Grandma Dyer, their maternal grandmother. See Kimber 2016, p. 61. 3. Tuesday, 21 February was the birthday of their brother Leslie, born in 1894; the mention is a poignant reminder of his death in World War One, seven years previously.

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Leslie Heron Beauchamp (1894–1915)

Introduction Leslie was the last-born child and only son among the five surviving children born to Annie and Harold Beauchamp. His names carry the weight of family history: ‘Leslie’ pays tribute to a distant, but proudly remembered, connection to C. R. Leslie, the nineteenth-century painter and biographer of the artist Constable; and ‘Heron’ (a clerical misspelling in the baptismal record at Karori Church) honours great-uncle Henry Herron Beauchamp, the father of novelist Elizabeth von Arnim (neé Mary Annette Beauchamp), to whom Harold was devoted. Yet rarely was he ‘Leslie’ as a child; it was usually ‘Boy’ among the family – reflecting, no doubt, his status as the only male child – and this evolved in childish speech into ‘Bogie / Bogey’. ‘Chummie’ seems to have been a later family nickname, and the one with which he ended his brief last letter from the front to his sister (5 October 1915), wherein he declared himself ‘frightfully fit and full of beans’. After his death, Leslie’s names and nicknames were artfully redistributed by KM. ‘Heron’ was adopted as emblematic of all Leslie’s perceived virtues – JMM once extravagantly alluded to him as ‘Chummie, sans peur et sans reproche’.1 Thus ‘the Heron’ became the code-name for the much-anticipated dream home in the country that KM and JMM would never share, and the Heron Press was their shortlived publishing venture, out of which emerged the first ever printing of KM’s story ‘Je ne parle pas français’. Leslie’s nickname ‘Boge(y)’ was duly transferred to JMM himself, while Ida Baker took ‘Lesley Moore’ (often reduced to ‘LM’), originally as a ‘professional’ name for her hairbrushing business. Leslie’s siblings were all born at home in Wellington, but the family moved out of town to ‘Chesney Wold’, Karori, in 1893. Leslie came into the world in Nurse Pattrick’s private hospital on 21 February 1894 – a fact that suggests some anxiety about Annie’s health. Leslie, then, spent the first five years of his life, along with his sisters, on the spacious fourteenacre property that his father had leased from Stephen Lancaster. Harold called it ‘quite a farmlet’, with its ‘cows, a couple of horses, pigs, and poultry’;2 with a stream running through it, it must also have been a children’s

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paradise. Leslie’s appearance alongside his four sisters in an 1898 photograph at the Karori Primary School is somewhat misleading. We see him, a comely child, not yet five, with long ringlets and nearly as tall as Jeanne and Kathleen, still attired, after the fashion of the day, in a smock with a wide lace collar. However, school records show that he was never enrolled as a pupil there. In fact, his schooling began in 1900 at Miss Swainson’s private school in nearby Fitzherbert Terrace, after the family had moved back into Wellington proper in 1898. In due course, he moved on to Wellington College for 1906–7 and then spent two years as a boarder at the elite Waitaki Boys’ High School, Oamaru, where he is memorialised on a brass plaque listing all former students who died in World War One. His service on the Western Front was painfully brief: on 6 October 1915 – a mere three days after reaching Ploegsteert Wood, Flanders, with the 8th Battalion, South Lancashire Regiment – he died demonstrating an unfamiliar type of hand grenade. Fortunately, some of Leslie’s letters to KM are extant – evidence enough of his singular status among her correspondents, given the many letters she had Ida Baker burn. There survives, however, but a single letter, now in the ATL, to her brother from ‘Katie’, as KM was affectionately addressed by him and by Baker. It is brimful of love and pride, and is, she says, ‘not a letter. It is only my arms round you for a quick minute.’ Unfortunately, it has been significantly misdated as ‘[25 August 1915]’ in The Collected Letters of Katherine Mansfield (vol 1, 1984, pp. 197–8). Of course, KM often left letters undated or partially dated – as in this case, ‘Wednesday 1915’ – a failing that irritated her in Ida. In fact, the letter, on Selfridge’s stationery, must have been written on Wednesday, 22 September. Were 25 August the correct date, it would have been written on the day that Leslie left KM’s Acacia Road home after a week’s instruction in ‘bombing’ (that is, hand grenades) on Clapham Common. The sentence ‘Ever since last Sunday you are close in my thoughts’ makes no sense if he were staying with her at the time. On the other hand, 22 September is the date on which biographers Nora Crone (1985) and Kathleen Jones (2010) have assumed – understandably following Antony Alpers (1980) – that Leslie left for the Front; and, indeed, that is the date he mentions in his 21 September letter to his mother (ATL MS-Papers 2063–05) for their expected departure. But the War Office records show unequivocally that the battalion’s departure for Flanders (not France) was delayed again until 6.45 p.m. on 26 September 1915. And the letter to his mother also documents that he was on leave in London on the weekend of 18–19 September – the ‘last Sunday’ to which KM alludes concerning their farewell meeting. Some critics have doubted the strength and sincerity of KM’s professed sense of loss, given what they perceive as the limited contact between the siblings over the years. C. A. Hankin, for example, asserts that ‘she mourned his accidental death in France [sic] inordinately’,3 and elsewhere cites both JMM and Frieda Lawrence in support of this view.4

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But Margaret Scott’s intimate knowledge of KM’s notebooks led her to affirm the existence of evidence ‘unpublished until now – that Leslie was always important to KM’ and to insist that ‘All the pain and grief she felt were truly felt.’5 Indeed, as early as 1906, the young Leslie is lovingly portrayed in his sailor blouse, showing off his ‘double-banger’ fireworks (an interest in which proves curiously relevant to his fateful role as a bombing officer) and later ‘whistling and plaiting a piece of flax’ (CW1, pp. 95, 96). He is also central to the 1907 ‘fairy story’, ‘She and the Boy; or, the Story of the Funny-Old-Thing’ (CW1, pp. 73–6); and, in two 1908 letters, KM praises him fulsomely to her cousin, Sylvia Payne, as an ‘intensely affectionate and sensitive’ boy with a talent for drawing (4 March 1908), and later to Vera and Jeanne as ‘the brother of brothers’ (5 November 1908). There is, moreover, a substantial story from 1909, ‘His Sister’s Keeper’ (CW1, pp. 150–7), that continues in the same semi-adulatory vein, projecting what Scott summarises as an ‘idealised and romantic view of her young brother . . . six years before his death’.6 Consistent with this evidence of a special bond between sister and brother is KM’s behaviour towards Leslie when he was in England with the family in 1911 for the coronation of George V: she took him to meet A. R. Orage (influential editor of the New Age), introduced him to JMM and even gave him a key to her flat. By 1914, then, when he returned to join the British Army, their intimacy was well established and of long standing. It was almost certainly at this time that she acquired Chummie’s regimental cap badge and he gave her his precious ‘greenstone’ (jade pendant), which she was still wearing in 1922 (see KM to Dorothy Brett, 21 January 1922). There is ample documentary evidence, then, of her early, sustained and singular affection for her brother, well before his death in Flanders. The Karori house, Chesney Wold, is, famously, the setting for both ‘Prelude’ (1917) and ‘The Doll’s House’ (1921), in neither of which does a Leslie stand-in appear. In ‘Prelude’, however, Stanley notes the empty place at the top of the table and thinks ‘That’s where my [as yet unborn] boy ought to sit’ (CW2, p. 76). This subtly indirect tribute by KM to her dead brother in a story set before he was born may account for her father’s statement that ‘Her grief is poignantly expressed in her masterpiece, “Prelude,” which was written for him.’7 Chesney Wold is also the locus of KM’s evocative elegy for him, ‘To L. H. B. (1894–1915)’. When sister and brother walk together in a dream ‘beside the stream / fringed with tall berry bushes, white and red’ (CP, p. 109), they are demonstrably at the foot of the paddock through which ran the Karori stream. Within this domestic garden of Eden, there was even a ‘Forbidden Tree’ – a rare species of apple-tree – that the children were told never to touch upon pain of a whipping. In the vignette ‘Autumns: I’, published in Signature on 4 October 1915 (see CW1, pp. 451–4), KM conjures up ‘Bogey and I’, alone among the children, following their father ‘down the violet

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path [. . .] and down the hill to the orchard’, where they participate in a quasi-sacramental ceremony, sharing an apple from this tree: ‘he handed to Bogey one half, to me the other’. And Bogey is also central to ‘Autumns: II’ in the same issue of Signature (see CW1, pp. 454–8), revised as ‘The Wind Blows’ in 1920, where their oneness, their indivisibility is further emphasised: ‘we have the same excited eyes and hot lips’ and ‘stride like one eager person through the town’. Together, they walk down to the esplanade, there to imagine themselves ‘Brother and Sister’ on a ‘big black steamer’, saying together ‘Goodbye, little island’. Importantly, these are the first two published stories in which Leslie features, and were surely inspired by his presence in England and his week-long visit to Acacia Road. Although we have only the one letter to Leslie, he remains a persistent presence in letters, poems and stories alike. He is, of course, an infant – ‘the boy’ – in ‘At the Bay’ (1921), whose charm melts even the heart of his reluctant mother, Linda; and he is perhaps most visible as Laurie, ‘with the warm, boyish voice’ and constant companion of Laura ‘on their prowls’ in ‘The Garden Party’ (1921, CW2, pp. 401–14). He makes his final fictional appearance in ‘Six Years After’ (1921, CW2, pp. 421–6), which imagines a nameless Leslie figure reunited with his parents on his first leave and the mother poignantly ‘pressing her head against the cold button of his British warm’ [that is, military greatcoat] (CW2, p. 425). He is still ‘little brother’, however, in poems, including number VIII in the recently discovered collection The Earth Child (1910), where ‘Little Brother lay with his head in my lap’ (CP, p. 79). In her letters, KM is ever ready to remind recipients, albeit in different ways, of her claims to a unique relationship with Leslie: ‘we understood each other so wonderfully’, she tells her sister Vera (26 February 1916); she recounts vivid dreams of them together for JMM’s benefit (26 May 1918); and she even reminds him of some of Leslie’s dying words: ‘God forgive me for what I have done. Those words Chummie spoke as he died’ (11 December 1919). J. Lawrence Mitchell Notes 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

On 19 January 1920 (Hankin, p. 254). Beauchamp 1937, p. 85. Hankin, p. 80. Hankin 1983, p. 106. Mansfield 2002, p. xxi. Mansfield 2002, p. 228, n. 224. Beauchamp 1937, p. 94.

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[22 September 1915] [ATL] Selfridge & Co. Ltd. Oxford Street London W. The Lounge, Reading and Writing Rooms, Wednesday 1915 Dearest, I have an odd moment to spare & I’ll use it in sending you a line – Ever since last Sunday you are close in my thoughts. It meant a tremendous lot, seeing you and being with you again1 and I was so frightfully proud of you – you know that – but I like saying it. But the worst of it is I want always to be far more with you and for a long enough time for us to get over the ‘preliminaries’ and live together a little. I heard from Mother this mail. She was very cheerful & says she has such happy letters from you. Again she wanted first hand news of you so I have written this mail & told her just what I would want to hear if I were she – She is a darling and her personality simply enchants me in her letters. Do you know a day when your heart feels much too big? Today if I see a flag or a little child or an old beggar my heart expands and I would cry for joy. Very absurd – Im 26. you know – This is not a letter. It is only my arms round you for a quick minute. Your Katie. Notes 1. Leslie finally set off for France on 26 September. See Introduction above.

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Vera Margaret Beauchamp (1885–1974) (m. Mackintosh Bell)

Introduction Most of KM’s letters to her eldest sister, Vera, fall into two periods: the first half of 1908 and 1921–2. The sisters’ lives had followed a similar trajectory by 1908: both had received an increasingly elite education, first in Wellington and then, from 1903, at the progressive Queen’s College in London. Upon their return to Wellington in 1906, they were afforded lives of relative social and cultural privilege: both frequently socialised with the capital’s elite and took advantage of some of the artistic life that Wellington had to offer.1 However, this period also began to mark stark differences of temperament. While KM resented the futility of such an existence and longed to establish herself as a writer in England, Vera seems not to have shared her sister’s frustration with New Zealand’s cultural and intellectual restrictions. Indeed, rather than achieving recognition in the arts, Vera was preoccupied in this period with her courtship by Canadian geologist Dr James Abbott Mackintosh Bell (1877–1934). Nevertheless, the first cache of correspondence is evidence of a close relationship. Written after Vera had gone to Sydney to stay with relatives of her paternal great aunt, Elizabeth (Louey) Weiss Beauchamp, these early letters are informal in appearance: the handwriting is large and untidy, in pencil or black or purple ink, sometimes the date is written vertically, and one includes an illustration. The letters shed light on KM’s early intellectual development and social circumstances in Wellington, and it is striking that, despite emerging differences of personality, she consistently presumes that Vera shares her own refined tastes, appreciation of music and literature, and disdain for New Zealand’s unsophisticated provinciality. Vera returned from Sydney in July 1908, just after KM left New Zealand for the last time, resuming the social rounds that her sister had been so eager to escape. Society columns in local papers reported Vera’s attendance at afternoon teas, balls and dinners – often with the families of the Governor and Prime Minister2 – and her involvement with the Girls’ Realm Guild and the Savage Club.3 In September 1909,

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Vera married Bell, familiarly known as Mack, in Wellington’s St Paul’s Cathedral. Vera’s youngest sister, Jeanne, recalled that Vera had been sent to Sydney ‘as a distraction’ from Mack, and yet, whatever their parents’ reservations had been, Mack had promising career prospects: after earning a PhD at Harvard University in 1904, he had negotiated his appointment as Director of the Geological Survey of New Zealand in 1905, becoming the youngest director in the Survey’s history. From this point, the course of Vera’s life was determined by her obligations as wife and mother. Mack was to prove himself loyal to Empire and to the war effort, and remained ambitious in a stable career. He and Vera relocated to London in 1911, where Mack founded his own mining geology company. By the outbreak of World War One, they had returned to Mack’s native Canada, Vera had given birth to two sons – Andrew born in 1912 and John in 1914 – and Mack was engaged in military service, which would eventually lead to his being awarded an OBE. Vera spent the remainder of her life in Canada, where, after the war, Mack forged a successful career in mineral exploration and mine development. In later life, Vera acknowledged that KM’s life had been ‘bohemian’, while hers had been ‘much more conventional’.4 Vera had visited London with her two small children in 1914, and this was the last time KM saw her. Yet KM had begun to feel ‘out of touch’ with Vera as soon as she left for England in 1908; she was disheartened at Vera’s report that the family had never been so ‘happy’ and ‘united’ once KM had gone.5 Vera would later comment in turn that KM was ‘selfish’: it was ‘hurtful’ to the family that she wrote to them so seldom.6 In 1914, KM dismissed letters from Vera and Mack as ‘disgusting’; Mack she found ‘vulgar’.7 By January 1922, KM wrote privately, ‘I would not care if I never saw Vera again. There is something in her assumed cheerfulness which I cannot bear’, and dismissed Vera as ‘so absolutely insincere’ (CW4, p. 408). One letter survives from 1916, concerning the painful news that their father would be financing her mother and sister (but not KM) to visit Vera in Canada. The rest of the correspondence from 1921 is characterised by tender expression but an acute awareness that the sisters have drifted apart. As if to reflect this distance, the later letters are visually more formal, composed in small, neat handwriting on paper with a personalised address. All surviving letters to Vera are now held by the ATL in Wellington. Anna Plumridge Notes 1. See, for example: ‘Social Gossip’, Free Lance, 19 October, p. 6; ‘Fashion & Frivolity’, New Zealand Mail, 4 October 1907; ‘Happenings in the Capital’, Clutha Leader, 21 December 1906.

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2. See, for example: ‘Social and Personal Notes’, New Zealand Times, 26 April 1909, p. 2; ‘Ante-nuptial teas’, New Zealand Times, 29 May 1909, p. 7; ‘Naval Ball’, New Zealand Times, 28 August 1909, p. 11; ‘At Home in Whitmore Street’, New Zealand Times, 19 August 1909, p. 2. 3. Vera’s involvement in the Girls’ Realm Guild is noted, for instance, in ‘Girls’ Realm Guild Meeting’, New Zealand Times, 18 August 1909, p. 2, and ‘Social and Personal News’, New Zealand Times, 3 November 1908, p. 2, and her participation in the Savage Club in ‘Social and Personal’, Dominion, 27 July 1908, p. 5. 4. Owen Leeming (Producer) (1962), The Sisters of Kezia: Katherine Mansfield Remembered [sound recording]. Available at: (last accessed 1 February 2019). 5. Letter to Garnet Trowell, 3 October 1908. 6. Leeming. See above, n. 4. 7. Letter to JMM, 12–13 February 1918.

[17 January 1908] [ATL] [4 Fitzherbert Terrace] Friday 17 I 08. My dearest sister – Thank you a great deal for your letter – Do you think of remaining until April – I think that so extremely wise – and Life sounds full of interest for you – Gaston la Touche1 is worth a 1000 miles of ‘mal de mer’2 to visit – I am sure – Oh, my dear, how absurd this plan is about my leaving in March – and of course I feel, undyingly certain that I shall leave in March and the diet of Hope and Assurance is eminently comfortable – So I am waiting for Guardie’s3 cable before I become involved in any definite occupation here – mean while my days are full of work – as you know. Miss Isitt4 was quite interesting – pardon the remark, she has a distinctly provincial trend of mind – but the gist of the matter with her was:– Miss I: ‘With your genius and future I would go home steerage.’ That is very gratifying – but not feasible – Give me two years of your life – Vera – I pray you. I shall certainly read Keir Hardie’s Serfdom & Socialism5 – he is progressive and sincere. For a brilliant book read Mrs Henry Dudeney’s latest:– ‘The Orchard Thief’6 – it is clever from start to close – It is a book alive with epigrams written in a fluent, fascinating style – Like most feminine productions – there is much introspection – in fact the book is mainly introspection – and the plot is the inevitable two men and a capricious incorrigibly dimpled girl. Now you are saying:– not for me danke schön7 – but you would

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like it. She catches the very quintessence of the suburban atmosphere – where the middle class deck their minds with neat little rows of sham Chippendale furniture [I am rather proud of that sentence] but do try & read the book – Honey – and give me your impressions. I have just written a sketch ‘The Education of Audrey’8 – which I think you might like – Of course it is London – but it is actually happy – and ends to begin – you understand? L’autre jour,9 I meet Dr Tudor Jones10 – and he asked me to spend an afternoon with him. I did so – but he is so eternally the same – He has one string to his bow –and he persists in twanging it a violent forte11 from the moment of meeting – I showed him some of my work, and he has promised me several very influential letters of introduction – He only wishes he had known me before – hein?12 We could have spent so much time reading together – What was Life but this:– a continual feeling for knowledge – summing up the result & feeling as fresh – – – –13 Do you know the Doctor in that mood – He illustrated that simple fact in at least two dozen ways – it formed the conversational basis – Oh, what a bore! Last night Dr Crosby et femme14 – that is not French – I know – Aunt Li and Burney15 dined with us – It was very pleasant – The Dr sat on my right – and I am exceedingly fond of him – He is lending me the precious Kennedy16 while he goes away – and sending me Arnold Trowell’s Reverie de soir17 – Oh, Vera, Tom has had the most magically successful concert – you know a packed hall – and glowing notices even from the Times18 – I am so glad – He played this Reverie then – and also at Queens Hall – where the Duke of Connaught was present.19 (Very very choice indeed my dear.) Chaddie, Mother & I saw 3 Little Maids20 the other night. It is so incomprehensibly feeble that I felt quite hysterical with laughter – Oh, the men, the costumes – the women – the lady opening a golf course – attired in purple velvet – Pompadour period21 – Bo peep crook – uncovered bosom 1906. They all held up their skirts like the NZ. football lady on the Eastbourne Pier.22 Everybody loves it here – and the song ‘Auntie Found the Needle in the Haystack’23 (needless to remark she finds it by sitting on it) has become the rage of Wellington – especially by Dr Milsom – & Webster & Reid24 – you know? . . . I could continue chatting like this for a week – You know that mood – but its mail days – so au revoir25 – Write me if you have time – dear – I think of you so often – Your sister K. Notes 1. As the Dominion newspaper reported, Vera had ‘left for a short visit to Sydney’ in December 1907, a trip she finally extended until summer 1908 (Kimber 2016, p. 233). While there, she visited the Art Gallery of New South Wales, and clearly enthused to KM about one striking picture in their

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permanent collection, ‘The First Born’ by Gaston la Touche (1854–1913), an artist, engraver and sculptor from Normandy, reputed for his detailed portrayal of everyday scenes and intimist realism, and his collaborative work with the novelist Emile Zola. (Fr.): Sea-sickness. Elizabeth von Arnim’s brother, Henry Beauchamp, was KM and her sister’s guardian during their stay in England, and thereby earned the nickname ‘Guardie’ or ‘Guardy’. Henry was a highly respected singing master and conductor at the Royal Academy of Music, where one of his colleagues was George Bowden. While the reference is unclear, it is possible that KM had been in touch with Kate Evelyn Isitt, the Wellington-based journalist and writer, and a keen supporter of women’s rights, then working for the Dominion. She would obviously have understood, and even shared, KM’s longing to go to London, where she settled in 1910, working for the Manchester Guardian. The Scottish socialist and founder of the British Labour Party, Keir Hardie (1856–1915), made a short visit to Australia and New Zealand in late 1907, where he gave talks on the British Labour movement, social welfare and women’s suffrage, and visited mines and factories. The Otago Daily Times reported on 10 January that Hardie ‘said the condition of the working classes in New Zealand and Australia was better than in any other part of the world he had visited’ (p. 10). His From Serfdom to Socialism, published in 1907, was one of the key documents in the history of the early Labour movement, laying out political objectives and defining Hardie’s own convictions on social, political and historical issues having an impact on the lives of the working men and women of his country. Though largely forgotten today, Alice Louisa Dudeney (1866–1945) was an emerging writer in the early twentieth century, who went on to be one of the most prolific, popular and respected authoresses of her day, often compared to Thomas Hardy. Her The Orchard Thief had been published just one month earlier, and was warmly praised for the psychological depth of its study of an ill-matched couple. (Ger.): Thank you very much. With the exception of her abandoned novel Juliet, KM’s ‘The Education of Audrey’ was her longest story to date. It was published by the Wellington daily, the Evening Post, one year later, on 30 January 1909. See CW1, pp. 102–7. (Fr.): The other day. Dr William Tudor Jones (1865–1946), originally from Swansea, had arrived in New Zealand in 1906 as a representative of the British and Foreign Unitarian Association, having been appointed founding minister of the Wellington Unitarian Church; he stayed until 1910. Although a trained theologian, he was also a keen philosopher, writer, translator and musician, often composing hymns for his congregation. (It.): Loudly. (Fr.): Interjection, implying ‘don’t you think?’ At this point in the text, there is an illustration depicting three fan-shaped pie charts, one on top of the other, and the words ‘the ego ––> feeling for knowledge ––> summing up etc’. (Fr.): And wife, woman. Dr Arthur Crosby was the superintendent at Mount View Mental Hospital in Wellington.

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15. Eliza Trapp, or Aunt Li, was the eldest sister of KM’s mother; she and her husband, Burney Trapp, were visiting from Sydney. 16. Given the context, it seems most likely that ‘the precious Kennedy’ was the ‘Rêverie – Star of the Sea’ by the Irish–American composer Amanda Kennedy (1867?–1939?). Allegedly composed when she was only sixteen, the piece became hugely popular as the music for a song with lyrics by George Cooper. Like Trowell, Kennedy was something of a child prodigy, a pianist who began composing in her early teens. She made a career as a composer and piano teacher, writing parlour songs, piano methods and carols. 17. Arnold (Thomas) Trowell (1887–1966), KM’s early romantic flame for a while and her model as a performing artist, was not only a virtuoso cellist; he was also a composer of note, even as a young man (he was only nineteen at the time). He had composed his ‘Rêverie du Soir’ (Op. 12 no. 1), for cello with piano accompaniment, in 1907, and performed it in the second concert he gave in London, at the Bechstein Hall on 23 November 1907. Five days after the evening party described in the letter, KM drafted a letter to Trowell about his piece, and the link to Crosby, writing in German as a form of intimate or secret code. See CW4, pp. 85–6. 18. The unsigned report of the concert in The Times included the following praise: In all these pieces Mr. Trowell showed himself a master of technique, overcoming the difficulties with ease and without making it apparent that there were any difficulties to overcome; at the same time he played the music as though it meant something to him, and not as if it were only a vehicle for display. His tone was full and came easily off the strings, and his readings were free from the affectation that so often accompany a player to whom difficulties come lightly. (25 November, p. 8) 19. Arnold Trowell made his début as a concert soloist on 6 November at the Queen’s Hall, where his repertoire included Boëllmann’s virtuoso piece, Variations Symphoniques. Whether the Duke of Connaught (one of the titles of Prince Arthur, brother of King Edward VIII) attended or not is unclear. 20. Three Little Maids is a musical comedy by Paul A. Rubens, which had premiered in London in 1902. It went on tour in New Zealand as part of the popular Blue Moon Company’s seasonal repertoire, in late 1907 and early 1908. The season opened at the Opera House, Wellington, on 26 December and lasted ten days. A warm review in the Otago Witness three months later summarised the production as follows: A plot is not one of the essentials in musical comedy, and that of the ‘Three Little Maids’ is a gossamer trifle that is wafted from the golf links at Market Mallory through a Bond Street tea shop, and finally settles on three humorously loving couples in Lady St. Mallory’s drawing room. [. . .] ‘the miller’s daughter’ is admirably sung by Miss Alma Barber; and Cupid scores heavily with ‘The needle and the haystack’. (1 April 1908, p. 69) 21. Jeannette Antoinette Poisson, better remembered as Madame de Pompadour (1721–64), was a courtier, patronness of the arts, figure of renowned fashion

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and beauty at the court of the French King, Louis XV, and his official mistress from 1745 until 1751. Her name remains attached to the elaborate gowns and hairstyles she favoured. Possibly a reference to a visit by the Beauchamp sisters to the English seaside town of Eastbourne in 1905, during their schooling at Queen’s College in London, during the celebrated Original All Blacks (known as ‘The Originals’) tour of the UK, France and USA in 1905–6. ‘Looking for a Needle in the Haystack’ was one of the songs added to Rubens’s show from another musical comedy from 1903, The School Girl, by Henry Hamilton. The opening lyrics, with their reference to Marie Corelli, a writer KM read with passion in those years and discusses with Vera in a later letter (see below, p. 286), suggest why KM singled out this piece in particular: ‘She had read Marie Corelli, and emphatically swore / that she’d never wed a man who’d ever kissed a girl before.’ The score, by Leslie Stuart, notes that the melody of the refrain is suggested by an old Norwegian tune. Dr Milsom was a doctor in Wellington whom the Beauchamps consulted (see below, p. 286); Garcia Webster was also a local doctor, and Nicolas Reid the director of the National Mutual Life Association of Australasia. The three men are evoked in the ‘Social Gossip’ column of the Wellington newspaper Free Lance, sometimes attending events at which Harold Beauchamp was also present; they were clearly socially acquainted in wellto-do circles and possibly friends too. (Fr.): Goodbye.

[Late March 1908] [ATL] [4 Fitzherbert Terrace] Dear Vera – You see that my Mrs Weston plan1 has also fallen through. Now I am not conquered yet – and I know that I ought to get to London to work & study. I have been writing a great deal here but I can’t do all that I know is in me – etc etc. You know that, situated as I am – I shall never make all that I mean to make of my life – Also – were I not convinced that I have a real call a duty which I owe to myself I’d give the project up. Now I do think that we are all sent into the world to develop ourselves to the very fullest extent – of course you do – too – and here there is really no scope for development – no intellectual society – no hope of finding any. You know exactly what this life is like and what life means here. Mother has the plan of sending us to London to live together – we three in a flat on £300 a year which is amply sufficient – of course knowing that the separation from her & from Father is purely temporary. Now what do you think. Do you think that your duty lies with them now – but if you married you would have to leave home – living here you certainly will not marry – You with music & painting – Chaddie singing etc – I literature – This plan refuses to be discussed on paper – so I shall give it up – I know you can argue it all out – & I waste

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words & state deep feelings so superficially. But to tell you the absolute truth – I can’t stand this life much longer – I have tried to get work but I only can get work which helps my literature – & there’s none to be got – I feel I am crying my own wares all the time – do you I wonder – understand. Mother (this is between you & me) informed me the other day – that it was your firm belief that nothing but a great trouble would ever ‘put me right’. I can’t really let that pass – Vera without saying it shows how little you know of my life. I was almost amused – deeply hurt – and not a little surprised. It does not sound like one who has read Maeterlinck & Meredith.2 That rather cheap and distinctly simple philosophy of the ennobling power of sorrow does not surely belong to you – It is true in a very few cases but there is more strength required for permanent happiness in man than for sorrow. My dear girl – do you believe in drugging children for their ultimate good instead of administering happy thoughts. It is true that some people must go through fire before realising that others suffer from the heat – but that is a distinctly brute creation idea – This is a digression. Don’t go laying down laws for other peoples natures tho’, to a woman like Mother. I am convinced times without number that in the future that silly statement ‘she ought to have a real sorrow’3 – will be as unintelligible as a book of ‘Elizabethan simples for the stomach ache’. Your life sounds quite charming – and I am indeed glad to feel that you are there. Unless this last English plan matures – don’t dream of returning here until it is necessary – Yesterday morning I spent with Trix4 – she is one of the best. When I go to her house & she hugs me & says – ‘Bless you – dearest old girl – pretty nice to see you’ & puts cushions at my back – and flowers in my soul – I do verily think that a woman is one of the most delightful creations possible – I feel – here is a breath of my own life – The voice of the chrysanthemum is heard in the land. Two blossoms – so full of colour that I feel they are lighting the dead summer on her journey – greet you from my table. Flowers like Tom’s music5 seem to create in me a divine unrest – They revive strangely – dream memories – I know not what – They show me strange mystic paths – where perhaps I shall one day walk – To lean over a flower – as to hear any of his music is to suddenly every veil torn aside – to commune soul with soul – This is like the hysteria of 17 it’s the conviction of experience – Sister – K. Notes 1. Captain T. S. Weston was a naval friend of Harold Beauchamp’s. It is not clear what the plan with his wife actually involved but, like so many other plans at this time, it was still-born. However, coincidentally or not, KM did eventually sail back to England on Weston’s ship, the Papanui, setting sail on 6 July. 2. Maeterlinck and Meredith were both figureheads of the late Symbolist–preModernist era, blending intense Aesthetic patterns and intermedial resonance,

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and a heightened awareness of the heady pulse and dynamics of the turn of the century. Maurice Maeterlinck (1862–1949) was one of the greatest Francophone Belgian poets, playwrights and essayists, soon to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature (in 1911). He is mostly remembered as a Symbolist, although his later works are more influenced by occultism and existentialism. George Meredith (1828–1909) was a British novelist and poet, famous for works such as The Egoist (1879) and Diana of the Crossways (1885). His works feature memorable, independently minded heroines; his style is elevated, favouring complex, extended metaphors. His sonnet cycle, Modern Love (1862), tracing the painful disintegration of a marriage, was very widely read. For KM’s reading notes on these authors and others from the cusp years of the turn of the century, see CW4, pp. 91–3. 3. KM encapsulates in this apothegm (rather than a quotation) the conventional vision of a woman’s lot in the prelapsarian world. In the words of Genesis 3: 41, ‘Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.’ The ennobling, redemptive role of a woman’s suffering had provided the narrative dynamics of much conventional fiction in the nineteenth century. 4. KM’s Wellington friend remains unidentified. 5. By mid-1908, notable compositions by Arnold (Thomas) Trowell include his ‘Rêverie du Soir’, op. 12 (see CW4, p. 85), ‘Trois Morceaux pour Piano’, op. 18, a series of six pieces dedicated to Kathleen Beauchamp, op. 20, and a very evocative cello nocturne dedicated to Boris Hambourg. As KM’s letters to his twin brother, Garnet Trowell, later that year reveal, she was highly sensitive to the narrative expressivity of music, and wrote poetry that sought to complement in words its sonorous appeals and rhythms. See CP, pp. 62–6.

[April 1908] [ATL] [4 Fitzherbert Terrace] Friday. To the Apostle of the Blue Green Aura1 All Hail – This is only to say that I have not forgotten you – Sister Mine – and will write you good measure pressed down & running over next week – At present I am cable waiting – which is you know – horrible – Do – an’ I pray you – read Le Morgan’s book ‘Alice-For-Short’2 – So delightful – He – Le Morgan – was very much in with the P.R.B3 – and a devoted ami of William Morris.4 He is also a designer – & wrote his first book ‘Joseph Vance’ at 60 years of age – I have 10000 things which I am saying silently – My love to you – Chèrie5 Your Mark.6

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Notes 1. KM’s heightened address reflects her vivid interest in fin-de-siècle Aestheticism, which, in Britain, was inspired by the Oxford Movement and its revival of High Church liturgical practices and emotional symbolism. The Apostolic appeal recalls Oscar Wilde and his Paterian cult of youth and beauty (see also CW4, p. 46), and various brotherhoods and guilds established in the era. The Blue Green Aura may well also be inspired by KM’s interest in the paintings and writings of the American painter Whistler (see below, p. 297, n. 29), whose Variations in Blue and Green (1868), for example, features what amounts to a sisterhood of four female figures gathered by the waterside. 2. William De Morgan (1839–1917) was one of the artists, designers and potters inspired by the craftsmanship and aesthetics of the Arts and Crafts movement and the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood; he was also, as KM underlines here, a life-long friend (Fr.: ami) of William Morris. In the early 1900s, he was more acclaimed for his novels, which included the best-selling Joseph Vance (1906) and Alice-for-Short (1907), both rather sensational stories with a naturalist’s focus on the sordid details of London poverty, but with touches of humour and fairy-tale enchantment that the French naturalist master, Emile Zola, would rarely allow in his own uncompromising and often grim naturalism. 3. The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood brought together like-minded artists, poets, designers and art critics in the pursuit of artistic ideals that renewed with the symbolic design, proportions and poise of the Quattrocentro. Much of their originality derived from the blend of Renaissance and Medieval models, revisited via English Romanticism. 4. William Morris (1834–96) is very much at the heart of the Aesthetic period that fascinated KM – influenced by the Oxford Movement, a friend of many of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and a major force in the Arts and Crafts movement. He was a designer, novelist, poet, printer and translator, but also a committed social activist both within his artistic life and creativity, and in more directly political involvement, especially international socialism. His interest in folk tales and high-Romantic fantasy had captured KM’s imagination from an early age. See CW4, p. 88, and Symons’s Studies in Seven Arts, from which KM was taking copious notes in the years 1907–8. 5. (Fr.): My darling. 6. Julian Mark was one of the many pen-names that KM toyed with in the days when she was still Kathleen Beauchamp. It was the name she used to sign her fin-de-siècle vignette ‘In the Botanical Gardens’, published in the Native Companion in December 1907. See CW1, pp. 84–6.

[May 1908] [Berkman 1951, pp. 24–5] [4 Fitzherbert Terrace] I am ashamed of young New Zealand, but what is to be done. All the firm fat framework of their brains must be demolished before they can begin to learn. They want a purifying influence – a mad wave of

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pre-Raphaelitism, of super-aestheticism,1 should intoxicate the country. They must go to excess in the direction of culture, become almost decadent in their tendencies for a year or two and then find balance and proportion. We want two or three persons gathered together to discuss line and form and atmosphere and sit at the street corners, in the shops, in the houses, at the Teas. People who would quote William Morris and Catulle Mendès,2 George Meredith and Maurice Maeterlinck, Ruskin3 and Rodenbach,4 Le Gallienne5 and Symons,6 D’Annunzio7 and Shaw,8 Granville Barker9 and Sebastian Melmouth,10 Whitman,11 Tolstoi,12 Carpenter,13 Lamb,14 Hazlitt,15 Hawthorne,16 and the Brontës.17 These people have not learned their alphabet yet. Notes 1. KM’s extravagant remedy for her country’s ills sums up all the seduction and ambiguity of the fin-de-siècle cult of Aestheticism, including the tension between beauty and morality, nostalgia and demolition, privilege and social reform. The list of recommended readings to achieve such ends only reinforces the dialectic; it is indeed fascinating to note the balance between high Aesthetes, social and sexual reformists, and visionary Romantics. KM had listed many of the authors cited here in a 1907 story, aptly named ‘In a Café’, which is set in London. See CW1, pp. 86–9. 2. Catulle Mendès was a French poet and critic, and one of the Parnassians – a circle of Art-for-Art’s Sake poets (the very slogan having been coined by Mendès’s mentor and later father-in-law, and the reference in late nineteenthcentury decadence, Théophile Gautier). Baudelaire, Verlaine and Mallarmé were associated with the movement at various times but never as exclusively as Mendès. 3. John Ruskin (1819–1900) was a Bloomsbury-born writer, poet and critic, associated with the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood but also ardently engaged in educationalist movements and social reform. 4. Georges Rodenbach (1855–98) was a Belgian Symbolist poet and novelist, who had settled in Paris, where he became associated with the major literary figures of the day. As KM might have known, given her evocation of a reformed New Zealand where people would gather to discuss literature, Rodenbach was renowned as one of the most outstanding conversationalists at Mallarmé’s renowned ‘Tuesdays’ at his apartment in the rue de Rome, Paris. Rodenbach might also have appealed to KM on account of his editorship of the review La Jeune Belgique, in which the young country was heralded as the one most apt to home the Aesthetic revival of the era; coming from another young country – a ‘young New Zealand’, so to speak – KM may have been tempted to draw parallels with her own country of origin. 5. Richard Le Gallienne (1866–1947) was a Liverpool-born author, translator and poet, who became converted to the ideals and aesthetics of late nineteenth-century decadence after hearing Oscar Wilde lecture in Birkenhead. He later set off to London to join him, becoming known as the Apostle of Aestheticism and contributing frequently to the literary journal The Yellow

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collected letters of katherine mansfield, vol. 1 Book. In 1911, KM and Beatrice Hastings wrote a short pastiche in Le Gallienne’s prose style, as part of a tongue-in-cheek letter sent to the New Age. See CW3, pp. 391–2. The poet, critic and editor Arthur Symons (1865–1945) had a huge impact on the literary imagination and creative apprenticeship of KM. As her reading notes attest, she consumed his works avidly and with scrupulous attention, often writing out long passages in full. Symons’s The Symbolist Movement in Literature (1899) was the first literary history in English focused entirely on the French literary movement, whose works also had a major influence on his own. Nearly all of the authors that KM cites as her literary models in the years 1906–9 are praised by Symons, and his influence is also perceptible in her early prose style. For KM’s notes on Symons in 1908, see CW4, pp. 98–100. Gabriele D’Annunzio (1863–1938) was an Italian poet, playwright and essayist, whose widely acclaimed, provocative novels Il Piacere (1889) and L’Innocente (1892) established close links with the French Symbolists and the British Aestheticists at the turn of the twentieth century. The Irish playwright, critic and political activist George Bernard Shaw (1856– 1950) was one of the most influential literary figures of the day, enjoying great success as a West End playwright, but also challenging traditional theatrical conventions and using the stage as an indirect means to disseminate boldly committed political convictions, becoming one of the most prominent figures in the Fabian Society. Interestingly, he is one of the few writers in KM’s list not to have the blessing of Symons, who concludes his essay on ‘Problem Plays’ and what he saw as Shaw’s ‘sterile logic’ as follows: ‘In a word, the difference between the spirit of Tolstoi and the spirit of Mr. Shaw is the difference between the spirit of Christ and the spirit of Euclid’ (Symons 1903, p. 152). Harley Granville-Barker (1877–1946) was an actor, director and critic, who first caught the public eye with his performances of male protagonists in London productions of Shaw’s plays. Sebastian Melmouth was the assumed name under which Oscar Wilde lived in Normandy after his release from jail in 1897, taken from two figures that fascinated him: Melmoth, hero of Maturin’s Gothic classic, Melmoth the Wanderer (1820), and the maryred Saint Sebastian. The American poet Walt Whitman (1819–92) is generally credited with having given American poetry its first epic-scale voice in Leaves of Grass (1855); it is known for its near-pagan celebration of physical earthly energy, whilst communing with the down-to-earth lives of the common people. He represents a very different strand of mid- to late nineteenth-century aesthetic innovation and craftsmanship in KM’s literary pantheon. Renowned today essentially as the author of War and Peace and Anna Karenina, Lev Nikolaevitch Tolstoy (1828–1910) was not only one of the most important novelists of the nineteenth century, but also a moral philosopher, social reformer and iconoclastic religious leader. He had a major and lasting impact on KM’s literary apprenticeship. The poet, essayist, philosopher and champion for reform Edward Carpenter (1844–1929) is another interesting figure in KM’s list of essential literary references. He was a friend of Walt Whitman’s and acquainted with Keir Hardie and William Morris; he never espoused one literary movement, his

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literary activities being well subordinated to his political engagements in favour of social and sexual reform. His extended philosophical study, Civilisation, Its Cause and Cure (1889), brought him notoriety in the last years of the century, as did his essays exploring sexuality in a free society. As with Whitman and Tolstoy, KM’s evocation of Charles Lamb shows her range of recommended reading extending well beyond the Aesthetes of the 1890s. Lamb (1775–1834) was a renowned essayist (notably The Essays of Elia, 1823) and poet who belonged to the same literary circles as his friends Wordsworth and Coleridge. Like Charles Lamb, the writer, critic and painter William Hazlitt (1778–1830) was a close friend and associate of the Romantics, and one of the most highly esteemed essayists and art critics of his time. His Table-Talk (1821) and Liber Amoris, or, The New Pygmalion suggest links that KM may have made with other writers evoked here. Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804–64) was one of the founding figures of American literature, a friend of Emerson’s and a keen social observer; he is remembered, above all, for his outspoken The Scarlet Letter (1850), but also for the dark, even bleak romanticism of his literary style. The Brontë family reflect yet another dimension to KM’s literary world – not just the bleak, wild romanticism of Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights (1847) or Charlotte Brontë’s broodingly Gothic, yet socially outspoken Jane Eyre (1847); Emily and Charlotte, along with their siblings Anne and Branwell, also incarnate the romantic passions and burning literary aspirations of exceptionally talented young writers, whose family and social environment obstructs their access to the larger world they yearn so ardently to explore. They provided models in terms of individual writers’ biographies and, in terms of their literary achievements, would therefore have appealed immensely KM as a budding writer.

[Late May1908] [ATL] [4 Fitzherbert Terrace] Friday. You know – you have not answered my last rather nice & particularly long letter – Oh, Lady of the Blue-Green Aura – and I am a little surprised to find myself writing again – Send me a letter soon – will you – Vera – I wonder how you felt when awaiting the Sydney cable – did you have one tenth of my suspense and rapturous assurance? I feel so confident that every moment the ’phone bell rings – & Father says IT HAS COME. Today Tom Mills1 comes from Feilding – I believe that we carrol together cette après-midi.2 I am not at all keen – he has written me too many letters – told me too much of himself – and likes me far too much – to make it anything but a trying ordeal – It is a little ridiculous. I cannot keep the men I know friends. They persist in drifting into some other ridiculous attitude – I let them drift – and then suddenly see

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what a big big log we have both bumped against – so I say to myself – ‘dear me – how inadvisable, but it is certainly copy.’ I wonder if you have seen Mrs Glyn’s new book – ‘Three Weeks.’3 No – don’t tell me that I am Marie Corelli4 with her feet on a muddy road – I don’t say read it – but the frontispiece holds a portrait – and the tout ensemble5 delineates more nearly that indescribable ‘call’ of the feminine – that subtle sex attraction – which began with the foolish affair of the apple – than anything I remember having seen for years. It is a pity that Elinor Glyn wastes a pretty talent and a decided charm in catering for the foolish. You are always expecting her very decollété gown6 to slip right off her shoulders – it does not – but on the strength of the reputation she ‘amasseth a seemlie fortune’7 – I have been reading a good deal of Balzac8 – with such interest – He is colossal – As I read I always see him – sitting in his room – how many stories high? – in the white dressing gown – writing writing feverishly – with Paris like a little clock work toy whirring at his feet. ‘La passion est toute l’humanité’9 yet – and this keeps him from being much read by young people – he deals with the senses through the intellect – n’est-ce pas?10 And have you – I wonder read Guy de Maupassant’s Pierre & Jean.11 It is really a most fascinating book – but I liked best his article in the front on the Novel – and there is positively no difficulty with the language – the French seems to translate itself. Or rather – it does not translate at all – I have had too, quite a mania for Walter Pater12 – and Nathaniel Hawthorne – and also Robert Browning13 – and Flaubert14 – Oh, many others. I have been spending days at the Library reading and writing a novel – entitled The Youth of Rewa15 – it is very much in embryo just at present – I have posted your letter to Eileen16 – she is spending eight days at Nelson – she and I have become very good friends – she is clever – uncommon refreshing – and very satisfying. Our friends is based upon milk & soda at the D.I.C.17 so the foundation is deliciously insecure – Seen a good deal of Miss Isitt lately – she is charmed with you – ‘Oh isn’t your sister quite delightful – Miss Beauchamp’ – ‘I have never seen anyone more charming than your sister’ – She does not like me at all – but I interest her. Chaddie has been quite seedy with Dr Milsom in attendance – His sister you would like – she is wholesome – and clever – and womanly – I like her exceedingly. By the way – I received a telepathic message from you that you had received a letter from Mr. Trowell18 – now can that be so? The message was most vivid – Well – well – well – that’s how I feel – I wonder if we shall ever see each other again – & cry ourselves purple at your bedroom window. Isn’t life strange – Vera – My love to you – Julian

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Of course you know Mark Hambourg19 is the father of a little daughter. Is music resolving itself into an aggressive Maternity & Paternity – He is photographed with the baby already – I can so see Vere BartrickBakers face20 – with half shut eyes – & raised brows she stares at it through the smoke of Egyptian cigarets – – – – – Notes 1. Tom Mills was a Wellington journalist, whom Harold Beauchamp had contacted for an honest appraisal of KM’s talents as a writer. Mills immediately recognised KM to be a special case, even though, in his opinion, her stories were of the ‘sex-problem’ type. He suggested markets for her work, including the Native Companion in Australia, and seems to have converted Harold to the idea that KM had real talent. See Kimber 2016, pp. 209–10. He was also attracted to KM, who rebuffed his approaches, as she explained in an earlier letter to Vera (see above, p. 285). 2. (Fr.): This afternoon. 3. Elinor Glyn (1864–1943) was a highly popular British novelist of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, with a reputation for writing scandalous, relatively sexually explicit works that reflected her unconventional lifestyle. Her 1907 best-seller Three Weeks recounts the passionate affair of a young British gentleman seduced by ‘a Lady’, who turns out to be the Queen of a Russian dependency in the Balkans. 4. The British-born writer Marie Corelli (1855–1924) was one of the bestselling authors of the late nineteenth century. Corelli lived for four years in Paris to complete her education, studied as a musician and later became known for her non-conformist writing and lifestyle, features that may have appealed to the young KM. For KM’s notes on Corelli, see CW4, pp. 29–31. 5. (Fr.): Overall effect. 6. The décolleté gown, baring the neck and shoulders, had been highly fashionable in the eighteenth century, especially in the French court; it made its return in the lavish balls of the Edwardian era. A celebrated photograph of Elinor Glyn, wearing a very décolleté Brussels lace gown, featured in the picture press in 1903. 7. KM appears to be pastiching eighteenth-century style here rather than actually quoting – thereby revealing a delight in imitating idiosyncratic turns of phrase and voice that would mark her writing throughout her career. 8. Honoré de Balzac (1799–1850) is considered one of the masters of the French novel, excelling in historical romances and realism. He was also a renowned art critic, literary critic and playwright. 9. (Fr.): Humanity is nothing but passion. KM is quoting a famous phrase from Balzac’s Preface to La Comédie humaine (1842); he continues, ‘Without passion, religion, history, the novel and art would be pointless.’ While her readings of Balzac are not to be questioned, KM was doubtless guided by Symons, whose studies on the French author are quoted at length in KM’s notebooks. See CW4, pp. 103–4. The influence of Symons is also borne out by her evocations of other writers in this letter, who are all discussed in chapters of Symons’s 1904 Studies in Prose and Verse.

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10. (Fr.): Don’t you think? 11. Guy de Maupassant (1850–93) was a major French naturalist writer and is considered a master of the short story; his influence on KM’s literary craft can be traced in terms of genre, theme and narrative dynamics. His 1888 novella Pierre et Jean is a ruthless account of sibling rivalry and family dissensions over money, the powerful ending of which – depicting the illegitimate son Pierre’s departure on an ocean liner – may well have appealed to KM for more poetic and personal reasons. The work was published with a lengthy Preface, in which Maupassant studies the writer’s craft in terms of ‘partisans of analysis’ and ‘partisans of objectivity’ – features that Symons underlines in Studies in Prose and Verse and that KM notes in her notebook. See CW4, p. 88. 12. Walter Pater (1839–94) was a highly influential essayist, art critic and writer, whose works were revered by the Aesthetic movement, and notably Oscar Wilde. 13. The poet and dramatist Robert Browning (1812–89) was one of the foremost late Victorian poets, whose use of dramatic monologues was highly influential on later poetic and prose styles – including KM’s early sketches. Symons compares the craft of Browning and various other poets and stylisticians, incuding Pater, in his Studies in Prose and Verse. 14. Gustave Flaubert (1821–80) was one of the foremost French novelists of the nineteenth century and is deemed one of the champions of realism. His most lasting contributions to the evolution of the novel were his intricate attention to psychological realism and introspection, notably thanks to his use of inner monologue and shifting centres of consciousness. 15. See ‘Rewa’ in CW1, pp. 127–33. This is the only fragment of KM’s planned novel known to have survived. 16. Eileen was the daughter of New Zealand Prime Minister Sir Joseph Ward (1856–1932), and a good friend of the Beauchamp sisters, who all moved in the same Wellington social sphere. See Kimber 2016, p. 243. Here, for example, in the anonymous ‘Ladies Column: Girls’ Gossip’ of the Wellington Evening Post for 21 December 1907, p. 19, we find the following: A very pleasant little tea was given by Miss Chad. Beauchamp in honour of Mrs Macgregor, nee Miss Martha Grace. There was music during the afternoon, Mrs Macgregor, Miss Ward, and Miss C Beauchamp singing. The young hostess wore a dark green silk, and the guest of the afternoon was in dark blue taffetas and a hat with feathers. 17. J. McDowell & Company, also known as the D.I.C. or Direct Importing Company, was a large draper’s, furnishings and clothing store on the corner of Lambton Quay and Willis Street in Wellington, opposite the Bank of New Zealand. 18. Thomas Trowell senior was the father of Thomas (whose stage name was Arnold) and Garnet Trowell, and the music teacher from whom KM took cello lessons. 19. Mark Hambourg (1879–1960) was a Russian pianist, who grew up in London after his parents fled Tsarist repression. He was championed by Oscar Wilde and George Bernard Shaw, among others. KM also refers to him in a 1907 notebook; see CW4, p. 52.

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20. Evelyn (Vere) Bartrick-Baker had been a close friend of KM’s at Queen’s College. It was Vere who, in 1904, had lent KM the original Lippincott’s magazine serialisation of Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray. See also CW4, pp. 29–30.

[12 June 1908] [ATL] [4 Fitzherbert Terrace] Friday. My dearest Sister – It is long since I have written you but every correspondence of mine has been far more summarily treated; I am so busy day & evening – July – you can imagine how I wait for the news – my dear – surely the Fates have given me a very just share of anticipation – and Beauchamp Lodge1 (which, dear, like most of the pleasant things in my life – I owe to you) sounds quite ideal. My plans – Vera – they are Work – and struggle and learn and try and lead a full, life – and get this great heap of MSS. off my hands and write yet more – Après tout2 – I do not think that the dice is thrown hap hazard – I was not ready for London or for an independent life – when the Trowells3 went – so it is better to have waited and thought – Culture – do you remember hearing, as we sat among the Cowslip Jelly4 – is reflecting upon knowledge – the power to do so – keenly – fully – How wonderfully true! You know I go to the Technical School5 every day – Library until five in the afternoon – then a walk – and in the evenings I read & write – By the way, read R L.S’s Mother’s letters from Samoa6 some day – and do read ‘Come & Find Me’ by Elizabeth Robins7 – that woman has genius – and I like to think she is only the first of a great never ending procession of splendid, strong woman writers – All this suffragist movement is excellent for our sex – kicked policemen or not kicked policemen. Everybody amongst your kin is well and, I think, happy – Mother absorbed in cooking, dear Chaddie just the same – Jeanne – very plump and pink – she will make an adorable woman some day – riding, and Chummie with Erik Cruikshank.8 He is all that can be desired – except I find him greedy at table – I don’t like to write that – no doubt he suffers from some mental atavism – but you know how that offends our taste. All the florists windows are full of the blue light of violets. And I can’t resist them – tight posies tied with yellow flax – Do you feel flowers like this – a sense of complete magic – I am spell bound – entranced – One day, ma chère9 – I pray you share my little Roman villa and I mean to have a blossoming almond tree quivering against a blue sky – and

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wide, cool rooms lit with daffodils opening their gilded doors to the sunshine which drips through the window vines. Also my scheme includes a boatman with a pomegranate behind his ear! Have you lately read Hans Anderson’s Fairy Tales?10 If you have a copy in the house do look up the Fir Tree – the last sentence is so astonishingly Chopin.11 I read it over & over – and the simple unearthly words flood your soul like the dying phrase of a Majorca nocturne. It is sweet of you to come home before I leave – but don’t unless you wish – to – you know – dear – I’d love to see you – but I would not like you to leave for that reason – Don’t, at any rate – dream of it – until my passage is literally booked – And more I think than any two other people in the world – we don’t need to see each other. Here is a little news – don’t call me conceited – I think I am popular than almost any girl here at dances – Isn’t it funny – It makes me glad – in a way – but it’s a little trying – Shall I tell you the men who like me – too much – Well Bert Rawson – Arthur Duncan – Mr Chafery – Ken Duncan12 – etc. – this is all very much by the way – but I tell you for this reason – It’s so unwise not to desire to please – & it is so amusing to find these men talking quite brilliantly about Amiel’s Journal13 – Dearest Sister – I love and admire you – I would give so much to hold your hand again – Since you have left I have begun to know you Your devoted K. Notes 1. It was Vera who had suggested Beauchamp Lodge to the family as suitable lodgings for KM in London, and which cousin Henry Beauchamp in London had confirmed was entirely appropriate; it was a well-run hostel for young women, most of whom were music students. 2. (Fr.): After all. 3. The Trowell family had moved to London in May 1906; in 1903, the family had gone to Europe for the first time, a trip financed, above all, by a fund-raising campaign in Wellington, to allow Garnet and Tom to study in Germany. 4. Cowslip jelly was a daintily fragrant, crystalline jelly, recommended for rough and dry skins; it was used and advertised by a certain Charles A. Turner, ‘Masseur, dermatologist and hair specialist’, based in the Bank of New Zealand Buildings. Given the unusual, poetic name, it may have caught the girls’ attention when they visited the premises. 5. In May 1907, at the suggestion of her father, KM enrolled at the Technical School in Wellington, where she learnt typing and book-keeping skills. 6. Robert Louis Stevenson had travelled to the South Seas in 1888, together with his wife, Fanny, his mother and the French maid, Valentine Roch. The letters that Stevenson’s mother wrote during the journey were published in 1903, with the title From Saranac to the Marquesas and Beyond.

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7. The American-born actress, playwright and novelist Elizabeth Robins (1862–1952) was then settled in London, where she was a committed suffragette and campaigner for women’s rights. Her novel Come and Find Me had been published just that year; it draws on her own experience of going to Alaska to look for her her brother, who had gone missing there. 8. A friend of Leslie Beauchamp’s. 9. (Fr.): My dear. 10. The Danish writer, novelist and poet Hans Christian Andersen (1805–75), best known for his fairy tales, published four volumes of folk tales and fairy tales in the 1830s and 1840s. These formed part of the Beauchamp children’s literary environment from the nursery, and had a lasting impact on KM’s creative imagination and her life-long love of the genre. See Kimber 2018, pp. 231–50, for a discussion of this story. 11. As her letters to Garnet Trowell confirm, KM was particularly attentive to the resonance between literature and music in these years, and the aptness of certain stylistic figures matched with specific musical effects. The French–Polish pianist and composer Frederic Chopin composed some of his most famous, intensely lyrical, romantic short works during and after a fourmonth stay in Majorca with his lover, George Sand, including the Nocturne in G minor, Opus 37 no. 1. 12. As the context implies, Bert Rawson, Arthur Duncan, Mr Chafery and Ken Duncan were all acquaintances of the Beauchamp family and known to Vera. No further details about them have been traced. 13. The Swiss philosopher and writer Henri Frédéric Amiel (1821–81) is best remembered for his outstanding Journal intime, a private diary kept from 1839 until 1881, in which he explores the complex interconnections between intricate details of personal life, existential ponderings and lengthy introspection. The full work, some 17,000 pages long, was not published in full until the late twentieth century, but volumes of extensive extracts had a lasting influence on many of the foremost authors of the era, including Tolstoy. JMM would devote a chapter to him in his 1922 essay collection, Countries of the Mind.

[19 June 1908] [ATL] [4 Fitzherbert Terrace] June 19th

In the Smoking Room

Liebe Schwesterchen1 – I was so exceedingly glad to receive a special letter from you by the last mail; I love your Family letters – you know, but they do not breathe of the Inner You, which I prise and delight in – so you know – So, after all the cable came, and I sail today fortnight – incredibly delightful Thought! The Papanui2 leaves from Lyttelton on July 4th. I leave here by the Maori3 July 2nd – the cable came on Wednesday

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morning – I was at The Technical School & when I came home the family were all out – laying in large and varied stocks of machine needles! Nelly told me the news – I rang up Trix4 – who declared ‘God bless my soul – pretty nice – dear – come & see me,’ and then popped round to Fan5 – Do you know before I saw her I did not feel one ounce of excitement – but when she heard the whistle of Carennos Staccatto Etudes6 – she came to the door – and we literally fell into each other’s arms – I know I had tears of joy. We sat in Fan’s little room, & talked it all over again – the joy – the freedom – the bonhomie – the cheapness of the laundry – the Beauchamp Lodge knock – which is the two opening bars of Lohengrin’s Wedding March7 – then I came home and descended unto vests and stockings –– Vera, it is really hard to realise – I am so afraid that I shall wake up and hear the bath tap running – why are we always so much more chary to recognise grief than joy – isn’t it absurd – and distinctly shows a great lack of that mental fineness of poise – which will one day be the joyful lot of every one of us – (Here I am going to digress & describe clothes, because I want your opinion.) I’ve nothing fashionable at all – simplicity and art shades reign supreme – A black flop hat with a wide wreath of mauve chrysanthemums round the crown – a little evening frock of satin – soft satin – made exactly after the pattern of Grandmother Dyer’s wedding dress – a green straw Home Journal8 travelling hat with wide black wings – and everything in like manner – Chad & Mother have been yearning, I know to blossom into empire frocks9 and créations de la moment10 – but I haven’t one – Clothes ought to be a joy to the artistic eye – a silent reflex of the soul – so I’m training my amenable little soul accordingly – Do you like it – – – – – – – Digression no 2 – I had to leave this letter – go into the kitchen & cut myself an entire round of bread & bloater paste11 – tin loaf – because the body refuses to consider itself dined on one piece of flounder & an orange – I didn’t know that Life held anything so ineffably delicious as this bread – was für Warheit!12 Simple pleasures are the refuge of the complex – nicht?13 O, Vera, and while I am on the subject of eating – for I am convinced E.F. Benson14 wrote the book on an empty, healthy tummy, do please read ‘Sheaves’ – It is delightful – and also it is, in parts Simpson Hayward15 incarnate – If you asked me for Benson in a nutshell I would quote:– ‘Ah, I must speak’, said Hughie, taking fish & bacon on his plate at the same time, and eating very fast, . . . . . . . .’ The book is by no means a menu, don’t think that – Oh, in a way it is – it creates a wonderful appetite – but do ménus do that – for many things. If you read it – do talk to me about it. They have been making havoc of our pine avenue – cutting down some of the trees – sawing the branches off others – a horrible, crashing,

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tearing sound, then the clinging roots scattered on the yellow clay – The whole sight – the men in their rough clothes – the toiling horses – patches of sunshine lacing through the silver point boughs – on to the emerald grass – makes me think of a modern Belgian painting16 – do you see it – full of suggested sound – and strangely – death! Chaddie has gone to a Ball at the Masonic Hall17 – – – – to what base uses! It is after twelve o’clock so I shall sit up for her – as I feel – Eastbourne18 like – fresher than ever – I am glad that you will see Aunt Lil. She is really, what Mac19 would call ‘one of the best’, and, between you & me, she worships you – my dear – endows you with all the virtues – respects you, and loves you very whole heartedly – Writing to you, I live again, very vividly, certain charming experiences. Gigglianum at Vianden20 – the ‘Admiral’s Broom’21 – at Macs – and hair soup & raisins on the wild sea – Now I know I am going on to a ship – I feel almost hyper nautical; the shipboard life – which is such an utterly different existence – another plane of existence – suddenly predominates – I can hear & smell & feel – and see – nothing but ships – do you know that? I pray you – marry an Englishman & come live in London – and take your Poor Relation to an Art Gallery with an Entrance Fee once a month – Ida & May have been down at Ridge Cap. Easter time & heavy snow – Will you ever forget that time & Cousin Lou – and our poor little shocked souls when Aunt Belle & Uncle Harry performed a charade in Kimonos! Have you forgotten Ralph’s easter egg, or his nice, Grecian mouth – how often the Gods endow a man with a perfect profile and no brains to live up to it! Now you live up to your eyebrows – do you realise that fact – talking about you I instively think of enamel work – perhaps – You know that charming remark of Dante Gabriel Rossetti:– ‘I am trying to live up to my blue china’22 – that is by no means absurd – To whom shall I send your love, my dear? And of course you know if ever you want anything from a Watts Original23 to a Dying Pig – I am yours to command – Oh, Vera – the first time I stand on those College steps – dear sister – I shall send you a wireless of the most pregnant order – & when Henry Wood24 stands in his place & lifts his hand – silently – for one moment – I send you another – Do write to me – I feel I never can stop – Oh, that – face to face – we two could talk, I wonder when and how she shall again – and what will have happened in the meantime – Do you know Theodore Watts Duntan’s25 work – in the main, intensely artistic critical essays – he it was he brought into being that constantly recurring expression:– the renascence of wonder – I admire the man very much indeed; he lives with Swinburne,26 was a friend of George Borrow,27 William Morris – all that ‘set’ – Isn’t it extraordinary how one can never tire of these people – they are my very

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good friends – and I know them immeasurably better than the people I meet here – There is a fascination almost unequalled in collecting all the detail’s of a man’s life – studying his portrait – his work – bringing him, splendidly willing, to one’s own fireside – I have R.L.S. and Dante Gabriel Richard Wagner28 & Jimmy Whistler29 – all the Brontës – countless others – haven’t you? One day let us give a dream party – invite those in the flesh who are attune to meet those in the spirit – ‘Oh, Alice, allow me to introduce you to Mr Stuart Mill’30 – – – It is bitterly cold; I hope that you are wrapped in a nice piece of dog – and have a fire in your bedroom – that is the epitome of quiet, fastidious, charming luxury – Aunt Li – is giving me pour souvenir31 an opal ring – Do you know a large, uncut opal32 which she possesses – and she is having it set in a thin wide silver setting – I am so pleased because – as you know opals are my aura, & any jewellry which I do possess is mounted in silver. I don’t wish for gold – It is to fit the second finger – doesn’t it sound beautiful? My black box is up in my bedroom – there is a vast amount of sorting to be done – steamer clothes & otherwise –Clara33 is giving me a red leather manuscript book stamped with a black tiki & my name – I’m taking only half a dozen books and my photographs and the W.F.C.A34 green candlestick – Your jewel case sticketh unto me more closely than a brother – thank you again for it. My dear – this is all – Write me reams – please – I do want to have you again – before I sail – Vera – It is a lovely moonlight morning – Bon Jour35 – Yours as ever K– ‘Heine Seile sucht nach dir’36 Notes 1. (Ger.): Dearest little Sister. 2. The Papanui was a large passenger and cargo ship, built in Dumbarton in 1898. KM sailed from Lyttelton aboard this steamer when she left New Zealand for the last time, on 6 July 1908. 3. The Maori was an inter-island ferry that assured the Wellington–Lyttelton crossing. 4. Nelly and Trix appear to be schoolfriends or the daughters of neighbours, but no records have been traced that might identify them. 5. Another apparent friend of KM’s at this time. 6. Although largely marginalised or forgotten by music historians, the Venezuelan pianist Teresa Carreño (1853–1917) was frequently proclaimed to be one of the finest virtuosos of her era, sometimes nicknamed the ‘Walkyrie’, ‘Amazon’ or ‘Lioness’ of the Keyboard. She was also an esteemed teacher and composer, and a fine mezzo soprano. Her Caprice-Etudes numbers 1–3

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8.

9.

10. 11. 12. 13. 14.

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are technically demanding studies for advanced pianists, including passages that shift constantly from clipped staccato to lyrical legato. The ‘Wedding March’, from Richard Wagner’s 1850 opera Lohengrin, is one of the composer’s most famous melodies (often known as ‘Here Comes the Bride’), even though the origin of the piece is often not realised. In the opera, it is sung by a chorus of eight women, who accompany the newly married Elsa to her chambers. The ‘Beauchamp Lodge knock’ would therefore have been four raps, in the rhythm of the words ‘Here comes the bride’. Several Home Journal magazines were in circulation in the late nineteenth century, including an Australian monthly magazine that included sewing patterns for modern fashions, the American weekly Ladies’ Home Journal, subtitled ‘For the cultivation of the memorable, the progressive and the beautiful’, and the People’s Home Journal. In each case, the readership was clearly intended to be enterprising and economically empowered but domestically minded, with a clear interest in a modern comfortable home and a taste for travelling. While the Empire style goes back to the early eighteenth century, the Empire dress, inspired by the French Empress Josephine, was in fashion in the early years of the twentieth century. It featured a fitted bodice above a loosely flowing, tunic-style skirt. (Fr.): Latest inventions. Bloater paste is a fish spread made from salted herrings (called bloaters). (Ger.): In truth. (Ger.): Don’t you think? The novelist, writer and archaeologist E. F. Benson (1867–1940), famous for his ‘Mapp and Lucia’ series, published Sheaves in 1907, a sad story of a loving society hostess and widow who marries a much younger man set on becoming an opera singer. George Simpson-Hayward (1875–1936) was a popular English cricketeer, touted for being a stylish underarm lob bowler. He had toured New Zealand in 1906–7, and met KM and her sisters on board the SS Corinthic when the family returned to New Zealand, as the Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) cricket team were also on board. See Kimber 2016, pp. 166–71, for details of KM’s relationships with members of this cricket team on the voyage. The Belgian Impressionists – Eugène Boch (1855–1941), Theo van Rysselberghe (1862–1926) and Jean Delville (1867–1953), for example – were known in the 1890s and 1900s for their subtle blend of Impressionist landscapes and Symbolist themes or techniques, often verging on neo-expressionism. They had very recently caught the attention of the Glasgow School of Art, and exhibited in London in 1906. The Masonic Hall was on Boulcott Street in Wellington. As the ‘Society’ pages of the Wellington press make clear, it was used for a variety of social and charitable events. Eastbourne, situated on the eastern shore of Wellington harbour, was where the Beauchamp family had spent many summer holidays as children, famously evoked by KM in her story ‘At the Bay’. Vera was then being courted by James Abbott Mackintosh Bell, whom she married the next year and who was known affectionately to the family as ‘Mack’. The context might suggest that KM is referring to him here but ‘Mac’ could be another friend in their social circle.

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20. ‘Gigglianum at Vianden’. KM appears to be recounting a spontaneous musical performance or playful sing-song at Mac’s, but the the exact nature of this work – very possibly a song with partly invented lyrics – has proved impossible to trace. An epic poem by Friar Hermann (c.1290), set in the medieval city of Vianden in Luxembourg, ‘The Life of the Countess Yolanda of Vianden’, recounts the inspirational story of an aristocratic girl who takes the veil to escape a forced marriage. The French poet Victor Hugo was particularly fond of the city and lived there during his years of exile (1860s and 1870s). 21. ‘The Admiral’s Broom’ was a popular early twentieth-century song by Frederick Bevan and Frederic Weatherly, recounting (in rather exaggerated fashion) the adventures of the early seventeenth-century Dutch naval hero, Admiral Maarten Tromp. 22. Quoting by heart, KM changes the aphorism slightly and also misattributes it. It was not the founder of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, who is believed to have announced ‘I find it harder and harder every day to live up to my blue china’, but a fellow student from Oxford, Oscar Wilde, supposedly when in his room at Magdalen College, in 1875. Both artists subscribed to forms of art for art’s sake, a cult of beauty and aesthetics, in which life aspires to imitate the work of art. This and later allusions suggest that, inspired by her imminent departure to Britain, KM is recalling the cult figures of the British Aestheticist movement and the finde-siècle Decadents, that her favourite teacher, Walter Rippman, had introduced her to during her schooldays in London. 23. George Frederic Watts (1817–1904) was a late nineteenth-century British artist and sculptor, renowned for his espousal of Symbolist themes and techniques, especially when he worked with Rossetti and other fellow Aestheticists in the 1870s. Upon his death in 1904, much of his work was bequeathed to the country, and exhibited at the purpose-built Watts Gallery near Guildford. Symons’s chapter on Watts in Studies in Seven Arts (1906) was doubtless familiar to KM, given her impassioned readings of Symons while at school. 24. Henry Wood (1869–1944) was one of the most prominent and influential British conductors, renowned, above all, for founding the Promenade Concerts (‘Proms’), held in the Queen’s Hall, the first of which was performed in 1895. 25. Theodore Watts-Dunton (1832–1914) was a British critic and poet, who contributed frequently to the Athenaeum in the last decade of the nineteenth century. His literary essays were very influential, especially the 1903 collection The Renascence of Wonder, which focused on the Romantic and late Romantic legacy. 26. As KM explains here, the late Victorian Symbolist poet Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837–1909) was a friend of Watts-Dunton. He is also remembered for having introduced Baudelaire to British readers. KM’s familiarity with his work was both direct and indirect, thanks to her in-depth readings of Arthur Symons’s works in the years 1906–8, in which Swinburne figures prominently. 27. Like the other figures evoked here, George Borrow (1803–81) was an English novelist and essayist, and also an outstanding linguist. His life and works

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doubtless appealed to KM’s imagination, both on account of his vivid interest in the Romany people (as reflected, especially, in his immensely popular Lavengro – The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest, dating from 1851, and because of his immense thirst for travel, which took him not on travels only throughout Europe but also to Russia and North Africa. Richard Wagner (1813–83) was arguably the most influential composer for the opera in the nineteenth century, on account of his powerful musical modernity, his detailed theories of operatic writing and opera-house design, and his large-scale, mythologically complex operatic narratives. Preferring to call his works ‘music-dramas’, he inspired intermedial, literary and musical dialogues whose influence lasted well into the Modernist era, in philosophy as much as in literary and musical praxis. For dialogues between Wagner’s music and KM’s literary imagination, see Da Sousa, pp. 84–98. The American-born Impressionist artist and art critic James Abbott McNeill Whistler (1834–1903) lived most of his life in Britain, but also travelled widely in both Europe and North and South America. Many of his most memorable pictures seek inspiration in music and musical forms – inter-art dialogues, to which KM would have been sensitive. She gained many of her earliest insights into his inspirational role on the arts from a chapter written by Symons in his Studies in Seven Arts. John Stuart Mill (1806–73) was one of the most influential philosophers, economists and social and political reformers of the nineteenth century, whose key publications, On Liberty (1859) and The Subjection of Women (1869), prompted controversy and even violent hostility in their day, but paved the way to political and educational reform. (Fr.): To remember her by. Drawing of oval stone, with ‘natural size’ written beside it just here. Miss Clara Finetta Wood ran the boarding house in Harley Street, where the girls from Queen’s College lodged. She was known as ‘Woodie’ amongst the boarders. KM used the notebook that was Miss Wood’s leaving present, duly inscribed to her pupil, for day-to-day notes and early drafts of sketches. Now at the ATL, it is Notebook 39 in their precious KM collection. See also CW4, p. 23. The Wairarapa Farmers Cooperative Association was a network of furniture factories and workshops based in Masterton, with premises in other major cities of New Zealand. Their Wellington premises were on Thorndon Quay. (Fr.): Good day. (Ger.): Heine soul seeks yours. Rather than quoting, KM appears to be conflating lyrics from Heine’s poetry, Schubert’s song lyrics, church hymns and cantatas (notably Heine’s ‘Wintermärchen, ‘Liebster Jesu, mein Verlangen’, Bach’s Cantata no. 32, ‘Meine Seele ruft nach Dir’ [My soul calls for you] from another nineteenth-century setting of similar lyrics, ‘Wo is Jesus, mein Verlangen’, and Psalm 63, ‘Es dürstet meine Seele nach dir’ [My soul thirsts for you].

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[26 June 1908] [ATL] [4 Fitzherbert Terrace] J u n e 2 6. Dearest Sister – This is going to be only an apology for a letter – I could not allow your last charming Brief to remain entirely unanswered. And firstly – yes – the dedication belongs to you – please accept it. Thank you immeasurably for your ‘Fat’ re my work; it is so scarce – I think these are surely the seven lean years of appreciation.1 This time next week I am gone – So much is taking place – farewell teas – & Bridges, and parties – that there is almost a glamour – But seeing the people now so much I realise even more fully – is that possible? how glad I am to go – I do hope that you remain in Sydney as long as seems possible – Mother & Father are so happy to know that you are in congenial, appropriate surroundings, and Chaddie won’t miss me a great deal – with the male Home Journals arriving in such good measure pressed down & running over in Auckland2– Jeanne is developing into a charming girl – of course she is no taller – & I’m afraid a little less sylph like – but her disposition is delightful – she is artistic – and – a family trait – keenly receptive & sensitive – I think Jeanne, properly guided – should be a truly remarkable woman – essentially womanly, lovable & capable. But she needs an unlimited display of Affection and your influence – ma chère.3 She is – du verstehst?4 – a child who requires kissing. The days are full of rain – I want to say so much – but really dear there is not a moment – except I shall indeed treasure the tidy5 – on the boat & at B. Lodge – & write as often as you can – I love your letters – I embrace you in the spirit – Your sister K. Notes 1. Vera and KM are referring to the story of the Egyptian Pharaoh’s dreams in Genesis 41: 5, when he dreams that he sees seven plump cows emerging from the Nile, followed by seven lean ones. Joseph interprets this to mean that after

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seven years of plenty will come seven years of famine, urging the Pharaoh to have his people stock food in advance to cater for the coming drought. The prophesy is fulfilled, enabling not only the Egyptian people to survive, but Joseph to be reunited with his biblical family when they come for food. The 1900s and 1910s marked the heyday of the new magazine market, as the costs of printing and publication dropped, and the potential readership expanded exponentially in the wake of educational reform. Domestic journals proved a great success, mixing recipes, fashion advice, housekeeping guidelines and other precepts for modern living. A number of ‘Home Journals’ circulated at the time, including the very conservative New Zealand Home Journal, published between 1907 and 1911, whose priority objective was to popularise temperance and sobriety; it was largely funded by the Prohibition movement. The other ‘home journal’, more likely to be at the source of KM’s banter here, was the American publication Ladies’ Home Journal, which mixed social gossip, practical housekeeping, modern fashions and the arts. The ‘male Home Journals’ distracting Chaddie are visibly young men with ‘intentions’, pursuing their love interests with a view to finding a desirable wife. See above, p. 293. (Fr.): My dear. (Ger.): Do you know what I mean? A tidy was wooden desk-set used to organise a writer’s implements – pen, ink seal, letters received and so forth.

[. . . and Jeanne Beauchamp, 5 November 1908] [ATL] Beauchamp Lodge. 5 Nov 1908 My dearest V and J. Just a joint note to say ‘Frohliche Weinacht’1 and joy to you both in the year that is coming. May you both find those Beautiful Things that the world is so full of 2 – I have been looking at the little Nelson photograph3 – it is so good – so characteristic – I love to think of you two together. Oh, Jeanne, I am so glad you have Vera. Oh, Vera, isn’t it joy to have Jeanne – I get hungry for her sometimes – and your thoughts – as she & I walked round the Esplanade4 together – & Life walked between us – didn’t he, Jeanne? Your letters do so satisfy me – I thank & kiss you both for them – All my news is in the family letter – I just popped in here to say ‘good night & Bless you both’. Chummie, too is included here – He is surely the brother of brothers. Dear me! Do you ever sing ‘Too proud to beg, too honest to steal?’5 I hug you, all three Your devoted Sister K

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Notes 1. 2. 3. 4.

(Ger.): Merry Christmas. KM here echoes the popular hymn ‘All Things Bright and Beautiful’. Nelson was the oldest city in the South Island, New Zealand. The Esplanade in Wellington is the long coast road looking out across Island Bay. The Beauchamps’ house in Tinakori Road was a short walk from Thorndon Esplanade. KM captures memories of the picturesque esplanade in ‘The Aloe’. See CW1, pp. 467–519. 5. The popular minstrel song ‘Too proud to beg, too honest to steal’, written in the 1870s by Harry Clifton, was a music-hall and family favourite.

[26 February 1916] [ATL] February 26th 1916.

Villa Pauline Bandol (Var)

Dearest Sister V, Our letters have crossed. I wrote & posted to you just the other day & this afternoon a long lovely letter has come from you – I am more than glad to have it and to hear of you at last, darling. How strange that you should have mentioned the snapshots when I had asked if you had any – I do hope that they arrive – Thank you for this letter: it was such a very great delight to hear from you again – for I think of you often – I envy you indeed with the lovely prospect of a visit from Mother and Jeanne.1 Unfortunately I am rather in the dark about their plans for Father has only mentioned the idea of their voyage to me once & that was in his last letter and he has never breathed a word that I should come – Yet, if he had offered the trip to Chaddie that means he could afford it – doesn’t it? Oh, my dear, of course it would be a wonderful wonderful pleasure and I can think of nothing that I would more greatly love to do than to be with you all and tell you all I know of our dear Chummie. But, Vera, Father is so good and generous to me that I could not possibly mention it to him. You understand – don’t you? We have not the money and I should never ask Father for it. If he had wanted me to come or if he had thought of me coming he would have suggested it to me. I feel it simply isn’t my place to do so – Perhaps, later on, he may and if he did of course I should come by the first possible boat. I told Jack about the idea and of course he understood it just as I did and as our house is sublet and we are only spending the summer visiting friends it would be very easy – But these are at best, my dear, dreams. Only in case anything definite was proposed I felt I ought to write to you at once and let you know exactly how the land lay – Our present intention is to return to England at the end of April – We shall be here until then, but all my letters etc. go to our good Mr Kay at the

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Bank and he sends them on to me – Jack says: ‘Give Vera my love’ but you refer to him so formally that Im half afraid to. I would love to tell you a great deal about our brother – One day I shall, dear – There was no one like him and his loss simply can’t be ever less for me. Oh, Vera, I loved him – more than I can say – and we understood each other so wonderfully – When we talked together we were like ‘one being’. Do tell me what your boys look like when you write to me again – and how big they are and what they wear – so that I may have a picture of them. I knew that John would be a ‘thorough boy’ – I don’t know why – I always felt it – Is he like our family? Put your arms round the darlings and give them a special bon baiser2 from their Aunt Katherine. I expect that Mack will be in Europe3 by the time that you get this letter – Will you give me an address where I might write to him – How I feel for you without him, my dear – but you must be very proud, too. Jack was desperately upset that he could not get into anything – and I was too, for him – He and Chummie were such friends. They were great pa men together – They even had their baths together and went in for what Chummie called ‘a very special kind of walrusing’4 – We talk of him continually, and when I am alone I feel he is quite close to me – indeed I am sure he is – but all the same it is not comfort enough – For he loved life so and he took such a great joy in being alive – That is what makes his death so hard to bear. Chaddie wrote to us a day or two ago from Sangor5 – some mysterious, lovely place – She sent us a postcard of it. Yes, she has a perfect nature. It is four years since I have seen her but her letters bring her right into one’s presence immediately – I am longing for my next home letters. Perhaps I shall hear more of their plans. Vera, you will tell me all about Mother when she is with you – & do tell me about my little almost unknown sister Jeanne – too – Is Father coming? Oh, that you were nearer! Goodbye, dear, for just now. I must cook the dinner and blow up the charcoal fire first. Always your sister Katherine. Notes 1. The exact dates of this visit have not been established. 2. (Fr.): Great big kiss. 3. Vera’s Canadian husband, James Mackintosh Bell (1877–1934), served with the Canadian army as an officer in France from 1915 until 1917, and was seconded to the British Military Mission to Russia in 1918. 4. While the meaning here is obscure, Chummie and Mack may have been alluding to the walking and feasting enjoyed in Lewis Carroll’s ‘The Walrus and the Carpenter’.

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5. Chaddie had been living, and travelling, in India with her husband, John Charles Perkins (1866–1916), who was Controller of Military Accounts there, but plans were afoot for a visit to Canada to visit Vera, apparently funded by Harold. Perkins died, however, just the day after this letter was written.

[early November 1921] [ATL] Chalet des Sapins Montana-sur-Sierre Valais November. Dearest Vera, Its very late in the day to answer your birthday letter. I dont know what happens to Time now-a-days. The weeks dont only seem to fly; they seem to become all tail – all Saturday to Monday. That broad middle of the week when so much is going to be accomplished is telescoped away. Do you know – with increasing years, my dear, this speeding up? I wish it were not so. It was a delight to hear from you. Your handwriting always brings you back to me – the very sight of it and I see you and the way you hold the pen & I hear that pen flying. I had begun to feel we had gone into the silence, as we used to say. Marie and dear little J. give me news of you and send me snaps. (I had those summer ones from Almonte) but that is not the same. Shall I see you when you are in Europe, I wonder?1 It would be very nice to think so. I cant imagine you won’t visit France & France is only at the bottom of the road or round the corner from Switzerland. But I know no more about your ‘visit’ except the bare fact of it. I have asked Marie for some flesh and feathers – – – Well, darling – – – how are you? I would like to sit down beside you and ask you that and have the feeling neither of us was to whirl away before the full, free, confidential, sister-to-sister answer. Do I ask too much? Are such terms over between us? Do you feel I am a little bit of a stranger & not a real sister like the others? I believe you do. But there was a time when we were awfully near each other’s heart. Don’t lets forget it . . . Jack and I are fixed here for the next year and a half. We have a furnished chalet – very snug, in every way, rather ugly, but with views that are really superb. We are on the threshold of our first northern winter. I wish you could give me some hints in the management of snow! Its very strange to us. Ida is ‘attached’. She has a room out but comes here by the day and keeps interruptions away and acts in fact as a housekeeper and ‘official wife’ to both of us. She is very good at the job. I could not possibly do without her. I am no good at buttons and puddings. It is a business arrangement tinged with sincere friendship. We get on very well. But there is no ‘minding the invalid’ included, my dear. I hope, at the end of two years here to be able to resume a normal

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life. That is if everything goes on well. This is the first time I have really been able to take care of myself at all as I have to, and that horrible anxiety of separation is over. Jack loves this place and the life here. He works very hard, and so do I. We have done more work here than ever before. Even if it wasn’t our ‘way of living’ we should be compelled to, for Switzerland is quite the most expensive place I have ever known at any time. It is double the South of France and of course the exchange is against us. But there you are – I cant even keep alive at present anywhere else so here we must stay – What a bother! as Pa would say. – Its no hardship as regards lovely Montana. And isn’t it strange that ‘Elizabeth’ would be our neighbour. Her chalet is at the bottom of the hill. We saw a great deal of one another all summer and we are very close friends. She is a rare lovely little being, I think and I do so admire and respect her for the way she works. Her chalet is quite magnificent . . . She looks about 352 – not a day more – runs up the hills, climbs, laughs, just like a girl. I don’t think she will ever be older. Have you read her new book ‘Vera’? It has had rather a mixed reception, but I think its by far the most brilliant book she ever has written. I can quite understand people turning against it, though. There are few men who have not a touch of Weymss . . . Well, darling, I must bring this letter to a close. Give my love to my nephews; Im afraid I am a shadowy figure to them. And please give Mack my kindest remembrances. To you I send, as ever, my warmest love and a big sisterly hug. May we meet again! Your own sister K. Notes 1. Vera was planning a trip to England with her children, where they would be based in Woodhay, the Hampshire home where her sisters Chaddie and Jeanne lived. As the following letter makes clear, KM was not given any precise details about the visit. 2. Born in 1866, KM’s cousin Elizabeth was then forty-five years old.

[26 January 1922] [ATL] Chalet des Sapins Montana-sur-Sierre Valais 26 I 1922 My dear Vera, I had heard via Elizabeth, via Mack that you were in England and how long you were going to stay. I am so sorry to know you have had

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Flu. What bad luck on arrival! But I expect you will be beautifully nursed and cared for. I am afraid we shan’t be in England for many a long day – I am going to Paris on Monday next. But I expect Paris seems just as far as Switzerland to you. Yes, its a great joy to us to have Elizabeth back in her chalet. She is a wonderful little being and I love her dearly. Dont let your Andrew turn into a writer, though, my dear. Take warning by Elizabeth and me! Nip him in the tenderest bud rather than have that happen. All Beauchamp blood ought to be poured into business. Make him a millionaire instead. My flight to Paris is on business, but its so delightful to look forward to. Paris is much nicer than London. I hope you have the happiest visit and une belle santé1 from now onwards. With much love from Yours affectionately K. Notes 1. (Fr.): Fine health.

[20 March 1922] [ATL] Permanent address which always finds me c/o The Nation and the Athenaeum 10 Adelphi Terrace W.C.2 London. Paris 20 III 1922 My dear Vera, Yes, I was sorry, too, that we did not meet. It was a very close shave.1 For I wrote that Id be in Paris in a fortnight – not a week – and at that time my X rays were not having any horrid effects. We might have seen each other and rediscovered each other. But it was not to be! I feel its a toss up whether we shall ever meet now; I am such an impermanent movable and so are you. And theres always the very good chance of a person with consumption moving off for a grim journey where she

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certainly wouldn’t wish to be followed. But I mustn’t freeze your blood, my dear, by talking about such subjects. Dear Marie and little J2 – they are a remarkable little pair, aren’t they. I wonder why they don’t adopt a baby each? Do you think that would interfere with their chances of matrimony? Well – not Jeanne – but Marie. A baby would be far greater fun than Kuri and Im sure if she caught one young enough she would feel it was her own. Short of marriage Im sure to be a mother is the happiest life for women who have not a profession – perhaps Id better say a foster mother in case my Canadian sister thinks Im approving of immorality. What a horrid crossing you must have had! I have such memories of bad times shared at sea – But I was always in such a furious temper then and you were an angel. I should like to hop across to America one day; we have many friends there. But with a return ticket in my hat the whole time. It must be a ghastly country to live in. Canada is attractive because of its back-country life and its size. Do you feel you are a Canadian now? I expect you do. We intend to stay in Paris until May. Then, if this treatment has been a success we shall go to Austria or Italy for part of the summer and to Elizabeth for the rest. Then I have to come back here for 10 more applications – And that’s as far as I can even dimly see. But its all vague, for the treatment is experimental, at present. If its a failure I shall go to Nancy3 and try the new psychotherapeutics which are rather on the lines of our stepmother’s4 subconscious mind treatment. Im a desperate man now; I cant be ill any longer – Ida has remained in Switzerland. Its her spiritual home, I think. Its just her size and build. She is very happy there, living in our chalet until the lease is up in June. After that I want, if I can possibly manage it, to send her to Rhodesia. Im under such immense obligation to her that I feel its the least I can do. But I don’t see my way at present, I confess. Jack and I are as usual awfully busy. We never seem to have enough time. There is so much business correspondence and so on connected with writing, and although I have a very good agent, I seem to be never at an end with it. But Im not complaining. I love my work and Ive had such good fortune. My new book has been far more successful than the others even. I sent Father some of the first reviews to ’Frisco.5 Weren’t you delighted to be home again. Will your boys stay at boarding school now that you are back? I wish I knew them. Boys are such darlings at that age. Give them my love even though Im a wraith like aunt to them. I could recommend Jack as an uncle with all my heart if he were nearer. Much love, dear, from your affectionate sister K.

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Notes 1. The details of this reunion that never came about have not been established. 2. ‘Little J’ here refers to Jeanne, the youngest Beauchamp daughter. 3. Since the late 1880s, a new school of psychotherapy had developed under the name of the Ecole de Nancy, or the Ecole de la Suggestion, which believed that hypnosis, occultism and cutting-edge psychological and psychiatric research could form the basis of ‘psychical treatment’. The work and methods of the doctors who spearheaded the movement – Hippolyte Bernheim, Henri Beaunis and Ambroise-Auguste Liébault – was translated into English and discussed by the foremost medical magazines and newspapers by the last years of the decade. In terms of the history of psychiatry, the Ecole de Nancy marked the most important break with the clinical approach to psychiatric treatment favoured by Charcot in Paris. Freud published an article on the theory after his visit to the city of Nancy (also the home of the Art Nouveau Ecole de Nancy in the late nineteenth century) in north-eastern France in 1890, and incorporated many of their techniques into his emerging theories of psychoanalysis. 4. The Beauchamp girls’ stepmother was Laura Bright, whom Harold had married in January 1920. See Introduction below. 5. KM had sent him early reviews of The Garden Party and Other Stories, published in 1922. See above, p. 232.

[10 August 1922] [ATL] Hotel Chateau Belle Vue Sierre (Valais) My dearest V. Forgive me, if you can, for delaying so long in answering your card & the photograph of my little neffys & the Cook Book for Ida. You see I put them in order of precedence but I was delighted to receive the first two, especially, and more especially, the second. Andrew & John have grown into such big boys now Eliza1 that there is no recognising them at all. John is the image of you – isn’t he. Do you remember a photograph of yourself taken with Guy Tonks?2 If John only had curls he would be you as a child over again. Andrew looks extremely like Mack. Is he? The expression, even seems to me to be his Father’s – They are darling little boys & you must be tremendously proud of them. I wish I could think I might see them sometime in the near future. Id so like to hear them and watch them – don’t you know? Jack was very interested in the photograph, too. Supposing I was critical . . . Is Andrew in a school uniform? Is that why he wears a linen collar? With that kind of suit English children of his age and ‘station’ wear cricket shirts with soft turn-down collars. But I feel rather like

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Grandma B.3 commenting on what is no doubt a Canadian fashion. Don’t be cross with me, darling! The Cook Book is at present an inspiration only to Ida, but a very real one. Jack & I hung over it, too, and wondered if those were the ‘plats’4 one ate at Almonte. The moment I have a kitchen again and a meek maid Ida is determined to reproduce the coloured illustrations exactly and dazzle us and our friends. How very well these books are got up in Canada and America. They are written for an entirely different class of woman to the English ones. I mean they presuppose brains. English cookbooks always seem to be written for basement readers, only. I am hoping to see Papa next week. I had intended to meet him and the sisters in Paris but now I find I shall have to go direct to London from here and see my dear faithful doctor. My heart has been playing up very badly. But no more of that. I hate writing about illness. The point is I shall see Papa & the girls in England. I so look forward to that. I am afraid Papa’s visit has been flooded with rain. What a dreadful summer England has had! Its very unfortunate especially as he has not been well. I put him on to my doctor & I think he feels more comfortable, now. After London I go to Paris for the autumn & we hope to spend the winter at a little place called Arco on the Lago di Garda.5 It sounds lovely – very sheltered – and famous for oranges and lemons. But plans are as usual, rather en l’air.6 Its no fun, my dear, to be chased over the globe. And what must it be like for poor Jack who longs for nothing so much as to settle, unpack, and bury his luggage under an oak tree for ever! He hates travelling and is a very unhappy traveller. He sheds his possessions like leaves – poor darling. But on we fare. I hope it will end one day. I have spent the summer down here at work on a kind of short novel. Jack has been up the mountain side chez Elizabeth.7 I cannot breathe so high, I can only gasp. So they come down to me from time to time instead – He has been very happy with her, and I have loved it here. Sierre is such a fascinating small valley town, full of orchards & vineyards & funny little mountains that skip like young sheep. This hotel has a farm attached to it, too, and one can wander at will among the beasts and birds. I love farms – do you? Sometimes I wish Jack was a farmer & I was a farmers wife & wore a big apron & cut bread and butter for the children. There must be very solid joys in that. By the way this has been a marvellous year for dahlias. Do they grow well in Canada? We have saffron yellow, big spiked red ones, white ones and a little round bright orange kind – most lovely. As for the antirrhynms they are superb. I think I ought to have called them snap dragons though. I’m sure that spelling is wrong. And do you grow zinnias? I wish I could see your garden. Dear little Jeanne seems to be a very fierce, successful gardener. We all as a family seem to inherit the tastes of our First Parents ––

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Do you have much time for reading and what do you read, I wonder? I thought the Canadian novel, Marie Chapdelaine,8 was very charming. But there are precious few new books one can like. One always falls back on the old ones. Ive just remembered I have two copies of a novel on Russian themes which might amuse you.9 I think it has great youthful charm. The writer has, in fact just left Oxford. I suppose you would scorn to read German. Goethe’s conversations with Eckermann10 is a wonderful book – full of riches. Have Andrew and John a library? But I am asking you too many questions and its so tiresome to have to answer them in a letter. This dreadful handwriting is because I’m lying down dear, and my hand is tired with typing. Can you make it out? I hope so. Ida would I am sure send her love if she were by. She is very excited at the prospect of England and buns again. I mean to really feast on my friends, or on all those who are within reach. Such joy after a long exile. Well dearest sister, the dressing gong has boomed up & down the corridors. I must preparer descendre.11 Give my remembrances to Mack. My love to the little boys – and accept much for yourself From your own sister K. My permanent address is: c/o The Nation & The Athenaeum 10 Adelphi Terrace London W.C.2. Notes 1. As she does in numerous letters to friends and family, KM here pastiches the conversation patterns of many late eighteenth- and nineteenth-century novels. For use of ‘Betsy’ in a comparable fashion, see above, p. 76, n. 2. 2. The identity of Guy Tonks, possibly a schoolfriend, has not been traced. 3. KM’s paternal grandmother, Mary Elizabeth Stanley. 4. (Fr.): Dishes. 5. (It.): Lake Garda. Garda is the largest lake in Italy; it is situated in the Alps to the north of Verona and is relatively close to the frontier with Switzerland. To this day, it remains a stunning and highly popular tourist resort. 6. (Fr.): Up in the air. 7. (Fr.): At Elizabeth’s. 8. Marie Chapdelaine tells the story of a family settling in one of the French colonies on Lake Saint-Jean; it was published in 1913 and was by the French novelist, Louis Hémon (1880–1913), who was then living in Quebec. It was long considered one of the finest colonial sagas of new lands and new destinies. 9. Gerhardi’s Futility, subtitled ‘A Novel on Russian Themes’. For the context of this new friendship, Russian themes and their importance in KM’s last years, see their correspondence below. See also Davison 2017, pp. 66–88.

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10. Goethe’s ‘conversations with Eckermann’ actually consist of the diary-like records made by the German poet Johann Peter Eckermann of his innumerable conversations with the great German poet from 1822 until his death in 1832. Eckermann’s Conversations of Goethe is universally acknowledged as one of the founding works in the art of biography, presenting the poet’s musings and convictions set in the context of everyday life. See above, p. 54, n. 5. 11. (Fr.): Get ready to go down.

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Andrew Mackintosh Bell (1912–1977)

Introduction KM’s first nephew, Andrew Beauchamp Mackintosh Bell, was the son of KM’s oldest sister Vera Beauchamp, who had married the Canadian geologist James Mackintosh Bell in 1909, and subsequently emigrated from New Zealand to Canada. Her first son, Andrew, was born in 1912, followed by a second son, John, in 1914. Neither son married and Andrew died in the same year as his mother, 1977. In the two extant letters to him below, KM reveals a warm affection for both Andrew and his brother. Gerri Kimber

[early November 1921] [tr. Scott] [Chalet des Sapins, Montana-sur-Sierre] Dear Andrew, I was so touched to hear from your mother today that you still talk sometimes of your Aunt Katherine. Dear little boy! It is very sweet of you. Now I know I shall listen very carefully when the wind from Canada is blowing this way. Do you remember sending me a pot of wild strawberry jam? I’ve never forgotten that, not the jam, I mean, but the fact that you sent it to me. Ever since when people talk about wild strawberries I think of you. Give my love to John please.1 Je vous embrasse tous les deux de tout coeur. Ta Tante dévoue2 Katherine Notes 1. John Bell was Vera’s younger son, born in 1914. 2. (Fr.): Your devoted Aunt.

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[11 September 1922] [tr. Scott] 6 Pond Street Hampstead N.W.3 XI.IX.1922 Dear little Andrew You are growing up so very fast that I had better be quick and call you little before it is too late. Many many thanks for your letter. I can hardly believe the tiny person I said goodbye to in London is able to write with such grownup handwriting. Do you really think about me? That is awfully nice of you. I hope we would be friends if we lived near each other. You see I don’t know a bit the kind of life a little Canadian boy leads or the things he learns at school – or out of school. I wonder if you know a lot about birds. Some of the nicest men I know are fearfully keen on birds and can tell you marvellous things about them. If you would like me to send you a book on birds send me a card to let me know and you shall have it. Or are you interested in plants – wild flowers, as well? I was staying at a house this weekend where all the guests have made a habit of bringing roots and bulbs and cuttings from wherever they have been and planting them in the garden.1 So you come across a little Spanish flower, or a little rock plant from Cornwall, or a lovely little tuft of grasses from France, or a Swiss daisy. Don’t you think its a good idea? The little boy who lives in the house is eight years old and he is a great naturalist. He has stocked a pond with fishes he has caught himself and knows all about them – carp, and dace and tench. I wonder if you have those kinds in Canada? Aunt Chaddie and Aunt Jeanne are coming to tea with me this afternoon. I expect I shall hear all the news about the wedding then. If Aunt Jeanne goes to live in New Zealand I shall be living in Italy, I expect and Aunt Chaddie in England. You will have to make a tour when you are grownup and come and visit us all. Does John ever write letters? Granpapa has told me about him, too. I am quite up to date in the news of what happened on his visit. With much love to both my dear little nephews. I shall keep my first letter from you for a ‘remembrance’. Ever your affectionate Aunt Katherine. Notes 1. KM and JMM had spent the weekend of 1–3 September 1922 at the home of Vivian Locke Ellis, at Selsfield in Sussex. Her comment, therefore, probably refers to his garden.

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Marie-Adelaide Belloc Lowndes (1868–1947)

Introduction Like her better-known younger brother, Hilaire Belloc, Marie Belloc was a prolific and highly popular novelist and playwright in the early twentieth century. The Belloc children grew up bilingual, living between the family homes in Versailles and Sussex, their father a reputed French jurist, their mother – Bessie Rayner Parkes – a respected feminist and suffrage campaigner.1 In 1896, Marie Belloc married Frederick Sawrey A. Lowndes, a journalist then at the beginning of what was to become an illustrious career at The Times. It was as ‘Mrs Belloc Lowndes’ that she published her first work, a biography of the then Prince of Wales, and she enjoyed literary approval and public success from then onwards. Although many of her works – and the list is impressively long, amounting to over fifty novels and short-story collections, as well as plays – have since been forgotten, she is still acknowledged as a major and influential contributor to the emerging genre of the thriller. That the young Alfred Hitchcock was just one of her avid readers, and later the first cinematographer to adapt her works for the screen,2 is just one tribute among dozens to her skill in building subtly crafted plots and finely captured psychological depth. Although she only ever published in English, Marie Belloc Lowndes admitted to her daughters – one of whom later wrote a moving biographical portrait of her mother – that she was less at home in England than she was in France, where she felt there was more vitality and a more stimulatingly intellectual life for women. She remained absorbed by the political and literary worlds of both countries throughout her life, and was often sought as an astute observer and commentator of the ‘French’ mindset. Along with her mother’s steadfastly feminist stance, both the cultural influence of French literary realism and the interplay of AngloFrench dialogues can be felt in her own literary production – where the accent is placed firmly on the social and economic precarity that tips the vulnerable individual into crime, and on the frailty, rather than the innate wickedness, of human nature.3

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Widely cherished by her friends as a ‘fine raconteur and conversationalist’, and as a generously supportive talker with a searching knowledge of the human heart,4 Belloc Lowndes thus had plenty of similarities in her life choices and literary tastes that would have ensured that she and KM took pleasure in each other’s company. She did not note down her memories of afternoons spent with KM until 1941, prompted to do so following an article by Hugh Walpole that made, as her diary put it, ‘odious remarks on four women writers’. These disparaging comments were somewhat paradoxically included in a biographical memoir and tribute of friendship that Walpole wrote upon learning of Virginia Woolf’s death: Literary Ladies, from Rhoda Broughton through Katherine Mansfield and Rebecca West to Gertrude Stein have worn, from time to time, the robes of priestesses engaged in throwing frankincense on their own altars. Katherine Mansfield’s Letters, brilliant and touching, seem to me exactly to do this.5

Belloc Lowndes’s alternative sketch of the writer whose warm company she had so enjoyed reads: ‘I had long intimate conversations with KM while she was in the south of France, and our meetings were followed by several brilliant letters from her. She never made any allusion to her work in our talks.’6 Unfortunately for literary scholars, neither woman made any note of what they did talk about; nor did KM’s cousin, Elizabeth von Arnim, who would appear to have been the intermediary who first brought them together. Other than the surviving letters published here, the closest KM came to evoking her fellow writer was in her review of one of Belloc-Lowndes’s novels set in the heady Riviera hinterland, The Lonely House, published in 1920 (CW4, pp. 606–8). Claire Davison Notes 1. See Belloc Lowndes’s 1941 memoirs of her Anglo-French childhood years, I, Too, Have Lived in Arcadia. 2. Alfred Hitchcock’s silent film The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog, adapted from Marie Belloc Lowndes’s 1913 novel The Lodger, was released in 1927. 3. Belloc Lowndes’s Studies in Wives (1913) is perhaps the most telling example of this rich triple influence. 4. See Lowndes 1971, pp. xx–xxi; xxiv. 5. Hugh Walpole (1941), ‘Virginia Woolf’, New Statesman and Nation, 14 June, pp. 602–3. 6. ‘June 15th 1941’, in Lowndes 1971, p. 216.

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[April 1921] [HRC] Villa Isola Bella Garavan Menton A/M Dear Mrs Belloc-Lowndes, Ariane arrived at 6 oclock this evening and I have just (10. P.M.) taken leave of her.1 I think its an enchanting little book and amazingly well done. Thank you very much for sending it to me, yes I have enjoyed it immensely. But not improper – is it? There’s something so delicate, supple, warm, in the style – the emotion is so sensitive – – – I wish there were more books of this kind. But they wont be written in England. I confess to an awful feeling of wickedness after reading Ariane – some feeling almost like a dégout2 for those solid boiled puddings that those good young men & serious young women cook with such Awful Care. But that lovely little creature en chemise3 is responsible – Yours very sincerely Katherine Mansfield. Notes 1. Ariane, jeune fille russe is a 1920 French novel by the French journalist, travel writer, polyglot and international tennis player Jean Schopfer (1868–1931), who wrote under the pen-name Claude Anet. Both this novel and his previous publication, La Révolution russe – chroniques, reflect the months in 1917–18 that he spent in St Petersburg as correspondent for the daily Journal; they also provide the explanation for KM’s interest in his work, for 1921–2 were the years when she was most actively engaged in reading, translating and learning about Russian with her friend, S. S. Koteliansky. The novel’s engaging, bold and emancipated heroine Ariane is portrayed growing up in the last years of Tsarist Russia and yearning to get to university at any price; in the episode KM alludes to, Ariane has been discovered in the bed of an ageing benefactor and escapes wearing nothing but a camisole. 2. (Fr.): Disgust. 3. (Fr.): Creature in a camisole, her underwear.

[3 May 1921] [HRC] Villa Isola Bella Garavan. Menton. After today: c/o The Nation and Athenaeum 10 Adelphi Terrace W.C.2. 3 v 1921

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Dear Mrs Belloc Lowndes, I ought to have sent back the books you lent me – I ought to have written to you about them. But I only posted them yesterday and I never sent a word of thanks. Please do not think me the black and graceless creature I appear. But the Lord, for some reason, has seen fit to visit me with a New Curse and I have been ‘in the surgeon’s hands’ as they say. They were very expert, professional French surgeons hands which made a difference & they didn’t have to do anything very fearful.1 But this little affair was horrid enough to be my excuse for ‘creeping into my shelly cave.’2 Forgive me. Tomorrow I am going to Switzerland – first to an hotel in a little place near Montreux & then later to some convenient mountain. If I may Id like to write to you about the Mrs A. book from there. It was awfully interesting. It has been cold and grey and frileux3 here & all the english papers show people trying to get a cool breath from the river or eating ices in Trafalgar Square. But its always thus . . . My husband sends his warm remembrances. I do hope we shall meet again one day not too far-away – Yours very sincerely Katherine Mansfield Murry Notes 1. KM’s tuberculosis had been particularly burdensome in these weeks, as she recounts in a letter to Brett (pp. 389–90) and a long report to Dr Bouchage. She had consulted a doctor in Menton before leaving just the day before this letter for Montana, to consult specialists at the clinic there; she also travelled to Sierre in the same month to consult Dr Stephani (see above, p. 103). 2. From one of the powerful Homeric similes in Shakespeare’s Venus and Adonis: ‘Or as the snail, whose tender horns being hit, / Shrinks backward in his shelly cave with pain, / And there, all smother’d up, in shade doth sit, / Long after fearing to creep forth again’ (ll. 1033–6). 3. (Fr.): Sensitive to the cold, shivery.

[26 May 1921] [HRC] Hotel Beau-Site Clarens-Montreux Switzerland. 26 v 1921 Dear Mrs Belloc-Lowndes, I was so delighted to hear from you & so sorry to know you have been ill. I hope your play has not meant too much work & that you are

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better now.1 Murry, who has been lecturing in Oxford writes that the weather in London has been exquisite.2 Are you enjoying it? I have such a romantic vision in my mind of your house in Barton Street. Thank Heaven for dreams! I have been there on a warm spring afternoon, & there has been a room with open windows where you sat talking, wearing the same embroidered jacket . . . . Outside one was conscious of trees – of their green gold light . . . But its all far away from my cursed Swiss balcony where Im lying lapping up the yellows of eggs & taking my temperature in the eye of Solemn Immensities – mobled Kings.3 Ive seen the best man in Switzerland and he says I still have a chance. But I don’t feel in the least die-away. Illness is a great deal more mysterious than doctors imagine. I simply can’t afford to die with one very half-and-half little book and one bad one & a few – – – – ? stories to my name. In spite of everything, in spite of all one knows and has felt – one has this longing to praise Life, to sing ones minute song of praise, and it doesn’t seem to matter whether its listened to or no. Will one ever be able to say how marvellously beautiful it all is? I long, above everything, to write about family love – the love between growing children – and the love of a mother for her son, and the father’s feeling – But warm, vivid, intimate – not ‘made up’ – not self conscious. Dear Mrs Belloc-Lowndes – is it bad manners in me to write to you so frankly? Forgive me if it is. Whenever I think of you I cant help loving you – just as I did when you sat in the little salon of the Isola Bella & I wondered (though I didn’t even know at the time I was wondering it) if you’d kiss me – & you did. Goodbye – I hope you are happy. I hope you are are well. Yours ever Katherine Mansfield. Notes 1. Since Belloc Lowndes appears not to have completed any plays that year, she may have been attending rehearsals for one of her many novels and stories adapted for the stage in the late 1910s and early 1920s. See p. 312. 2. JMM had been invited by Professor Walter Raleigh, Chair of English at Oxford University and Fellow of Merton College, to give a series of six lectures at his old Oxford college – Brasenose – that month. These were later compiled into the volume The Problem of Style (1922). Amongst those who attended the lectures was William Gerhardi, then an undergraduate. 3. The description of the Alps as ‘Solemn Immensities’ clearly appealed to KM – she uses the same expression in a later letter to JMM. Rather than a precise quotation here, it would appear that she is pastiching styles – the lofty imagery of Wordsworth, Coleridge and Shelley when beholding the Alps, the sublime magnitude of the cosmic immensities evoked by Carlyle in Sartor Resartus (1833), and the figure of the ‘mobled queen’, three times repeated in Hamlet, II. 2. To ‘moble’ is an antiquated term meaning to muffle the face and neck.

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Edith Kathleen Bendall (1879–1986) (m. Robison)

Introduction Edith Bendall (‘Edie’) was the seventh and only surviving child of Master Mariner William Edward Bendall and his wife, Mary. Originally from Bristol, William Bendall plied the Tasmania–New Zealand trade until he settled in New Zealand as a marine surveyor for the Wellington Underwriters’ Association.1 Edie was educated at the Terrace School, later working as a part-time librarian to pay for art classes at the Technical College in Wellington. She gave her first exhibition at McGregor Wright’s, Lambton Quay, in 1904 and, with the money earned, sailed to Sydney for more advanced study. The artist Norman Lindsay recommended her as an illustrator for a children’s book,2 but this career was cut short when she had to return to New Zealand to look after her sick mother. She exhibited at the Academy of Fine Arts Annual Exhibition in October 1907. The Dominion newspaper in Wellington reported, ‘The chubby children, painted by Edith Bendall, are always delightful and her decorative little ones in this year’s list are distinctly good.’3 Edie had been acquainted with KM since at least 1901 because KM’s prayerbook has this inscription on the flyleaf: ‘Went with EK Bendall and Vera [KM’s older sister] to St Mark’s Church to hear [. . .] a sermon on Mauries (Kimber 2016, p. 90). Edie, that same year, decorated KM’s autograph book with a cute mermaid, thumb in mouth, clasping the arm of the letter K in ‘Kass’ with the inscription, ‘May your life be one long Honolulu Sunset’ (Kimber 2016, p. 91). When KM’s father, Harold Beauchamp, became Chairman of the Directors of the Bank of New Zealand in April 1907, he moved his family from their home in Tinakori Road, Thorndon, Wellington, to a grander house nearby on 47 Fitzherbert Terrace. KM and her sisters had recently returned from three years of schooling at Queen’s College, Harley Street, London, chaperoned by Aunt Belle, their mother’s unmarried sister. KM, though a dreamy, often lazy but intense student, was already missing desperately the freedoms she had experienced in London – walks with her friend Vere Bartrick-Baker to concerts, cello lessons, intimate talks with

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her new friend Ida Baker, and the sophistication of her German language teacher Walter Rippman, who had introduced her to the works of Oscar Wilde and Walter Pater. On the voyage home to New Zealand she could feel paternal control stifling her: ‘he is there, eager, fearful, attempting to appear unconcerned’ (CW4, p. 25), she wrote of Harold Beauchamp, who tended to hover near when she was talking with young men and even women. Perhaps her parents had seen some of KM’s alarming diary entries, such as the shipboard description of ‘R’, a handsome and skilful cricketer: ‘When I am with him a preposterous desire seizes me, I want to be badly hurt by him. I should like to be strangled by his firm hands’ (Kimber 2016, p. 170). Harold and Annie Beauchamp were watching their third daughter’s burgeoning sexual awareness with concern. They were possibly suspicious that she was bisexual in nature. KM was openly admitting it in her diary of 1907, with disturbing declarations of intent derived from her reading of Oscar Wilde: ‘Push everything as far as it will go’ (CW4, p. 34).4 She had been considering life as a professional cellist, inspired by the Trowell twins – Thomas and Garnet – and her teacher, their father. ‘Musicians . . .’, she confided to her diary, ‘it is not one man or woman but the complete octave of sex that they desire’ (CW4, p. 36). Her vow was to make her family’s life so unbearable that her father would consent to her return to London. It is in 1907, against this background, that Edie Bendall, aged 27 to KM’s 18, with her own art studio in Fitzherbert Terrace, Wellington, reenters KM’s life, the personification of her dream of a free woman. She was self-supporting, she was an artist, she was beautiful. Fuming at the restrictions that a bourgeois life of conventional tea parties, balls and visits were placing on her, KM quickly introduced herself by knocking on Edie’s front door. She was lonely and had seen Edie painting in her front room and walking on the Wadestown Hill. Edie told an interviewer at the end of her life: I was a worker and that’s why she liked me. I was working all day in my studio and at 5 o’clock I went for walk and she used to come with me. Kathleen asked if she could walk with me every night. I was completely taken with her. She liked me and she let me know it.5

This introduction was likely to have been ardent. When beginning a friendship, the young KM usually invited people boldly into her heart. Edie was attractive and womanly, with fine features. According to Edie, KM wrote to her every night, describing scenes or people and inviting Edie to illustrate them. They planned a book together featuring KM’s early poems and illustrated by Edie’s drawings. It was subsequently rejected by an American publisher (see Kimber 2016, p. 195).6 A sketchbook of Edie’s drawings of children remains with her granddaughter, Lindy Erskine, in London, unfortunately undated; it is perhaps the work for this book-in-progress. It features, as Lindy

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describes, ‘the usual sentimentalised babies and children – skaters in Napier Street; a little girl teetering in “Mother’s Boots”’. Lindy, searching for an explanation as to why her grandmother made children, ‘slightly disturbing in their archness’, the main subject of her sketches, said: When Barbara [Edie’s only surviving child] was a toddler, her younger brother died. He was only a few months old. It was incredibly upsetting for the whole family, especially Edith. Barbara always said that her mother’s way was to ignore and deliberately forget the rough side of life. I wonder whether the shock of the death of her son led her to produce those unreal, whimsically cherub-like children.7

Edie, as the seventh and her parents’ only surviving child, also had earlier reasons to be fixated on drawing babies and young children, the main subject of her œuvre. When she was commissioned, reluctantly, to paint the editor of the Sydney Morning Herald, explaining that she painted only children, Edie depicted the eminent man ‘at six months’ old, longgowned, blue-bowed, ringleted’.8 Only one letter remains of the drawerful of daily correspondence that KM wrote to Edie. She had taken it on her honeymoon in December 1909 to complete an illustration recommended by KM.9 All other letters from KM were destroyed by a maidservant in Edie’s absence, presumably at the instruction of her parents. If these letters resembled the amethyst-and-gardenia hothouse style of KM’s writing at this time, they would have been shocking for a new husband to find. Edie had married Gerald Robison, a teacher at Wellington College and later its bursar, eighteen months after her friendship with KM apparently ended. Gerald and Edie had met when Edie was working part-time as a librarian, before KM’s re-entrance into her life. Their engagement was announced by the Dominion on 15 September 1909. Gerald’s sister, Maud Pember-Reeves, was a co-founder of the Fabian Women’s Group, the author of Round About a Pound a Week (1913) and a famous campaigner for the poor of Lambeth, London. The remaining letter to Edie is in four parts and is controlled, the first section describing in vivid detail a tableau of small children outside Paino’s fruit shop on Lambton Quay, Wellington.10 Edie completed a drawing to accompany the letter, 64 years after it was written, in 1970. 11 It seems likely that the letter was written in mid-1907 at the time of the book collaboration. In the first section, KM describes colours and specific detail for the artist, Edie: I saw such a charming little group – A little girl with very red hair and a green frock sat on a doorstep – with oranges in her lap – And looking at her – with more than envy was a small boy in a red pair of knickers – and a tight holland bodice [. . .].

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The arrangement to meet at the end suggests their daily walks and conversations. ‘I’ll see you on Saturday – dearest – won’t I – At a quarter to three as usual?’ Why Edie’s parents, or the maidservant, as she and her descendants tell the story, felt compelled to protect Gerald from this possibly incendiary correspondence is revealed in KM’s notebook entry of 1 June 1907, after a hectic night spent at the Beauchamp holiday cottage at Days Bay, Wellington, in an unidentified woman’s arms, most probably Edie’s. It is typical of KM’s see-sawing entries of this year as she advanced and retreated from various passionate commitments to both sexes – to Edie, to ‘R’ (to whom she thought she was engaged), to her younger Māori schoolfriend, Maata, and to the idealised and talented cellist, Tom Trowell, with whom she was also corresponding. At Days Bay, looking out of the window at night, KM had experienced a night terror and had become hysterical with grief. Her companion had comforted her (‘Better now darling?’), ‘kissing me, my head on her breasts, her hands round my body, stroking me lovingly, warming me’. Perhaps her companion had rejected a commitment to ‘the amethyst outlook’, as KM came to refer in code to a lesbian relationship, because KM records in the same entry: the end has come with such suddenness that even I who have anticipated it for so long and so thoroughly am shocked & overwhelmed. She is tired. Last night I spent in her arms, and tonight I hate her – which interpreteth meaneth that I adore her, that I cannot lie in my bed and not feel the magic of her body. [. . .] I feel more powerfully all those so termed sexual impulses with her than I have with any men. She enthrals, enslaves me, and her personal self, her body absolute, is my worship. (CW4, p. 47)

By 29 June, KM’s notebook records a complete reversal: ‘I do not think that I shall ever be able to write any Child Verse again. The faculty has gone.’ And, this afternoon has been horrible. E.K.B. bored me. I bored her. [. . .] E.K.B. is a thing of the Past, absolutely, irrevocably. [. . .] It was [. . .] a frantically maudlin relationship & one better ended – also she will not achieve a great deal of greatness. She has not the necessary impetus of character. (CW4, p. 52)

KM’s thoughts immediately turn to Maata, her earlier love object: ‘Do other people of my own age feel as I do [. . .] so absolutely powerfully licentious [. . .] – I want Maata’ (CW4, p. 52). When JMM came to make selections for his first publication of her notebooks, he omitted these entries, beginning his edition with material from 1910.12 Edie herself – and afterwards her only child, Barbara Webber – waved away indiscreet questions from biographers trying to establish the truth lying behind KM’s vivid diary entry of 1 June 1907, the scene at Days Bay. Edie was just comforting the distressed, adolescent KM in a maternal way, Barbara, then aged 103, told me at a lunch in London in 2012,

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when I mentioned the relationship. She repeated what she had told the biographer Jeffrey Meyers, that Edie’s family thought KM ‘posey and affected’, ‘rude and difficult’.13 It is understandable that a family fending off biographers would prefer the theory that KM was using her relationship with Edie to explore erotic description in her writing. Two years before she died, KM wrote the unfinished, Wellingtonbased story ‘Weak Heart’ (1921). A young girl, aged fourteen, a brilliant pianist named ‘Edie Bengal’, may become one of ‘Miss Farmer’s girls’ at a nearby school. Edie has been playing ‘frightening’ ‘bold’, ‘defiant’ music, ‘from memory’. Reminiscent of Schubert’s song Erlkönig, death is in the room, innocence is being violated: ‘for a moment the thought comes to Mrs Bengal [. . .] that there is a stranger with Edie [. . .] a fantastic person, out of a book – a – villain’ (CW2, p. 426). Edie dies and is buried. Her friend Roddie (evoking KM’s brother Leslie, killed in World War One), a ‘half-grown boy’, attends the funeral, seemingly not knowing it is his Edie who has died. KM, in writing this grim, apparently unfinished, story at a time when she was near death herself, may have been brooding on her frustrated relationship with Edie Bendall, which was so abruptly ended, and on the dual nature of her early sexuality. As she departed New Zealand for London in 1908, never to return, KM gave to Edie, the love object of her nightly letters in the tumultuous year of 1907, a mounted photo of the goddess of love and beauty, Venus. Moira Taylor Notes 1. Bruce Mason, ‘Woburn Home honours 100-year-old artist’, Dominion, Wellington, 30 January 1979, p. 2, an article celebrating Edith Bendall’s 100th birthday. 2. Ibid. 3. Dominion, 3: 823, 23 May 1910, p. 5. 4. Wildean in character, the expression would not appear to be a direct quote. 5. Tomalin, p. 35. 6. It may have been inspired by the publication of The April Baby’s Book of Tunes, illustrated by Kate Greenaway and written by KM’s cousin, Elizabeth von Arnim. 7. Lindy Erskine to Moira Taylor, 16 January 2018. 8. This anecdote comes from the New Zealand author Bruce Mason, who wrote ‘Centenary’ from which the Dominion 1979 article was written. It was not repeated when ‘Centenary’ was rewritten and published as ‘Woburn Home honours 100-year-old artist’. 9. Dominion, 30 January 1979. 10. Ibid. 11. Ibid. 12. See Mansfield 1927. 13. Meyers, p. 22.

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[July 1907] [Leeming] [4 Fitzherbert Terrace, Wellington] Thursday Night This afternoon on the Quay – I saw such a charming little group – A little girl with very red hair and a green frock sat on a doorstep – with oranges in her lap – And looking at her – with more than envy was a small boy in a red pair of knickers – and a tight holland bodice that buttoned down the back with three huge buttons – this sister – a young lady vainly trying to appear out of an enormous pinafore – held his hand. She was distractingly pretty – and her hair was braided in one stiff aggressive little braid that stuck straight out behind – and was tied with an orange bow – They were all so delightful – I could have stood still & just rudely stared at them – Somehow they were so entirely picturesque – The shop behind them was full of coloured beads – do you see how nice that effect was? You would really have liked them – I know. ––––––––––––––––––– Do they – in New Zealand have a Childrens Thanksgiving Service? They do in the country in England – One year when I was staying with my Granny at the time – down in Kent – her German Grandchild of five was there so we took her1 – I shall never forget how beautiful it was – She wore the shortest little white embroidery frock – and white stockings & red shoes – And under her little white satin straw hat – with just a wreath of field daisies round it – her curls tumbled round her – There was a hymn ‘All Things Bright & Beautiful’ – where the children had to hold their offerings as they sang – We lifted the German Baby right up on to the cushions in the pew – and she sang very gravely – holding her white basket full of coloured Easter Eggs – and flowers – and the sun streamed into the little old quaint church – and the children’s voices – very thin and high – seemed to float in the air – and above them all I heard the German Baby – exultant – joyful – her cheeks all rosy. Granny & I enjoyed ourselves so much that we both cried – to the Baby’s horror and astonishment – She pulled my sleeve – ‘Kassie why are you lookin’ so wistful’ – I can hear her now – with a violent German accent. She was so precious. –––––––––––––––––––––– I’ll see you on Saturday – dearest – won’t I – At a quarter to three as usual? I’m so glad youre not going to read ‘In the Morning’ Glow2 – somehow – I longed to read that to you. ––––––––––––––––––––– The Little Girl With the Fringe is fascinating me3 – in fact all of them are wonderfully beautiful – I wish that I was as advanced in my Art as you in yours – but I’m far from it. Tomorrow I have Mr Trowell in

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the afternoon.4 the idea is simply detestable tonight. but I expect I’ll recover – – – One has to – you know – from everything. Goodnight – darling – Your devoted K M B. Notes 1. KM is recalling one of the Christmases spent with her Great-Uncle Henry Herron and his wife, Elizabeth (Louey), the parents of Elizabeth von Arnim, at their home, The Retreat, in Bexley, Kent, during the period she spent at Queen’s College from 1903 to 1906. This central section reads more like a short prose piece than a spontaneous letter, which is doubtless not fortuitous. The German baby is Felicitas Joyce von Arnim, Elizabeth’s fourth daughter. Possibly inspired by her cousin’s example and her life-long affection for children, KM wrote a series of ‘baby stories’, some of which were published, and also a collection of children’s verses, which were submitted to an American publisher, with illustrations by Edith Bendall. 2. This was one in a collection of short stories, In the Morning Glow, published by the popular novelist Roy Rolfe Gilson (1875–1933) in 1903. Gilson was acclaimed for his endearing, life-like portrayals of children, and doubtless influenced the young KM’s literary imagination and apprenticeship. 3. The Little Girl with the Fringe was one of a series of sketches by Edith, now in the ATL. See Kimber 2016, p. 194. 4. KM was taking cello lessons with Thomas Luigi Trowell, father of Garnet and Arnold. This is one of the rare occasions when she alludes to the lessons with foreboding – they usually figure as sources of delight.

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Princess Elizabeth Bibesco (1897–1945) (née Asquith)

Introduction Born Elizabeth Charlotte Lucy Asquith, Princess Bibesco, as she was later to be known, was the daughter of Herbert Asquith, the British Prime Minister, and his second wife, Margot Tennant, a Scottish writer and hostess. Elizabeth owed her romantic name and title to her husband, Prince Antoine Bibesco, a Romanian diplomat, whom she married in 1919, shortly after leaving her extremely select, fashionable finishing school, ‘Les Roches’, in Fontainebleau. It was there that she was swept into the world of the Bibesco family, who lived lavishly in Paris surrounded by the artists and writers of the time; they gravitated around Antoine Bibesco’s mother, the salon hostess and patroness of the arts, Hélène Bibesco. One of many aspiring writers and avid, but sardonically amused, observers of this European aristocratic family was Marcel Proust, who became close friends with Antoine and his brother. However accustomed the young Elizabeth Asquith may have been to high society events in her parents’ social spheres, the particular glamour and hyper-sophistication of the Parisian ‘beau monde’ captivated the aspiring writer and social climber. I Have Only Myself to Blame, the first collection of her short stories, published in 1921, seeks to render the buoyant charm, nonchalant wit, lavish style and sparkling décor of a rarefied world in the decades either side of the war. Elizabeth Bowen later referred to these stories as ‘impetuous, intimate, egocentric – in fact, engagingly personal [. . .] aerial; yes, airy, even; but they are not airy nothings – the luxurious prettiness of the mise-en-scène may be deceptive’.1 Some of these stories were among those she had previously sent to the Athenaeum, where they, and then she, caught the eye of the then editor, JMM. This marked the beginning of an intense but complex emotional relationship over a number of months, which Virginia Woolf, with wry amusement, referred to in her diary as ‘the Bibesco Scandal with which London, so they say, rings’.2

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In their different ways, the affair caused pain and bitterness for both JMM and KM, who followed the affair step by step via JMM’s anguished and confessional letters. As Alpers’s reconstruction of the episode reveals, however, JMM’s affair was one in a whole series of impulsive sexual advances, followed by bitter self-loathing.3 The couple were living mostly apart, he in London and she in the South of France, where she was increasingly ill, and both were desperately lonely. Whatever the gruelling emotional context for both JMM and KM, the episode, in hindsight, has the advantage of showing KM’s talent for acerbic caricature and crushing remonstrance at its best, as she tartly reminded Elizabeth Bibesco that manners mattered more than trumped-up pedigree. In her diary, she noted: I thought also of the Princess B. It’s a bit bewildering – her unlikeness to the faces ‘we’ recognise or would recognise. She has a quick rapacious look – in fact she made me think of a gull with an absolutely insatiable appetite for bread, and all her vitality, her cries, her movements, her wheelings depend upon the person on the bridge who carries the loaf. This would of course be hidden. But this is what she is when she is really she and not ‘enchanted.’4

Her more poised put-down was reserved for the deftly elegant, ruthless letter sent to the Princess, printed below. There is no record, unfortunately, of the impression it made upon reception; KM’s draft for a follow-up letter confirms, however, that an epistolary exchange of sorts did take place. Despite the pain that Bibesco inadvertently caused KM, and the disdain that London’s Modernist circles maintained towards her, there is no denying the aura of sensation, beauty and romance that surrounded Bibesco throughout her life, nor the successful reception of her fiction and poetry, especially in the United States, where she lived in the 1920s. Augustus John captured the slightly old-world grace of the young ‘Princess’ in a portrait painted in 1924, giving her – either consciously or inadvertently – a certain Proustian air that well befits someone who relished meeting Proust in Parisian salons, especially when in the company of another of his close friends, Anna de Noailles. Bibesco’s warm affection and her intimate knowledge of Proust’s social scene are beautifully rendered in the obituary she wrote for him in 1922. Indeed, Sydney Janet Kaplan debates whether her fascinating tales of the close domestic scene around the largely reclusive Parisian writer (when he was being lionised in fashionable salons) were, in fact, what first drew JMM to the young writer. In different circumstances, Bibesco’s sparkling accounts of socialising with so many outstanding French artists and writers would doubtless have appealed to KM too. Tensions between the Bloomsbury-based intellectuals and Bibesco and her more fashionable social circles resurfaced in the 1930s, when Bibesco began organising an anti-fascist exhibition in London and wrote to Woolf, seeking her support.5 Woolf wrote asking for details about

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how the exhibition would take ‘the woman question’ into account. Bibesco’s prim response, insisting that feminism was of no significance to her ‘matters of ultimate importance’, fuelled Woolf’s contempt and a crushingly tart reply. Both Woolf’s politics – resolutely refusing to separate the personal and the political – and her elegant disdain for what she saw as Bibesco’s shallow militancy while eschewing larger questions would surely have appealed hugely to KM. Claire Davison Notes 1. Bowen, p. xi. 2. See DVW2, p. 91. Woolf’s response was never merely sardonic, however. Her record of listening to JMM’s lamentations shows intense pity as much as distance; she also avenged KM’s despondency a year later with a veiled but public slight belittling the Princess, her literary ambitions and her pampered coquettishness. See ‘A Letter to a Lady in Paraguay’ in EVW6, pp. 391–5. 3. See Alpers, pp. 322–3. 4. See CW4, p. 338. 5. Woolf pasted the letter into the second volume of scrapbooks she collected during the decade, which gradually became the archive where she stored materials that inspired Three Guineas. The scrapbooks are now kept amongst the Monks House Papers at The Keep in Sussex (SxMS–18–3).

[24 March 1921] [ATL] Villa Isola Bella Garavan Menton A/M. 24 iii 1921 Dear Princess Bibesco I am afraid you must stop writing these little love letters to my husband while he and I live together.1 It is one of the things which is not done in our world. You are very young. Wont you ask your husband to explain to you the impossibility of such a situation. Please do not make me have to write to you again. I do not like scolding people and I simply hate having to teach them manners.2 Yours sincerely Katherine Mansfield.

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Notes 1. ‘Princess Bibesco’s intimacy with JMM had increased since they first came into contact over her submission of a story to the Athenaeum the year before. It would appear clear, however, that her advances were welcomed, if not initiated, by JMM himself. His insensitive handling of the affair, as far as both women were concerned, is recounted by most biographers. See KM’s account to Ida Baker above (pp. 100–1) and also her diary jottings (CW4, pp. 338, 341). 2. The subtle reminder of ‘manners’ is more than a prim retort. It is taut with class insinuations, reminiscent of KM’s critical reading of high society etiquette in her book reviews in the same years. She had, for example, written, or contributed to, a rather scathing review of Elizabeth Bibesco’s mother’s memoirs in 1920. See CW4, pp. 736–7, for instance, and her other reviews of similarly fashionable upper-class circles.

[April 1921] [ATL] [Draft] [Villa Isola Bella, Garavan, Menton] Dear Princess Bibesco,1 I sent you my ‘insolent’ letter because of this very thing. Your letters sounded insincere to me; I did not believe them. People dont write such things they only think they do, or they read them in books. But real life is on quite another plane. If I were not ill I still would have withdrawn from ‘the world’ because of my hatred of insincerity – It makes me dreadfully uncomfortable and unhappy. I could have answered your letter just in your vein and ‘accepted’ it – you knowing how I accepted it I knowing that you knew – but it wouldn’t have lasted. It would have been another cul-de-sac relationship. What good would that have been to either of us? You see – to me – Life and work are two things indivisible. Its only by being true to Life that I can be true to Art. And to be true to Life is to be good – sincere – simple – honest.2 I think other people have given you a wrong idea of me, perhaps. I only like to love my friends. I have no time for anything less ‘precious’. Friendship is an adventure but do we agree about the meaning of the word adventure: That’s so important! Thats why I feel we would quarrel. If you came onto our boat should we have understood one another? You must not think I am ‘prejudiced’ or unfair. I am not. I still wish it were possible but I cannot and I wont pretend. Let us really and truly know where we are first. Let us be open with each other and not concealing anything.

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Notes 1. In JMM’s edited, revisionist version of KM’s diaries and notebooks (Journal, 1954), this extract is included, with no addressee, under the heading ‘an unposted letter’ (pp. 236–7). 2. The tone, frame and even wording of this letter reflect KM’s intense engagement with Chekhov’s life, work and letters in the same months. See, for example, CW3, pp. 211, 245–9. See also Garnett’s Letters of Chekhov, which KM had read avidly, and Polonsky, pp. 201–14.

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Edmund Blunden (1896–1974)

Introduction Edmund Charles Blunden was an English poet, author and critic, educated at the same school as JMM – Christ’s Hospital, in London. For a period in 1920 and early 1921, he was JMM’s editorial assistant at the Athenaeum, JMM having already published two of Blunden’s poems in the paper: ‘Wilderness’ (12 March 1920) and ‘Chinese Pond’ (7 May 1920), as well as an article on the poet John Clare (5 March 1920). In a letter sent to KM on 25 February 1920, JMM had copied out and included the two poems mentioned above in a state of some excitement, writing: Something rather thrilling has happened. The other day a beautifully written (in both senses) article on the peasant poet John Clare came into the office. I thought it awfully good, accepted it on the spot, & wrote to the man to say so. He wrote back saying he knew about me, because I was a Christ’s Hospital boy. [. . .] He sent me a little book of his poems this morning [. . . with] three other poems [. . .] two of which I am going to print. [. . .] Now, old girl, tell me: isn’t that the real stuff? I’m sure it is. I think he’s our first real discovery, and he comes from my school!1

KM’s response, written on 2 March from Menton, offered a more cautious tone: Your Blunden man — oh what a curse. He doesn’t really thrill me yet. [. . . I]t seems to me the first poem overweighted – overheavy. But I know I am not fair & I understand what he must be to you & all success to him!

Later on, she came to like and admire him. In a letter to Dorothy Brett, written on 12 July 1920, KM tells her: ‘I would be delighted to see you on Friday but we have the little tiny Blundens coming to dinner.’ The only extant letter from KM to Blunden (the manuscript of which is lacking) discusses his poem Old Homes, published in book form in 1922, a copy of which he had evidently sent to KM. Written in rhyming couplets, the poem celebrated Blunden’s rural childhood. It is clear from the tone of the letter that KM had grown fond of young Blunden and was

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eager to encourage him, as she did other young writers such as William Gerhardi. The section she particularly liked is as follows: Thence too when high wind through the black clouds’ pouring, Bowing the strong trees’ creaking joints, went roaring, Adventure was to splash through the sightless lane When church-bells filled a pause of wind and rain, And once within the venerable walls To hear the elms without like waterfalls [. . .]2

Later an academic and highly regarded poet, Blunden won the Hawthornden Prize in 1922 and eventually ended his career as Professor of Poetry at the University of Oxford. He published a large number of poetry volumes during his lifetime and would be nominated a total of six times for the Nobel Prize in Literature. Gerri Kimber Notes 1. Hankin, pp. 289–91. 2. Blunden 1930, pp. 94–8.

[end July 1922] [Letters 1928, 2, p. 232] [Hôtel Château Belle Vue, Sierre] It is awfully kind of you to have sent me a copy of your lovely poem, Old Homes.1 Many, many thanks. I like especially the verse beginning: Thence, too, when high wind through the black clouds pouring – One walks straight into your chill, pale, wet world as one reads. . . . I love the sound of water in poetry. How are you, I wonder, and where are you spending the summer? It’s the moment here when all the dahlias are out, every little child is eating a green apple, the vines have been cut down for the last time and the grapes are as big as marbles. In fact, this whole valley is one great ripening orchard. Heavens! how beautiful apple trees are! But you know these things a great deal better than I do. If H.M.T.2 is near by – give him my love, will you? Notes 1. Blunden’s poem was printed as a slim octavo by W. T. Ward in 1922; only 100 signed copies were issued. It was one of a series of his post-war poems, in which he deliberately sought to shake off the nightmares of trench warfare

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and reconnect with the contemplative, pastoral vein of English poetry – here, his home town of Yalding in Kent. The fifth verse, which KM singles out, marks the agitated, tumultuous landscape during a storm, in which the ominous resonance of cosmic war sounds a bleak, topical note within the poem’s overall frame of serenity. The apocalyptically watery sound of this ‘chill, pale, wet world’ is the focus of the closing lines of the stanza: If this had been the tempest harbinger Of the world’s end and final Arbiter: The pollard’s in the yellow torrent drowning, The weir’s huge jaw a-gnashing, all heaven frowning. 2. Henry Major Tomlinson (1873–1958) was a prolific British author, travel writer and journalist, and a friend of JMM’s; he was then working for H. W. Massingham’s Nation but, like Blunden, was also involved in the Athenaeum. KM had reviewed his novel, Old Junk, in 1919 (see CW3, pp. 450–2).

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George Bowden (1877–1975)

Introduction Biographies of KM have not always been kind to her first husband, George Bowden. In some, he is almost portrayed as a figure of ridicule, and his – admittedly brief – walk-on part in her life is seen as more of a footnote to an otherwise salacious story of unwanted pregnancies, double-crossings and shady Polish émigrés. And yet the truth is somewhat different. Eleven years older than KM, born in 1877 and the son of a Baptist minister, Bowden was admitted as a choral scholar to King’s College, Cambridge, in 1899, at the age of 22, receiving his BA degree in 1902. After leaving Cambridge, he became a lecturer on voice production and a teacher of singing, first in England and later in America. Bowden recounts his initial meeting with KM, probably in February 1909, at the west London home of Dr C. W. Saleeby, a music enthusiast, whose wife was a daughter of the poet Alice Meynell. The pair discovered that they lived within walking distance of each other, for KM was residing at Beauchamp Lodge in Paddington and Bowden in a nearby bachelor flat, which he shared with his friend, Lamont Shand. According to Antony Alpers, who in the late 1940s interviewed KM’s close Beauchamp Lodge friend, Margaret Wishart, Bowden fell for her at once, bombarding her daily with love letters, which she read aloud to her friends. At this time, however, KM was pregnant with Garnet Trowell’s child. Ever the pragmatist and realising that she needed to secure a husband, she soon became a regular visitor to Bowden’s flat, and the pair quickly became engaged, as he explained: the occasion being marked by a festive celebration at the next Saleeby dinner party. K. Dutifully did her share of the honours, introducing me to those of her relatives living in London, among them her guardian uncle and the novelist, ‘Elizabeth’ [. . .] her cousin. But she was impatient with this side of her existence [. . .] Nor did they on their part appear to be familiar with her way of life or her friends, few of whom were even known to me.1

KM’s guardian in London (Henry Beauchamp) had written to her parents in New Zealand, informing them of the engagement, but as Bowden

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explained, she found the idea of having to wait for their consent – or worse, their arrival in London – ‘repugnant’, since ‘it carried the unbearable suggestion that of suffering again the domination from which she had only just escaped’ (p. 6). KM and Bowden were married at Paddington Register Office on 2 March 1909, with Ida Baker as the sole witness. Afterwards, Bowden complained of KM’s sudden and complete frigidity after we had reached the hotel suite where we were to spend the night. She had of her entirely free will entered into the marriage, we had had dinner and ‘done a show’ on our usual good terms, so that this anti-climactic denouement came as a complete surprise – not to say shock – to me. We left the hotel together the next morning, but instead of bringing her things from Beauchamp Lodge to the flat as arranged, she failed to appear, and it was something like a week before I could obtain an address.2

Bowden had no idea of KM’s pregnancy, discovering the truth only with the publication of Ruth Mantz’s biography in 1933. On hearing of the news of KM’s marriage, her mother Annie Beauchamp had immediately set sail for England; having arrived on 27 May, she immediately arranged a meeting with Bowden at the offices of the Bank of New Zealand. Bowden recounted that there was ‘constraint on both sides’, and that the conversation had chiefly turned on the ‘state of K’s health. I gave my opinion that her manner of living had not conduced to a reasonable care of herself’ (p. 12). In fact, he had claimed that he believed KM to be a lesbian: hence her refusal to consummate the marriage, for which a water cure – a German speciality – was deemed to offer a successful treatment. KM was therefore taken to Bavaria by her mother, who, also ignorant of her daughter’s pregnancy, left her there to take a ‘water cure’; Annie Beauchamp immediately returned to New Zealand and, on arrival, cut her wayward daughter out of her will. KM remained in Germany until the end of 1909, having met and fallen in love with a Polish émigré, Floryan Sobieniowski. However, KM came back into Bowden’s life early in 1910. According to notes written by Mantz during research for her biography, the reason that KM went back to Bowden was given to her by Ida Baker: ‘After K.M. returned from Bavaria, her father decreed that “since she was married” to George Bowden, she must return to him under threat of cancellation of her allowance of £100.’3 It is also almost certain that KM was pregnant once more on her return to England in January 1910, carrying Sobieniowski’s child and precipitating her return to her legal husband. Thus it was while staying at a country house in Lincolnshire that Bowden received two telegrams one evening in quick succession, stating that KM was back in London ‘and urging me to see her’ (p. 12). It was arranged that KM would move back in with him, ‘but though we were

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the best of friends as ever, the venture proved short-lived, and only on the surface a success’ (p. 12). During this second brief period together, KM had given Bowden the stories she had written in Bavaria to read, and at breakfast one morning in February, he suggested sending them to the New Age, a weekly arts and literature paper. Never one to let the grass grow under her feet, by dinner KM had taken them to the editor, A. R. Orage, in person, and ‘The Child-Who-Was-Tired’ was published on 24 February 1910, the first of many such publications in the New Age. Within a few weeks, however, KM suddenly disappeared – again – never to return. In mid-1912, some two years after the second attempt at living together, Bowden called on KM and her new partner, JMM, at 69 Clovelly Mansions, Gray’s Inn Road, to find out what her intentions were: She did not seem to be concerned about any proceedings that would make remarriage possible for her [. . .] For on leaving I asked her in his presence – half jokingly – if they wanted to marry, and she looked quizzically at him and said something like, ‘Do we, J. M.?’ Incidentally [. . .] it had happened that K. M., with the easy manner of a good hostess asked me if I would not sing something for them. And on finding a volume of Schumann’s songs – for low voice, however – I went to the piano and played and sang one or two.4

Indeed, for the rest of his life, Bowden would affirm that all initiatives towards a divorce came from him, and that at no time did KM or JMM ever suggest expediting it. Regarding the divorce, ‘Bowden against Bowden and Murry’, the decree nisi was eventually formalised on 17 October 1917, citing that the respondent, Kathleen Bowden, had been guilty of adultery with the correspondent, John Middleton Murry. The decree absolute came through on 29 April 1918. Bowden’s second wife (after KM) was Annie Frances Moore (known as Dina) and they were married on 22 March 1919 in Berkeley, California. She was 25 and Bowden 41 at the time of their marriage. He had gone to the USA in 1915 and taught music at the University of California in Berkeley from 1915 to 1918. He then moved to New York in 1918 and met his wife, who was studying music there. In a letter dated 27 February 1919, sent to his prospective father-inlaw, Bowden had focused on his wife, KM, being ‘sexually unbalanced’: ‘While her people in New Zealand were aware of this, her guardian in London was not, and as we married after a short acquaintance, it was only then conditions became known to me.’5 Almost certainly, he was trying to explain how he had been very much the innocent party in his first disastrous marriage, and egged his pudding by encouraging his future fatherin-law to believe that KM was a lesbian, thereby rendering the marriage useless. The Bowdens spent nearly all of their married life in Mallorca, Spain, and would go on to have one son and three grandchildren. Gerri Kimber

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Notes 1. HRC: George Bowden file, Katherine Mansfield Collection, 2.7. 2. Letter from George Bowden to Antony Alpers, 16 November 1949 (ATL: qms–0263). 3. HRC: Ruth Elvish Mantz collection. ‘Swing on the Garsington Gate’, miscellaneous box, n.p. 4. Letter from George Bowden to Antony Alpers, 16 November 1949 (ATL: qms–0263). 5. Letter from George Bowden to Andrew Moore, 27 February 1919 (ATL: MS-Papers–3886).

[23 May 1912] [ATL] 69 Clovelly Mansions, Gray’s Inn Road WC

May 23rd

Dear G. I called at the Bank of New Zealand this afternoon and saw Mr Kay who gave me your letter and told me of his interview with you. Thank you for your letter. I should very much like to see you if it can be arranged and discuss your project with reference to an American divorce – I think it is in every way the wisest plan for us both.1 But arrange a time for us to meet, G. will you? I was sorry not to see you on Saturday afternoon – Believe me, Sincerely yours K. Notes 1. For a detailed account of KM’s relationship with Bowden, along with details of their divorce attempts, see Kimber 2020, ‘“An intellectual comradeship”: A reassessment of the relationship between George Bowden and Katherine Mansfield’.

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Edwin J. Brady (1869–1952)

Introduction Edwin James Brady was an Australian journalist, who, from August to December 1907, was editor of the Native Companion, a little magazine published in Melbourne. Only eleven issues of the magazine were ever published, with Brady editing the last five. As Jean Stone notes, the magazine was ‘professionally edited and well produced and attracted to its pages the work of some of Australia’s and New Zealand’s best known authors’.1 Four contributions by KM appeared in the last three issues: ‘Vignettes’ (October 1907), ‘Silhouettes’ (November 1907), ‘In the Botanical Gardens’ and ‘In a Café’ (December 1907). They were all signed ‘K. Mansfield’, except for ‘In the Botanical Gardens’, which was signed ‘Julian Mark’. KM submitted several of her vignettes to Brady, having been encouraged to do so by her father’s friend, Tom L. Mills, a New Zealand journalist, who had been asked to read some of his daughter’s work by Harold Beauchamp. Brady’s autobiography recounts his early misgivings that such a young woman could have written the stories: When her contributions began to flow in I grew suspicious – the matter and treatment seemed too sophisticated for a girl of seventeen, – . I thought that perhaps Frank Morton, then in New Zealand, who was also writing for me, might be ‘putting one over’. I knew no writer at the time with a more finished literary style than Morton and somehow connected up with him on that line of doubt. So I wrote to Miss Beauchamp and queried her identity. Her father replied assuring me I need have no fear of being imposed on [. . .] I had several stories and sketches of hers in hand and in type when the magazine went out of publication. I regretfully returned accepted manuscripts to contributors [. . .] I have consoled myself since by reflecting that if the Native Companion did no more than open the door of publication to Katherine Mansfield it was worthwhile.2

Many years later, on 18 March 1922, in a letter to her father, KM wrote: ‘I have certainly been most fortunate as a writer. It is strange to remember buying a copy of The Native Companion on Lambton Quay

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and standing under a lamp with darling Leslie to see if my story had been printed.’ KM’s responses below to letters from Brady were brazen, to say the least, but they certainly marked her out as different and attracted Brady to both the author and her stories. Gerri Kimber Notes 1. Stone, p. 10. 2. Ibid., pp. 10–11.

[23 September 1907] [ATL] 4 Fitzherbert Terrace. Wellington 23. ix. 07. E.J. Brady Esq Dear Sir – Thank you for your letter – I liked the perempatory tone – With regard to the ‘Vignettes’1 I am sorry that resemble their illustrious relatives to so marked an extent – and assure you – they feel very much my own2 – This style of work absorbs me, at present – but – well – it cannot be said that anything you have of mine is ‘cribbed’ – – – Frankly – I hate plagiarism. I send you some more work – practically there is nothing local – except the ‘Botanical Garden’ Vignette3 – The reason is that for the last few years London has held me – very tightly indeed – and I’ve not yet escaped. You ask for some details as to myself. I am poor – obscure – just eighteen years of age – with a rapacious appetite for everything and principles as light as my purse – – If this pleases you – this MSS please know that there is a great deal more where this comes from – I am very grateful to you and very interested in your Magazine. Sincerely K.M. Beauchamp – Notes 1. For the four vignettes published by the Native Companion, see CW1, pp. 78–86. 2. KM was not alone in defending the integrity of her stories; her father also wrote to Brady on 10 October 1907, assuring the editor that ‘She herself is,

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I think, a very original character, and writing – whether it be good or bad – comes to her very naturally.’ See Stone, p. 17. 3. The vignette ‘In the Botanical Gardens’ is written in highly sensuous prose, revisiting the vast gardens to the north of Tinakori Road in Wellington.

[11 October 1907] [ATL] 4 Fitzherbert Terrace. Wellington – 11 X 07. Dear Mr Brady Thank you for your note – and the cheque too – Encouragement has studiously passed me by for so long, that I am very appreciative. I like the name ‘Silhouette’1 – If you do print more than one ‘Vignette’ in the November issue – please do not use the name K. M Beauchamp. I am anxious to be read only as K. Mansfield or K.M. Mr Brady – I am afraid that so much kindness on your part may result in an inundation of MSS from me – but the kindness is very pleasant. Sincerely Kathleen M Beauchamp. Notes 1. The short sketch for which Brady suggested the title appeared in the Native Companion on 1 November 1907. The title does indeed capture the various sketchy outlines framed by the story – that of an enraptured female observer looking down from her window, that of a suggestively stirring laurestinus bush in the avenue outside, the distant outline of sombre hills seen in the dusky half-light, and shadowy glimpses of unknown passers-by. See CW1, pp. 83–4.

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Dorothy Brett (1883–1977)

Introduction KM first met Dorothy Brett at Garsington Manor in July 1916, when Brett placed rolled pellets of bread into KM’s pockets at lunch, aware that they shared the experience of feeling like fish out of water. Afterwards, KM came to Brett’s room, requesting a pledge of friendship, as she had once done with Ida Baker at Queen’s College. Their relationship was similar in other ways, which might explain the animosity that persisted between Brett and Baker.1 Although KM’s tone in her correspondence with Brett is consistently kinder than that used with Baker, her letters often read as if imparting sagacity to a green companion, despite Brett being five years her senior. KM was aware of a lack of confidence within Brett, which she sought to rebalance; as she explained to Koteliansky (see letter of 2 August 1922), ‘She is weak [. . .]; she must be fed on the sap of another.’ It is difficult not to detect a resonance in the story ‘The Canary’, which KM speaks of dedicating to Brett in her letter of 26 February 1922, with its description of captivity and an ineffable sadness whose tones are not quite caught. Despite KM’s encouragement and coaching attitude, Brett can appear needy and unsure of herself, though this might be partly explained by guilt at the complicated feelings she had toward JMM. As recounted fervidly in KM’s diary, the pair had become romantically entangled, not too long after Brett had acted as witness at KM and JMM’s wedding at Kensington Registry Office (see CW4, pp. 315–17).2 KM forgave them both, but late in the year 1922, when living together with Brett at Pond Street, she made Koteliansky promise that he would do all he could to prevent Brett and JMM from marrying.3 In spite of these complications, the correspondence between KM and Brett is voluminous, illuminating and crucial. The letters that KM wrote to Brett from the Chalet des Sapins are exquisite in their rendering of the glacial world she shared with JMM during those creatively prosperous months. Although the pair’s happiness at Montana may have been over-emphasised for personal–political reasons, KM does not appear to bowdlerise her accounts of her experience of illness when writing to Brett

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as much as with others, even though in a late letter of 15 October 1922, she confesses: ‘In my heart I am far more desperate about my illness and about Life than I ever show you [. . .] I have no belief whatever in any kind of medical treatment.’ Brett’s experience of disability through deafness perhaps gave KM access to an increased frankness with regard to matters of the body. The pair were also, importantly, ‘kindred spirit[s]’ and artists.4 Arguably, KM’s clearest articulations of her personal aesthetics are contained in correspondence with Brett. Brett had quit her aristocratic roots to attend the Slade School of Art alongside Dora Carrington and Mark Gertler from 1910 onwards and her ongoing artistic works are frankly critiqued by KM in her correspondence. In her advice to Brett on life and art, ideas of authenticity and direct honesty are increasingly prominent; these parallel KM’s own core philosophy for living and working, but she finds it necessary to emphasise them particularly for Brett’s benefit.5 In addition, KM sets out her own artistic methods and visions more specifically. Among those letters of obvious importance is the communiqué in which KM describes her mode of production as an intimate process of becoming: ‘at any moment I may produce an apple, miraculously, out of my own being like the conjuror produces the egg’, asking Brett, ‘When you paint apples do you feel that your breasts and your knees become apples, too?’ (11 October 1917). And then 12 September 1921 yields correspondence comprising a bonanza of life writing, art critique and professional discussion, where KM explains her experience of writing ‘At the Bay’ as an act of personal remembrance, which also speaks to ‘the secret self we all have’. A further letter from the Swiss mountains describes KM’s arresting memory of viewing van Gogh paintings at an exhibition: ‘They taught me something about writing, which was queer – a kind of freedom – or rather, a shaking free’ (5 December 1921). Brett’s epistolary relationship with KM was maintained even after her death – she would address diary entries to her, bizarrely writing to her about her own sexual relationship with JMM and jealously complaining about Frieda Lawrence into the bargain.6 In addition, Brett had made the discovery of unfavourable letters that KM had sent to other friends, of which she wrote ‘to’ KM: ‘I can’t help even now being astonished and once more horrified that you could have loved me as you did and yet written of me like that = hardly once have you said of me to your other friends a kind word.’7 Despite the obvious hurt this would have caused, Brett was well aware of KM’s chameleon guises – she commented as much in her remembrance of KM, included in Adam International Review in 1965. By contrast with Anne Estelle Rice’s recollections, Brett’s appear rather truncated and sober, written from the perspective of being in her eighties in New Mexico, where she had settled. In her short piece, Brett perceptively highlights the influence of illness on KM’s life and work, as well as her personal affinities with D. H. Lawrence. She also performs

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two acts of deference to KM – firstly, in diffidently describing a ‘stodgy’ portrait of KM that she completed after her death, performing the type of self-critique of which KM would likely have approved, and secondly in clearly stating that ‘Katherine and Murry were always deeply in love’.8 The Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas holds an extensive Dorothy Brett collection and the British Library has recorded interviews with Brett as part of its sound archive. Aimée Gasston Notes 1. Hignett 1984, pp. 119, 127, 134. 2. The digitised typescript held by the Harry Ransom Center can be viewed online at: (last accessed 17 August 2019). Perhaps pointedly, KM had written to JMM earlier that year: ‘Brett is a dear creature but [. . .] much more a friend of yours than mine’ (22 April 1920). On 18 March 1920, she wrote to Brett herself, asking her to burn the letter in which she had ‘shown her wounds’ – a request with which Brett complied. After knowledge of the indiscretion, KM wrote to Brett on 19 August 1920, asking her to return those letters she had previously sent that were of a confidential nature. 3. Jones 2010, p. 450. Sean Hignett’s biography of Brett also makes nimble work of tracing the tortuous meanderings of the relationship between Brett and JMM, both before and after KM’s death. 4. See letter of 4 August 1921. 5. For example, in her letter of 9 January 1921: ‘I think the important thing is – to make ones Life part of ones work – to live as honestly as one paints or writes [. . .] You can’t pretend for a moment.’ 6. Hignett’s Brett contains a number of extracts from the diary. 7. Diary entry of 22 July 1923. Quoted in Hignett, p. 137. 8. Brett 1965, pp. 86–7.

[1 August 1917] [N] [141A Church Street, Chelsea] Aug 1st 1917 Wednesday. Dearest Brett, I must tell you how excited I am that Murry is so enthusiastic about your picture – and I cant help delighting in the thought of you listening to all Clive’s bubble blowing with this quite trump card up your monastic sleeve.1 Do tell me how it goes on & what you decide about

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the ‘background’. Murry was especially impressed with the middle figure in the bonnet: with your easy, beautiful handling of it. There it was.2 Thinking about you Ive got such a picture in my mind to entreat you to paint – that I long to describe it. But Ill wait till we meet. Cut my throat, Brett if its not a good ’un. But if this weather goes on, my girl, Im afraid you’ll have to make a canvas boat of your picture and I will have to turn my writing table upside down and float out of the window. But perhaps God in His goodness will allow us to bob near each other for a moment. I have been informed by my great aunt Charlotte (of Bangalore, Worple Avenue)3 that all those who are saved have expected a recurrence of the flood ever since the Kaiser was recognised to be Anti Christ.4 And are Fully Prepared for it. Cant you see them, ‘done up in impervious cases, like preserved meats’ like the Micawber family starting off for America5 – – I spent a mournful half morning yesterday being thumped and banged & held up by the heels by my doctor, who gave me no comfort at all, but half hinted, in fact, that given another hearty english winter or two – the chances were that I’d bend and bow under my rheumatism until I became a sort of permanent croquet hoop . . . So if, in a year or two (I don’t think the rain will stop before then) you should come through my gate & find me in the garden as a sort of decorative arch with a scarlet runner6 growing over me you will know that the worst has happened. Goodbye for now, mia bella.7 Salute my friends, frown on my enemies & remember me to Herr Mark.8 Yours ever Katherine. Notes 1. Brett’s 1917 painting, Conversation Piece at Garsington, also known as Umbrellas and now at Manchester City Gallery, depicts a group of friends in the relaxed, rural setting of Garsington’s gardens, gently shaded by variously coloured, large umbrellas that give a stylised, spiralling dynamic to the otherwise poised scene. Most of the figures are recognisably Bloomsbury familiars: Ottoline Morrell presiding at the centre, her daughter Julian, Aldous Huxley, Brett, Lytton Strachey, JMM and KM, and probably Clive Bell too. See Frances Spalding, ‘Dorothy Brett’s Umbrellas’, in Katherine Mansfield and Translation, where the picture features on the front cover, and is presented and contextualised (pp. 178–80). 2. Next to this word is a tiny drawing of a lady’s head with a bonnet. 3. KM is referring to Charlotte (Chaddie) Waterlow, née Beauchamp, sister of Elizabeth von Arnim and mother of Sydney Waterlow. 4. Kaiser Wilhelm II was the last German Emperor and the eldest grandchild of Queen Victoria. As such, he is the perfect example of the tight dynastic

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and diplomatic links between Britain and Germany in the nineteenth century. Wilhelm’s aggressive foreign policy from the mid-1890s onwards, however, severely damaged the alliance, leading to an escalation of tensions that came to a head in 1914, when the former ally became Britain’s foremost enemy. Wilhelm II abdicated in 1918. KM is referring to characters in Charles Dickens’s David Copperfield (1850); the novel’s extended dénouement includes the narrator’s account of the Micawber family just before they emigrate to Australia, looking for a new start in life after Micawber’s harsh experiences in a debtors’ prison, and then in the hands of a dishonest employer. It is the Micawber children whom David sees ‘done up, like preserved meats, in impervious cases’ on the eve of their departure (Chapter 57). The Scarlet Runner is a fast-growing vine, whose clusters of flowers make it a popular garden shrub; it is also grown for its green ‘runner beans’, which, if left on the vine, ripen into a deep purple bean that can be dried and eaten. (It.): My beauty. ‘Herr’ refers to their mutual friend and Brett’s fellow artist, Mark Gertler. The German ‘Herr’ is ironic or affectionate: Gertler was British-born, the youngest child of Polish–Jewish immigrants, and also a staunch conscientious objector in the war.

[11 October 1917] [N] [141A Church Street, Chelsea] Thursday. My dear Brett, It is a cold sharp day – I can see the sun flying in the sky like a faint far-away flag – my Japanese doll has gone into boots for the winter and the studio smells of quinces.1 I have to write all day with my feet in the fringe of the fire – and oh Alas! it is sad to think that I shall be warm in front and cold behind from now until next June. It seems to me so extraordinarily right that you should be painting Still Lives just now.2 What can one do, faced with this wonderful tumble of round bright fruits, but gather them and play with them – and become them, as it were. When I pass the apple stalls I cannot help stopping and staring until I feel that I, myself, am changing into an apple, too – and that at any moment I may produce an apple, miraculously, out of my own being like the conjuror produces the egg . . . When you paint apples do you feel that your breasts and your knees become apples, too? Or do you think this the greatest nonsense. I don’t. I am sure it is not. When I write about ducks I swear that I am a white duck with a round eye, floating in a pond fringed with yellow – blobs and taking an occasional dart at the other duck with the round eye, which floats upside down beneath

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me . . In fact this whole process of becoming the duck (what Lawrence would, perhaps, call this consummation with the duck or the apple!!)3 is so thrilling that I can hardly breathe, only to think about it. For although that is as far as most people can get, it is really only the ‘prelude’.4 There follows the moment when you are more duck more apple or more Natasha5 than any of these objects could ever possibly be, and so you create them anew. Brett: (switching off the instrument):6 ‘Katherine I beg of you to stop. You must tell us all about it at the Brotherhood Church one Sunday evening.’7 K. Forgive me. But that is why I believe in technique, too. (You asked me if I did.) I do, just because I dont see how art is going to make that divine spring into the bounding outlines of things if it hasn’t passed through the process of trying to become these things before re creating them. I have left your letter unanswered for more days than I would have wished. But don’t think it was just because I am so careless & faithless. No, really not. I enjoyed keeping silent with the letter just as one enjoys walking about in silence with another until a moment comes when one turns and puts out a hand and speaks. I threw my darling to the wolves and they ate it and served me up so much praise in such a golden bowl that I couldn’t help feeling gratified.8 I did not think they would like it at all and I am still astounded that they do. ‘What form is it? you ask. Ah, Brett, its so difficult to say. As far I know its more or less my own invention. And how have I shaped it?’ . . This is about as much as I can say about it. You know, if the truth were known I have a perfect passion for the island where I was born. Oh, I out-Chili Chili any day!9 Well, in the early morning there I always remember feeling that this little island has dipped back into the dark blue sea during the night only to rise again at beam of day, all hung with bright spangles and glittering drops – (When you ran over the dewy grass you positively feel that your feet tasted salt.) I tried to catch that moment – with something of its sparkle and its flavour. And just as on those mornings white milky mists rise and uncover some beauty, then smother it again and then again disclose it I tried to lift that mist from my people and let them be seen and then to hide them again . . . Its so difficult to describe all this and it sounds perhaps over ambitious and vain. But I don’t feel anything but intensely a longing to serve my subject as as well as I can –– But the unspeakable thrill of this art business. What is there to compare! And what more can one desire. Its not a case of keeping the home fire burning for me. Its a case of keeping the home fire down to a respectable blaze and little enough. If you don’t come and see me soon there’ll be nothing but a little heap of ash and two crossed pens upon it.

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Are you coming to London soon – Let me know. Let us meet. Shall I see you float across my window upon a chariot of bright umbrellas? . .10 Venus Laughing From the Skies . . .11 Isn’t it a beautiful title, when all is said and done – Goodbye goodbye goodbye. It is all too wonderful Katherine. Notes 1. KM had a beloved Japanese doll, which she named Ribni, or Ribnikov, after the fictional Captain Ribnikov, Japanese spy and infiltrator of the Russian army, and the hero of a 1916 short story by Kuprin, which KM and JMM later co-translated with Koteliansky (see CW3, pp. 151–81). As numerous letters and notebook jottings attest, KM also gives Ribnikov an imaginative life of his own, always recounted with relish and tenderness. 2. Although she maintained a life-long interest in stylised still-life and portrait painting, Brett completed a number of post-Impressionist studies for still lifes with fruit in the late war years, leading to the well-known 1918 oil painting, Still Life with Fruit and Frog. 3. Critics have long speculated about the exact meaning of ‘consummation’ in D. H. Lawrence’s early works and philosophy; above all, it harks back to a form of primal innocence while also embracing an intuition of spiritual completion or fulfilment. This yearning for full consciousness and physical wholeness is one of the dominant themes of his 1915 masterpiece Women in Love, as well as a number of his animal poems and the later Lady Chatterley’s Lover; it was also a preoccupation that JMM singled out scathingly for its ‘degradation’ in his review of the novel (see Kaplan 2010, pp. 138–40). 4. Although KM is clearly using the term ‘prelude’ here in its classical musical sense – an opening piece setting the tone for a larger composition – she had been avidly exploring the shift from musical prelude to a more scenic, self-contained ‘prelude’ in exactly the same months, as she worked her draft story ‘The Aloe’ into its final published version, ‘Prelude’. 5. Countess Natalya Rostova, or ‘Natasha’, is the captivating heroine of Tolstoy’s War and Peace, a figure whose keen eye for detail and rich, sensuous, spontaneous zest for everyday life made her a model both for Tolstoy himself and for KM, as so many of her reading notes and life-long engagements with the great Russian novel attest. In her memoirs, Ottoline Morrell also recalls discussing Natasha at length with KM (Morrell 1983, pp. 121–2; 1974, p. 186). 6. Brett’s ‘instrument’ was the ear trumpet that increasingly forced its way into her daily life to counter the deafness that set her so much apart from her contemporaries (see Hignett, pp. 49–52). 7. The Brotherhood Church on Southgate Road, London, was the venue chosen for a meeting of workers’ and soldiers’ committees, backed by the NoConscription Fellowship, on 28 July 1917. The initiative, fully supported by the ardently pacifist clergyman, was part of Bertrand Russell’s plan to

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collected letters of katherine mansfield, vol. 1 set up a People’s Party with socialist guilds. One of Russell’s subsidiary aims was to foster support for the newly elected but vulnerable Kerensky government in Russia, following the February Revolution, which had brought the Menshevik party to power. Both Russell and Koteliansky had been lobbying the British government to lend more support to the nascent state, aware, as they were, that pursuing the war would have devastating consequences for Britain’s ally. Russell wrote a bitter account in his autobiography of his attempt to address the meeting, which was wrecked as much by organised saboteurs as by mob violence. See also his letter to Ottoline Morrell in Russell 1990, pp. 116–17. Many of Virginia and Leonard Woolf’s friends referred to them affectionately as ‘the Wolves’, a nickname that made even more sense, given the peer group’s pleasure in attributing animal nicknames. By blending the jocular usage with the more ominously connoted idiom, ‘to throw to the wolves’, KM does, however, highlight the ambivalent tensions that underscored her complex friendship with Virginia Woolf (see Froula et al. 2018). She is referring here to her story ‘Prelude’, which was published by Virginia and Leonard Woolf’s newly founded Hogarth Press, then based in Richmond. ‘Chili’ was the nickname given to Alvaro Guevara (1894–1951), a Chilean artist of distant Spanish aristocratic origin whom Brett had first met at the Slade. He had arrived in London from Valparaíso in 1910, working for his father’s immense and very lucrative textile company, but quickly drifted away from business into the artistic and avant-garde circles of London. His closest friends were Mark Gertler, Isaac Rosenberg and David Bomberg. As in the previous letter, KM refers here to Brett’s 1917 painting, ‘Umbrellas’. The title of a song sung by the Chorus of Heathens in Act II, scene 1 of George Frideric Handel’s oratorio Theodora (1750), with a libretto by Thomas Morell. KM is clearly suggesting a playful parallel between the relaxed, near-pastoral idyll in Brett’s picture of a Garsington social occasion and the brothel of Venus in the oratorio.

[19 November 1917] [N] [141A Church Street, Chelsea] Dearest Brett I left an envelope on my doorstep today for fear lest you should call & find me gone. I should love to see you, while you are in town and so let us try to manage it somehow. But the facts are these. Murry is in the throes of that long expected breakdown.1 He is no longer at the office, he has to go away for some time to some place where the SUN shines, and at present I am as you may imagine, rather tied. He has been appallingly, terrifyingly weak and ill – and is much wasted away – I don’t think he will be back in London at work all this winter, but he

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talks of being alright again in 6 weeks – My dear girl – I shall be at his place for T tomorrow – at 47 Redcliffe Road. Will you come there? Or will you dine with me tomorrow in town? Anywhere. The Sceptre, par exemple.2 But he would just love to see you if you can manage tomorrow. Bus no 14 passes the end of his road – (tomorrow of course means Tuesday.) I am sorry the Wolves are at Garsington.3 There will be a rare bone dragged into the light before they are gone – I agree with all you say about Ottoline – yes with every word. She is all that – she is like music . . But if my letter hurt her she must know how she hurt me –4 I do hope that we shall see you tomorrow at T time. We speak of you so often. Brett darling. I am yours as ever Katherine. Notes 1. JMM’s thankless and draining work at the War Office, based at Watergate House, where he was a translator of international press releases and editor of the Daily Review of the Foreign Press, along with extensive editorial undertakings, had led to a complete nervous breakdown by November 1917, and he was declared ‘in imminent danger of tuberculosis’ by his doctors (Lea 1959, pp. 56–7). 2. The Crown and Sceptre in Foley Street, London, was a pub and ‘chop house’, and also the traditional meeting place of T. E. Hulme’s circle after his Tuesday evening salons in Fitzroy Street. It was also a firm favourite with the Imagists, Georgian poets, avant-garde painters and New Age contributors. See, for example, Nevinson’s Paint and Prejudice, p. 84–6. 3. While Brett was living semi-permanently at Garsington in these months, she had met Virginia and Leonard Woolf during a weekend party there on 16–19 November. Woolf briefly described the event to her sister Vanessa Bell, who was, like Brett, a former student at the Slade, although their years there did not overlap. See LVW2, pp. 197–8. 4. Virginia Woolf noted in her diary, ‘K.M. has broken with Ott. in a letter which says “You shan’t play the Countess to my Cook any more”’ (DVW1, p. 75). The letter (written 22 October 1917) at the origin of this admittedly short-lived misunderstanding refers to an evening at the Charing Cross Road Hippodrome, where KM and Ottoline had planned to meet but didn’t. KM confesses her elusive absence in terms of feeling riled by a sense of social inferiority (‘playing Cook to your Duchess in Alice in Wonderland’), and also a sense of being out of place in the gossip-mongering camaraderie and the ‘spirit of a jaunt’ of Garsington. While the veiled critique clearly upset Ottoline, the two women rapidly patched up their friendship, in part thanks to Brett’s mediation; Ottoline’s memoirs of those years make no mention of this particular misunderstanding, despite a chapter tackling her ‘Quarrel

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with the Murrys’. Within a month, KM was writing to ‘Ottoline, my dearest one’ to seek her helping caring for JMM, to which Ottoline responded to ‘dearest Katherine’, within hours, by telegram. See also Morrell 1974, pp. 185–92.

[21 November 1917] [N] 141A [Church Street, Chelsea] Nov. 21st 1917 141A Dearest Brett, I spent at least ½ an hour in the Chelsea Post Office this evening trying to get through to you on the ’phone. First they said you were engaged & then that ‘there was no reply from the number’. I told them that you were there, did my utmost, but it was simply hopeless. They finally refused to answer my ringing at all – and I came out of the box positively gasping with rage. Here is, dearest girl, the full report from Head Quarters. I wrote Ottoline last night & wired her at dawn. This is her perfect answer.1 It really is a masterpiece of an answer – don’t you think? I wired then again. Murry wrote fully, too, explaining his little self. But here is the Great Brick. He cannot travel till Saturday – I have urged and implored him to go tomorrow, but he says simply that he cant, and please to ‘tell Brett what a brute I feel and to ask her to forgive me.’ He says he must arrange his affairs here – that I cant do it – and Saturday is the first moment he can get away. So don’t wait for him. I am so infinitely sorry that it has kept you in town another day, but what can I do? On Saturday I whisk him to Paddington & put him into that morning train. Brett, he really is ill. Do look after him. I felt quite terrified about him today – he is so pale and frail-looking. And explain just what we have decided to O. won’t you? But I know you will. What a winged messenger you were yesterday – & how you comforted me. Bless you for it. Always as ever your Katherine. Notes 1. Ottoline’s response to KM’s appeal for help nursing JMM (see above, pp. 346–7), sent the morning after receiving KM’s telegram, reads ‘Of course delighted have you both dearest Katherine come soon why not today Ottoline’ (ATL).

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[7 December 1917] [N] [141A Church Street, Chelsea] 1.45 A.M. Very quiet and attentive prior to Bombs dropping.1 Dearest Brett, I have been writing all the evening & now, with a ten minutes interval I should like, so to speak, to walk up and down the corridor with you, before the curtain rings up again. I really can’t travel this weekend. It is 2 cold and I am 2 cold and my cold is 2 bad. So I am hugging the cave and sitting wrapped up in a rug, very self contained and luxurious. How are you? Are you in a working mood? We had no talk at all really. I did feel (as you jolly well know) uncommonly awkward down there & then lying in Mademoiselle’s little cubby hole seemed to remove me miles and miles away from you.2 It is another house up there. And then one did so tend to talk politics. Rather comic to use the little Welshman as a fan and hide behind him . . .3 Miss D. Brett has painted a companion picture to the Gamps.4 It is called Politics. Scene: the fireplace in the red room. Mademoiselle in left hand corner, profile holding a tray of coffee. Someone with his back turned helping himself. Philip in the middle of the fireplace, very bland and double breasted, smoking a cigarette in a long holder. Ottoline in armchair in right hand corner with a tangle of bright wools spilling out of her lap. Brett on the floor in brocade shoes, holding the bellows and in the foreground Murry seated, black beyond measure & Henry Bentinck with his legs crossed, his hand shading his eyes. You might, if you were particularly devilish call this The Great War instead. But I do wish, Miss, as how you would paint it.5 Why does one get so peckish in the stilly watches? I have just summoned the waiter and ordered the wing of a chicken, very hot, with a rum omelet to follow and half a bottle of wine. He has gone away, but I am afraid he will be a long time executing the order . . . In Heaven the waiter will always come back within five minutes – don’t you feel? This is only a note by the way, a pin stuck in to make you write me one of your pearls of letters. I shant write any more. Ill go to bed. My bed is waiting Cool and Fresh With linen White and Fair And I must off to Sleep-sum-bye BUT not forget my prayer! And my neapolitan ice pyjamas wrapped round the water bottil. The Lord be with you. Hug the lad for me,6 & tell me if you think he is putting on our mysterious enemy Flesh.

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Brett: Katherine, you are very silly tonight. I am. But if you knew how hard I have been working you’d forgive me and not disdain the honest worker’s palm of Katherine qui vous aime.7 Notes 1. The first Zeppelin raids over England began in September 1917 and continued sporadically until the end of the war. A particularly intense campaign began on the night of 5 December; alerts were sounded by hooters, flares, whistles and distress rockets, and the ‘all-clear’ called by bugle. There were no air-raid shelters, which impelled civilians to take shelter in basements, under staircases or in the Tube stations. Woolf captures the eerie apprehension of the air-raids in the 1917 chapter of The Years. 2. KM here recalls her most recent visit to Garsington the previous weekend, when she slept in the room of Juliet Baillot, the Swiss-born governess of Julian (only daughter of Ottoline and Philip Morrell), often referred to by friends and close family as ‘Ma’amselle’. In 1919, Juliet would marry Julian Huxley, brother of Aldous. 3. ‘The little Welshman’ was a title conferred by politicians and the British press in general on the Liberal politician David Lloyd George after 1909 – an epithet sometimes used disparagingly, but also quickly picked up as a testimony of Welsh bravery in many Welsh newspapers. Appointed Secretary of State for War in June 1916, following the death of Kitchener, Lloyd George then became Prime Minister the following December after the resignation of Herbert Asquith. The Asquiths were neighbours of the Morrells, and Herbert Asquith was a close colleague of Philip Morrell; as such, they were regular visitors to Garsington. 4. Derived from the character Sarah Gamp, a rather slovenly nurse in Dickens’s Martin Chuzzlewit, the term ‘The Gamps’ was contemporary slang for either negligent nursing staff or a makeshift hospital. KM appears here to be conflating this sense with a loosely abbreviated label for Garsington, then a nursing hospital for shell-shocked soldiers. 5. KM’s evocation of a painting that Brett could paint, reflecting the social interior of Garsington in the same way that Umbrellas (see above, p. 342, n. 1) portrayed sociability in the gardens, is a fine example of the vivid visual and aural idiom that became characteristic of their correspondence. Henry (Cavendish-)Bentinck was the elder brother of Ottoline. 6. JMM had gone to stay with Brett. See previous letter, p. 348. 7. (Fr.): Katherine who loves you.

[12 December 1917] [N] [141A Church Street, Chelsea] Dearest Brett. Snow use.1 My medicine man2 will not let me stray into wild pastures & I shant be able to meet you in the Lyons den3 on Friday. I am so sorry. I would have loved a bone and a chat but my left water wing has

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played up4 – curse its eyes! How long will you be in Town? Shall you feel inclined to alight on this doorstep – isn’t it a devil of a way out – but youll be heartily welcome – a bright fire and a nice hot cup of tea – Ill write you at length another time – Theres tons I want to say but I am catching a post – making a kind of dash for it. The tooth is out & Ottoline & I have had a rare giggle at it. Bless you. Kiss your hot water bottle for me. Ever yours. K. Notes 1. KM’s characteristic language play: ‘It’s no use.’ 2. Dr William Bradshaw Ainger was a New Zealand-born doctor working in London who had begun attending KM just one month earlier; it was he who first identified the ‘spot’ on her right lung. 3. Lyons’ Corner Houses were a small chain of fashionable teashops launched in 1909 following the success of the original Lyons’ teashop in London’s Piccadilly. Rosabel, the heroine of KM’s 1908 story ‘The Tiredness of Rosabel’, has a meagre tea in Lyons’ while dreaming of a gentler, more comfortable lifestyle. See CW1, pp. 133–7. 4. KM frequently referred to her lungs as her wings. For more explicit usage, see above, p. 86, n. 3.

[30 April 1918] [N] [47 Redcliffe Road, Fulham] April 30th 191 Darling Brett. If you would Call for Murry on Thursday at One Oclock at his House of Business he would convey you on the Wings of Love to the Appointed Spot,1 and Lunch will follow. It will be Great Fun, Larks and Jollifications. I am wearing, of course, a Simple Robe of White Crepe de Chine and Pearl Butterfly presented by our dear Queen. Murry, naturally, top hat and carnation buttonhole. Blessings on thee – I hope thou wilt be Godmother to my First Half Dozen – Katherine. P.S. We have decided (owing to the great war) to have a string band without brasses. * In the top left corner of the page, KM has drawn a tiny bird in ink labelled (A) and then, next to it, writes: ‘(A) a dove’ (the A in both cases is circled).

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Notes 1. KM and JMM were planning their wedding, at which Brett was to be one of the witnesses. The ceremony had to be postponed by one day (as KM explains in the next letter), and so took place on Friday, 3 May, rather than Thursday, 2 May.

[1 May 1918] [N] [47 Redcliffe Road, Fulham] My dearest Brett, This morning, chasing the law up and down and round about Somerset House for an Order of the Court declaring the Decree Nisi to have been made Absolute I was rapped over the knuckles by a Legal Gent who refused, utterly and finally, to supply me with same until FRIDAY at one o’clock. So tomorrow is ‘off’ until Friday and alas! I am afraid that means you will not be able to come for you’ll be at Pangbourne.1 This is very disappointing, but Authority was adamant to all my pleading. No, he cant and won’t give me such an order until Friday. Even when I told him that you were leaving for the Front tomorrow, that I was great with child and expected to be delivered tomorrow night – that Murry had symptoms of Botulism and would be shut eyed, at least, on Friday – nought availed. So, dearest girl, as I quite understand you can’t put your journey off – we’ll have to postpone the delight of your presence until Murry & I marry again. Damnation take the Law! Your loving Katherine. Notes 1. Lytton Strachey and Dora Carrington, Brett’s close friend and fellow artist, were then living together in Tidmarsh Hall in Pangbourne, Berkshire.

[12 May 1918] [N] [47 Redcliffe Road, Fulham] Sunday. Dearest Brett, If you are passing through on your way to Scotland don’t forget to let me know. I am not going to Looe until the end of this week.

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There is a show at the Burlington Galleries – a few doors away from the Leicester Galleries, Leicester Square, which has one or two very interesting ‘pieces’ in it – Some Still Lives by Peploe and Anne Rice and some early Fergussons – but no late ones – and its the late Fergusson who really is IT.1 There’s not much at this show but it is worth a visit. Then Fergusson’s show is on Thursday.2 I would love love love to go there with you. But I suppose it can’t be managed. (Brett you are awfully nice to go about with.) Hurrah! its begun to hail. Vive le joli Printemps!3 Murry is lying down upon the shell shaped 1840 sofa reading in a book4 He is wearing a mauve shirt and pinkish socks, and above his head on the black marbil mantlepiece there is a bowl of dying lilac. Spring Picture (2) I saw Virginia on Thursday.5 She was very nice. She’s the only one of them that I shall ever see, but she does take the writing business seriously and she is honest about it and thrilled by it. One cant ask more. My poor dear Prelude is still piping away in their little cage and not out yet. I read some pages of it & scarcely knew it again. It all seems so once upon a time. But I am having some notices printed and they say it will be ready by June. And wont the “Intellectuals”6 just hate it. The’ll think its a New Primer for Infant Readers. Let ’em. Curse this letter writing. If only we were together. Ive such a deal to say & this fool of a pen won’t say it. Will it keep? Each time I dip into the honey pot a very exquisite little bee with a message under its wing flies out & off in the direction of Garsington. Don’t frighten it away. It is a guaranteed non-stingless or anti-stinging bee. Now God in His Infinite Wisdom hath made the sky blue again. Oh dear oh dear – people are vile but Life is thrilling. There is a man who plays the flute in this street on these faint evenings . . . Well – well – Addio mia bella,7 Katherine. Notes 1. Samuel John Peploe (1871–1935) was one of the foremost Scottish Colourists; he had been working alongside the group’s acknowledged leader, J. D. Fergusson. The challenge of painting ‘the ideal’ still life became the dominant preoccupation of his artistic career after 1914. Peploe, Anne Estelle Rice, Fergusson and their fellow English artist, Jessie Dismorr, had all made significant contributions to Rhythm, thereby defining the bold visual dynamics of the review, which remain its most lasting feature. 2. After a brilliant early career, Fergusson had lost much of his artistic momentum in the early war years; the 1918 exhibition at the Connell Gallery in

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New Bond Street, London, marked the renewal of his activities. The catalogue preface was written by JMM. One picture on display for the first time was Poise – a picture believed lost for many years but which resurfaced in a French attic in 2015. The striking woman it portrays is now largely believed to be KM herself. (Fr.): Long live the lovely springtime. The ‘Empire’-style sofa from the early 1800s remains easily recognisable for its scalloped backrest and wing-style armrests. Woolf gives a short, somewhat perplexed account of their meeting in her diary (see DVW1, p. 150). As critics have frequently pointed out, the relationship between the two women was always complicated; it was, however, considerably richer and more cherished than most early commentators allowed. See Froula et al. 2018. KM deliberately puts two sets of quotation marks around the word ‘intellectual’. (It.): Farewell, my beauty.

[22 May 1918] [N] Headland Hotel Looe LOOE Cornwall. Wednesday. Dearest Brett First there came a divine letter from you and then enough cowslips to make a chain from Garsington to London – with bluebells between. It is very lovely of you to do such things. I wish I could have seen you again before you went to Scotland.1 Be sure you see J.D.F’s show if you can. I popped in at the Private View and I thought it wonderful – I seem to spend nine-tenths of my life arriving at strange hotels, asking if I may go to bed, saying:– ‘Would you mind filling my hot water bottle?’ ‘Thanks very much; that is delicious’ – and then lying still growing gradually familiar, as the light fades, with the Ugliest Wallpaper of All . . This has been my programme since I arrived here last Friday with the tail ends of another attack of pleurisy. However – its over again and I am up, sitting at three windows which positively hang over the sea, the sky and an infinite number of little ships – The sea is real sea – it rises and falls, makes a loud noise – has a long silky roll on it as though it purred – seems sometimes to climb half up into the sky – and you see the sail boats perched upon clouds like flying cherubs – and sometimes it is the colour of a green gage – and today it looks as though all the floor of it were covered with violets – If it weren’t for the boats which are a distraction for the drunken eye I should become quite

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be dazzled and never turn my head from this ‘vast expanse’ as they say, again – I havent seen anything more of this place yet – Anne Rice, who is staying up in the village, says it is extremely beautiful – and ‘full of the most lovely drawing’ – As soon as my knees do not melt backwards I shall go forth again – But tell Ottoline – will you – I have at last found – he whom we have all looked for so long and so ardently THE doctor.2 He appeared at 11.30 p.m. on Saturday night – I felt they had gone up into the hills to fetch him away from his flocks and herds – He is – or looks about 18 – and is an irish peasant lad – very ardent – with curling hair – but, I suspect, a sort of natural genius. No nonsense about whispering ‘99’ – or shouting ‘99’ – He went over the old battlefield with his stethoscope – and said ‘I can see whats wrong with ye and the kind of woman ye are’ – and immediately began to cure me – You can imagine he made me feel like a very old worn Georges Sand,3 washed up by the tide, with a pen behind each ear – But after the London quack – quacks – its a great relief ––––– Our time with Ottoline was a failure. We were both so ready for her – spiritually, you know what I mean? – But then she brought Philip. And Philip was not only as she said ‘grim’ he lay back and yawned so loudly that each gasp took a little more of ones real self away – It was awfully silly – a waste of time. He & Murry played politics and O. and I played books – That was what I felt. After she had gone I lay down in dismay and heard myself saying ‘how awful! how awful!’ Perhaps it wasn’t as bad as that but I felt it was – I feel it was another ghastly failure between us – And yet I still feel there is that between us – which if it were only allowed to flower – but it isn’t – at present – Curse Life! I have been reading Dorothy Wordsworth’s journals4 – She & ‘William’ & Coleridge had no end of a good time – but we could have a better. If we went jaunting off in a little painted cart or if we lay in the orchard & ate cherries – we should laugh more – we should have far more fun. Should – indeed. I mean shall. Hallo! Here come two lovers, walking by the sea – she with a pinched in waist – a hat like a saucer turned upside down and 4/11¾d. velvet shoes, he with a sham panama & hat guard – cane – etc – his arm enfolding. Hideous – hideous beyond words. Walking between the sea and the sky – and his voice floats up to me: ‘Of course occasional tinned meat does not matter but a perpetual diet of tinned meat is bound to produce . . . . .’ I am sure that the Lord loves them and that their seed will prosper & multiply for ever – Send me darling Brett – if youve a mind a skirl of the bagpipes frae bonnie Scotland – I presume you will call in on Murry on your return in kilt, sporran, wee velvet jacket & tartan bow & be discovered by him dancing the sword dance in the waiting room –––– I hereupon rise, and according to the Act of Parliament declare that – I love thee –Tig5 –

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Notes 1. Brett spent nearly five months from late spring to early autumn in Scotland, based at ‘Roman Camp’, the country estate on the edge of Callander in Perthshire, known affectionately to the family as ‘Pinkie’. The idyllic Scottish setting and her more complex life are well evoked in Hignett’s 1984 biography of her. 2. This would appear to be the first meeting with a certain Dr Pagello, whom KM consulted while in Cornwall. No other information about this doctor, whose name may well be a nickname, has been traced. 3. See Ottoline Morrell’s memoirs: One of [KM]’s heroines was George Sand, and I can see and hear her now, describing George Sand getting up very early in the morning and putting a little white shawl round her shoulders and creeping down to the room where she wrote, kneeling down to light the fire and start her writing before anyone was awake. She seemed to identify herself with this woman, who had the same passion for writing as she had, and the love of independence, and the romance of her lovers in the background. (Morrell 1974, p. 186) George Sand was the pseudonym of Amantine-Lucile Aurore Dupin (1804–76), a militant and pioneering journalist, intellectual, author and playwright whose sexual and vestimentary non-conformism scandalised mid-nineteenth-century French society. Besides publishing more than seventy novels, she was a radical political campaigner, notably defending the rights of factory workers, rural labourers and prisoners, as well as working- and middle-class women. Her extensive Histoire de ma vie (1855), in epistolary form, is a mixture of autobiography, family history and cultural testimony, reflecting the violent civil war years of France in the aftermath of the French Revolution. As well as appealing to KM (see also CW4, p. 304), her writings were much appreciated by various members of the Bloomsbury Group, including Lytton Strachey and Virginia Woolf. 4. Dorothy Wordsworth’s ‘Grasmere journals’ in particular offer highly detailed, affectionate and also very poetic accounts of travels in the Lake District with her brother, William Wordsworth, and their fellow romantic poet, Samuel Coleridge. See above, p. 34, n. 12. 5. KM and JMM had begun referring to each other as ‘the Two Tigers’ during the period when they were editing Rhythm during 1912. Alpers (p. 146) notes: ‘The novelist Gilbert Cannan, delighted by a woodcut in Rhythm’s first number of a tiger stalking a monkey, had bestowed the name, and they had taken it up themselves, Katherine later being “Tig” to Jack, and eventually “Wig”.’ Brett became one of their rare friends to adopt the nicknames too.

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[19 July 1918] [N] The Artist at work with a dove behind her head bearing a crown of laurels.* 47 Redcliffe Road S.W.10. Friday – Dearest Brett When are you coming to London again? And if you do come do not forget to let us know. Our last interview was so hung with drops of rain and cups of tea – I should love a longer, dryer one. And what are you doing? And how are you feeling? And are you painting? Or do you feel like I feel just at present – – another slice of this loaf I cannot & will not eat. I want to change the baker – the bread – everything – everything – I want to sit at an entirely new table in fact with new hands to pour out strange wines – and unfamiliar music playing – – – No, that aint enough either – Change the country – the climate, too. Lets all put on velvet masks and have our fortunes told by Chinese wizards. Murry is exhausted again. He comes out of Watergate House, shakes himself, only to dive into another weedy little tank, trying to catch french fish for the Times.1 And just occasionally he swims into Hamptons sale,2 buys stair carpet as grey as a moth, sees himself awalking down it to welcome Brett and bear her aloft up above the world so high to his little study which looks over tree tops on to a kind of flashing eternity . . . There he is happy. Once we are ‘settled’ there will always be a bed and trimmings for you in the elephant3 – (I have said that so often.) I went to see the Naval Photographs today4 – They are wonderful. And all the middle of the gallery is occupied by a Naval Band which, at the first blast carries you far far out into the open sea, my dear, so that you positively bob up and down in an open boat upon huge immense waves of sound gasping, breathless, holding on to ropes and trying to bail out your mind with the catalogue before you are swept on again. When I reached the final room I really did give way & was floated down the stairs & into the kind air by two Waacs & a Wren5 who seemed to despise me very much (but couldn’t have as much as I did myself.) They asked me when I had drunk a glass of the most dispassionate water whether I had lost anybody in the Navy – as though it were nothing but a kind of gigantic salt water laundry – (There’s the postman – nothing for me. I do think Brett might send me a line – – – –)

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I was so happy today to hear that Ottoline did write to me in Cornwall – and it was only the Post, my ultimate enemy, which withheld her letter – Addio, mia bella.6 Your loving Tig * Above these words KM has drawn a stick figure sitting at a table with a vase of flowers and a crown of laurels. Notes 1. JMM was one of the foremost reviewers of French novels for the TLS at this time. 2. Hamptons and Sons was a long-established household furnishers and estate agents in Pall Mall, London. 3. ‘The Elephant’ was the nickname given to their house in Hampstead, at 2 Portland Villas, East Heath Road, because of its then tall, grey exterior. 4. An exhibition of naval photography was held at the Princes Gallery, Piccadilly, in the summer of 1918 and was given widespread coverage in the press. 5. (British Army abbreviations from World War One): Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps and Women’s Royal Navy Service (abbreviated to WRNS but generally pronounced and known as ‘Wrens’). 6. (It.): Farewell, my beauty.

[22 July 1918] [N] 47 Redcliffe Road. S.W.10 Monday Dearest Brett I tore open your letter this morning thinking I should find therein all your views of the case Murry V Morrell.1 But you neither mention nor ignore it – you take, if I read you a right – a kind of wang2 at both parties & that’s all. Is that how you feel? Does the affair seem to you another proof (if a proof were needed) of the cruelty and corruptness of mankind? I can understand that. Of course I am not referring to Ottoline’s letter to M. Well3 – I couldn’t be; even though I do think she misunderstood – misjudged him completely & what is so much sadder suspected him of all kinds of vile intentions. I dont care a damn for her misjudgement or rage. I care awfully for her ugly suspicions . . . But the flower of the affair is Philips abusive attack on Murry in the Nation – – To have professed friendship for Murry – to have clasped his hand and then, without a word of warning – without even a commonly courteous note

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saying ‘dear M. I heartily disapprove of your review & mean to say so in print’ – just to come out with this great Full Blare of Pomposity . . . . !! If I didn’t feel so contemptuous – the spectacle of Philip, rising from the sea like a lighthouse & turning his Awful Beam upon dear Murry in the ‘professional armchair’ would be very very comic – But it is too ugly to laugh over really – When I think of M’s passionate honesty, his scrupulous fairness & sincerity – and then of how he has aired himself at Garsington I cannot understand how, at a jump, in one moment Philip was ready to believe anything of him . . . . . Its true; he is extreme. And there have been times when I have cried: Oh do give way a little. Must you make of everything an affair of Life & Death? Must everything be judged from one stern standpoint? But now I appreciate that in him and wouldn’t have it otherwise. I agree with him absolutely about his review – and the point that he makes that experience as experience is not yet Art seems to me profoundly true – and that self BETRAYAL is not self expression – that needs saying a million times – But the curse – the plague is – Brett that I am so afraid it will change my relation with Ottoline. It should not but I fear it will. She wrote me asking me to come to Garsington but of course I cant ever come there again – for I wouldn’t for worlds be under the roof tile of a man I so wholeheartedly dislike – Couldn’t – for pride’s sake. I am glad that this has happened – For one thing it shows what unfriendly country Murry had been repoging4 in – & it forces him to show his hand – to publicly draw apart from those who dont share his beliefs. Hurrah! I am with him. We sit together and alone, an arrogant, hateful pair – with cannon balls for eyes – Ever your loving Tig. Notes 1. The quarrel here was with Philip Morrell rather than Ottoline, although Ottoline too was shocked and offended by JMM’s dismissive review of a volume of poetry by Siegfried Sassoon, Counter-Attack and other Poems, published that summer and written mostly during his stay in Scotland. The verses were, he said, ‘not poetry’ but incoherent cries of torment, touching the sense rather than the imagination. In 1916 and 1917, Sassoon had spent recuperation time at Garsington, recovering from injuries and trauma after serving at the Front as an officer in the Royal Welch Fusiliers, and on one occasion sought JMM’s help in drawing up a protest to be published in the press, denouncing the senseless cruelties of an endlessly protracted conflict. Philip Morrell’s indignation at JMM’s sharp review of poetry by ‘a gallant and distinguished author’ recounting his war experiences was published as a letter to the editor in the Nation on 20 July, an attack to which JMM in turn took offence. KM’s

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outrage at Morrell’s action can be seen in this letter to Brett. Virginia Woolf also found herself caught up in the polemic. See DVW1, p. 174. 2. A wang, more commonly spelt ‘whang’, is a sharp blow. 3. Mr Well here refers to JMM – probably playing on the idiomatic expression ‘Mr Right’ to refer to a partner. 4. KM’s spelling here probably reproduces an idiomatic or mispronounced usage of the verb ‘reposing’.

[26 July 1918] [N] Friday.

‘47’

Dearest Brett, Your long absorbingly interesting letter came yesterday. You are as Kot would say a ‘wonderful being’ – and if ever in a dark hour you feel that nobody loves you – deny the feeling on the spot. For I do. I love you dearly. So does Johnny.1 You seem to me to have the most exquisite virtues. I only hope that one day you will become a part of our life for a time and we’ll share a gorgeous existence somewhere painting and writing and looking out of the window on to the sea perhaps – with painted ships sailing on it & sailors playing ball with oranges and little black niggers sitting in the bows playing twing-twang-twing on guitars made of coconuts! This I fondly dream while the rain pours down & the old lady in the basement tells ’er friend across the way that ’er legs ’urt er somethink ’orrible . . . I am delighted to think you will be in London in September and for a long time – long enough to really talk and really laugh without the backs of our minds flying off to railway trains. If you dont think our particular Elephant2 a King of Beasts I shall be very disappointed. And now, that I have fairly started and we are sitting before a fire of friendship with our skirts turned back comfortable & something hot with a nutmeg in it at our elbows – Ill really answer all your letter. But again – how the dickens can I? The whole affair is so complicated and there is poor young Sassoon tucked up in bed with a wound in the head – given him by Murry, perhaps, in a paper cap with a carrot stuck on it . . . I have read Johnny’s review ‘time and time again’ as they say. I think it is severe – terribly straight but to say that Sassoon would let himself be shot because of it, or that if some one had said it about Prelude Murry would have ‘stabbed them’ is simply fantastic to me. I tried to talk it out with O. the first afternoon she came here, but it was a failure. In the first place I think she was astounded that I didn’t agree with her as against Johnny. In the second I simply couldn’t get on ground with her that didnt, after one minute, rock so that I was off again. I do wish shed say – bang out – that she hated Johnny. The picture she draws of him absolutely revolts me; and though she said

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one moment she utterly believed in his honesty & that he wouldn’t attack S. S. personally, at the next she wondered whether he didnt wish to seize the opportunity of showing how much he disliked her – by wounding her through the body of S’s book. Well Brett, the second monster is greater than the first. If that cad were Johnny Life would be a very different affair to me. It made me blush deeply to hear her say this. I could only murmur: ‘Oh, no, he wouldn’t do that kind of thing’. And then the idea that Johnny is solely a black, morbid, depressed, ill, melancholy object, like a crape knocker on the handle of a house, closed for the duration of the war – that isn’t the case either. If you get past the knocker & open the door you’d find an extraordinarily simple eager passionate boy, very sensitive, desperately loyal, full of tweaks and twirls of fun – and more shy and more modest than even I, who know him pretty well, can remember. The great brick is that hes only this self when he feels safe – when he is with people whom he feels are after the same thing as he is. What is that? It is ‘profoundly speaking’ – to be honest – That sounds so bald when I say it but perhaps you’ll understand what I mean . . . (All my letter seems to be a defence of Johnny & I feel rather like the poster of the young girl in Her Love Against the World.)3 And Oh – Oh! – don’t lets quarrel! It isn’t really ‘like that’ – As Bill Noble says – ‘Jesus Christ! You folks just float around with razors in your socks all the time!’4 I don’t want to hate people: I want to love them. If I do lose my faith in people I want to run to them and to cry: ‘Oh, please Ive lost my faith in you: have you seen it about anywhere. Do give it back to me: I wouldn’t be without it for anything!’ But perhaps that sounds childish to you . . . . Now it has stopped raining; the air feels lovely – I wish you were here. (I have a teeny little study in the Nation this week or next – Its just a sort of glimpse of adolescent emotion: I am full of work again.)5 Write again, Brett, when you have a mind to – Your loving Tig. Notes 1. Johnny here refers to JMM, as the rest of the letter makes clear; it is also the name KM used for J. D. Fergusson. 2. ‘The Elephant’ refers to their house at 2 Portland Villas, East Heath Road, Hampstead. See above, p. 358, n. 3. 3. Her Love Against the World was a melodramatic stage play by the British playwright Walter Howard (1866–1922), which proved immensely popular in London’s 1907–8 theatre season, when it played at the Lyceum. Howard was a much-loved actor and playwright in both Britain and Australia, where he worked for a number of years; a selection of his romantic, patriotic plays were revived during the war.

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4. Now largely forgotten, John Noble (1874–1934) was a Kentucky-born artist whose parents were émigrés from Great Britain. After a vibrant and often sensationalist début in Kentucky, he moved to Paris to work alongside key post-Impressionsist artists, and there gained the sobriquet ‘Wichita Bill’, or ‘Whiskey Bill’ or just Bill Noble. Noble and his family moved back to the UK at the beginning of the war. 5. ‘Carnation’ was published in the Nation on 7 September. See CW2, pp. 160–2.

[7 August 1918] [N] Give Ottoline a warm warm greeting from her K. 47 Redcliffe Road S.W.10 Wednesday Dearest Brett, If you should come to Town this week don’t fail to let me know – will you? I so want to see you before you disappear into Scotland. There are not going to be any Air Raids this autumn, so I propose you take a studio in Hampstead and that we meet ever so often in the innards of the Elephant, & talk about work and enjoy one another – (which sounds a little ‘arabian’ but is, like all my remarks, innocently meant.) It was the lad’s birthday yesterday.1 We had what Koteliansky might have called a simple fête. I gave him a paper knife and there were stewed plums for supper – I am glad the Pup is happy and good: her home sounds nice but ‘hot and low’ makes me suspicious of . . earwigs. I wish the Lord would cancel all creeping things. Oh God! There are roses in this room – which drive you distracted. I love flowers too much. Then there is this writing business – worse than the roses – and then there is this house in which I do mean to express all I know about colour and form and – – – comfort. Fergusson is at Portsmouth:2 I miss him greatly. Sullivan3 comes & talks & is particularly nice. I have forgotten all about the quarrel, and (in strict confidence) am full of love for my friends. Yours ever Tig Notes 1. JMM turned twenty-nine that day; he was born on 6 August 1889, which made him almost a year younger than KM.

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2. Fergusson was in Portsmouth for some weeks, commissioned by the government to paint a series of studies of the naval dockyard. 3. John William Navin Sullivan (1886–1937), frequently referred to by KM, JMM and their Bloomsbury circle simply as J. W. N., was a close friend of JMM’s and KM’s, and deputy editor of the Athenaeum, alongside Aldous Huxley, during JMM’s editorship. He was also a respected science writer, mathematician, journalist and biographer. In 1928, he married KM’s former Queen’s College schoolfriend, Vere Bartrick-Baker.

[14 August 1918] [N] [47 Redcliffe Road, Fulham] Wednesday – My dearest Brett I was so glad of your letter today. Yes, it is an immense blow. She was the most precious, lovely little being,1 ever so far away, you know, and writing me these long long letters about the garden and the house and her conversations in bed with Father, and of how she loved sudden unexpected cups of tea – ‘out of the air, brought by faithful ravens in aprons’2 – and letters beginning ‘darling child it is the most exquisite day’ – She lived every moment of Life more fully and completely than anyone Ive ever known – and her gaiety wasnt any less real for being high courage – courage to meet anything with. Ever since I heard of her death my memories of her come flying back into my heart – and there are moments when its unbearable to receive them. But it has made me realise more fully than ever before that I love courage – spirit – poise (do you know what I mean? All these words are too little) more than anything. And I feel inclined to say (not to anybody in particular) ‘let us love each other’. Let us be kind and rejoice in one another and leave all squabbles and ugliness to the dull dogs who can only become articulate when they bark and growl. The world is so dreadful in many ways. Do let us be tender with each other. I dare say that to you because I know you understand. With much love Tig Notes 1. KM’s mother, Annie Burnell Beauchamp, whose health had been declining rapidly ever since the death of her son in 1915, died on 8 August. 2. KM appears to be quoting her mother, rather than a literary source.

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[25 August 1918] [N] The Old Vicarage Tadworth Surrey.1 Dearest Brett, Send another letter into the blue when you have a mind – will you? Its so long since I heard from you. I shall be on the Elephants back tomorrow, any time after sunset – & there is a letter box there that wants warming. I am stupified – turning into a perfect fool! This constant pain is so wearing – and never being able to walk or to run or to be in the least mobile – and never sleeping a night through. Oh, dear, I shall be old very soon if this goes on – Thats enough – Now you are to consider this a begging letter – begging for one from you – 2 Portland Villas East Heath Road Hampstead – Ever your loving little Tig. Notes 1. KM was staying with Aunt Belle, her mother’s sister, who had lived in Surrey since marrying a stockbroker, Harry Trinder, in September 1905.

[5 October 1918] [N] [2 Portland Villas, East Heath Road, Hampstead] Saturday afternoon. October. Dearest Brett, Your letter came by itself with a special loud great knock at the door for it. I fancied it had been carried in the bosom of some hielan’ drover,1 and saw him at the door with his dirk showing in the folds of his plaid and his ram’s horn of whisky. Outside all his shaggy beasts munched the wet willows . . . . I was awfully glad to hear from you. It all sounded so far away and like a novel of Turgenev2 – so far away from Hampstead and London. I wish you would come back soon and have a pied à terre of your own. It must be very difficult to live in ones family when one has flown out of the nest. What can I do with my wings3 now I am back? There is

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no room for wings in the largest nest imaginable – and its no use pretending that I haven’t got ’em. They have carried me ever so far up and away – That is the sort of pipe that I should make – yet, of course, not having that nest to fly to – I imagine it the softest loveliest place to rest oneself out in as the Germans say.4 I saw a great deal of Ottoline. She came up here often – and we talked. She was wonderful and I think she looks a great deal better. Oh dear, I wish I lived nearer her. Its such a joy to have one’s absolute largest fling in talk and be not only understood – but carried away by what she flings back. Why isn’t there some exquisite city where we all have our palaces – and hear music – very often – and row upon the water, and walk in heavenly landscapes and look at pictures and where all the people are beauties – moving in the streets as it were to a dance. I am quite serious. I pine for lavishness. For the real fruits of the earth tumbling out of a brimming horn. (Perhaps it is four years of khaki.) No, I didn’t see her doctor. I saw a big Gun on my own5 – who was very intelligent. He says I have got this disease in both my lungs, that I can get better in London but must go off to some mountain peak to be cured. ‘Serious but recoverable’ said he. I see M. & I climbing up some peak after this war & finding a tiny little house at the top with windows like spectacles & living in it – all nicely dressed in big rabbit skins – especially rabbit skin gloves – which we shall never take off until we have gradually eaten them off with our bread and butter – as one does – In the meantime Murry and I are painting the Elephant and he has bought a Press and I have typed 30,000 words of my 50,000 book6 and the Mountain makes her steam puddings for herself and Jack That is what M. will look like eventually, a little set of pudding basins . . . . with a plume of steam rising out of his hair and three raisins for buttons and two currants for eyes.* I am full of new ideas for work. Rather held up as usual by my wretched machinery which creaks and groans and lets me down – But I mean to get it in good enough order to be able to ignore it & plunge into the REAL LIFE. Gertler is coming to supper tomorrow. I hope he will sit at my fireside often this winter – and tonight Sullivan is coming for a talk – Dont stay in Scotland too long, dearest. Just draw Ma’amselle and then come back – Its too far – And take care of yourself. Don’t turn into a pixie or a fairy or a gnome or a water nymph – you might you know – Yours ever with love Tig * At this point in the text, KM has drawn a tiny man made out of pudding basins.

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Notes 1. KM is playing with rural Scottish pronunciation here, given that Brett is writing from the family home near Callander, often referred to as the gateway to the Scottish Highlands. She thus pictures the letter-bearer as a Highland (hielan’) livestock dealer (known as a ‘drover’), complete with his dirk – a Highlander’s knife. 2. Ivan Turgenev (1818–83) was a Russian playwright and novelist who spent much of his life in Western Europe. His novels focus largely on the disintegrating, restless lifestyles of the alienated gentry and the conflicts between generations. 3. KM’s own nickname for her lungs. See above, p. 86, n. 3. 4. The verb ‘ausruhen’ in German translates literally as ‘to rest out’, implying that you need calm (‘Ruhe’). 5. Dr Victor Sorapure (1874–1933), a consultant at Hampstead General Hospital, who became KM’s most trusted doctor. 6. KM was busy typing up Bliss and Other Stories, eventually published by Constable in December 1920, having been previously rejected by William Heinemann in 1919.

[27 October 1918] [N] [2 Portland Villas, East Heath Road, Hampstead] Your letters are wonderfully well worth waiting for, dearest Brett. I read this one to Murry as we drank our coffee last night and on the wings of it away we flew, up the snow mountains to some place like this (see drawing)* The two flies on the path are M. & me; then there is you in the sleigh – Ottoline is just behind the tallest mountain. Pray observe that we have got a Swiss milk cow! Oh, Heavens! how nice it is. What does one ask more! This must come true after the war. There is no reason why it should not & really, in spite of all England shrieking & imploring everybody not to make Peace until they’ve had a rare kick at him & a rare nose-in-the-mud rubbing one does feel that Peace is in the air. ‘It is all about, my sister Yet it is unborn –’ (Those lines struck me suddenly & seemed suddenly mysteriously lovely.) They took my breath away. It was like listening at the door & hearing the winter steal away – leaving spring, spring, in a basket on the doorstep of the world. Oh Brett – let there be no more War. I have been spending all my days gradually fitting into a smaller & smaller hole as my puff gets less. Now Im in bed – & here I must stay for a bit. This is very cursed: in fact

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its HELL but I shall get out of it & once we have lain down our knife & fork & agreed to eat no more German Ill be well again – But England! What! Peace! Its like suddenly snatching away all their meat coupons – What did my son die for, Sir? To keep the war going or to end it, Sir? To keep it going Sir, until everybody else’s son is as dead as he! They, the old gentlemen over 70 who write to le Times would like to have such a Peace that they could plant a camp stool in any corner of Europe, sit down, throw their handkerchiefs over their faces & go to sleep there without being disturbed by one single solitary soul. But they won’t get their way – Ottoline came on Thursday – It was Murry’s ‘early closing day’ & he was here, too – Heavens! The dove really seemed to settle on them. They looked at each other & laughed. But she was so marvellous – Do you know her mood when she is wonderfully lavish & gay – When she says ‘I am like this & like this & like this.’ There is nobody like her – Lawrence & Frieda have been in town.1 Frieda was ill & in bed but I saw a very great deal of Lawrence – For me, at least, the dove brooded over him too. I loved him. He was just his old merry, rich self, laughing, describing things, giving you pictures, full of enthusiasm and joy in a future where we were all ‘vagabonds’ – We simply did not talk about people. We kept to things like nuts and cowslips & fires in woods, and his black self was not. Oh, there is something so lovable in him – & his eagerness, his passionate eagerness for life – that is what one loves so. Now he is gone back to the country. Murry-who-loves-you is full of Fire. The flue has not penetrated the puddings. He simply thrives. I shall have him photographed in his singlet soon, lying on a mat, you know, a-goo-gooing with REARED FROM BIRTH ON SUET PUDDINGS written underneath. Of course I always feel that the Mountain has got her own head tied up in a cloth so she can pop that into a basin & steam it if supplies run short – – – – But Murry is really seriously excessivement bobbish,2 & when we are alone together, just talking, or putting a stick on the fire – or especially when we lie in bed at night, all neat & brushed, smelling faintly of Kalodont toothpaste & reading out of one poetry book, our happiness quite overcomes us & we feel positively faint – I don’t know what it is in our love – that seems to give everything a touch of faëry – It is a different world altogether from the world that other people live in. One’s neither grown up, nor a child, neither married or unmarried, one simply is & the other being is and so – on they fare – No, I can’t explain, but you know – otherwise I shouldn’t have mentioned it. Darling Brett, I must stop this letter – The day is divine. Do not get flu. Do not stay there too long. We think of you & long to see you. I keep on writing – its such queer stuff too. I am afraid nobody will want it – Success to the drawings. I wish Mamselle could spare me a

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little tiny bit of her front. Mine has gone. I hope it doesn’t appear anywhere else – Addio dearest friend Tig * At the top of her letter, KM has drawn a mountain scene with a house, trees and a cow. This picture is on the front cover of the present volume. Notes 1. D. H. Lawrence and his German wife, Frieda, had been on the move since fleeing Cornwall after persistent questioning and surveillance on account of Frieda’s German origins. In late 1918, they were then based in Derbyshire. This visit proved to be the last meeting between KM and Lawrence, as the Lawrences left Britain as soon as they could after the end of the war. 2. (Fr.): Excessively. The adjective ‘bobbish’, derived from the name Bob, was popular slang meaning ‘on good form’ or ‘high-spirited’.

[17 December 1918] [N] [2 Portland Villas, East Heath Road, Hampstead] Tuesday Dearest Brett Your letter and sketch have just come – I shall have to wait a bit before I talk about the sketch. Its difficult – – Murry shall have it tonight. I was under the impression that you owed me a letter, and then I thought you were coming to London at Xmas time, any day now – That explains my silence – Have you and Ottoline really been having a ‘scrap’? I have not heard from her for Ages. I sent a letter and a Token but there is no reply.1 I hope tongues have not been wagging the wrong way, but I expect they have – and that’s it. Oh – the cold! My feet are ice – my fingers & nose – ice – too – and shiver after shiver goes down my spine –– I cannot konker it with clothes. Where did your lamb come from? Is it one of the Jaegar flock?2 I think I shall have to buy an immense tea cosy and wear it & crawl under it as a snail does its shell3 ––– I go to Switzerland in early April. The cows ought to be laying properly by then – Its no good before. Then my plan is to let this house furnished for a year – then Murry will come back find a tiny farm in a remote spot & put the furniture into it & live there – I shall make my general Head Quarters abroad – a little house & a big maid on some mountain top – Italy, I think. But Murry says he could not live abroad so he will make his G.H.Q. in England – It will be very easy to spend

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some months of the year together like that & I think that – health apart even – its the best way to live if two people love each other and love Art, too. When I have found a cuckoo clock you will come & stay with me – wont you – dearest – & draw mountains? Brett, at present I feel with you that Life is ugly –I am hardly alive. I have not been out for months & cannot walk up & down the stairs with any success. But – apart from that – I feel in my heart as though I have died – as far as personal life goes. I don’t even want to live again. All that is over – I am a writer who cares for nothing but writing – thats how I feel. When I am with people I feel like a doctor with his patients – very sympathetic – very ‘interested in the case’ – very anxious for them to tell me all they can – but as regards myself – quite alone – quite isolated ––– a queer state. What radiant stars there will be on your Xmas tree! Are any of them nice or are they all just twinklers? I wish I knew your plans. Are you going to Garsington after Xmas? Come soon & tell me – With love and a big warm hug – Ever your Tig Notes 1. The Armistice and the immediate post-war months proved extremely difficult for Ottoline, however ardently she had objected to the war. But, as one of her biographers explains, ‘The end of the war brought an end to Garsington’s use as a working refuge. Graceless to the last, the COs left without gratitude and with a sackful of stories of how they had been patronised and exploited’ (Seymour, p. 303). The Morrells were left with huge debts and the spectre of ruin, and Ottoline’s health deteriorated fast as pressure grew to find new sources of finance – which included selling her own jewellery. 2. During the war years, the Jaeger company became renowned for its warm, healthy, woollen undergarments. See above, p. 193, n. 5. 3. Brett appears to have been sensitive to this playful, endearing image – her Christmas present to KM in 1921 included a tea cosy. See below, pp. 429 and 431, n. 2.

[1 January 1919] [N] Portland Villas Jan 1st 1919 Dearest Brett A Happy New Year. This letter is just a chance shot for I can’t help feeling you are on your way here – Every knock is your knock – & you have come up the stairs so often these last few days that I cant imagine why you are not in at my door. It is open wide ––––

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We had a superb Xmas – stockings – a tree, decorations, crackers, puddin, drink – most potent & plentiful – parcils pouring in and out. Murry seemed to wear a paper hat (a large red & yellow butterfly) from Xmas Eve until after Boxing Day – We gradually, under the influence of wine & Chinese mottoes gave a party – charades – Kot, Gertler, Campbell etc.1 Oh, I did love it so – loved everybody – They were all fluttering & twinkling like candles on the darkest, most mysterious Tree of all – I wanted to say to everybody – Let us stay forever just as we are – Dont let us ever wake up & find it is all over – – It made me realise all over again how thrilling & enchanting life can be – & that we are not old – the blood still flows in our veins. We still laugh – The red chairs became a pirate ship. Koteliansky wore a muff on his head & Campbell a doormat tied under the chin – Can’t this happen more often? Ought not Life to be divided into work and PLAY – real play? We ought not to have to sit in corners when our work is over. I feel that I have a thirst for Happiness that never will be quenched again. Brett, my treasure, my prison doors have been opened at last – I am allowed to go out – I have found a man who is going to cure me. But he says I must not go to Switzerland but to a tropical climate in the spring – like Majorca or Corsica. So now I am surer than ever that I shall be able to tempt you to come & visit me in a little house with a fig & a date by the door – Hurrah for Life – But this isn’t a letter. It is just a Hail – and a do let us spend a part of a very New Year indeed together. Yours with warm love Tig Notes 1. Gordon and Beatrice Campbell were close friends of KM and JMM, and part of D. H. Lawrence and S. S. Koteliansky’s intimate circle too. He was a barrister at the time; she was an artist and writer. Beatrice Campbell’s memoirs of these years, Today We Will Only Gossip, published once she had become Lady Glenavy, evokes their lives and social interactions with detail and great affection. For her memories of the Christmas party, see pp. 111–12. For KM’s letters to her, see below, pp. 501–11.

[10 January 1919] [N] [2 Portland Villas, East Heath Road, Hampstead] My dear Brett I am so sorry. I had no idea I was invited to tea with you today until I received your note. I think, in future, you’d better write me a card as Jack is a little vague.

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At any rate Im afraid the weather of the last few days would have done for me and tomorrow – alas! – Im engaged with my good doctor all the afternoon. May I come on Tuesday afternoon if its fine or warm? Yours half frozen K.M.M. [Written on the back of the envelope:] Murry is coming to you tomorrow – of course.

[7 June 1919] [N] [2 Portland Villas, East Heath Road, Hampstead] Dearest Brett I feel Murry was very silly at the party to say that I was frightened by your new home.1 He acknowledged afterwards he had only said it ‘for fun’. What I told him was their size and difficulties frightened me: ALL there was to do and only you – a leaf on a ladder to do it. It made me feel you’d such a giant’s task. For they are difficult – so big and so assertive in their way. But I expect you will laugh at me for my timidity: I am a mouse these days. Laugh as much as you like – do laugh but dont be cross with me. And come & see me – will you? And tell me how you are getting on. Ottoline has been here today. She looked wonderful. And I felt what silly little dull dogs they are who cry her down. She was in a radiant, radiant mood – you know that mood when she’s like a tree in the light – in the sun – Brett – I want to see you. Come to Tea soon – As I write the willows fly streaming in the sun – & some one is playing the piano – oh! so wonderfully – seeking out, gently, tenderly, with light, whimsical fingers some thing. Wonderful – wonderful life – I wish one could be certain of living to 100 – Isn’t it awful to feel full of life and love and work and joy & to think one will have to turn up one’s toes & be still one day –––– Yours with love Brett dearest Tig Notes 1. Brett was now living at 28 Thurlow Road in Hampstead, London.

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[10 June 1919] [N] [2 Portland Villas, East Heath Road, Hampstead] Dearest Brett After all Friday will not suit. For I quite forgot Virginia is coming to talk over the Centenary of George Eliot with me1 – That puts the stopper on this week – I will try & come & see you; I should like to very much. I am afraid I was a dull dog yesterday – my back hurt me – About what you said of – more or less – launching a second Ark.2 It depends so awfully what effect tumpany has on your work.3 Perhaps it stimulates you; then I think you are ever so right to do it. It does the opposite to me. I have to keep solitary as I can – to have nobody depending and to depend as little as I can. Even if I had footballs for lungs I wouldn’t go out often, for instance – couldn’t. But then my particular Graces are very jealous & very shy & I have to humble myself and sit ready for their knock. Well, its no hardship – There could never be a choice between them and the present ‘world’ – But I am no criterion, dearest girl – I want my ‘flings’ today to be oh! such delicate flings & if a drunken Chili blundered in I could not bear it. I can’t help it; I do feel so increasingly fastidious & frightened of rudeness and roughness – Life today is such an affair that I don’t feel one can afford to rub shoulders with the world that goes to Parties. You will think me a sad old frump – but of course, like everybody else, I don’t think I am – Gossip – tittle tattle, Nina Hamnett4 & Gertler spreading the news – all that fills me with horror – Were I perfectly sincere Id have to confess that I was always acting a part in my old palmy days – & now Ive thrown the palm away ––– Your devoted dull old inwalid Tig. Notes 1. For Woolf’s record of the visit, see DVW1, pp. 281–2. As part of the centennial anniversary of the birth of the great nineteenth-century British novelist and pioneering feminist, George Eliot, Woolf’s essay, ‘George Eliot’, was published in the TLS later that year. KM had also hoped to write a major review essay to mark the same occasion, to be published in the Athenaeum, but JMM chose to entrust the task to Sydney Waterlow. 2. ‘The Ark’ was the nickname given to a house at 3 Gower Street in Bloomsbury, owned by J. M. Keynes. Keynes had rented out the property temporarily to Brett in 1916, who in turn took in lodgers to share the rent. Carrington subsequently moved in, followed by JMM and KM in September 1916. Maria Nys, who later married Aldous Huxley, arrived in 1917. The pace of life at the Ark was hardly conducive to work or rest, and KM moved out at the end of January 1917.

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3. Given KM’s pleasure in wordplay, this could be entirely idiosyncratic usage, deforming the word ‘company’. However, The Garden, You and I, the memoirs and garden diary of an American hostess and writer, Mabel Osgood Wright, published in 1906, includes a lightweight episode that suggests KM’s letter is actually pastiching Wright’s style more directly. Since Wright’s works did circulate with some success in Britain, especially those most closely focused on gardens and birdlife (she was a keen ornithologist), and was known in particular to Elizabeth von Arnim, KM may well have been familiar with its themes and styles, many of which resonate with her own writing: ‘And what is company?’ I asked, rather anxious to know from what new point we were to be regarded. ‘Tumpany is people that comes to stay in the pink room wif trunks, and we play wif them and make them do somfing to amuse ’em all the time hard, and give ’em nicer things than we have to eat, and father shaves too much and tuts him and wears his little dinky coat to dinner.’ (Wright, p. 94) 4. Nina Hamnett (1890–1956) was a Welsh-born artist and writer who was closely associated with fellow artists from the Slade and the London School of Art, and also with the Bloomsbury Group artists and intellectuals – Vanessa Bell, Duncan Grant and Roger Fry. She was as renowned for her flamboyant lifestyle as she was for her works, and until recent years, faded from histories of the avant-garde movements more quickly than did many of her fellows.

[9 July 1919] [N] [2 Portland Villas, East Heath Road, Hampstead] Me running into the sun followed by Athenaeum.* Brett dear, Can it be lunch instead, tomorrow? For this reason. You remember dear Earnest? He can see me tomorrow afternoon, or rather my toes at 4.40. And his time is so precious & toes seem to be so plentiful that I don’t dare miss the chance – I am going to take a car down there – get it to wait for me & spirit me home again. So, dearest Brett, come to dejeuner1 at 1 oclock instead if you can – will you? I so much want to see you before you go away for a long time – in fact I must see you for dear knows where I may be setting out for by the time you are back. I hope you will come; Ill expect you. No, thats bullying. Just come if you can & if you cant – it cant be helped. Yours Tig.

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Oh, this day! Summer again – and Life changed again – the other side of the sun – indeed – I can see both sides and all round it . . ––––––––––––––––––– * KM has drawn a picture at the top of the letter of a little stick figure on a path walking towards a sun, followed by a tiny cat. Notes 1. (Fr.): Lunch.

[18 July 1919] [N] [2 Portland Villas, East Heath Road, Hampstead] Friday My dearest Brett I have just been doing the flowers. They look so lovely; pictures – especially these in my room which are small white roses with gay little leaves; fairy tale roses. Downstairs the Dwarf1 is making me what she calls a ‘cotton body’ – a very useful possession, I should think. I wonder if shed make me a fur body for the winter with a little hot piping round the waist. Further downstairs, in the tool box Charlie2 has just been delivered of 6 kittens. She is in a dark cupboard, among the rakes and hoes & old bulbs, twisted with yellow twine, and straw and red flower pots & bunches of twigs. I put in my head & feel I shall see a bright star in the crack above Charlie – & hear a chorus of angels – Athenaeum hates them. When M. went to him & told him that God had sent him six little brothers & sisters he fell off the studio window ledge right through the glass house, breaking two large panes of glass. I love his sense of the dramatic necessity – but all the same next time he must not be told. C’est trop cher.3 I am very horrified by your account of Mrs B.4 Can’t she be flung over the garden wall? Must she cling? Can’t you harden your heart. And if she threatens to kill herself why should she be stopped? (provided she didn’t do it at Garsington.) I dont know a single enemy who wants to share a house & to whom I could fling a bramble. But be firm – don’t have her in your room – that is the worst of brambles – there is never an end to them – they creep under the doors they catch you whenever you want to fly & they can be more than a nuisance – they can hurt. I think she ought to join something and become a ? or a ? or a ? . Its no use her

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staying Mrs B, evidently. I am awfully hard hearted about clinging – one must just use a knife as quickly as possible. I hope you don’t feel lonely at Conscience Castle & that you get a real painting mood. When the sun shines I feel that is enough to make one do anything. This house seems to be an R34 today,5 rushing through the air. Everything is in flight. Its as much as one can do to catch anything. The windows all open – the curtains moving – a smell of cherry jam boiling from the kitchen – Gertie saying ‘if you please m’m the nasturtiums in the front are out’ as if they were walking up to the door – advancing upon us. Oh Life – mysterious Life – what art thou? Forster6 says: a game – I feel suddenly as though from all the books there came a clamour of voices – the books are speaking – especially the poets – How beautiful willows are – how beautiful – how the sun rains down upon them – the tiny leaves move like fishes. Oh sun – shine forever! I feel a little bit drunk – rather like an insect that has fallen into the cup of a magnolia. Write again – Love dear Brettie from Tig. Notes 1. Presumably the nickname for one of the Murrys’ domestic servants at 2 Portland Villas. 2. Charlie (Charles Chaplin) was the mother of KM’s beloved cat, Athenaeum; she had just had a second litter of kittens. 3. (Fr.): It costs too much. 4. Dora Meath Baker was a friend of the artist Geoffrey Nelson, who frequented the same circles as Gertler and Nina Hamnett, all based at the time in Fitzrovia and Bloomsbury. She worked for the Medici Society, the energies of which were focused on bringing upcoming artists to the attention of wider publics, notably via the sponsorship of exhibitions and the publication of illustrated books. 5. The R34 was the latest British-built airship, developed in the second half of World War One but launched only in 1919. It had made the news that month when, from 2 to 10 July, it achieved the first ever return crossing of the Atlantic, a feat that assured it great commercial success. 6. ‘O Life, what art thou?’ is the opening gambit of E. M. Forster’s 1919 essay ‘The Game of Life’, later published in Abinger Harvest. He continues, ‘Life seldom answers the question. But her silence is of little consequence, for schoolmates and other men of good will are well qualified to answer for her. She is, they inform us, a game. Which game?’ He concludes his essay by suggesting that the game of life is piquet.

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[29 July 1919] [N] [2 Portland Villas, East Heath Road, Hampstead] Dearest Brett You are on my mind. I keep wondering whether the Angel has visited you and are big with a wonderful picture – or what you are doing. Are you drawing? Have you made flower drawings. I wish you would do a whole Flower Book – Quarto size – with one page to each flower – its leaves, roots, buds, petals. – all its little exquisite life – in colour – very delicate with an insect or two creeping in on a blade of grass or a tiny snail. I see summat wonderful – Do you ever see those books Karl Larson made of his house and garden & children1 – They didn’t need any words at all – They were fascinating. I wish you would make such a book; you have just the vision for it – delicate – & light light as a flying feather – But I daresay you will rap me over the head for my imperence – But time is flying – soon or late it will be closing time – let us be divinely drunk while we may – I wish you did not mind what they say – what anybody says. Why are you hurt by Gertler’s wooden airs? I think like the man in Mr Polly, he wants his head boiling – he wants the MIGHTY to say to him – ‘Oh, Boil your head!’2 When ever I hear his absurd literary opinions I burn to make that my cry. Now – what is the news. Murry’s poems are ‘out’3 – and he is printing at lightning speed a long story of mine4 – We are both slaves to the Athene5 but when we do escape we are happy & talk & build sand castles. Will the treacherous tide have them – knock them flat? I don’t know. I know nothing until my Pa has come & either blessed or cursed me – He arrives Saturday week.6 I am just a kind of Royal Academy picture Waiting for Pa – in a velvet dress, lace collar, curls, tartan sash, with one foot on a five barred gate & an almost lifeless puppy under one arm. The puppy on this occasion only will be [???] The wind set up such a song in my bones that my dear doctor is once more sticking longer stronger needles into my behind. Although I walk like the only child of a crab and an indian colonel I feel it is going to do the trick. Pray for me, Brett. Burn a candle for me if there is a Roman Catholic chapel in Oxford. Ottoline came yesterday. Really she was so superbly beautiful that the memory is like a vision – No one can be as lovely as she – She wore a black hat with a veil, half folded – a veil that made me realise, once & for all, how exquisite veils are – But it wasn’t just her dress – it was her air, her charm, her fascination – her radiant youthfulness – yes youthfulness is the word. Oh, Brett, my dear – I hope you are happy. It is a very quiet day here, green & silver – the movement of the leaves is so secret so silent that I could watch them all day – I try to find words for how they lift & fall – Dearest let me hear from you – I wish I could put into this letter a tiny ring of happiness for you to slip on. Yours ever Tig.

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Notes 1. Carl Larsson (1853–1919) was a major Swedish artist, whose arts-and-crafts training had given him a rich apprenticeship in book and magazine illustrating. He spent many years living and working in France, and his works were almost as appreciated abroad as they were in his home country. His bestloved books in the vein KM describes here include On the Sunny Side and Other People’s Children. 2. Rusper, a character in H. G. Wells’s 1909 novel, The History of Mr Polly, is described by his friend Mr Polly as having ‘the most egg-shaped head he had ever seen’. As a result, whenever Polly and Rusper have a heated debate, Polly provocatively exclaims, ‘“Boil it some more, O’ Man, boil it harder” or “Six minutes at least”, allusions Rusper could never make head or tail of’ (p. 195). 3. The first publication of JMM’s Heron Press was his own Poems, 1917–1918. 4. KM’s story, ‘Je ne parle pas français’, was the second publication of the Heron Press in 1919. 5. JMM was appointed editor of the Athenaeum in January 1919; KM contributed extensively as a reviewer, but also became involved in the daily running of the journal. 6. Harold Beauchamp had not seen his daughter since 1912; they met in London two weeks later, on 16 August.

[20 December 1919] [Letters, 1928, 1: 317] [Casetta Deerholm, Ospedaletti] December 20, 1919 I’ve been ill with pneumonia, and too wretched to write. Forgive me. I have thought of you so often. And I want to thank you for the photographs, to talk about them. I will, at length, now I am ‘better.’ Now M. has brought over his exquisite little coals of fire for Xmas from you – So lovely. Such gay greetings. Thank you ever so much for them. This is an exquisite little place – and the weather – like June. The whole village is under roses as other villages are under snow. I hope you have a happy Christmas and Joy in the New Year, real, real Joy.

[16 February 1920] [N] [Postcard] Villa Flora Menton Brett darling This is my new & permanent address. You see what a nice easy one it is . . . . . Please take the hint. I long for a letter from you. I shall write a big answer. Im fearfully busy – but do let me hear your news. Take

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care of yourself. It will be such joy to see you again – you darling! Ever your woolly lamb K.M.* * Squeezed underneath her initials, KM has drawn a tiny frolicking lamb in a rural setting.

[18 March 1920] [N] Villa Flora Menton Dearest Brett There is no question of ‘forgiving’. If there were it is I who should ask it of you for having written to you so unpardonably ‘frankly’. Of course you couldn’t reply! I shouldn’t have shown my wounds: I should have shown you only bandages but at that moment there seemed to be no bandages to show . . . But you must forget the letter: I am so deeply ashamed of it. If it does still exist, tucked in your desk somewhere – will you please burn it.1 I am going back to England at the end of next month & staying until the end of October when I return here. Here is a villa owned by relatives of mine:2 its an exquisite house with an enchanted garden and we are very very happy. We bask in the sun, picnic on mountain tops, go for long long drives. And the country is in its full beauty – flashing white cherry trees among the silver olives, the orange & lemon groves in perfection – the pink & white almond & blue rosemary still in flower and all the little flowers and plants . . . . myriads of hosts. Sometimes we drive to Monte Carlo and shop and eat ices – and look at the poor gay world at the Casino, or we buy hats – spring hats – this villa seems to have a hat complex at the moment. All this is so far away from London. I confess, Brett, that I hate the ‘orgies’ and gossip. But then I have been away for at least 8 years and in that time I have seen and felt so much else. This is the place for working. My lovely room, full of sunshine looks over the broad gardens ablaze with cinerarias today – over to the sea. It is so wonderful to think I shall come back here next Autumn. Why don’t you try for a winter in the South? If I were a painter I should never spend those dark days in London. One needs to be renewed: thats one of the secrets of life, I think. Well, dearest we shall meet this Spring at 2 Portland Villas. I long to make the house really nice. I am afraid poor M. has had an uncomfortable winter but perhaps his gaierty has not made him realise it too much. Be happy. Be well. Yours ever Tig.

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Notes 1. The letter to which she refers does not appear to have survived in draft format or in its final sent version. It is therefore safe to assume that Brett did indeed destroy the letter, as KM requests. The nature of the misunderstanding and request for ‘forgiveness’ were most likely the intimacy that been developing between Brett and JMM since the previous winter. 2. Villa Flora was owned by KM’s aunt, Constance (‘Connie’) Beauchamp. See above, p. 147 n. 6.

[26 March 1920] [N] Villa Flora Menton France 26 iii 1920 My darling Brettushka, If I write letters which convey my feelings so ill I ought to be stopped. God, in his infinite wisdom ought to touch my pen with wings & make it to fly hence from me for Ever. He ought with his Awful Breath to breathe upon the ink so that it catcheth on fire and is consumèd utterly . . . Will you let me put my arms round you and give you a quick, small hug? Thats what I want you to feel I am doing this moment – and after that – lets sit down and talk for five minutes – I’ve a review to write – We shall keep our big talk until the end of Avrilo when you must come (will you?) and spend the day & bring your slippers in a satin bag as one used to when an infant and ‘invited out’ . . . But why can’t I give you – send you for a present – this day like a pearl. There’s no sun; the sky is folded, the sea moves and that is all. It is so still; the air is so gentle that every tiny flower seems to be a world unto itself. I am sitting at the window and below a silent, silver coloured cat is moving through a jungle of freesias. ‘There, by the Grace of God, goes K.M.’ – you know. Don’t feel bitter! We must not. Do let us ignore the people who aren’t real and live deeply, the little time we have here. It really does seem that the world has reached a pitch of degradation that never could have been imagined – but we know it – we are not deceived. And the fact of our knowing it and having suffered, each in our own way cannot make Life – the Life of the Universe – what we mean when we stand looking up at the stars or lie watching the lady bird in the grass – or feel – talking to one we love – less marvellous. I think that we – our generation – ought to live in the consciousness of this huge, solemn, exciting, mysterious background. Its our religion – our faith. Little creatures that we are we have our gesture to make which has its place in the scheme of things. We must find what

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it is and make it – offer up ourselves as a sacrifice. You as a painter and me as a writer. What is it that urges us? Why do you feel that you must make your discovery and that I must make mine? That just because we are artists and the only free people we are obedient to some law? There’s the mystery! And we shall never solve it – we shall only know a little more about it by the time we die and thats all – and its enough. But, Brett, just because we do feel this – I know you do, too – we cant afford to be bitter and oh, we musn’t let the wrong people into our Holy of Holies – Dont think, darling, I am become an elderly fogey. I believe like anything in happiness and being gay and laughing but I am sure one can’t afford to be less than ones deepest self always. Thats all I mean by renewing oneself – renewing ones vows in the contemplation of all this burning beauty. We belong to the Order of Artists and its a strict order but if we keep together and live together in love and harmony we’ll help each other. Oh, Brett, I worship Life. I fall on my knees before Love and Beauty. If I can only make myself worthy – – – – There! I had to say these things for I cannot bear that you should feel there is a door closed between us. I send you my love always Tig.

[20 May 1920] [N] [2 Portland Villas, East Heath Road, Hampstead] My dearest Brett* The STOVE is come, installed, burning, giving out the most blessed benificent heat imaginable! I cannot tell you how good it is to be in this room – in a whole warm room with no smoke, no making up fires, just a silent, discreet, never failing heat. If I were a savage I should pray to it & offer it the bodies of infants – Thank you a billion times for your dear thought – And now a belated thank you for the yellow roses – which are perfection. Now stop being generous or Ill have to lead a baby elephant washed in rose soap, hung with lily buds & marigolds, carrying a flamingo in a cage made of mutton-fat jade on its back to your doorstep as a return for past favours ––––––– You dine here on Saturday – don’t you? Love from Tig * Above these words, KM has drawn a picture of a large stove, radiating heat.

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[26 May 1920] [N] [2 Portland Villas, East Heath Road, Hampstead] My dear Brett, What I told John about a report that had been spread I told him in confidence, as it had been told me.1 I would not have breathed a word to anybody except John. This he didn’t understand when he repeated it to you. But Id be so immensely grateful if you forget it. I detest such affairs and cannot bear to think I have been the unconscious creator of one. Yours ever Katherine Notes 1. The precise nature of the ‘affair’, and the breach of trust that triggered it, remain unclear, although biographers have pieced together various letters and memoirs to establish likely explanations. See, for example, Carswell, pp. 174–6; Hignett, pp. 109–14; Alpers, pp. 314–16. As well as this note from KM to Brett, letters written to Gertler in late May and to JMM on 10 October provide other glimpses of an apparently hurtful misunderstanding and gossip. Flirtatious but complicated relations between Brett and JMM the previous winter, and between KM and Gertler, had previously sparked tensions amongst the group, as had speculations about KM’s health. See below, p. 597.

[20 June 1920] [N] [Postcard]1 [2 Portland Villas, East Heath Road, Hampstead] Brett, I must work like a Trooper tomorrow. Ive promised an article by Friday & I can’t fail.2 So would you come on Thursday instead if you are free. I am so sorry about tomorrow but may the horn blow & the worm come for me this very night if I am not too busy for anything – K.M. Notes 1. KM’s note is written on a postcard, the picture of which is a reproduction of the watercolour picture, Mirth and her Companions by William Blake, part of the collection of illustrations he realised for a luxury edition of Milton’s L’Allegro in 1816–17.

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2. KM was contributing one or two articles a week to the Athenaeum alone, so her image of the trooper is decidedly not hyperbolic. Given the date of the letter, she was more than likely preparing two extensive reviews that appeared in early July: ‘Mr Conrad’s New Novel’ and ‘First Novels’. See CW3, pp. 625–8.

[12 July 1920] [N] [2 Portland Villas, East Heath Road, Hampstead] Wednesday Brett, I would be delighted to see you on Friday but we have the little tiny Blundens1 coming to dinner and as Arthur2 is here as well we are full up inside. If you would come after it would be delightful – or dine here on Sunday evening – come early so that we can talk. On Saturday evening I am taking le jeune Peintre3 to see the Rushing Ballet.4 My mornings are all spent on the typewriter: I am simply fiendishly busy with journalism and the Higher Walks . . . But what price Blazing July!! Every stove in the house is red. Do come soon and tell me of your discovery if its undiscoverable. Come button your boots with a Tiger’s Tail And let down your golden hair And live for a Week on Bubble and Squeak At the foot of the Winding Stair And when you feel like a conger eel Or as Tough as an old Split pea Lift up the lid as the hedgehog did And come and listen to me5 FOR To be Kontinued. Notes 1. For other references to Blunden, see above, pp. 329–31. In June 1920, he was the father of two children, and still grieving bitterly for the baby daughter who had died the year before. 2. JMM’s younger brother, Richard. 3. (Fr.): The young artist [that is, Richard]. 4. There were three new Ballets Russes productions alternating at Covent Garden for the summer season in 1920: Pulcinella, Le Chant du Rossignol and Cimarosiana, as well as a revival of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring. 5. A verse from the twenty-three-stanza poem ‘The Lay of the Lobster’ by the Scottish engineer, and occasional poet, William Dundas Scott-Moncrieff (1846–1924), a cousin of the illustrious writer and translator of Proust, C. K. Scott-Moncrieff.

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[19 August 1920] [N] [2 Portland Villas, East Heath Road, Hampstead] My dear Brett, If you really do feel any friendship for me – it is a rare feeling, terribly rare – will you send me any letters you have of mine to you. I am the most unfortunate of women – There were one or two or even three times when I committed to paper what I never ought to have let out of my heart. Grant my prayer for the sake of any good moments we may have had and let me have the chance of destroying what ought never to have been sent. I felt (very queerly) that you were in a specially confidential ‘position’ because you had been a witness at that Registry Office. But that was great nonsense – such ceremonies are no more binding than tea parties. But please send the letters. Yours Katherine.

[29 August 1920] [N] [2 Portland Villas, East Heath Road, Hampstead] My dear Brett Thank you for letting me see the book.1 Ive read it. But it wouldn’t be fair for me to say to you just what I think about it. After all the blood bond between sisters is very very strong: Id hurt you. The little children Laurette and Elissa say some nice things – don’t they? I didnt really hope to get that letter back. One never does, neither on the stage, nor in novels nor in real Life. This is a rule. One might as well try to lure the moving finger back to cancel half a line. However, I did ask for it: I have repudiated it. That puts me right with posterity . . . But don’t think I am unhappy or desperate or lonely. I am not. I am simply a woman with a craving to work – who longs to get away to her own tiny house and indulge the craving. My one regret is – health – And that doesn’t remind me – but gives me the chance to say to you how much, how deeply I feel for you in your deafness. Perhaps you think people ‘accept’ it – forget it. I never do and I never could. I think you are wonderfully courageous to accept it as you do and I am constantly realising what it must mean to you. I hope you have a happy time. Katherine Notes 1. According to Sylvia Brooke’s biographer, Brett had sent KM Toys, the first novel by her younger sister, Sylvia Leonora Brooke (1885–1971), who had married the Rajah of Sarawak, Charles Vyner de Vindt Brooke in 1911.

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Sylvia Brooke had already published short stories and autobiographical sketches, works that she frequently illustrated herself. The troubled lives of children, especially in mixed-marriage families, was a dominant concern of Sylvia’s own life and of her fiction. See Eade, pp. 51–2, 128–30.

[9 December 1920] [N] Villa Isola Bella Garavan Menton 9 xii 1920 My dear Brett, I have just received your letter. Do not fear your letters. Let me try and explain why I did not reply to you. I felt, somehow, that you felt it necessary to assume a personality with me that wasn’t wholly you. Perhaps I was quite wrong. But I feel there was a strain – an uneasiness. And then – I must own – after talking so much about imagination – it seemed to me impossible for you to have understood Gertler so little as to mind his being cross – and to almost boast that you wouldn’t cook eggs for him any longer but just gave him the saucepan and let him look after himself! Now I feel sure that was not true. I feel certain you have looked after Gertler to the very limit of your powers – but why did you think I’d admire you for being such a poor artist as not to understand a sick person’s psychology? There was (or I felt; please forgive me if I am wrong) a kind of frosty breath, light but chill, of falseness in this . . . and so I kept silent. But, dear Brett, don’t worry about telling me everything. We shall know each other by our work. The time to work is here. We cannot afford to delay. I have chosen deliberately to leave my friends for a time. If they do not understand then I must do without their understanding. I have left the company and gone away and I can neither return nor welcome my friends until some of this work is done. You see, Brett, the days are so short and who knows whether there is going to be a long evening? I, for one, don’t dare count on one. But forgive me for failing you as a friend. If you knew how I wish you Joy! Yours Tig Would you give my love to Koteliansky if you ever see him?

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[22 December 1920] [N] M.* brought over my Japanese doll. I wish you had painted his portrait. He really is a lovely little creature! Villa Isola Bella Garavan-Menton A/M. 22 xii 1920 Dearest Brett, I have to thank you for a most lovely sumptuous garment. One feels like a bird with its winter wooly wings on in it. And the colouring is so lovely and fair. I want to scold you for having sent it to me and at the same time to make you feel how admiringly Im saying: ‘Thank you very much indeed, please’. I wonder where you will be for Christmas. Having M. with me has turned it into a fête. My treasured Marie is determined that Christmas shall be kept here & bought the mistletoe all in readiness for the arrival of Monsieur. The kitchen is a progression of still lives from a poor dead bird leaning its tired head on a tuft of watercress (oh how awful it looks!) onwards. And because the weather is chill, blue & white weather, log fires roar in the chimleys. This little house is a perfect darling. Its not beautiful, its shabby and the bedroom wallpaper is baskets of pink flowers and in the dining room there is a big corpse of a clock that sometimes at dreadful intervals & for no reason begins to chime – never to tick. But there is a feeling over everything as though it were a real resting place. I have taken it until the end of 1922 and even so Im frightened at the idea of saying goodbye to it then. I love this country, too, more and more. It is winter now – many trees are bare but the oranges, tangerines & lemons are all ripe; they burn in this clear atmosphere – the lemons with gentle flames, the tangerines with bright flashes & the oranges sombre. My tiny peach tree still clings to a few exquisite leaves – curved like peaches & the violets are just beginning. More and more (for how long? No matter. A moment is forever) one lives – really lives . . . M. says you have painted a lovely picture of asters in sunlight. I wish I could see it. Are you childish about the New Year? Do you feel it is a mystery & that if your friends wish you a happy one – happiness does come beating its beautiful wings out of the darkness toward you?

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Dearest Brett I hope you will be happy. I salute your work for 1921. May it bring you joy. And I send my love and friendship – From Tig. * Before the M., KM has drawn a tiny little doll.

[9 January 1921] [N] Isola Bella Menton Garavan A/M 9 1 1921 Dear Brett Its very nice of you to send us all those good wishes. We have had a wonderful Xmas and New Year. The weather is absolutely divine today – like mid-June! But the day won’t come when I shall say I was wrong. Why should it? How have I been wrong? I don’t think I even understand. And I don’t want to protest about it. It makes me feel uncomfortable and inclined to hang my head. Its undignified. What is in the Past had a great deal better be buried – bury the good even to get the bad safely under – and begin again. I think the important thing is – to make ones Life part of ones work – to live as honestly as one paints or writes. But there musn’t be ‘weak spots’. One can no more afford to give way in Life – than one can in Art. If you really want nothing so much as to be an artist you must accept the discipline to obtain the joy. You can’t pretend for a moment. Dear Brett, there is so much that is good and fine in you, so much to admire and love. But don’t be frightened. Of all devils Fear is the most subtle; he takes all sorts of forms and disguises. Perhaps he is the most powerful, too. The curse of him is he eats away ones strength – and he confounds ones vision – I would wish you a triumphant victory over Fear in 1921. Dont give way! There. I expect you are very angry with me by now. Forgive me, Brett. I speak as one workman to another. Yours ever Tig.

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[1 March 1921] [N] Villa Isola Bella Garavan Menton A/M Dear Brett You sound so rich in plans, determinations, adventures and ‘Revelations’ that I feel my ambling nag can scarce keep pace with such a swift charger. And then – what do you mean exactly by revelations? And how do they beget other revelations? I don’t know – I feel mystified . . . Im sure its an awfully good plan to go into the country for the summer, and what luck to have Sylvia Sullivan to paint.1 She would be a lovely little creature under a tree, I should think. I feel I have been awfully wanting in kindness to Sylvia Sullivan: Im sure she’s simple and very lovable really. But you’ll find out in the summer. Don’t blame your parents too much! We all had parents. There is only one way of escaping from their influence and that is by going into the matter with yourself – examining yourself & making perfectly sure of their share. It can be done. One is NEVER free until one has done blaming somebody or praising somebody for what is bad & good in one. Don’t you feel that? By that I dont mean we ought to live, each of us on an island. On the contrary – Life is relationship – its giving & taking – but thats not quite the same as making others responsible, is it? There lies the danger. Dont think I underestimate the enormous power that parents can have. I don’t – Its staggering – its titanic. After all they are real giants when we are only table high & they act accordingly. But like everything else in Life – I mean all suffering, however great – we have to get over it – to cease from harking back to it – to grin & bear it & to hide our wounds. More than that, and far more true is we have to find the gift in it. We cant afford to waste such an expenditure of feeling; we have to learn from it – and we do, I most deeply believe come to be thankful for it. By saying we cant afford to waste – – feeling I sound odious & cynical. I don’t feel it. What I mean is – everything must be accepted. But I run on – and Im dull. How lovely your Down country sounded. Larks, too! I am only on nodding acquaintance with Spring. We talk from the window. But she looks from this distance fairer than ever, more radiant, more exquisite. It is marvellous to know the earth is turned to the light. Murry is very well. He looks and sounds happy. I don’t see a great deal of him as Im finishing a book & he’s terribly busy.2 I wonder what you think of the fat Nation or the thin Athenaeum3 – like Jack Spratt & his wife.4 Fare well. Be happy! K.M.

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Notes 1. Sylvia Mannooch (1896–1976?) was the first wife of the science writer, journalist and biographer John William Navin Sullivan (frequently referenced by KM and JMM simply as J. W. N.); he was a close friend of JMM’s and KM’s, and was also deputy editor of the Athenaeum, alongside Aldous Huxley, during JMM’s editorship. Although Sullivan is acknowledged for his succinct but highly sensitive study of Beethoven, Sylvia was also a passionate lover of music, to the extent of influencing her more erudite, mathematically minded husband’s work. She and Sullivan separated in 1921, and in 1928 he would marry KM’s Queen’s College friend, Vere Bartrick-Baker. 2. The Garden Party and Other Stories was published by Constable in 1922. 3. In January 1921, the Nation and the Athenaeum merged, thereby bringing together in a single review the more political, contemporary focus of the former and the rich cultural coverage of the latter. 4. In the well-known nursery rhyme, versions of which have been traced back to the 1650s, Jack Sprat was a lean, lithe man, and his wife a buxom matron. Halliwell’s 1850 anthology gives the opening verse as ‘Jack Sprat could eat no fat / His wife could eat no lean / And yet, betwixt them both, / They licked the platter clean,’ and the long poem that follows continues the stark opposition to great comic effect.

[April 1921] [N] Villa Isola Bella Garavan Menton A/M My dear Brett, I am afraid I shan’t be here when JMM goes to England.1 I intend, if Im above ground, to disappear and view the solid earth from another angle. Just for a change. But why don’t you arrange to go to Paris when he returns from England & go over together & spend some days there looking at pictures. That seems to me no end of a good plan. Don’t put it forward as mine. Tackle him on your own account. You’d both enjoy it so – wouldn’t you? – and have such fun into the bargain. Murry knows Paris awfully well; he’d be a good person to go with – Paris is divine in June – I can see you both, in my minds eye, sitting under the stars & talking about art with a VERY big A. If I were there Id take out a small mouth organ and spoil everything . . . Im writing in the garden under a big striped umbrella. Its the most perfect day but the butterflies go to ones head, rather, and you feel the bees are coming to tickle you, when they hover so near and buzz so awfully nicely. The little darling, precious bees! I love bees! Through the rather shabby lattice wood fence (which is covered with tiny rose clusters) one can see winking-fire diamonds of sea. And heres a visitor – I smell his pipe. He’s coming in.

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He came and stayed and stayed, and he and JMM talked clothes until the sky changed for the evening. I shall have to write one day a masculine dissertation on clothes. Ive listened to so many. JMM is just as interested in his clothes as a woman, tho’ in a different way. As to sewing – he loves it, and performs miracles of patching. You would laugh to hear him say in the middle of a conversation on, say – Burtons Anatomy of Melancholy:2 ‘Ive got a hellishly difficult piece of hem stitching here. I have to keep it tucked under with one hand and bind it with the other . . .’ He’s very well and I think, quite happy. Good food does wonders for him. Goodbye for now. I hope your Thursdays are a success. Yours ever K.M. Notes 1. JMM left on 4 May for Oxford, where he gave the series of talks at Brasenose College that were later published in The Problem of Style (1922). 2. Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy, first published in 1621, is an unwieldy, encyclopedic work of philosophy, medical remedies, scientific observation and daily life, with detailed, often absurd, illustrations and satirical commentaries.

[20 April 1921] [N] I.B. G.-M. A/M. Sunday Dear Brett Don’t have those dreams about me. I don’t feel the least in the world inclined to snub you, my dear. And I thank you most awfully for your letter & for the little box which hasn’t come yet. They take a long time coming – little boxes – weeks & weeks sometimes, but they always do arrive, finally, & are carried up the hill to this little villa by a black man who gets a franc for his pains – About Love.1 Well, each of us thinks differently. For M. & for me love is possessive. We make terrific demands on each other & if we are not all in all then we are wrong. We feel we have the right to each other & are exclusive & jealous and fierce. If we fail from this the heavens fall & have to be builded up again before we can go on. But that is personal to us. No two people are alike. Its the only way we can be free as artists. But it has taken years to discover this & it will take all the years there are to hold to and to enjoy this. You see, one cant say what is freedom

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for another. One can only find out. I think its the hardest thing on earth to divine. About Toronto.2 You weren’t really quite serious in asking me that – were you? You couldn’t do it. You don’t live on that plane – I feel a little bit disgusted with Toronto and with the people who say such things. Love isn’t a new dish, after all, & physical love is such rare rare delight that its only to be taken in hand lightly and wantonly by both parties. Equally! Unless its a purely trade affair I imagine you want a lover to give yourself to. No woman wants less. And no man either, if he is worth loving. Im all for love & for people enjoying themselves, but its a pity when they enjoy themselves less than they might, that’s my feeling. And I think any relation which is not fastidious is not worth having. We are wondering if that Strike has really struck.3 There is no way of knowing here. It must be horrible in London. Bernard Shaw had a letter in the D.N.4 which explained it all away. Its a pity he’s not King. But the very sound of a soldier fills me with horror, and as to all these pictures of young giants joining up & saying goodbye to Daddy – the falsity of it – the waste of Life – even if not a man is killed – is appaling. And all the while the trees come out & the year begins to ripen . . . If there were a God he’d be a Queer Fellow. Here it is so cold that it might be November. We are both frozen. We shiver all day. I get up from 11–5.30 & turn the clock round so as to get back to bed more quickly. Ive been spitting blood since last Tuesday too – which is horrid. It makes one feel that while one sits at the window the house is on fire. And the servants have gone mad or bad or both. One has completely disappeared. Only her feather duster remains. She wasn’t a little one either. But I expect we shall come across her one day – I have a fancy she’s in one of the chimneys. All our flags are pinned on Switzerland. Meadows, trees, mountings, and kind air. I hope we shall get there in time. I saw your party at Iris Moffatts.5 I envied you seeing Koteliansky. Isn’t St Johns Wood lovely in the spring? It seems to me always especially lovely – The houses are so white & the trees so plumy & one hears a piano. It is a romantic spot. I wish 5 Acacia Road were mine. You paid too much for the sticks from Portland Villa. One day I shall come & weep over them. Goodbye for now, dear Brett. I hope London is calm. I hope you are happy. With love from Tig. Notes 1. As KM would have been perfectly aware, ‘About Love’ is a short story by Chekhov; Constance Garnett translated it merely as ‘Love’ but Koteliansky’s translation preferred the more accurate ‘About Love’.

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2. Frank Prewett (1893–1962), widely known in Bloomsbury and Garsington circles as ‘Toronto’, after his home town, was a Canadian poet who had come into contact with a number of his fellow poets and peers during his military service in World War One. He met Sassoon when they were both in hospital, having been wounded at Ypres. He spent a lot of time at Garsington both during leave in the war years, and immediately after demobilisation, before returning to Canada, in part under suspicion of tax evasion. His friends liked to believe he had Iroquois blood, but going by Robert Graves’s description, which is the most detailed yet traced, their hypothesis was grounded merely on his ‘high cheek-bones, dark colouring, graceful walk, and fiery heart’ (see Graves, p. 8). 3. There had been rumours of pending large-scale industrial action in March 1921, when acute unemployment among miners and the context of post-war economic depression affecting the transport and railway workers seemed likely to end in united strike action. The threat ended on 15 April, when union leaders announced that sympathy strikes would not be called. The agreement, and the breach of solidarity, went down in industrial history as ‘Black Friday’. 4. Shaw’s letter was published in the Daily News on 14 April. The newspaper provided exceptionally detailed, regular coverage of the strike and its impact on miners’ families, as well as on the lives of everyday consumers; weekly features included chronicles and eye-witness accounts, along with full-page annotated photographic illustrations. 5. Iris Tree (1897–1968), then married to an American artist, Curtis Moffat, was a poet and artists’ model, famously painted by Modigliani in 1916, but also by Duncan Grant, Vanessa Bell and Roger Fry. She studied at the Slade and had published her first anthology of poetry the previous year.

[4 June 1921] [N] [Pension du Lac, Sierre] Dearest Brett I am awfully sorry to seem so horrid. But I am so fearfully busy that I simply cannot see people this year. Come 1922. It will all be much nicer then. You wouldn’t enjoy it now. And indeed I couldn’t have that laugh or that talk. Its no go for this year. I must finish my book & finish another before I can think of making holiday. Im working. And you know what that means. One simply is not as far as other people are concerned. I sound horribly ungracious. I cannot help it. I am determined to finish something before my time is up. Perhaps Murry explained to you that the specialist only gives me a chance – no more.1 This makes a great difference, you know. It makes one want to hurry in case one is caught. Work to me is more important than anything, I fear, and Im working against time. Please believe me. I cant expect you to forgive anyone who sounds so horrid. I hope you’ll like France & have fun. Tig.

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Notes 1. This was the verdict of Dr Stephani, whom KM had consulted the previous month.

[25 July 1921] [N] 1921–1923 Chalet des Sapins Montana-sur-Sierre (Valais) My dear Brett, I have been wanting to write to you for ever so long. The difficulty has been to know where to catch you. If you were not at your Paris hotel I knew from experience the letter would never be sent on & I couldn’t decide whether to chance sending direct to the Pyrenees . . . I shall send this to Paris & hope for the best. We have been very interested to hear of your experiences. I somehow feel you haven’t really enjoyed it much. Thats in my heart of hearts. Perhaps one hasn’t any right to intrude into these – intimate places – But you know the feeling? As though it has all been very delightful, but the fly has been there in the amber. Was Mrs D. the fly, perhaps?1 But you say so much of what youve seen and little of what you – you yourself are feeling . . . Will you be glad to be back in your own studio? After all? We couldn’t help feeling just a little superior about your mountains. We are living on tops that are over 5000 feet high and the only way to get here is to be drawn out of the valley up the sheer side in a little glass carriage that pauses and winds and sways like a spider in mid air. It is divinely beautiful up here – We have a small – not very small house in a forest clearing. The trees are only a few yards away – Theres no fence – nothing that separates us from them but a little rocky lawn covered with grass and wild pinks and yellow tufty plants. It is absolutely remote and unspoilt – we might be miles and ages away from all civilization – There is nothing to be seen but a ring of mountain tops & beyond that more mountains – dazzling white against the sky. I send you a picture of our house in winter – it gives an idea of what it is like. Its delightful inside too – very snug, with a sumptuous bathroom, central heating, electric light, and even a piano. We have a real peasant girl who looks after everything.2 I wish you could see her. She is made to be painted and she wears, always, the peasant dress – a short jacket & full skirt – and her BEAMING smile is a joy. When she comes back after her afternoon out with a great bouquet of flowers and stands at the door holding them – I wish Van Gogh was still alive!3 But to tell you the truth, its all so lovely – so wonderful that I hardly dare write it down.

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I feel it will fly away – it must be faery. I am writing now on the balcony – The sweet scents – the sounds – (there is a little flock of goats with bells nibbling on the lawn) and all round it the quiet – the butterflies – the goldfinches – the black squirrel scolding on a high branch – they are all the citizens of our new world. Murry is almost a rich-brown-gravy brown – He lives out of doors as much as I do. Our nearest neighbour – about ½ an hours scramble away is my ravishing cousin ‘Elizabeth’ – We see her fairly often and Murry goes there. She is certainly the most fascinating small human being I have ever known – a real enchantress – and she is so lovely to look upon as well as to hear. We exchange books and flowers and fruits. This is a marvellous moment for peaches & apricots & wild strawberries. They grow lower down the mountains. Very little grows here except pines, wild flowers and occasional small bobbing cherries. I feel at present as though I could spend the rest of my life here – with occasional descents – But this is more what I would like for home than anything I have known. I don’t know why. There is a kind of charm – For one thing its so unspoilt – no railways – no motorcars – no casinos or jazz bands. Every tiny flower seems to shine with a new radiance. That queer chain of modern life seems to be unknown. I feel one will get younger and younger here & its fatal to begin laughing – one never leaves off. Murry & I get up early & work every morning until lunch. Then we play until tea time & then work again until supper. After supper, we smoke, read aloud – talk until bed time. By the way – can you tell me the address of a man who makes really well cut breeks? I foresee that with the fall of the first leaf the only thing to do will be to shed ones petticoats & go in mans attire until next spring. It will be much too cold for anything else. But, I don’t know a single tailor who really can cut well & who goes in for such things. Who cut your lovely ones? And was he a very frabjous price?4 I shall have to have 2 pairs & wear them with thick wooly cardigans – or what would you suggest? How charming you looked at Garsington – it seems such years ago since that time. There is a great gulf between – Do tell me more about your painting next time you write. Has France changed your ideas? Have you been disappointed in French painters? What are you working at now? In London, I mean. Oh, Heavens – how difficult Art is. Its the perpetual work at technique which is so hard. Its not enough to know what you want to say – but to be able to say it – to be equipped to say it! That is a life’s work. – – – – – I loved your bits of news. Fancy Carrington Mrs Partridge.5 It sounds very right, somehow. Is she happy? Is she just the same? I should imagine marriage would change her. How is Gertler? Is he quite cured? Sullivan I am sure will wax very prosperous – and shine with fatness. He has become a humorous character to me. Sydney W. is very nice – don’t you think? But Id rather see Koteliansky than any of them & I suppose I never shall. We shall not be back in England for 2 years at

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least – perhaps longer. I have been away nearly a year now. How I have hated England! Never, never will I live there. Its a kind of negation to me and there is always a kind of silky web or net of complications spread to catch one – Nothing goes forward. But perhaps I am not fair – Dear Brett have your next summer holiday here – Do you feel its too high? Even strong men feel it for a day or two but it goes off. Goodbye. Take care of your little self – With love from Tig. Notes 1. Probably the same Mrs D, or Dobs, whom KM evokes less elliptically four days later. See below, pp. 395 and 396, n. 1. 2. That is, Ernestine Rey, the maid at the Chalet des Sapins. See above, p. 105, n. 3. 3. The post-Impressionist artist Vincent van Gogh died in 1890; as KM readily acknowledges, two of his favourite themes, inspiring his most dazzling, stylised pictures, were flowers and rural labourers. 4. Originally a portmanteau word coined by Lewis Carroll in the poem ‘Jabberwocky’, from cognates such as ‘fabulous’, ‘joyous’ and ‘rapturous’, the abjective ‘frabjous’ has since been lexicalised into the English language. See Carroll, p. 142. 5. Brett’s close friend and fellow Slade artist Dora Carrington had been living in a tense ménage à trois with Lytton Strachey – whom she loved passionately – and Ralph Partridge – who was loved desperately by Strachey but who loved Dora. The two spurned lovers, Dora and Ralph, married in May 1921 and continued to live, relatively harmoniously, together.

[29 July 1921] [N] Chalet des Sapins Montana-sur-Sierre (Valais) ? 29 vii 1921 Dearest Brett, I tremendously enjoyed that long letter. I had been out with M. down the road a little way & then across a stream & into the forest. There are small glades & lawns among the trees filled with flowers. I sat under a big fir & he went gathering. It was a dazzling-bright day, big silvery clouds pressing hard on the mountain tops – not even the cotton grass moving. Lying on the moss I found minute strawberry plants and violets and baby fir cones – all looked faery – & M. moved near and far

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– calling out when he found anything special . . . Then he disappeared down into a valley & I got up & explored the little fir parlours and sat on tree stumps & watched ants & wondered where that apricot stone had come from. These forests are marvellous: one feels as though one were on a desert island somehow. There is a blissful feeling of remoteness & adventure. As to the butterflies & golden and green dragonflies and big tawny bumble bees they are a whole population. M. came back with a huge bunch of treasures & I walked home & found your letter in the hall. So I sat down on the bottom step of the stairs with the flowers in a wet hanky beside me & read it. Don’t you think the stairs are a good place for reading letters? I do. One is somehow suspended – one is on neutral ground – not in ones own world nor in a strange one. They are an almost perfect meeting place – Oh Heavens! how stairs do fascinate me when I think of it. Waiting for people – sitting on strange stairs – hearing steps far above, watching the light playing by itself – hearing – far below a door, looking down into a kind of dim brightness, watching someone come up. But I could go on forever. Must put them in a story though! People come out of themselves – on stairs – they issue forth – unprotected. And then the window on a landing. Why is it so different to all other windows? I must stop this . . . . I don’t like your Dobs at all, in spite of all her good qualities.1 I don’t feel she is living. She isn’t really positive; its only her attitude of defence I imagine to disguise and protect her lack of power to sympathise. And isn’t she really boring? Self engrossed people are the only boring people – but they are a fearful trial. There they are – slap in front of you with all the keys in all the drawers and all locked. How deadly. I feel there is no suppleness in Mrs D. She paints thinks & feels with those bed post legs. As to her eating the last chicken leg – thats a very bad sign. That chicken leg is very deep really. It would have infuriated me at least – She ought to have had it strung round her neck like the poor ancient mariner’s bird.2 What a fool the woman is, too, to imagine she knows you. I bet she does. Funny! I see her as somebody in broad stripes in my mind’s eye – Do you know the stripes I mean rather bright but stupid. I am deeply interested in what you feel about Manet.3 For years he has meant more to me than any other of those French painters: He satisfies something deep in me. There is a kind of beautiful real maturity in his painting, as though he has come into his own and it is a rich heritage. I saw a reproduction of a very lovely Renoir the other day – a young woman – profile – or ¾ quarter with the arm lazily outstretched lovely throat, bosom, shoulder – such grace4 – But I think that in his later paintings he is so often muzzy. I cant appreciate the queer woolly outline, & I feel it was so often as like as not rheumatism rather than revelation – But I don’t know. Id like to have a feed of paintings one day – go from here to Madrid, say, and have a good look. I shall. Once one is out of England I always feel everything & place is near. We are only

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four hours from Milan here. Well, even tho’ one doesn’t go – there it is. One could start on Saturday morning & be there for the opera that evening – Its the channel which is such a dividing line. It frightens me. It is so terrifically wide, really. And once one is across one is on the island – Thanks so very much for the tailor’s address. I shall write to him for a measurement form. I appreciate what you say about the size. As to any other garments I must wait until Constable makes up his accounts. It is very particularly nice of you to say youll look round for me then – – – Brett, while I remember. Have you read The Three Mulla-Mulgars by DelaMare. If you haven’t do get it and read it to any infants you know. Its about three monkeys. One seems to read a lot here. Its the kind of house in which you go into a room to comb your hair, find Gulliver’s Travels5 on the shelf behind the door and are immediately lost to the world. The bedroom walls are of wood; there are thick white carpets on some of the floors – outside the windows wide balconies, & thick striped cotton blinds shut out the midday glare. A great many flowers everywhere – generally apricots ripening on a balcony ledge & looking rather gruesome like little decapitated chickens. If only I can make enough money so as never to leave here for good! One never gets old here. At 65 one is as spry as a two year old – & (I suppose it is the climate) all is so easy. The strain is gone. One hasn’t that feeling of dragging a great endless rope out of a dark sea. Do you hate London? No, I do see it has its beauty and its charm, too. But all the same one feels so like the swollen sheep that looks up & is not fed.6 Its so hard, to put it ‘stuffily’ to live from ones centre of being in London. Now it will be you who won’t be able to read all this . . . Tell me what you are doing, my dear, if you are so inclined. Dont lose any more ½ stones! For Heavens sake put the half stone back again. Look at the Sargol advertisements & be wise in time.7 God only loves the Fat; the thin people he sticks pins into for ever & ever. With love to you from Tig. Notes 1. Dobrée was the professional name of Gladys Brooke-Pechell (1894–1974), a largely self-taught artist, collage-maker and designer who had studied briefly at the Slade, where she became the friend and associate of Brett. She was also a former lover and life-long friend of Gertler, who had completed a large oilpainting of her in 1919. She was married to the literary scholar and critic, Bonamy Dobrée, and went on to become a respected literary journalist and writer in her own right. 2. In Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, a sailor who shoots an albatross, once it has guided his ship through the ice, is punished by the crew, who superstitiously believe that their later misfortunes at sea are the punishment being meted out by the elements. To expiate his crime, the mariner has to

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wear the dead bird around his neck and is further condemned to a life in exile, cornering unsuspecting passers-by and recounting his misdeeds. Edouard Manet (1832–83) is often considered one of the founding fathers of the French Impressionist School, especially after the furore caused at the Paris Salon of 1863, when his Déjeuner sur l’herbe, a painting that had such a hold over the early modernist imagination in London, was denied exhibition, and consequently became the central focus of the Salon des Réfusés. This served both as the exhibition space for the secondary works and, increasingly, as the trademark of the avant-garde. There are a number of paintings by Renoir that might have inspired KM’s description here, but one highly likely possibility is his Woman with a Letter, where the female figure’s posture and her rêverie recall that of Beryl at the window in ‘At the Bay’. Jonathan Swift’s classic, Gulliver’s Travels, the 1726 fictional travel account and satirical prose fantasia in four episodes. KM extends the letter’s focus on the frail human body, food and hunger, nutritious disorder and harmonious order by quoting indirectly from Milton’s pastoral elegy, Lycidas. Towards the end, a bold analogy explores the stark parallel of famished skeletal frames and swollen, rotting bodies: The hungry sheep look up, and are not fed, But, swoln with wind and the rank mist they draw, Rot inwardly, and foul contagion spread; Besides what the grim Wolf with privy paw Daily devours apace, and nothing said.

The literary evocation is as telling about KM’s growing sense of distance from the urban centre in favour of a more rural, life-giving environment as it is about the hunger and malnourishment that were rife in those years. 7. Advertisements for Sargol in the 1910s, published in all the major household and fashion magazines, announce ‘Sargol makes thin folks fat and keeps them warm. It puts ten – twenty – yes even thirty pounds of life-giving, nervequieting, warmth-producing fat on bony frames. It makes thin folk just as fat as they ought to be.’ The remedy, expensive but tempting for under-nourished men and women in the immediate post-war years, was denounced by the Medical Association in Britain and America alike in 1921, and the inventor taken to court for ‘quackery’.

[8 August 1921] [N] Chalet des Sapins. Dearest Brett Forgive this paper. I am at the top of the house & there is no other here. I am on the side balcony which leads out of my dressing room. Its early evening. All the tree tops are burnished gold, a light wind rocks in the branches. The mountains across the wide valley are still in sunlight. On the remote snowy peaks there are small cloud drifts – silvery. What

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I love to watch – what seems to become part of this vision, though, are the deep sharp shadows in the ravines & stretching across the slopes. But one could not imagine a more marvellous view or one more perfect to live by. I watch it from early morning until late night when bats are out & booming moths fly for ones hair. With intervals . . . While you feel I am in any way a kindred spirit – write to me. A kindred spirit reads your letters; that you may be sure of. That scene in the summerhouse went to my heart. What a big blundering callous world it is! Its no good saying they know not what they do; it doesn’t stop them doing it. And it is bad bad – or so I feel – that one should have to shrink from human beings as one has to in such circumstances. Its a kind of suffering which (if you know what I mean) ones real positive nature rebels at – and rejects – and so, as well as everything else one has ones own poor self to hush and comfort and sing lullaby to . . . . I hope you won’t be there long. Ice cream and strawberries & hot baths don’t really compensate. No, you are right we have no ice cream here. But we have strawberries – the only kind – wild ones – little brilliant magic berries – too exquisite to eat really. But I wont fly off on to strawberries until I have said I realise what it is like up there. And I’d like to sit with you in a field and draw your eyebrows with a grass & make you feel you were – loved – gently – tenderly – Its not v. nice to see Mr and Mrs Sullivan a lapping up the cream & licking of their paws somehow. I think Sullivans obsession is all a fake – a make up. It fits in with his present ‘idea’ of himself. Isn’t that more like it? Its not pretty! Now I shall be indiscreet & trust to your discretion. S. has a very vivid imagination – Beware of it! But perhaps you have discovered it already. Before listening take a very large grain of salt & let it dissolve slowly in the mouth (without swallowing) as they say. That is dead private! Oh, about the Spahlinger.1 No, its not true. For one thing one can’t have the treatment for there is no serum, and for another I wouldn’t have it for any money. Its purely experimental & very terrifying in its results at present. Please please never think I need money like that. I can always get money – I can always go into some crowded place & hold out my hat or sell Id worth of boracic ointment2 for 2/6 net profit 2/5 – on – money has no terrors for me nowadays. And besides I am making some – and its only a question of my own activity how much I make. At present I am £30 down – and two nuns have just come with needlework made by infants in their convent. The dear creatures (I have a romantic love of nuns) my two gentle columbines, blue hooded, mild, folded over – took little garments out of a heavy box & breathed on them & I spent £2.7.0 on minute flannel jackets & pinnies for Ernestine’s sisters first not-yet-born baby. The butchers bill on red slaughtered butchers paper is quite unpaid & now I cant pay it. But you see thats what I am like about money – never to be pitied or helped!

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What is your picture – the one you thought of in your bath? Yes, I find hot baths very inspiring, so does my cousin Elizabeth. She reads Shakespeare in hers. No, she wasn’t the Von Hutton.3 She was Von Arnheim – and now she’s Countess Russell, Bertie’s sister-in-law. Her love of flowers is really her greatest charm. Not that she says very much, but every word tells. A man wouldn’t discover it in her – he wouldn’t realise how deep it is. For no man loves flowers as women can. Elizabeth looks cooly at the exquisite petunias and says in a small faraway voice: ‘They have a very perfect scent.’ And I feel I can hear oceans of love breaking in her heart for petunias and nasturtiums and snapdragons. I believe you have been painting petunias – your purple velvety ones – Were they? Oh, we have the most wonderful ones here – SUCH colours – If I were an artist I could never resist them. But they must be difficult, because in spite of the weight of colour there’s a transparent light shining through look in them – The look one imagines the fruits had in Aladdin’s orchard . . . Brett, don’t let men worry you with sex. Be cold, be brutal. You can’t hurt their feelings. If they had delicate feelings they would realise they outraged, or disgusted or bored yours. But in the name of our sex make them feel how impudent they are! Intelligent men have no right to be so stupid. I must stop this letter & get on with my new story. Its called At The Bay & its (I hope) full of sand and seaweed and bathing dresses hanging over verandahs & sandshoes on window sills, and little pink ‘sea’ convolvulus, and rather gritty sandwiches and the tide coming in. And it smells (oh I do hope it smells) a little bit fishy. Addio Ever Tig. M. had your letter. He is imbedded in a WORK just at present. I don’t think he is writing letters for the moment. Let me know when you are leaving Scotland Notes 1. Spahlinger’s treatment for tuberculosis was being heralded as a potential remedy in the medical journals of the time. See above, p. 102, n. 1. 2. Boracic ointment was used for the treatment of skin irritations, particularly sores, eczema and impetigo. 3. Brett’s slight muddle over the identity of KM’s cousin Elizabeth is not unwarranted, as features of the life of Bettina von Hutten were distinctly reminiscent of those of Elizabeth von Arnim. Von Hutten was the married name of Bettina Riddle (1874–1957), an American novelist who published under the

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name of Betsey Riddle. Her first, unhappy, marriage was to Friedrich August, Baron von Hutten, and although the couple divorced in 1909 (a much publicised affair), she was considered an enemy alien in Britain, where she lived during the war years with her second husband; she was even arrested on these grounds when she failed to respect the travel restrictions imposed on ‘aliens’.

[29 August 1921] [N] [Chalet des Sapins, Montana-sur-Sierre] Dearest Brett, I would have written before but the Furies have had me until today. Something quite new for a change – high fever, deadly sickness and weakness. I haven’t been able to lift my head from the pillow. I think it has been a break down from too much work. I have felt exhausted with all those stories lately & yet – couldn’t stop. Well, there has been a stop now & I am just putting forth my horns again & thinking of climbing up the hill . . . How I do abominate any kind of illness! Oh God, what it is to live in such a body! Well, it doesn’t bear thinking about . . . As soon as I can get well enough to go downstairs I shall engage our one original cab & go for a long drive behind the old carthorse with his jingle-bells. The driver – as a great honour – throws the foot mat over the seat when one goes for a party of pleasure – He seems to think that is very chic! But this is such a beautiful country – Oh! It is so marvellous. Never the same – the air like old, still wine – sounds of bells & birds and grasshoppers playing their fiddles & the wind shaking the trees – It rains & the drops in the fir trees afterwards are so flashingbright & burning that one feels all is enchanted. It is cloudy – we live in fine white clouds for days & then suddenly at night all is crystal clear & the moon has gold wings. They have just taken the new honey from the hives. I wish I could send you a jar. All the summer is shut up in a little pot. But summer is on the wane – the wane. Now Murry brings back autumn crocuses – and his handkerchief is full of mushrooms. I love the satiny colour of mushrooms, & their smell & the soft stalk. The autumn crocuses push above short, mossy grass. Big red pears – monsters jostle in Ernestine’s apron. Yes, ça commence, ma chere.1 And I feel as I always do that autumn is loveliest of all. There is such a sharpness with the sweetness – there is the sound of cold water running fast in the stream in the forest. Murry says the squirrels are tamer already. But Heavens Brett – Life is so marvelous – it is so rich – such a store of marvels that one cant say which one prefers . . . I feel with you, most deeply and truly, that its not good to be ‘permanent’. Its the old cry: ‘better be impermanent moveables’.2 Now here for instance – we are only 4 hours from Italy. One can run into Italy for tea. Murry went down

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to see Elizabeth last week & she had so done. She had waked with a feeling for Italy that morning & behold she was flown. And that night she sat in the Opera House in Milan – – – – That is right – I am sure. Thats why I hate England. I can’t help it, Miss, downs or no downs. There is that Channel which lies like a great cold sword between you and your dear love Adventure – And by Adventure I mean – yes – the wonderful feeling that one can lean out of heaven knows what window tonight – one can wander under heaven knows what flowery trees – Strange songs sound at the windows – the wine bottle is a new shape, a perfectly new moon shines outside . . . No, don’t settle. Dont ever have a convenient little gentleman’s residence. Hot baths in ones own bathroom are fearfully nice – but they are too dear. I prefer to bath in a flower pot as I go on my way . . . I absolutely agree with you, too, about Manet & Renoir. Renoir – at the last – bores me.3 His feeling for flesh is a kind of super butchers feeling about a lovely little cut of lamb. I am always fascinated by lovely bosoms but not without the heads & hands as well – and I want in fact the feeling that all this beauty is in the deepest sense attached to Life. Real Life! In fact I must confess it is the spirit which fascinates me in flesh. That does for me as far as modern painters are concerned, I suppose. But I feel bored to my last groan by all these pattern mongers. Ah, how wearying it is! I would die of it if I thought. And the writers are just the same. But they are worse than the painters because they are so many of them dirty minded as well. I don’t deny – I even can admire a dung hill. But Virginia Woolf tittering over some little mechanical contrivance to ‘relieve virgins’ – that I abhor & abominate & am ashamed of! What makes Lawrence a real writer is his passion. Without passion one writes in the air or on the sands of the seashore. But L. has got it all wrong, I believe. He is right, I imagine or how shall I put it . . . ? Its my belief too, that nothing will save the world but Love. But his tortured, satanic demon love I think is all wrong. The whole subject is so mysterious, tho’; one could write about it for ever. But let me try & say something . . . . It seems to me that there is a great change come over the world since people like us believed in God – God is now gone for all of us. Yet we must believe and not only that we must carry our weakness and our sin and our devilish-ness to somebody. I don’t mean in a bad, abasing way. But we must feel that we are known that our hearts are known as God knew us. Therefore Love today between ‘lovers’ has to be not only human, but divine today. They love each other for everything and through everything, and their love is their religion. It cant become anything less – even affection – I mean it can’t become less supreme because it is an act of faith to believe! But oh, it is no good. I can’t write it all out. I should go into pages & pages. But I think L. is a sign of the times – just as M’s reply was, too.

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How lovely your children sound. I saw them. Leonora’s hair, Angela’s ‘ways’ the expression of the little boy & Marie Loo’s sort of plunge into Life. You made them simply lovely and so real!! I do wish I could appear behind a bush & see you painting them.4 How I love little children & being with them! I envy you them fearfully. What is your picture like? I see the little heads & the green leaves behind them, but what is it really like? Tell me – do – & the colours. My stories for the Sphere are all done – thank the Lord. I have had copies with ILLUSTRATIONS!5 Oh – Brett! such fearful horrors! All my dear people looking like – well – Harrods 29/6 crepe de chine blouses and young tailors gents, and my old men – stuffy old wooly sheep. Its a sad trial. I am at present imbedded in a terrific story but it still frightens me. And now I have to emerge & write some special things for the old Daily Chronicle who going to make a feature of ’em.6 The Mountain7 is in London buying sweaters & stockings for our winter outfit. She has become a very fierce Swiss patriot. Switzerland is her home; she’s perfectly happy here & is getting awfully good looking. M. says he won’t stir for 5 years from this spot. Then we say we will sail to New Zealing. But I don’t know. Goodbye for now, dear Brett. I send you my love & my duties. Yours Tig. Notes 1. (Fr.): It’s beginning, my dear [that is, they are just ripening]. 2. KM is quoting part of a letter from John Keats to his loved one, Fanny Brawne, that she had jotted down in a notebook in 1918: ‘Better be imprudent moveables than prudent fixtures.’ John Keats’s early death from tuberculosis clearly struck a poignant note in KM’s heart, and may well have prompted her engagement with the poet’s life and works in the same months as the first harsh diagnoses of her disease. See CW4, p. 239. 3. Brett had clearly replied caustically to KM’s enthusiastic evocation of Manet and Renoir in her previous letter. As the fore-figures of French Impressionism, they were both now frowned upon by the post-Impressionist and formalist artists of Brett’s Slade generation. KM’s impatience with the ‘pattern mongers’, however, shows her reticence to adhere wholly to the Bloomsbury focus on ‘significant form’. 4. Brett had been at the home of her brother, Maurice, in Callander, Perthshire, in Scotland. He and his wife, the singer and actress Zena Dare (1887–1975), had one son and two daughters, whom Brett painted in the garden; the picture remains in the family. 5. KM published seven stories in all in the Sphere, and a further series was planned but never happened. They were illustrated by William Smithson Broadhead, a regular contributor to the Sphere. See above, p. 105, n. 6. 6. See above for KM’s planned commission to write for the Daily Chronicle, a project that also came to nothing (p. 107).

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7. ‘The Mountain’ was one of KM’s less complimentary nicknames for Baker, referring to her height and weight, one that she tended to use when complaining about her stalwart companion.

[12 September 1921] [N] [Chalet des Sapins, Montana-sur-Sierre] In harbour. Monday, Brett, Take a long breath. Im going to write masses. First about your picture. I think the little girl in the front is amazingly good. She is beautifully felt. You have got the essential ‘childishness’ of her and you’ve got it by painting. I mean all is so firm, so compact, modelled and simple. And it remains warm. I think you ought to pride yourself no end on that little girl et je vous serre la main pour elle.1 I have put the photograph on the top of this page so Im looking at it as I write. Please remember how Fearfully good I think that small child! I don’t think it comes off as a composition chiefly because of the big child. She seems to me too big, too pale (even tho’ I realise you want to get her fairness over) too broad, too much an expanse. She in a different world to the other child and therefore they cant be really related. Theres a kind of weakness, too, in the painting of the head. Its as though you haven’t held it in your hands & felt it all over. While you were painting you were not touching her. Thats how it looks. And her size distracts one. The picture falls away in her corner. The boy seems to me just very nearly successful. But in his case your sympathies – your feeling for his disposition seem to me to have interfered with your tranquility. You know how, whatever one feels in ones excitement, when one sits down to work that goes. All must be smooth. No novelty, no appearance of effort. Thats the secret. It must appear so natural, so without effort. I feel you have strained a bit to get across the fact of the boy’s sensitiveness, and so you show him off a little instead of paint him. See what I mean? Look here, Brett. Don’t be angry with me for saying all this. If I am your friend you have the right to expect the truth from me. I cant, in these days, give less. Life is too important as well as too short. So forgive me, my girl, if I hurt you. Three heads – a group like that – are – is – hard to manage. One wants to roll them round softly, until they combine.2 They want to flow into each other a bit, especially if they are children. You want a kind of soft nudging if one of the children is your little girl. This doesn’t upset their ‘differences’ but it does make one feel the artist has seen them as a THREE not as a 1, 2, and 3.

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I expect after this youll never send me another photograph. Well, I shall be awfully sorry if you dont. Good luck! All success to you! –––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– The Cezanne book, Miss, you won’t get back until you send a policeman or an urgent request for it. It is fascinating, & you can’t think how one enjoys such a book on our mountain tops. He is awfully sympathetic to me. I am absolutely uneducated about painting. I can only look at it as a writer, but it seems to me the real thing. Its what one is aiming at. One of his men gave me quite a shock. He is the spit of a man Ive just written about – one Jonathan Trout.3 To the life. I wish I could cut him out & put him in my book. Ive finished my new book. Finished last night at 10.30. Laid down the pen after writing ‘Thanks be to God’. I wish there was a God. I am longing to (1) praise him (2) thank him. The title is At The Bay. Thats the name of the very long story in it, a continuation of ‘Prelude’. Its about 60 pages. Ive been at it all last night. My precious children have sat in here playing cards. Ive wandered about all sorts of places – in and out – I hope it is good. It is as good as I can do and all my heart and soul is in it – every single bit. Oh God, I hope it gives pleasure to someone . . . It is so strange to bring the dead to life again. Theres my grandmother, back in her chair with her pink knitting, there stalks my uncle over the grass. I feel as I write ‘you are not dead, my darlings. All is remembered. I bow down to you. I efface myself so that you may live again through me in your richness and beauty.’ And one feels possessed. And then the place where it all happens. I have tried to make it as familiar to ‘you’ as it is to me. You know the marigolds? You know those pools in the rocks? You know the mouse trap on the wash house window sill? And, too, one tries to go deep – to speak to the secret self we all have – to acknowledge that. I mustn’t say any more about it. Im glad you have left Scotland. Its so bad to be with people who depress you. I feel that your wings, quivering and pressed together like a butterfly’s opened wide & fanned with joy to breathe the air of your own room. When do you give up your house? I think its not good to be alone. You want people for many reasons, even for the sense of security a lodger gives you at night. Thats a very real thing! The point is to try to have a house with as little ‘trouble’ as possible. How do you manage? And certainly to be a moveable as often as you can.4 But don’t you find housekeeping very difficult? I have had to give it up entirely. If one has a profession one has no more time for it than a man has. One cannot arrange food, do one’s mending, see that there are flowers and that all is in order and work too. Murry and I have tried it and neither he nor I can bring it off. So we have engaged the ‘mountain’ quite finally to be a professional housekeeper – to be the ‘mistress’ of the house in fact as a servant understands that word. It works well. When the mountain feels that she is needed she is quite different. And what a joy it is to be free and not to know what there is for dinner! The only perquisite we retain is jam-making. Murry and I brew our jam on the electric toaster in a big

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saucepan. We have just made red plum & aspire towards quince. Its a thrilling job, especially taking ‘specimens’ in a saucer – one ends with a ring of saucers. No, we certainly shan’t be back in England for years. Sometimes, in bed at night, we plan one holiday a year but everywhere else feels nearer than England. If we can get the money we shall build here in two or three years time & we have already chosen the way to look – the way the house shall face. And it is christened Chalet Content – we are both most fearful dreamers, especially when its late & we lie staring at the ceiling. It begins with me. M. declares he won’t talk. Its too late. Then I hear ‘certainly not more than two floors & a large open fireplace.’ A long pause K: ‘What about bees?’ J.M.M.: ‘Most certainly bees and I aspire to a goat.’ And it ends with us getting fearfully hungry & J.M.M. going off for two small whacks of cake while I heat two small milks on the spirit stove. You know Wingley? The mountain brought him over. He arrayed with immense eyes after having flashed through all that landscape & it was several hours before the famous purr came into action. Now he completely settled down & reads Shakespeare with us in the evening. I wonder what cat Shakespeare is like. We expect him to write his reminiscences shortly. They are to be bound in mouse’s skin. Goodbye dear Brett. Im taking a holiday today after my labours last week. I wrote for 9 solid hours yesterday. But it has been such a pleasure to talk to you. Id like to send my love to Kot, if he wasn’t my enemy. Take care of yourself. Keep well. Eat nourishing food. But one can’t say to another Be happy. One can only wish it. Yours, dear little painter Tig. Who do you think turned up at the end of this letter? Mrs H.G. Wells & two young H.G. Wells.5 Very nice boys. We feel full of gaierty. Notes 1. (Fr.): I shake your hand on her behalf. 2. Two sets of intertwined loops interrupt the line at this point. 3. Jonathan Trout is one of the more memorable male figures in KM’s essentially woman-oriented ‘At the Bay’. The passage that follows in the letter indicates many of the intimate interlinks between KM’s family memories and the fictional masterpiece. 4. See above, pp. 400 and 402, n. 2. 5. Amy Catherine Robbins (1872–1927), better known as Jane, was the wife of H. G. Wells and a life-long friend of Koteliansky, who had been giving one of their boys, George Philip (‘Gip’), Russian lessons. Their other son was called Frank. The two children were then aged eighteen and twenty.

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[1 October 1921] [N] Chalet des Sapins Montana-sur-Sierre (Valais) Dearest Brett Be gentle! Have pity on your Swiss friend. The staggering letter from Leila about Godfrey was almost too much.1 Its a perfect letter. Never never let it go. His desire for Panama is so touching & his Horror of putting on his dress clothes to go into Socierty. Such things cant be intended. The very mountains are laughing. But Brett – you must get to know him – you must stalk this wild shy creature – don’t you think. And the OPeration? What can it be. I don’t dare to brood over this aspeck of the affair. For Heavens sake and on my knees I beg (as Shakespeare put it) keep me posted in this affair! I am sitting writing to you on the balcony among teacups, grapes, a brown loaf shaped like a bean, a plaited cake with almond paste inside & nuts out. M. has just forsaken it to join our cousin Elizabeth. She appeared today behind a bouquet – never smaller woman carried bigger bouquets. She looks like a garden walking – of asters, late sweet peas, stocks – & always petunias. She herself wore a frock like a spider’s web, a hat like a berry – and gloves that reminded me of thistles in seed. Oh, how I love the appearance of people – how I delight in it if I love them. I have gathered Elizabeths frocks to my bosom as if they were part of her flowers. And then when she smiles a ravishing wrinkle appears on her nose – and never have I seen more exquisite hands. Oh dear I do hope we shall manage to keep her in our life. Its terrible how ones friends disappear & how quickly one runs after to lock the door & close the shutters – The point about her is that one loves her and is proud of her. Ah, thats so important! To be proud of the person one loves. Its essential. Its deep – deep – Theres no wound more bitter to love than not to be able to be proud of the other. Its the unpardonable offence, I think. But no doubt Elizabeth is far more important to me than I am to her. Shes surrounded, lapped in lovely friends . . Read her last book if you can get hold of it. Its called Vera & published by Macmillan.2 Its amazingly good! Except for her we are lost in our forest. And next month the weather will change. Six weeks or two months in the clouds with nothing to see but more cloud before it clears & the snow falls. Other people who flee from the mountains in the between seasons seem to think it will be a very awful time. But there is so much to do. And I love to be in a place all the year round – to know it in all its changes. Ive been away from England for over a year now. Why does England sound so horrid? I suppose its not really, but the smell of the newspaper even frightens me. J.M.M. has just the same horror of it. Its a kind of nightmare.

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I am very interested in your doll still life. Ive always wondered why nobody really saw the beauty of dolls – the dollishness of them – People make them look like cricket bats with eyes as a rule. But there is a kind of smugness & rakishness combined in dolls & heaven knows how much else that’s exquisite & the only word I can think of is precious. What a life one leads with them. How complete. Their hats – how perfect – and their shoes – or even minute boots. And the pose of a dolls hand – very dimpled with spreading fingers. Female dolls in their nakedness are the most female things on earth . . . I keep on being interrupted by the sound in the trees. Its getting late – the tree tops look as though they have been dipped into the gold-pot & theres a kind of soft happy sighing or swinging or ruffling – all three going on. A bird, bright salmon pink with mouse grey wings hangs upside down pecking a fir cone – the shadows are growing long on the mountains. But its impossible to describe this place. It has so brought back my love of nature that I shall spend all the rest of my life – – trekking. A winter in Spitzbergen is an ambition of ours after some photographs in The Sphere.3 It looks marvellous. The only question is – will our cat be able to stand it? The nearest other cat is China . . . Do you enjoy your Thursdays?4 Are the talks interesting? Who holds forth? Sullivan, I expect, & is seconded by Waterlow. I like Milne – don’t you? Sullivan sounds happy. There is no reason why he and Mrs S plus the motor car shouldn’t do very well. Is her baby coming? Babies are in the air just now. I heard via the Mountain – via Miss Reade that Miss Carrington that was – was expecting.5 She ought to have babies. Theyd be lovely – like sunflowers. How silly of Gertler. Thats the worst of being a sentimentalist one is landed in places where one looks silly. But you are very fond of Gertler – aren’t you? Is he better to talk painting with than Guevara? Who do you really talk to? My cold hand won’t write. I must go in. But these last moments are best moments. Now a whole troupe of little cattle, goats, black sheep, brown lambs has rushed down the forest path with a wild girl & a boy behind them. They have come down from the high pastures. I fully expected Charlie6 to be at Garsington. He sounded awfully nice – His Cousin Aubrey7 filled us with horror. We don’t see the Mirror but the Daily News feeds one. This picture of him is extremely good. Its the look behind the look which is wonderful. I am so sorry your parcil never came – Thats the point about Switzerland. The post offices are models. People post everything to one another. One sees the poor postman delivering double beds & cannon balls and kittens – All just with a label. Its very useful though, & letters from anywhere never take more than two days. Im tempted to send you a mushroom or a squirrel for your new house. Ive started & torn up two bad stories & now Im in the middle of the third. Its about a hypocrite. My flesh creeps as I write about him and my eyes pop at his iniquities.8

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Heres a new ‘press’ photo.9 Is it any good? Its like me – so M. says ‘the spit of you’ – Do you think it would go all right on a cover? Why don’t you send me a picture of yourself. Id like one! And my room here is so nice. Its like a wild west cabin – all wood and furs & silky stripes. I should very much like to have you on a wall. Dont get caught in the cold blasts, little artist. Wrap yourself up. Make the charlady feed you on bakin.10 In my infancy I used to cry myself to bed with the tragic lines I bought a poun of ba-kin An fried it in a pan But nobody came to e-eat it But me-e and my young man! Forgive a silly but grateful & loving Tig. Notes 1. Despite the vivid leads, the identity of Godfrey and Leila has not been traced. 2. Von Arnim’s novel Vera, largely inspired by her own experience of the emotional upheavals resulting from a marriage based on naivety and power, had been published by Macmillan that August. See above, p. 33, n. 2. 3. The Spitsbergen islands had been in the news since the mid-war years on account of their strategic interest, and again in 1920 when the Spitsbergen Treaty acknowledged full Norwegian sovereignty over the Arctic archipelago – of which Spitsbergen is the largest island. With disputed sovereignty settled, the following months saw a growth of interest in terms of tourism and trade. The most recent illustrated coverage in the Sphere, however, dated back to 13 July 1918. It is therefore possible that either KM was leafing through back issues, or she is muddling reviews, or the Sphere article had been republished elsewhere. 4. Thursday meetings were organised by Koteliansky at his home in Acacia Avenue, with the purpose of discussing contemporary social and political affairs. The idea took root in 1917, when he was so concerned about the damage that the extended war of attrition was inflicting on the fragile Russian state, which, as a result, hovered on the verge of civil war. He referred to the most regular attendees as the Thursdayers; these included Leonard Woolf, Gertler, W. J. Turner and the Irish poet James Stephen, as well as academics and staff from the British Museum, such as Herbert Milne, a classicist working on a papyri catalogue. 5. The rumour was either unfounded or premature; Carrington never had children. 6. Charlie Chaplin was well acquainted with various Bloomsbury personalities, both the central and the peripheral figures, having been introduced to Lytton Strachey, Augustus John and Aldous Huxley at a special lunch party hosted by Ottoline Morrell. He was also well acquainted with H. G. Wells. 7. Chaplin’s cousin, Aubrey Chaplin, was a publican in London, who also helped manage the family estate and the London visits of his illustrious older cousin.

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8. The hypocrite in question was probably the lacklustre protagonist of ‘A Married Man’s Story’. Critics tend to read this story as a slighting portrait of JMM; JMM, meanwhile, told Sydney Schiff that he considered it ‘an amazing piece of work’. See CW2, pp. 379–90. 9. KM’s press photograph of 1921 shows her looking sideways in three-quarter profile; it features as the cover photograph of CW4. See below, pp. 573–4, for KM’s description of the photograph to Gerhardi. 10. ‘Bacon’ (KM’s language play).

[5 October 1921] [N] [Chalet des Sapins, Montana-sur-Sierre] 5 X 1921 Brett dear I did send you one. If it hasn’t turned up by now, or if Mrs Horne has used it as a plaster for the eye I’ll send you another. It would be 2 awful for you to have 2! But I sent one exprès1 asking you if you thought it would make a good ‘press’ photo. Constables have taken my book and are publishing in the New Year.2 I am lucky. My new agent is a good man, I think, and Constables have treated me very well. If only one didn’t have to pay doctors bill with the money. I sent off another cheque to Sorapure on the spot and still I owe fifty guineas to friends here. It would have been nice to have had a small splash with ones money instead. But one day I shall. I’ll fly over & alight on your lawn under your windys complete with a soft snowball ready to throw – Lets have a good time some day, shall we? On our own? Cut off somewhere really thrilling for a bit? I must make enough money to bring this off . . . Oh Brett, Ive got another old chill. Im lying on the balcony in JMMs Jaegar cardigan with a jaegar blanket up to my chest and fever. The best part of a chill is fever. Then the world has just that something added which makes it almost unbearably beautiful. It is worth it. I am so glad you are hearing some music. I don’t think music ever makes me feel like Mozart does you, for instance. Its like being gloriously dead – if you know what I mean. One is not any more – one is wafted away, and yet there’s a feeling of rejoicing and a kind of regret – Ah, such regret – mixed together that I feel disembodied spirits must know. But to tell you the absolute truth, though Beethoven does that for me so does Caruso on a really good gramophone . . .3 JMM and I, before this chill seized me have been taking some more driving exercise. Even the horse was amazed last time & stopped every three minutes & turned round and ogled us. I am going to wear riding

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breeches next time & JMM pink coat & stock made of a dinner napkin. We leapt up into the air, bounded from side to side, shook, fell forward, were tossed back. The road was an ancient water course with upside down mountains in it. But the view! The beauty of everything! The gold green pastures with herds of tiny rams & cattle & white goats. We arrived finally in a valley where the trees were turning – cherry trees a bright crimson, yellow maples, and apple trees flashing with apples. Little herd girls & boys with switches of mountain ash ran by. There was a very old saw mill that had turned too – a deep golden red. There cant be any place in the world more wonderful than the road to Lens. It is near there we mean to pitch our ultimate tent. I hope Lady Ian Hamilton buys a big picture.4 I think your idea of a show is excellent. Where would you have it? I do hope you carry this idea out & advertise it as much as possible. Dont you think an artist ought to have a show at least once a year? It seems to me almost as necessary as for a writer to produce a book. That sort of contact with the public – even the feeling of being at the mercy of the public is somehow right. After all, we express these things because we want a bigger audience than ourselves – we want to reveal what we have seen. I wish I could think I shall see your show . . . Must stop. I only meant to write a note. If you can – send me a letter to get here on the 14th will you? Its such a thrill to get a letter on birthdays. Dont wash up!! I press your hand.5 Goodbye for now, I hope you are happy. Yours for ever Katherine. Notes 1. (Fr.): On purpose. 2. The Garden Party and Other Stories was published in early 1922. 3. Enrico Caruso was an Italian tenor and one of the most acclaimed opera singers of his era; he had died just two months before, prompting a new release of Vitrola phonograph recordings celebrating his voice and art. He is one of the singers recalled with nostalgia by Mary Jane in Joyce’s ‘The Dead’, from his collection of short stories, Dubliners (1914). 4. The Glaswegian-born Jean Muir (1861–1941), who became Lady Ian Hamilton in 1887 when she married the British General Ian Hamilton (also a poet and minor novelist), was a fashionable and much-loved hostess and generous patroness of the arts. She was notably one of the original shareholders of the Omega Workshops, willingly commissioning works and then using her receptions to publicise the group’s works. Her portrait, painted by Singer Sargent in 1896, is now in the Tate in London. 5. KM here uses a final greeting that she was particularly fond of, a literal translation of a courteous Russian formula that Koteliansky regularly employed.

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[15 October 1921] [N] [Chalet des Sapins, Montana-sur-Sierre] 15 X 1921 Dearest Brett, I have 2 letters to thank you for. Forgive me that I haven’t written sooner, but all this week I have been most fearfully busy with a long story which was only finished late last night. Finished it is, however. Thanks be to God. Its called The Garden-Party & I have decided to call my new book by that title instead of the other. Constable is producing it at the New Year. I told you that – didn’t I? In the meantime the Mercury is bringing out that very long seaweedy story of mine At The Bay.1 I feel inclined to suggest to them to give away a spade an’ bucket with each copy . . . The amount of work to do is awful, though. Are you busy? Lets sit down on your couch for a talk. The light in your room is lovely today. I like to look out of the window at that long garden – – I seem to know it so well. How are you Brettushka? You know your hair grows so awfully prettily off your forehead. Sheer gold. Little bright gold feathers. I often think of them . . . There is a mass of things to say! I was fearfully glad to hear of your success with Lady Ian Hamilton. Her house sounds lovely, too. I hope you get yours. It sounds so untroubled and hazy with gold light – like only Sussex is. I heard about Mrs Ferdy (marvellous name) from Sylvia Lynd.2 I dont remember her. But it all sounds rather horrid. Poor woman! Oh, how I saw that awful party at the Wells. Beginning with Ottoline on the stairs in that mood! What a nightmare. I have a perfect horror of such affairs! They are always the same. One has to be encased in vanity like a beetle to escape being hurt. And the ghastly thing is they are so hard to forget; one lives them over and over. Dont go to them, my dear. You are too delicate. But whats the use of saying that; there are times when one has to go. Its difficult to see what compensations there are in city life. I think the best plan is to live away from them and then, when one has done a good deal of work and wants a holiday – take a real holiday in a place like Paris or Madrid or even London (but not for me London). It is nice sometimes to be with many people & to hear music and to be ‘overcome’ by a play & to watch dancing. Walking in streets is nice, too. But one always wants to have an avenue of escape. One wants to feel a stranger for these things to have their charm, and – most important of all – one wants to have a solid body of work behind one. The longer I live the more I realise that in work only lies ones strength and ones salvation. And such supreme joy that one gives thanks for life with every breath.

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Midday. Ah, why can’t you hear that darling little bell in the valley. Its misty today, but the sun shines and the mist is silver. Its still. And somewhere there rings over and over that little chime, so forgetful, so easy, so gay. Its like a gay little pattern, gold & butterflies and cherubs with trumpets in the very middle of the page – so that one pauses before one begins the afternoon chapter. We are going for a picnic. We take the jaegar rug & a bastick.3 And then we lie under a tree, stir our tea with a twig, look up, look down, wonder why. But it begins to get dark earlier. At seven oclock the moon is in full feather on my balcony. I want to talk about your cats. Do you like them very much? The black one is good but I don’t see it related to the other. And perhaps it is the photograph – the other looks as though it were painted differently. Its big, heavy, broad. Its got no muscles. Its not nervous, not warm. I don’t see them as a design. The coloured balls aren’t enough to bring them together. You could cut that painting in half without changing it or so it looks to me. That makes me wonder about the difference of seeing-and-feeling and grasping. I know that when I write stories if I write at the seeing-and-feeling stage they are no good & have to be scrapped. I have to go on almost squeezing them in my hands if you know what I mean until I KNOW them in every corner and part. Sometimes, in your work, it seems to me you have the idea, the feeling, the ‘overwhelming emotion’ right enough and then, instead of holding on you lose hold, and something shaky happens – something is not realised fully. So that it might be the result of an accident that the picture looked as it does at the finish. You don’t do the squeezing process long enough or hard enough. Take for instance, The Mannequin. The middle figure is beautifully painted but it fails as a whole, I feel. The corner drops out. I know it wasn’t finished when I saw it but then it seems to me it ought not to have been finished all over. It ought to have been all at a certain stage – not one figure beautifully finished. That is so devilishly dangerous. One spends oneself on the detail before the time has come for that. To put it absolutely brutally – just where you go soft you ought to be hard, it seems to me. Dear Brett, I know how difficult this is, and I know I am horribly outspoken. Tell me how wrong I am! I remember often a still life of yours – Asters – I think that was most lovely. I think you have exquisite feeling and sensibility. But you know this . . . There it is. Dont send me any ‘present’.4 It was a letter I wanted – and I got a lovely one – real gift. Thank you dearest. I will remember yours on November 15th and send you an envelope & trimmings – Write again! About Christmas – Wouldn’t it be much too cold? Do you realise how snowed up we shall be? The height & the cold would be too much to bear so suddenly. Besides summer is so divine here. Long days, pic-nics, long drives, we might even go off on a small tour. Let it be summer. And then there are all the flowers – Oh yes, you must come in the warm weather.

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Goodbye for now, dear little artist. Keep warm. Be happy. Id like to give you a small hug. If you knew how much I like your purple writing on an envelope! Yours ever. Katherine. Notes 1. ‘At the Bay’ appeared in the January edition of the Mercury. See CW4, pp. 342–71. 2. Sylvia Dryhurst (1888–1952) was a short-story writer, novelist and poet, who had become firm friends with Brett during their years at the Slade. She was married to the Irish journalist and chronicler Robert Lynd, who is believed by many critics to have written the long review of Woolf’s Night and Day, ‘A Tragic Comedienne’, published in the Nation, which is also attributed to KM. See CW3, pp. 599–602. Mrs Ferdy has not been identified. 3. A good example of KM’s pleasure in punning and wordplay, often for the mere fun of playing with sound rather than creating new meaning, as in the case of this metathesis on the word ‘basket’. 4. KM had celebrated her thirty-third birthday on 14 October.

[2 November 1921] [N] Chalet des Sapins Montana-sur-Sierre Valais Cheque enclosed ii XI 1921 Dearest Brett, Just as I had sent my letter away your new letter came with the bills. What a dove you were to go wool gathering so far an wide! I saw you winding your way from shop to shop . . . As to the dogs in Heads1 you should have told them to stop pulling out each other’s wool. This Fearful Feebleness is because its very late night and I ate such a stupid man with my tea – I cant digest him. He is bringing out a book of Georgian Stories & he said the more ‘plotty’ a story I could give him the better. What about that for a word? It made my hair stand up in prongs. A nice ‘plotty’ story, please – People are funny. The Fat Cat Sits on my Feet – Fat is not enough to describe him by now. He must weigh pounds & pounds. And his lovely black coat is turning white. I suppose its to

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prevent the mountains from seeing him. He sleeps here & occasionally creeps up to my chest & pads softly with his paws, singing the while. I suppose he wants to see if I have the same face all night. I long to surprise him with terrific disguises – M. calls him ‘my Breakfast cat’, because they share that meal – two boys – alone together. M. at the table and Wingley on. Its awful the love one can lavish on an animal – In his Memoirs which he dictates to me M’s name is always MasteranMan2 – one word – my name is Grandma Jaegar3 – The Mountain he always calls ‘Fostermonger’ & for some reason our servant he refers to as The Swede. He has rather a contempt for her. Goodnight. Thank you again. We shall burn to see the wool now. We are making a huge quilt – it will be like lying under rainbows. With warm love Tig. Notes 1. Presumably a local store where KM had had an account. 2. The double ‘M’ in JMM’s name doubtless earned him this nickname, but it also has a Tolstoyan ring to it that is more than merely playful. ‘Master and Man’ is a powerful parable by Tolstoy, in which a Master urges his manservant to set out on a journey with him, despite threats of severe weather. The two men get lost in a blizzard, and when the servant collapses from exhaustion, the Master abandons him by the roadside and makes his way back to safety. Once sheltered, the Master is overcome by love for the man who gave up his life for him. 3. However playful, JMM’s sobriquet for KM doubtless reflects her growing need to wear thicker layers of woollens to ward off the cold, and thereby avoid bronchial infections.

[11 November 1921] [N] Chalet des Sapins Montana-sur-Sierre Valais 11 XI 1921 Dearest Brett, Forgive my silence lately – I have been wrestling with work which wouldn’t be done and had to be done in time. I did, in fact, write you a letter. But then I tore it up. It seemed to me not worth sending, and it wasn’t. I have thought of you often and wished that I could whip up my pen. But it was a dry pen, a cold pen, the kind I do dislike getting.

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Now I must begin a Service of Thanks – First for your letter & then for the little photograph which is the spit of you, and then for t’other photograph in the cape and cap. How well I remember those caps, especially pinned down at the back on to ones wad of hair. I had a pale blue one for one of my journeys to New Zealand and draped with a pale blue gossamer veil I felt – fearfully chic and dashing. Human flesh & blood doesn’t dare to think what it really looked like . . . My sister Chaddie has an immense book full of photographs from the age of 6 months. It is the most chastening book I know. Really, ones hats, ones waists and a small black round cap with wings I used to affect which I called always my wooza. It was rather a good name for it. But worn in conjunction with a linen collar and large tie . . . . . . I have never let M. see that book. It is too shattering. Thanks again, dearest Brett, for the Mercury which arrived gummed to its eyebrows. I tore my way into it, at last. But a harder roll has never entered Switzerland. That blue paper of yours for one thing is a kind of very superior rag book paper. If you drew a crocodile on a piece & gave it to an infant the crocodile would live for ever. I have preserved a small portion to be used as a patch when M. starts learning to ski. I wish people would not write those kind of articles for another five years at least.1 Though I was very glad the man liked my Daughters of the Late Colonel. For I put my all into those storys & hardly anyone saw what I was getting at. Even dear old Hardy told me to write more about those sisters.2 As if there was any more to say! But speaking dead seriously, I could do with a great deal less praise than I get. Its . . . frightening, and I feel with all my heart I want to have another two years work done at least before Im worth talking about. However, I am certain my new book will be a failure. There will be a reaction against it. I count on that, so I mean to make the next one really as good as I can. Do send along the photograph as soon as you have one of your next picture. Is it harder to work in winter than in summer? I should think it would be, but then theres a kind of thrilling quality in the air in winter which one doesn’t get at any other time. I remember it even in Hampstead – cold, bright mornings on the heath with the pond frozen & the sky so high so transparent – London, according to the papers seems to be positively hung with pictures, and no Great House but has a Guevara.3 The Lavery ménage is rather awful isn’t it.4 Sir John & Lady both at it. M. pines for one of her catalogues, written by Winston Churchill.5 If you go to the Exhibition will you send him yours. He wants it for a weapon. The attitude to Art – all Art – of the rich an great in London is odious – isn’t it. It always reminds me of the story by Tchekhov where the man wants to say, longs to say, ‘Paws off’ to the plebian.6 Id like to say it to not only Lady Cunard & Cie.7 Words cant describe the cold here. We have central heating which never goes out, but even then – on my balcony I freeze absolutely hard. The Mountain sends up all the food buttoned into tight little suet

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jackets and we both wear red indian boots, fur lined. They are so nice. Ones feet feel like small animals; you discover them playing together all on their own. But what shall we do if it gets colder? At present the Big Snow has not fallen. All is frozen hard and each tree has a little mat of white before it. Oh dear, it is so beautiful. The mountains are so noble & this snowy cover makes one see their shapes – every hollow, every peak is modelled. But all agree the snow is not serious yet. It falls, small and light like confetti, or it swarms like white bees – M. comes back from his walks hung with real icicles. He has bought boots with felt tops and a leather jacket. . . . –––– I had to break off there for I was being absolutely pursued by birds. They were flying right inside the balcony, the loveliest creatures, a bright salmon pink with silvery heads & beaks. I am afraid they must have been left behind. So now I have begged a great slice of bread from Ernestine & my balcony rail is a very nice restaurant. If only theyd come and eat. Precious little creatures – how I love them. Have I told you about my balcony? It is as big as a small room, the sides are enclosed & big double doors lead from it to my workroom. Three superb geraniums still stand on the ledge when its fine, and their rosy masses of flowers against blue space are wonderful. Its so high up here that one only sees the tops & halfway down of the enormous mountains opposite, and theres a great sweep of sky as one only gets at sea. In fact I always feel I am at sea – on a ship – anchored before a new, undiscovered country. At sunset, when the clouds are really too much to bear alone I call out, ‘mountains on your right a deep blue’ – and M. shouts from below ‘Right’ & I hear him go out to his balcony to observe. But its most beautiful at night. Last night for instance, at about 10 oclock, I wound myself up in wool & came out here & sat watching. The world was like a huge ball of ice. There wasn’t a sound. It might have been ages before man. Your Thursdays sound very fierce occasions. I expect they are fun – aren’t they? Tchekhov said over and over again, he protested, he begged, that he had no problem. In fact you know he thought it was his weakness as an artist. It worried him but he always said the same. No problem.8 And, when you come to think of it what was Chaucer’s problem or Shakespeare’s? The ‘problem’ is the invention of the 19th century. The artist takes a long look at Life. He says softly, ‘So this is what Life is – is it?’ And he proceeds to express that. All the rest he leaves. Tolstoi even had no problem. What he had was a propaganda & he is a great artist in spite of it. I think its a good thing I don’t come to your Thursdays. I would introduce a non serious atmosphere. Id feel inclined to suggest a game of Swartzer Peter9 or Hunt the Thimble. Sullivan might be extremely good at Hunt the Thimble! But Brett dearest, forgive me, I don’t think of people as ‘little’ people – Never! And I simply cant say you-and-I. I never feel you and I with my friends – There is something forever separate in me which makes

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it impossible. If this is a bad limitation – I am very sorry – But I cant help it. Oh – I have just remembered. If you should see Edmund Dulac’s show10 would you tell me about his portrait of Mrs Wellington Koo. She is a woman whose appearance I admire tremendously. Ive only seen bad newspaper photographs of her but she looks exquisite, even then. I should imagine it would be perfect joy to paint her as she should be painted. Couldn’t you get to know her? I am sure she is as rare a little being as one can find. But its true Ive only seen her on the back page of the Daily Mail!! Her babies are the greatest loves possible. M. & I nearly swooned over their picture. Goodbye for now – I press your hand warmly. I am yours ever Tig. Notes 1. The November issue of the London Mercury featured a long and enthusiastic review of ‘The Daughters of the Late Colonel’ by the literary journalist G. B. Street, who picks up, in particular, on the author’s exquisite art of rendering the everyday world. 2. Thomas Hardy, then an elderly man of eighty-one, had written via his wife to express admiration for the story; the letter, unfortunately, would not appear to have survived. JMM visited the Hardys in June that year. 3. Since Guevara’s exhibition at the Omega Workshops, 33 Fitzroy Square, in 1916, he had been lionised by London patrons and hostesses – including Edith Sitwell (whose portrait remains one of Guevara’s best-known works), Ottoline Morrell and Nancy Cunard. 4. Sir John Lavery (1856–1951) was an Irish-born, Scottish-educated artist who had enjoyed considerable success on the European mainland before being better acknowledged amongst his British peers. He was one of the official war artists during World War One, upon the recommendation of key political figures, including Ramsay MacDonald and Asquith, and received his knighthood in recognition for this service. His first wife died of tuberculosis in 1891; his second wife, the former arts student Hazel Martyn (1880–1935), was a glamorous and admired hostess who sat for a number of key artists at the time. 5. Winston Churchill (1874–1965) was one of Lady Lavery’s inner circle, although their political sympathies were hardly mutual, she being a firm defender of Irish nationalism. Churchill, who was a passionate amateur artist and an acknowledged art critic at the time, wrote the catalogue preface to John and Hazel Lavery’s joint exhibition at the Alpine Club in 1921. A report in the Nation and Athenaeum discusses both the exhibition and Churchill’s analysis (vol. 30, p. 432). 6. The quotation comes from one of Chekhov’s most explicitly engaged stories, ‘At a Country House’, in which Rashevitch, a complacent member of the local gentry, whenever he is in company, indulges in extended, lavish praise of the innate moral virtues and intellectual brilliance of the nobility, excoriating the low-born along the way. The translation ‘Paws off’ suggests that

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KM had been reading the story in the translation by Constance Garnett, in the collection The Chorus Girl and Other Stories, published in 1920. 7. Maud Burke (1872–1948), who married into the Cunard family (renowned for founding the Cunard shipping company – abbreviated by KM here using the French convention ‘et compagnie’, or ‘et Cie’), was a sophisticated and passionate patroness of the arts, and a London society hostess whose intimate circle included the novelist George Moore and the conductor Thomas Beecham. She was the mother of the renowned militant activist and artists’ muse, Nancy Cunard. 8. KM is quoting a letter by Chekhov to Souvorin that she knew well, having co-translated it with Koteliansky in 1919 (see CW3, pp. 220–1). She also discusses the same convictions with Virginia Woolf in a letter written in late May 1919. Interestingly, she is referring to the translation by Constance Garnett here, since Garnett uses the term ‘problem’, where KM and Koteliansky opt for ‘question’. Chekhov explains: In conversation with my literary colleagues, I always insist that it is not the artist’s business to solve problems that require a specialist’s knowledge. [. . .] An artist observes, selects, guesses, combines – and this in itself presupposes a problem; unless he had set himself a problem from the very first, there would be nothing to conjecture and nothing to select. [. . .] You are right in demanding that an artist should take an intelligent attitude to his work, but you confuse two things: solving of problem and stating a problem correctly. (Garnett 1920, p. 100) 9. ‘Schwarzer Peter’ is the German name for ‘Old Maid’, the well-known card game. One nineteenth-century version of the game was called ‘Donkey’ and involved making animal noises, rather like the scene in ‘At the Bay’. See CW2, pp. 361–4. 10. Edmund Dulac (1882–1953) was a French-born illustrator and designer who settled definitively in London in 1903. His illustrated fairy-tale books count among the best-known and best-loved editions to date. His success in the 1910s and 1920s was such that his publisher, Hodder and Stoughton, organised an annual exhibition of volumes illustrated by him at the Leicester Galleries. His portrait of Mrs Wellington Koo, the wife of the Chinese ambassador in London, shows her in Chinese dress; a number of contemporary newspapers and reviews reproduced the picture, including the Outlook, the Sketch and the Illustrated London News. Oei Hui-lan, then known as Mrs Wellington Koo, was a hugely admired figure in fashionable London circles, renowned for her great beauty and her elegant dress style, blending traditional Chinese costumes and contemporary Western clothes.

[14 November 1921] [N] [Chalet des Sapins, Montana-sur-Sierre, Valais] 1 purl 1 plain wool in front of needle knit two together slip one cross stitch for 94 lines purl again decrease to form spiral effect up leg now use the needle as for purl casting on first and so continue until

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length can be divided by three. Care should be taken to keep all flat. Press with warm iron and serve . . . Just a little home recipie, ma chère, for a wet evening. Monday Brett dearest The Wools came today. They are quite lovely & I feel inclined to carry them about, just as they are, like fat dolls. J.M. was deeply moved by their beauty; he is an expert with the needles – – – But we found, by piercing the postage signs that you had paid vast sums to have them sent over. So here is another cheque – and I hope you hear our grateful thankful thanks all standing in a row & singing your praises. Isnt leming yellow a fascinating colour. There is a very pink pink here too – aster pink, which is heavenly fair. I could get a wool complex very easily . . . These are simply perfect in every way. This is not a letter. Now you owe me one – pleasant thought. The day is simply divine – so hot that my pink perishall1 won’t keep out the sun enough. Blazing! With air that ones very soul comes up to breathe, rising like a fish out of the dark water. You were not serious about the sweater – were you? But can you make sleeves? I cant turn corners for nuts. Tig. P.S. No, what you ought to have said to the Fighting Dogs was: Will you go in or stay out? Which will you have Heads or Tails? P.P.S. What a duck Marie Loo must be.2 P.P.P.S. No, I dont like mousey colours. We began to wind after lunch today and now a miniature Garsington sits on the carpet. The cat almost had delirium tremens. We thought we should have to chloroform him finally. He sat up & began to wind his own tail. P.P.P.P.S. M. is at this moment sliding on the ice. P.P.P.P.P.S. I sent you those postcards just to show you how innocent a corner we keep. Now I shall get you some others to show you what it is really like. Notes 1. (KM’s wordplay): parasol. 2. The daughter of Brett’s brother, Maurice. See above, p. 402.

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[5 December 1921] [N] Chalet des Sapins Montana-sur-Sierre Valais Dearest Brett, Forgive my delay in answering. I wanted to answer bang off, but these last few days have been rather bad ones – tired ones. I haven’t been able to do anything but read. Its on these occasions that one begins to wish for queer things like gramophones. It wouldn’t matter if one could just walk away. But thats out of the question at present. But no more of it. If possible I will certainly meet you in Paris in the Spring near the Luxembourg Gardens. Lovely idea! It shall be done. I hope to have enough money by then to spend a month in Paris. Wouldn’t it be thrilling for you to arrive? I love Paris at that time of year. Wasn’t that Van Gogh shown at the Goupil ten years ago?1 Yellow flowers – brimming with sun in a pot? I wonder if it is the same. That picture seemed to reveal something that I hadn’t realised before I saw it. It lived with me afterwards. It still does – that & another of a sea captain in a flat cap. They taught me something about writing, which was queer – a kind of freedom – or rather, a shaking free. When one has been working for a long stretch one begins to narrow ones vision a bit, to fine things down too much. And its only when something else breaks through, a picture, or something seen out of doors that one realises it. It is – literally – years since I have been to a picture show. I can smell them as I write. I am writing to you before breakfast. Its just sunrise and the sky is a hedge sparrow egg blue, the fir trees are quivering with light. This is simply a marvellous climate for sun. We have far more sun than at the South of France, and while it shines it is warmer. On the other hand – out of it – one might be in the Arctic Zone – and it freezes so hard at night that one dare not let the chauffage down, even. It is queer to be in the sun and to look down at the clouds. We are above them here. But yesterday for instance it was like the old original flood. Just Montana bobbed above the huge lakes of pale water. There wasn’t a thing to be seen but cloud below. When are the photographs of your paintings to come? Send them soon! Are you working? Or resting after your last. Are people gay in London this winter? These awful fogs – I feel I should have to fly to something to get over them, and yet – if one is well – perhaps they dont matter so much and even have their beauty, too. Oh dear! I am sure by now you are gasping at the dullness of this letter. To tell you the truth – I am terribly unsettled for the moment. It will pass. But while it is here I seem to have no mind except for what

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is worrying me. I am making another effort to throw off my chains – i.e. to be well. And I am waiting for the answer to a letter – I’m half here – half away – its a bad business. But you see I have made up my mind to try the Russian doctor’s treatment.2 I have played my card. Will he answer? Will anything come of it? One dares not speak of these things. It is so boring for it is all speculation, and yet one cannot stop thinking . . . thinking . . . imagining what it would be like to run again or take a little jump. Forgive me, dear Brett. In my next letter I shall be over this. Do please write if you can. It would be fearfully nice to get a long letter, especially as I don’t deserve one. And tell me please what size you take in shoes. Don’t forget! It will be too late if you do, and be sure to let me know where you will be at Christmas Time. I want (as I daresay you have guessed) to send you a small present. Goodbye for now. My love to you Ever Tig. Notes 1. Goupil & Cie (‘et compagnie’) was a highly respected art dealer in Paris who had worked in association with van Gogh’s uncle, also called Vincent, in the 1870s. Van Gogh’s brother, Theo, also worked for the company in the late nineteenth century, becoming manager of the Montmartre premises, also famous for exhibiting new works. The company supported the artist throughout his career. KM had clearly admired van Gogh’s Sunflowers, perhaps his best-known picture today. 2. KM had contacted the Russian doctor Ivan Manoukhin about his renowned X-ray treatment for tuberculosis, then highly praised in the press. Upon his encouraging reply, she travelled to Paris a month later to begin treatment.

[11 December 1921] [N] Chalet des Sapins Montana-sur-Sierre Valais Dearest Brett, Your photographs have come. I am embarrassed by them and for this reason. I don’t feel its quite fair to give you my opinion unless you are certain – unless you remember – its no more than the opinion of one of the public. All I know about painting is that I like certain things – they seem to me to have ‘come off’ – or the artist has ‘brought it across’ – Strangeness doesn’t matter as long as one feels that. Its the only criterion I have to go by – But you see its not much of a one.

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I like your flowers best. Best of all the White Gloxinias.1 No – I should like the Asters equally. I feel the colour is very lovely in them. Your painting – as I know it – depends very much on colour. Thats what makes it so hard to really judge by photographs. I don’t really like Ottoline. You seem to have tried for subtlety in the face but there is not enough and so its weak. And the expanse of chest is ugly to me. It doesn’t look living. The head doesn’t look as though it belongs to it. Its not really Ottoline or a pretty lady; its a kind of giantess. That may be an ‘aspect’ of Ottoline but I don’t think it is what you aimed at conveying. The Dolls depend so greatly on colour for their decorative effect that its fearfully hard to know what to say. I like the way you have painted the little dish and the bowl. Theres a feeling for dolls in it, a naivete – awfully nice – and the head of the black doll seems to me very solid. But the off arm worries me. But without colour it is impossible to really see this picture. Its true I think the other doll’s face is not quite right. It looks flabby. But isn’t that the photograph? And the painting of the dress doesn’t look intentional enough; it looks not considered enough. Now we come to Marie Loo. I have read and reread the description so that I see it as near as I can. It sounds wonderfully attractive. The truth is I really don’t know quite what you are after. I don’t understand. There is Marie Loo in her own little world under her own parasol. Thats your idea – isn’t it? But the painting of the figure worries me – especially the legs. Shes too much like a flat cardboard figure – I have looked at her legs and I cant see her naked. Perhaps you will say – what on earth has this to do with it? Let her legs be flat. But there’s the head. You have painted the head as though it were a round object i.e. to me – the head is in one style and the rest of the body (except the hand holding the doll) in another. It seems to me your whole difficulty is technique. The feeling is there, the imagination & the colour but you cant yet express what you feel and see. Your tools are not good enough – your hands. And I also think you are a bit over anxious; you are trying too hard – what I mean is you are attempting in Marie Loo something that for the moment is beyond you. Its no good doing anything that is not just a little too difficult for us – thats a most profound truth, I think – but on the other hand we have to judge the degree of difficulty. And thats not easy. Forgive me if I hurt you. Please don’t mind what I say. It all comes to this: I feel there is a weakness in your more ambitious painting and the cause of it is that you haven’t worked long enough to overcome it yet. Dont imagine I do not realise how much work has gone into these pictures. Dear dear Brett – I do with all my heart & I respect you for it. But its useless to take that into consideration when one is considering the result – isn’t it? Ill write a letter later. This is to catch the outgoing post. Yours ever with love Tig –

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Notes 1. The early pictures by Brett, and most of those depicting her family and the family environment, are in private collections today and rarely reach the public eye.

[13 December 1921] [N] Chalet des Sapins Montana-sur-Sierre Valais Tuesday. Dearest Brett, Now Ill answer your letter. I have been – am so beastly ill: its because of the weather. The cold is terrifying – I don’t know how to meet it. Perhaps once the real big snow has fallen it will be better. But at present I feel like a slate pencil living on a slate – and my heart does such horrid things that – – – Well, we shall see. It is very bad, though. The pictures of London reminded me of Dostoievsky.1 The likeness was astonishing. You meant Lytton – didn’t you? The one where the head is raised & the nose like a beak & pits beneath the eyes – where he says ‘And since when has smoke become suspicious – may I ask?’ was a very fascinating photograph. But Dostoievsky – the spit of Dostoievsky to my mind. I like very much your habit of sending bits in your letters. Winston Churchills article – I suppose it wasnt so really offensive. I disliked it though.2 Under the humility I smelt insolence. But perhaps that is because I always intensely dislike that man. Dont you think his likeness to Clive Bell3 is remarkable? (Why do all my fountain pens die? I care for them as if they were babies and they absolutely refuse to live. Is there such a thing as a real pen?) Do you ever see all those people who used to go Garsington? It seems like fifteen years ago – a Christmas morning when I came in & you were sitting up in bed covered with bright beads, little gay silk handkerchiefs – ribbons cards – dividing your presents. You were so very sumptuous. I must say Garsington is my beau ideal4 of a house. Ottoline did bring it off amazingly. The appearance of the table was perfect always – and the very scent was right. I shall always admire her for that. It was a triumph – because she consulted nobody – It was all her own, and she took it so lightly – as a matter of course. I think of her breakfast cups now & her spoons with the tenderness of a burglar. I must say I do love civilized ways – At the same time driving out to Garsington in an open cart on a snowy night was rather a price to pay . . . and hard to forget – equally hard . . .

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So you have seen little Mamselle Sullivan. Isnt S. a very proud parent? I am sure he will be absorbed in his baby. Where do they live now? What a pity it is you cant get a house in St John’s Wood. I think it is the one darling part of London – And I am always seeing such houses advertised on the back pages of the Sunday Times and the Observer. They sound ideal. Don’t you prefer it to Hampstead? It has a charm . . But perhaps that is because I lived there in Carlton Hill5 for a long time when I was young and very very happy. I used to walk about there at night – late – walking and talking on nights in spring with two brothers. Our house had a real garden, too, with trees and all the rooms were good – the top rooms lovely. But its all the musical people who make St Johns Wood so delightful – those grunting cellos, those flying fiddles and the wakeful pianos. Its like a certain part of Brussels. And then the house at 5 Acacia Road.6 It has memories – but its not only precious because of them. It was a charming house. Oh, this cold! I feel like an explorer sending you these last lines before the snow kills him. Its fearful! One cant work; ones brain is frozen hard & I cant breathe better than a fish in an empty tank. There is no air, its a kind of ice. I would leave here tomorrow but where can one go? One begins the wandering of a consumptive – fatal! Everybody does it and dies. However I have decided to leave this particular house in June for another – more remote – I passed it one day lately when I was out driving. Its in the most superb spot – The forests are on both sides but in front there are huge meadows – with clumps of fir trees dotted over them – a kind of 18th century landscape. Beyond the meadows tower the gaunt snow mountains, and behind there is a big lake. It is to let in June. We shall take it for a year. My chief reason is for the hay making. One will be in the very midst of it all through August – To watch – to hear – mowing – to see the carts – to take part in the harvest is to share the summer in a way I love. You will really swoon at the view – or at least I shall expect you to!!! And we shall eat out of doors – eat the hay with trimmings, and get a little boat & float on the lake and put up hammocks & swing on the pines; and paddle in the little stream. Dont you love to paddle? I must end this letter. Its so dull. Forgive it – Now a pale sun like a half sucked peppermint is melting in the sky. The cat has come in. Even his poor little paws are cold – they feel like rubber. He is sitting on my feet singing his song. Wingley does not only purr; there is a light soprano note in his voice as well. He is very nearly human because of the love that is lavished on him. And now that his new coat is grown he is like a cat in a bastick tied with ribbons – He has an immense ruff and long curly new fur. Cats are far nicer than dogs. I shall write a cat story one day. But I shall give the cat to Carrington’s dressmakers – The Misses Read. What appaling dressmakers they were. They seemed to fit all their patterns on to cottage loaves – life size ones – or on to ham

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sandwiches with heads and feet. But it was worth it – to have got into their house and heard them as one did. Goodbye for now. Please keep a small warm place for me beside you ‘ever radiant’. But not next to Peter – – – And give my love to Gertler – will you? Ever yours Tig.

P.S.

Dearest Brett Your letter has just come Stop! You are not to send a gramophone. Please stop at once. None of us can possibly afford such a thing. You will be bankrup after it. My dear generous Brettushka – don’t do anything of the kind! Only millionaires can buy them. I know. I scan the papers! But for the really frightfully dear thought – a thousand thanks. Yes, I will go to Paris if Manoukhin answers. But I can get no reply – which is very disappointing. I like exceedingly the sound of your new friend. Do tell me more about him. And oh! how lovely the lights sound – the bottil & glass & the motor car! Greet them for me. If I go to Paris I will keep you to your word. I shall expect you. But today makes me feel let it be indoors, somewhere warm where there is music & coffee that bubbles in the cup. Heat! Heat!! This is just a note – the envelope broken to put it in to stop your extravagance – Dont do it – my dear little artist. I ‘note’ the size of your tootsies . . Now send your address for Christmas. Tig.

Notes 1. The Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821–81) visited London and Paris in 1862. He described and analysed the cities at length in intricate, often broodingly grim detail in his Winter Notes. 2. Winston Churchill’s extended essay, ‘Painting as a Pastime’, was published in two consecutive issues of the Strand (December 1921 and January 1922, pp. 13–20). Extensively illustrated with reproductions of his own paintings, the article enables Churchill to deliberate at length on the joys of the (talented) amateur, ranging from the choce of subject to the setting, via form, medium and the artist’s emotions. He also gives fulsome advice to other would-be artists.

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3. Along with Roger Fry, Clive Bell was the Bloomsbury Group’s foremost art critic, especially since publishing Art, his essential appraisal of modern art and significant form. He was married to the post-Impressionist artist Vanessa Bell, sister of Virginia Woolf. KM had met Bell in 1915. 4. An example of KM’s sometimes inaccurate use and misuse of French, whether deliberate or not, to slip between languages and semantic norms. ‘Un bel idéal d’une maison’ would be a ‘dream house’, or ‘everything I’d wish a house to be’. 5. The Trowell family lived at 52 Carlton Hill in St John’s Wood when they moved to London to further Garnet and Arnold’s musical education in 1908. 6. KM had lived at 5 Acacia Road in St John’s Wood from June 1915 but left after the death of her brother in October 1915, unable to cope with the memories of his precious visits there before he left for the Front. Koteliansky took over the lease and lived there until his death in 1955, cherishing the house for its memories of KM and for ‘her’ pear tree in the garden.

[19 December 1921] [N] [Chalet des Sapins, Montana-sur-Sierre, Valais] Dearest Brett I must write you a small Christmas letter. I do not yet know whether the furry boots I have ordered for you will arrive in time. If not I shall send you my new milanese petticoat, for there is nothing here that I can buy for you, my dear, & remembered you shall be. Dont be too hard on me. The shops that there are – I cannot get at even if they were to hold anything that I could send you. So wear my pink petty with my warm warm love & if its too big – I am sure it is far too big for you or for me puff it out with love. Since I wrote to you I have been in my familiar land of counterpane. The cold got through as I knew it would and one wing only wags.1 As to Doctor Manouhkin I got the Mountain to phone Paris yesterday & found he was absent & only there from time to time, très rarement.2 It was impossible for the secretary to say when. So that doesnt sound very hopeful. I am disappointed. I had made him my ‘miracle’. One must have a miracle. Now Im without one & looking round for another . . . Have you any suggestions? It has been a fine day. The sun came into this room all the afternoon but at dusk an old ancient wind sprang up and it is shaking now and complaining. A terrible wind – a wind that one always mercifully forgets until it blows again. Do you know the kind I mean? It brings nothing but memories – and by memories I mean those that one cannot without pain remember. It always carries my brother to me. Ah Brett, I hope with all my heart you have not known anyone who has died young – long before their time. It is bitterness – But what am I thinking of? I wanted to write you a Christmas letter. I wanted to wish you joy.

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I can – in spite of everything in life – I can, and by that I dont mean that its any desperate difficulty. No, let us rejoice – that we are alive – and know each other & walk the earth at the same time. Let us make plans, and fulfil them, and be happy when we meet, and laugh a great deal this year and never cry. Above all – lets be friends – There was that in your last letter which made you dearer to me than ever before. I dont know what it was. It was as though you came out of the letter & touched me & smiled and I understood your goodness. Blessings on you, dear little artist. I put my arms round you – I give you a warm embrace. Be happy! I am your loving Tig. Notes 1. KM often refers to her lungs as her wings. See above, p. 86, n. 3. She complicates her own metaphoric image here by suggesting the lung wags, like a dog’s tail, evocatively suggesting the half-hearted response of a sleeping or sick dog. 2. (Fr.): Only very rarely.

[22 December 1921] [N] [Chalet des Sapins, Montana-sur-Sierre, Valais] Brett dearest I reply immediately. Yes I feel certain that Marie Loo had brilliancy. And don’t think I am a stickler for the old laws of technique, as such. I am not. But I still cant see how you simplify a figure and leave the face out of the simplification. Its not that the face is ‘literary’, it doesn’t ‘tell a story’ (anymore than a face justifiably in painting does) but that is the effect it gives when joined on to the stiff little body. It seems to float in the air, not to belong. And the trees in the background – of course one sees practically nothing of them in a photograph. They look weak stemmed, somehow. I don’t know why I look at them. If I didn’t know they had meant much to you I shouldn’t see them, but I cant see their part in the design. I sympathise beyond words with your desire to discover, to explore, with your impatience at last with flower pieces. I am sure you are absolutely right and that its the only way one can ever be satisfied completely with what one is doing. I mean your whole mind, all your sensibility and intelligence must be at work and a little bit over. It seems to me the only way I can express that sympathy for you is by being as dead honest as I can be; risking your being offended or hurt. You know my opinion is only a personal opinion. But I give it to you – not quite easily – because

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for all we may think or believe – it is terribly hard to be honest where our hearts are involved! But listen – Brett! This is very serious. You may depend on my sympathy. You may say whatever you like to me – and its safe. I mean that. But don’t for Heavens sake paint something for me to show you can do it, ma chère. What earthly use would it be if you don’t care to do it? Ill send you a story called ‘A Tear in the Eye of a Violet’ by Katherine Florence Barclay Mansfield – a small return if you do.1 Im very interested by what you say about ‘Vera’.2 Wasn’t the end extraordinarily good. It would have been so easy to miss it; she carried it right through. I admired the end most, I think. Have you ever known a Wemyss? Oh my dear, they are very plentiful! Few men are without a touch. And I certainly believe that husbands & wives talk like that. Lord yes. You are so very superior, Miss, in saying half an hour would be sufficient. But how is one to escape? And also, though it may be ‘drivel’ in cold blood, it is incredible the follies and foolishness we can bear if we think we are in love. Not that I can stand the Wemyss ‘brand’. No. But I can perfectly comprehend Lucy standing it. I dont think I agree about Lucy, either. She could not understand her father’s intellect but she had a sense of humour (except where her beloved was concerned.) She certainly had her own opinions and the aunt was very sodden at the funeral because of the ghastly effect of funerals! They make the hardest of us melt and gush. But all the same I think your criticism is awfully good of the Aunt, of the whole book in fact. Only one thing, my hand on my heart, I would swear to – Never could Elizabeth be influenced by me. If you knew how she would scorn the notion, how impossible it would be for her. There is a kind of turn in our sentences which is alike but that is because we are worms of the same family – But that is all. – – About Paris. I have now received the doctor’s address from the secretary of the Institute & have written him again today. If I hear I will let you know. It seems more hopeful now that I send direct. I am still in bed and dear knows when I shall be out. A reply from Manouhkin would be the only thing, I think. (I am a bit disheartened to be back here again with all the old paraphenalia of trays and hot bottils. Accursèd disease!) I am so glad to know what you are doing at Christmas. I hope you will be happy – I shall see you all in my mind’s eye & wish I were there. Good Heavens! Is it really warm? Why is it my fate to always find the cold corner. If I go to a hot climate it freezes, if to a cold it becomes an arctic zone. I read of primroses in the paper. Primroses! Oh, what wouldn’t I give for some flowers. Oh Brett – this longing for flowers. I crave them. I think of them – of the feeling of tulips stems and petals, of the touch of violets and the light on marigolds & the smell of wall flowers – No, it does not bear writing about. I could kiss the earth that bears flowers – Alas, I love them far too much!

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It is ages since I have heard of Virginia. I thought she would have a new book out this winter.3 Perhaps it will come in the spring. I can see her in that dress. She is a lovely creature in her way – I had a laugh over Sullivan’s Canadians.4 Did he stipulate she must be a ‘fighting’ woman – guaranteed to have fought Red Indians? I am sure she will expect Sullivan to provide her with a Red Indian or two from time to time. But perhaps it won’t be too difficult. But its very funny. Goodbye for now. I send my loves to all who are at your hearth. Ever Tig. Notes 1. While KM never finished a story with this title, many of the sketches she was working on at the end of her life feature violets. See CW2, pp. 426–33, 438–42, 480–1. The addition of ‘Florence Barclay’ is probably a private joke, possibly alluding to the very successful romantic novelist Florence L. Barclay (1862–1921), whose death that year, and the release of an affectionate biography in the same year, had prompted retrospective reviews in the press. 2. See above, pp. 31 and 33, n. 2. 3. Woolf’s novel, Jacob’s Room, published by the Hogarth Press, was not released until October 1922. 4. Sullivan and his wife were planning to employ a Canadian nanny for their one-month old daughter Davina, apparently on Frank Prewett’s recommendation. See Prewett’s (undated) letter to Ottoline Morrell, Ottoline Morrell Collection, HRC, Morrell-17–6.

[26 December 1921] [N] [Chalet des Sapins, Montana-sur-Sierre, Valais] Boxing Day Dearest Brett, Your parcils and your letters came today and my bed turned into a corner of Marshalls1 – such a lovely one – Little O-T-Kosey-San2 sat against the lilac wall and the hankies and ribbons lay on a very gay wooly quilt. Thank you over and over. I feel I want to wave each of the hankies separately in silent greeting and to send this letter by a carrier pigeon with the three ribbons dangling from its little red feet. Please feel how I appreciate ribbon, too, how they all added to the festa. There was one the green which is really such a heavenly colour that one can hardly believe in it, but all are delicious . . . But what a terrific pace our parcels seem to have come flying at. I had barely sent my petty over the

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net when back came the letter. O-T-Kosey-San will be in daily use. She is very decorative. Brett I must speak of this new photograph at once. It is extraordinary how different it is to the other. In fact it is almost frightening to know what a photograph can do. Now I do see a design that I simply did not see before. I mean I see a movement which starts at the tip of the parasol, touches the tip of Marie Loos head, goes round the doll and ends by almost touching with a light brush tip the dog & the black babby, before it ‘disappears’ (if you know what I mean) behind that dark tree. One sees too, for the first time, the importance of the pyramidal shadow below the parasol and a kind of fluid beauty – flowing beauty in the grass. I seem to see what you are getting at – the sudden arrest, poise, moment captured of the figure in a flowing shade and sunlight world. To put it in another way, the décor was there and you have superimposed Marie Loo on it, or she has superimposed herself for you. Id give a great deal to see this picture in the flesh. The legs do still worry me – But the other photograph didn’t do it anything like justice, my dear; it is intensely interesting, and the doll an echo of the Marie Loo design – M.L. in very little – completing her like a small shadow is excellent. Yes, its easy to see why you are not content with flowers . . . . I hope all this means something. Isn’t it a curse one cant speak instead of write. Yesterday I heard from Manouhkine. As soon as I am up again and can get into a train into a train I go. After that all is uncertain. Most likely I shall come back here having seen him until May and then strike camp seriously and make for Paris for the treatment. It takes at least four months. But first I must see him and also go to a dentist in Paris & get my teeth pulled out and in. The treatment is very expensive – thats another reason why I want to wait until May. I must make money to pay for it. It is 300 francs a time! and I shall need about 30 times – not to mention hotel bills and very good food which one has to eat all the time one is being treated – And I have to take the Mountain with me – so its always two to be paid for. This means work with a vengeance. I shall manage it, though, and if I emerge with nothing and health I shall be so rich, so awfully rich that I will treat everybody I meet to beaming smiles, at any rate. The snow is here at last and still falling. It is deathly cold. But I never have a closed window, dearest. I lived out of doors on my balcony when I was up. I must work. Goodbye for now – My mind is dressed like a ship at a regatta with little coloured hanky flags – Thanks – thanks again dearest for being who you are. Forever Tig. Notes 1. Marshall and Snelgrove on London’s Oxford Street was a department store with a vast haberdashery section.

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2. The little nickname KM chooses for the gift is an eloquent example of her poetic word play. By giving a tea cosy the honorific title San (Little O-TKosey-San), she suggests a Japanese identity and the Japanese tea ceremony, as well as the dress-like form of the old-fashioned pot warmer. It may not be a coincidence that, in December 1918, KM told Brett that she was so cold she longed ‘to buy an immense tea cosy and wear it & crawl under it as a snail does its shell’. See above, p. 368.

[4 January 1922] [N] Chalet des Sapins Montana-sur-Sierre Valais 4 i 1922 Dearest Brett, Do you mind shopping for me? If you do please tell me bang out. If you dont would you be a lamb and get me a pair of shoulder straps –Ill explain. Lying propped up so much I have got a bit round shouldered & I want to correct it by wearing straps off and on. Gamage is the place I think.1 And I heard, once, they had an American pattern very simple which was good. I dont want buckles and canvas and bones, please. But something light, flexible, with elastic, if possible and unobtrusive. The less of the contraption the better. Is this a fearful bore to you, my dear? But Id be so deeply grateful. I really pine for a pair and Switzerland of course is hopeless. Besides here is nothing but snow. We are living in the moon. Its all white, ghostly, silent, eternal, and snow still falls. I hate snow. I could kiss the fertile earth – all this whiteness has a kind of mock mystery about it that I dislike very much. This isn’t a complaint. Its just the facts. By the way do you eat porridge? Do. It is good for you – fearfully. But it must be made with a good piece of butter added to it. Then it really does stick to your ribs and make a man of you. Butter I do really believe flies to the brain, also and creates a glow. So I wish you a very buttery New Year. I shall never forget how Ottoline, while talking abstractedly would pinch my little butter dish draw it towards her with her knife & devour it, whole. It is strange. I have no faith in you about food. I feel sure you give other people all the best bits & eat the heads and tails yourself. Dont do it; it is very bad. Always choose the fish with the fattest eye. Much love from Tig.

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Notes 1. Gamages was a very popular department store at Holborn Circus, most renowned for its huge toy department, but also its, at one time, unparalleled range of goods.

[9 January 1922] [N] Chalet des Sapins Montana-sur-Sierre Valais Dearest Brett – This is to catch the post as you say. As far as I know I shall leave for Paris on Monday fortnight; that is to say Monday week when it reaches you. We shant stay for more than a few days & we shall be so busy & the weather so bad that I wouldn’t advise you to come. Then in spring we return & if Manouhkin will treat me we’ll try for a flat in Paris & spend some months there. Happily our lease of this house is up at the end of May – That will be the time to come to Paris . . . But its so cold now; we shant stay a moment longer than necessary. And think of that vile Channel in this month! Or rather don’t think of it! I lapped up your letter. The party sounded one of the old kind. Fancy the Puma still biting.1 It seems impossible. She has bitten & wept for years. And why is there always someone on the floor like that doctor? Oh, I do hate such parties. But I like to read about them. They make my eyes roll . . . Garsington, too. Isn’t Julian a problem?2 What will she do? I think the trouble with her and Ottoline is that there is absolutely no love between them. There is nearly hate – isn’t there? Or is that too strong. Julian will go her way though, in her own time. There is something urgent in her which won’t be resisted. She interests me. She did when I saw her in France. I felt – there goes youth – with all that it means. I think her real fight will be with Philippo. There I can smell a battle. But this is all a bit beside the mark . . . You are right. I think of Manouhkine more than anyone can imagine. I have as much faith in him as Koteliansky has – I hardly dare think of him fully –No, I dare not. It is too much. But about money I have £100 saved for this Last Chance and as soon as I know he can help me I shall make more. Work is ease, joy, light to me if I am happy. I shall not borrow from anyone if I can possibly help it. My family would not give me a penny. But I shall manage – I am not frightened of money – for some blessed reason – I know I can make it. Once I am well I can make all I want – I don’t want much – In fact my plans go on and on – and when I go to sleep I dream the treatment is over and I am running, or walking

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swiftly and carelessly by and no one knows I have been ill – no one hands me a chair in a shop – Ah, it is too much! This awful writing is frozen writing, Brett. I am writing with two icicles for fingers. We have 6 foot of snow here – all is frozen over and over – even the birds tails. Is not that hideous cruelty – I have a large table for these precious atoms daily – and the first coconut in Switzerland is the Big Joint. They cant yet believe in the coconut. It overwhelms them. A special issue of the Bird Times is being issued, the bird who discovered it is to be photographed interviewed & received at Pluckingham Palace and personally conducted tours are being arranged. What with them and my poor dear pussy – he who got out today & began to scratch, scratched away, kept at it, sat up, took a deep breath, scratched his ear, wiped his whiskers, scratched on SCRATCHED – until finally only the tip of a quivering tail was to be seen & he was rescued by the gentle Ernestine – He wrung his little paws in despair. Poor lamb! To think he will not be able to scratch through until April. I suppose snow is beautiful. I hate it. It always seems to me a kind of humbug – a justification of mystery and I hate mystery – And then there is no movement. All is still – white – cold – deathly – eternal. Every time I look out I feel inclined to say I refuse it. But perhaps if one goes about and skims over all is different. How are your Swarees?3 Is everybody just the same? I am working at such a long story that I still can only just see the end in my imagination – the longest by far Ive ever written. Its called The Doves’ Nest.4 Tell me what you are working at? Or are you resting? I hope I shall see Marie Loo in her garden of Eden one day – one’s mind’s eye isn’t good enough – But winter is a bad black time for work I think. Ones brain gets congealed. It is v. hard. Goodnight my dear dear Brett. With tender love Tig. Notes 1. ‘Puma’ was the nickname of Minnie Lucie Canning, an artist’s model who inspired the figure of Pussum in D. H. Lawrence’s Women in Love, as Lawrence himself admitted to a lawyer friend, Donald Carswell. KM and Puma had met via Philip Heseltine (later known as Peter Warlock), a friend of Lawrence’s, in 1915. 2. Ottoline Morrell’s relationship with her daughter Julian, then aged sixteen, was predominantly tense and conflictual, and a major source of her depression in the early months of 1922. An entry in Ottoline’s diary at the beginning of the year cryptically notes, ‘They are Morrells’, reflecting a sense that Philip and Julian were conspiring to exclude her from their lives. See Seymour, pp. 324–5. 3. KM’s mock French, ‘soirées’ being evening receptions. 4. See CW2, pp. 448–61.

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[21 January 1922] [N] Chalet des Sapins Montana-sur-Sierre Valais Warning. Pages all wrong. Darling Brettushka, The jumper has jumped & the ribbons fluttered over today. And I can’t thank you. It seems feeble just to thank a person for such loveliness – I rejoice in the garment & the exquisite colours beyond words but that is not all. Its your thought in sending them which makes them so precious. I dont see how I am going to keep up with your lovely ways. I shall lag behind & admire – Thank you from my heart. Isn’t the jumper an exquisite creature. When I go to Paris I shall wear it to carry you with me in the interview with Manouhkine. It will be my mascot. As for the ribbons. My brother’s greenstone1 looks exquisite hung from one or other of them. If I had been the child of a conjuror I should have eaten ribbons instead of producing them from my hat. I cant get off to Paris just yet for I am still in bed! Six weeks today with one days interval. I cant shake off this congestion and ALL the machinery is out of order. Food is a horror. But I won’t go into it. I feel most frightfully inclined to hold your hand, too, & just let this month & February & March stream by like a movie picture – Then let it be April and all this dark and cold over. Huge fringes of icicles hang from the windows. I know one thing. I must never stay up here for another winter. Evan2 had a heart of brass. That is why he could stand it. We talked it over together over chops and cabbage in a Pullman one night . . . when he’d just got back. If I can get well enough to go to Paris. Its all I ask. I am fighting for that now – – – I wish I had got there before this last bout. I was so much stronger than I am now – But this is a bad black month, darling. There is a new moon on the 27th Look at it & wish. I will look at it & wish for you. I feel so in your mood – listless, tired, my energy flares up & won’t last. Im a wood fire. However, I swear to finish my big story by the end of this month. Its queer when I am in this mood I always write as though I am laughing. I feel it – running along the pages. If only the reader could see the snail in its shell with the black pen! Don’t work too hard just now. Let things be. Let things grow in the quiet. Think of your mind as a winter garden – growing underneath, you know with all the lovely shapes & colours of thrice blessed longed for spring. I think it is good sometimes just to let things be – But what does one do on those occasions? I can think of all kinds of plans but they need you near. Tell me about your little house. A queer strange feeling that I cannot explain away tells me I shall see it & know it & stay there once. One is shy of saying these things for some reason. But

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I feel there is a possibility of a much deeper relationship between us than ever we dream of. I feel a bit like a man about you. I mean by that Id like to make you feel loved – There is something I don’t like in most of the men you know (I mean those that I know too) They lack delicacy and perception and they do not give – I except of course Koteliansky & Tomlinson,3 both beautiful men. But I would like to try & make you happy, my dear – make you feel cherished. I wonder if you know what I mean. We grow in the bosoms of others; we rest there; it is good sometimes to feel carried. Your still life sounds lovely & I like to think of your bottils, all in a row – They are lovely things, even those slender hock bottles. But I see them from the ‘literary’ point of view. They say summer & lunch out of doors and strawberries on a glass plate with gold specks in it . . . I have just heard from DelaMare about my little family in The Mercury and from America where another story of the same people is coming out in The Dial.4 I feel like Lottie and Kezias mother after the letters I have got this month.5 It is surprising and very lovely to know how people love little children, the most unexpected people – Heres the doctor stumping up the stairs. No, he has stopped half way to talk to the Mountain. Elizabeth is here again with a minute sledge on a string wherever she goes – She herself in tiny black breeks & gaiters looks like an infant bishop. Murry & she flew down thousands of feet yesterday – right down into the valley. She is a radiant little being whatever the weather. Born under a dancing star – He comes. I must end this. Goodbye for now – You know what I think of these gifts. But send me no more, my little artist. You are too lavish. Keep your pennies now. I embrace you – You must feel that there is in this letter warm tender love – For its there. Tig. Notes 1. The pendant to which KM refers had belonged to her brother Leslie, and was fashioned from the rare, translucent greenstone, Bowenite, known as ‘tangiwai’ or ‘tear-water’ in Māori. Leslie had been gifted the pendant by the Beauchamps’ Wellington G.P., Dr Martin, just before sailing to England to join the war. 2. Evan Morgan (1893–1949) was a Welsh poet who had served as a lieutenant in World War One before becoming private secretary to a member of the government. During the war years, he was often to be seen at the Garsington receptions; he was a close friend of Aldous Huxley and Robert Graves, and, as a friend of Augustus John, Iris Tree and Nina Hamnett, often socialised in the same circles as Brett. See Morrell 1974, p. 200.

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3. H. M. Tomlinson (1873–1958) was a cherished and steadfast friend to both KM and JMM. In her diary the previous day, KM had noted, ‘I suppose it is the effect of isolation that I can truly say I think of W.J.D. [Walter de la Mare], Tchekhov, Koteliansky, HMT and Orage every day. They are part of my life’ (CW4, p. 406). 4. KM’s story ‘The Samuel Josephs’ was published posthumously by JMM in the Adelphi, 1: 1, June 1923, pp. 12–19. 5. Lottie and Kezia are two of the little children who feature so prominently in KM’s ‘Burnell’ cycle of stories (‘Prelude’, ‘At the Bay’ and ‘The Doll’s House’). Their mother Linda, fearful of the burden of repeated child-bearing, suffers from a sense of estrangement from her children but warms to them when she sees them through other people’s eyes. See CW1, pp. 56–93, 342–71, 414–21.

[26 January 1922] [N] [Chalet des Sapins, Montana-sur-Sierre] 26 1 1922 Dearest Brett I have taken seats in the puffi-train for Monday and should be in Paris on Tuesday. My address is Hotel Victoria Palace, 68 Rue Blaise Desgoffe, Rue de Rennes. Write to me there if you can! I hope to see Manouhkine on Tuesday afternoon. It is all rather like a dream. Until it has happened I cannot quite believe it. But I was thinking if Gertler stays in Paris on his way through I wish he would come & see me. Would you tell him? It would be a pleasure to talk to him again. Im deadly tired tonight. I wrote & finished a story yesterday for The Sketch.1 The day after that happens is always a day when one feels like a leaf on the ground – one can’t even flutter. At the same time there is a feeling of joy that another story is finished. I put it in such a lovely place, too, the grounds of a Convent in spring with pigeons flying up in the blue and big bees climbing in and out of the freezias below – If I lived in the snow long I should become very opulent. Pineapples would grow on every page – and giant bouquets would be presented to each character on his appearance – Elizabeth was here yesterday and we lay in my room talking about flowers until we were really quite drunk – or I was. She – describing – ‘a certain very exquisite rose – single – pale yellow with coral tipped petals’ and so on. I kept thinking of little curly blue hyacinths and white violets and the bird cherry. My trouble is I had so many flowers when I was little, I got to know them so well that they are simply the breath of life to me – Its no ordinary love; its a passion.

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Wait – one day I shall have a garden and you shall hold out your pinny. In the meantime our cat has got his nose scratched beyond words & he’s in such a condition that he looks as though he has been taking part in a boxing match up a chimney. He is to have lessons on the fiddle this spring. All the BEST cats can play at least Hey diddle diddle.2 He must learn. The strings of his fiddle will be of wool, of course and the bow will have a long tassel on it. I believe he can play the piano. He sits up & plays with his two front paws: Nellie Bly Caught a Fly Put it in her Tea!3 This exquisite morceau was in my Pianoforte Tutor, words and all. Who can have composed it! However it suits Wingley. Its a subject he can feel sympathy about. He comes down with such a terrific whack on the fly! He is the most unthinkable lamb, really, and I am sorry if I am silly about him. But I meant to write about the Flu. You are very nervous of it aren’t you? I feel it in your letter; I understand your feeling. But Brett, you can ward it off with food. MILK, my dear. Thats not hard to take. Drink all the milk you can & eat oranges. Oranges are full of these vitamines & they are very rich in some value that milk hasn’t, not to speak of their good effect on ones functions. And its half the battle to be rid of any internal poisoning that accumulates in the colon. Milk + oranges.4 If Mrs Horne is late drink hot milk & dont get exhausted waiting for her. If you feel depressed lie down & sip hot milk and sugar. Im tired of telling you to eat. I now commend you to drink. Get the milk habit, dearest & become a secret tippler. Take to drink I implore you. What the devil does it matter how fat one gets. We shall go to Persia where fatness alone is beauty. Besides you’ll never be fat; you’re too ‘active’ – This isn’t a letter. Only an odd note. Goodnight little artist. Tig. Notes 1. ‘Taking the Veil’ was published in the Sketch on 22 February (see CW2, pp. 467–72). 2. The well-loved English nursery rhyme ‘Hey diddle diddle’ features a ‘cat and a fiddle’, along with a cow who jumps over the moon. 3. ‘Nellie Bly’ was a minstrel song written in 1850 by American songwriter Stephen Foster. KM, characteristically, appears to be inventing her own lyrics, since in Foster’s song, Nellie sweeps the kitchen, makes the fire, and lights up the town with her dancing. The song was brought back into public memory in the 1880s when the name was adopted by the intrepid

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investigative journalist and pioneering feminist campaigner Elizabeth Cochrane Seaman, who coincidentally died just the day after KM wrote this letter. 4. KM’s recommendations here are very much a reflection of contemporary health advice and medical research, both of which were intensified after public awareness campaigns brought the plight of malnourished post-war populations to light. Government incentives to promote the safety and nutritional value of milk, for example, ran throughout the year 1921, prior to the launch of the British National Milk Campaign in 1922. Similarly, KM’s reference to ‘vitamines’ attests to contemporary medical discoveries following on the groundbreaking research by Casimir Funk, who coined the term in 1912. Although oranges had, for years, been associated with helping prevent scurvy, for instance, it was only in 1921 that the vital resources in the newly identified water-soluble vitamin C were announced. KM’s style here, meanwhile, is highly reminiscent of recently published works by Paul Carton (1875–1947), a pioneering French doctor whose alternative approach to treating tuberculosis involved radically changing the patient’s daily diet, to include large quantities of fruit and milk. From 1913 to 1915, the New Age had published a series of extracts from his works, translated by Dorothy Richardson. Meanwhile, it is also worth noting that KM was by now spending more time in France and Switzerland than in Britain, where the promotion of milk and vitamin-rich foods was even more intense.

[2 February 1922] [HRC] [Telegram] Paris 2nd 18.30 Begin treatment tomorrow. Tig.

[3 February 1922] [N] [Victoria Palace Hôtel, rue Blaise Desgoffe, Paris] iii Dearest Your letter has come. Now I have worried you after all. Stop! All is over. I wired you yesterday that I had decided to stay. I should not have written then. I should have waited. For, as so often happens, after waiting I saw daylight. And I knew that whatever might happen I must take this chance. Now I have written to my agent about money. I shall manage it. Dont ever send me money, Brett! I mean that. Please don’t – I am that kind of man!! I haven’t yet heard from Murry but I wrote to him fully. You mustn’t say that about thrashing him, for it makes me sorry I told you. I understand Murry awfully well; its only I cant bear to make him unhappy or to make him feel he is having to make sacrifices.

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As soon as I decided about the treatment I phoned Manoukhin and had my first treatment today. And its only now this minute, in bed, with a warm spring like wind at the window that Im beginning to feel perhaps it may come true. But now all goes smoothly, dearest. Ill stay at this hotel which suits me in every way. The Mountain will go back to Montana and settle everything there. I expect Murry will join me here a bit later. All goes well – awfully well. Dont come for a few weeks. Wait until about the 5th week when I shall be able to walk a bit and laugh without coughing. Then come for a weekend. We’ll be merry – really merry – two small crickets chirruping away – and there will be buds on the trees. So From now Don’t lets talk any more about Tig for the present. She is done with – settled in Paris and so full of blue rays at this moment that she feels like a deep sea fishchik. Thank you for your precious sympathy – But please fill your next letter with yourself. Let it be an exclusive film about you. Your work – your house – your plans – how you are – everything. Have you worn your new buff dress yet? That is important, too. And what about that milk? And your house – May I plant a lavender bush in your garden – a very big one – with long blue flowers? What funny Ms you make. They are very nice. They are like foxes. I always want to give them eyes. But you must put the name of this hotel on your envelope or I shant get your letters, and I don’t want to lose them. Victoria Palace. It seems a nice place – Letters simply fly here. Yours was only posted yesterday evening & it was on my supper tray – tonight. It was still warm – I want to tell you heaps of things, but first I want to hear about you. So curl your little head into my shoulder & talk to me – You don’t feel sad do you? Dont be sad! Next month is March & then there is no stopping the spring – I always feel winter is over in February even. The Dogs Mercury is in flower, so I read. But what is Dogs Mercury?1 And does the dog know? Its all a great puzzle – Perhaps he is very pleased or perhaps he just looks at it and bolts it. Oh, I do hope not. Life is so wonderful – very wonderful. Let us be happy in it. Above all let us not waste it. I am thinking of you with tender love – Tig. Notes 1. Dog’s mercury is the common name for Mercurialas perennis, a wild woodland flower often labelled as a weed, which can be toxic to animals. It produces small, green, malodorous flowers from February to March, and was hence used by nature columnists as a first harbinger of spring.

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[6 February 1922] [N] [Victoria Palace Hôtel, rue Blaise Desgoffe, Paris] Monday. Dearest Brett, Your letter about the little still life has come. I cannot express to you what I feel at the beauty of your letter. It is indeed such a still life that I shall keep it in my breast forever and never never forget that it was you who gave it to me. My dearest Brett you are very very rich that you have such gifts to give away – such treasure to unclose. Do not let us ever be less to each other than we are now. Let us always be more. I shall repay you one day with all that is in my power. In the meantime put this letter down & just feel for one moment that I love you. No more – no less. Now I want to fly off at a tangent at once and say that we must spend the summer (part of it) together. Is it agreed? If – If – If I get better let us go off alone to Perpignan and lie on the beach & walk in the vineyards. I am serious. You can paint, I shall write. We shall both wear very large hats and eat at a table under a tree with leaves dancing on the cloth. No, I dare not look out of prison at these delights. They are too much. And yet I do nothing else in bed at night when the light is out. I range the world over. It is just what prisoners must do when their time is getting short. I must write a story one day about a man in prison. Murry has answered my letter. He does not want to come to Paris. He feels it would do his work harm. So he is staying in Switzerland. But he says he will come and ‘fetch’ me in May – By that ‘fetch’ I know he hasn’t the slightest faith in Manouhkin. Indeed – after saying ‘what terrific news’ he never mentions it. I might have picked up a shilling. Men are odd creatures. But he is very happy and well looked after. In fact he sounds perfectly blissful. So there it is. This isn’t a letter dearest, just a word to answer yours. I dreamed last night Ottoline had taken to painting & gave an exhibition out of doors – at Garsington. One immense canvas was a portrait of Philip called ‘Little Pipsie head-in-air’.1 I can see it now. What fools our dreams make of us! But Ottoline was delighted with her work. She kept wandering about saying ‘such lovely reds – dont you think so? So warm!’ I must get up. I have a whole story to finish. Ive got a job on the Nation to write a story a month for them & Cassells want some more and The Sketch.2 What places to let ones poor little children go wandering in. It cant be helped. They are like waifs singing for pennies outside rich houses which I snatch away & hand to Manouhkine. God bless you Tig.

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Im worse at present in every way but then I shall be for 3 weeks. Its a kind of reaction. Notes 1. Ottoline’s husband, Philip Morrell, was a Liberal politician, known to his closer friends as ‘Pipsie’. 2. Sadly for KM, her growing success as a writer, and the consequent increase in commissions, came at a time when her health was seriously declining, meaning that she could not honour many of these requests.

[14 February 1922] [N] [Victoria Palace Hôtel, rue Blaise Desgoffe, Paris] St. Valentine’s Day. My dear Lamb, As soon as I am in full possession of my legs again I shall have to walk abroad with a purse of gold and buy you presents. Even then I shan’t be able to catch up. But Ill do my best. Ribbons – the last two are perfectly celestial – I really am beginning to feel flow out of your hat with white rabbits, canaries, and tight little rose buds. But here is this little book. It charms me beyond words! Im going to make it a LittleGreat-Men-Book, an ever permanent note book.1 And coming on St. Valentine’s very day. I always remember St V’s Day. Its in one’s diary, too. But it has a fascinating sound. Who was St. V? A ravishing person, no doubt, young, very young, with a glorious voice . . . But this is true. How ever much you may think these lovely gifts mean to me they mean ever . . so . . much . . more . . I shall not forget them. Now I want to answer your letter. I do hope your tooth is better. Why have we got teeth. Or why haven’t we brass ones. I cling to mine but I feel they will all go one day, and the dentist is such a terrifying animal. I hate to think of you in the clutches of that chair. I always think of dear Tchekhov in Nice, with toothache, where he says ‘I was in such pain I crawled up the wall’.2 That just describes it. It is maddening and exhausting to have toothache; I do hope yours is over. About Easter. Its a perfect plan. Its just the right time for Paris – April. Everything is still new-green and the sun is really warm and the first shadows of the new leaves (unlike all other shadows, so soft, so tender) are fluttering over the tables and on the grass. I think it is an excellent idea, too, to be here for May and June. For selfish reasons I like it too. We really shall have time to talk, and in Paris or anywhere outside England as far as I am concerned there is never that queer feeling

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that one is tied to the clock hand. One can go easily, in a leisurely way bask, take the air . . . Oh, Brett, let us look forward to this. Where is your little house! It is somewhere – but where. Sometimes I think it must be in the branches of a tree. Do let me know. I think you are very wise not to take a large one. Little houses are always best. A house is like an ark – one rides the flood in it. Little ones bob over the waves and can rest on the extreme tops of mountains much better than great big ones. Can I be official godmother to the garden? I should like to STARTLE you with the most superb things and to send for seeds from far corners of the earth and have a boronia plant below the studio window. Do you know the scent of boronia? My grandma and I were very fond of going to a place called McNabs Tea gardens and there we used to follow our noses and track down the boronia bushes3 Oh how I must have tired the darling out! It doesn’t bear thinking about. I am amazed that the Hannays have bought Thurlow Road.4 I thought they were penniless. But these penniless people always manage to afford what they want. I suppose we all do, more or less. Brett, I am so glad you know Koteliansky. I think he is one of the best human beings alive. He is real and not a coward and he has such fine feelings. One can always be absolutely safe with him. Perhaps that feeling of safety is almost the most precious of all. It means so terribly much. I hope Gertler’s show goes off well.5 Its not a very good moment for selling pictures or so I should think. There is an unrest in everyone. Its between light and dark, between winter and spring. People are neither open or closed. The moment to catch them is just a little later. I think the time for a picture-show or to publish a book is in the first days of real spring or just at the beginning of autumn. We are more alive then than at any other time. We are in the mood to receive. It seems to me one ought to link up all one’s projects as much as possible with the earth’s progress – The more I know of Life the more I realise it is profoundly influenced by certain laws. No matter how many people ignore them. If we obey them our work goes well; we get our desire. Its like studying the tides before we put out to sea in our fishing boat. We are all sailors, bending over a great map. We ought to choose the weather for our journey. Murry is here. After an awful week last week of letters and telegrams (for when I said I thought it a good plan of his to stay in Switzerland he hated the idea of staying) he came last Saturday. It takes M. time to realise things and to find out what he does want . . But two days was enough to disgust him with Switzerland. He will stay here now, and at the end of March we are going into a flat which we have found – awfully nice – high up – but absurdly furnished, like the Arabian Nights by Poiret.6 Very sumptuous and exotic. When you come to see me a little black boy with a pineapple on his head will open the door. The Mountain is at Montana, settling up the house & looking after the pussy. This is an excellent hotel. We have two rooms at the end of a

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passage, cut off from the rest of the hotel with a bathroom and masses of hot water. Rooms cost from 13 francs a day. There is a lift of course and one can eat on the premises. If I were you Id come here at Easter. All rooms have hot and cold water. After 7 months in that cleanliness I feel water and soap are the great necessities. M. and I have settled down according to programme, as we always do. We work, play chess, read, make our tea and drink it out of nice small bowls. I can do nothing but get up and lie down, of course, and Manouhkin says in three weeks I shall have a real reaction & then be able to do even less than that for the next three weeks. Its rather like waiting to have an infant – new born health. My horrid time ought to be just over by Easter. I must begin work. Seven stories sit on the doorstep. One has its foot inside. It is called The Fly.7 I must finish it today. This is a hard moment for work – don’t you feel? Its hard to get life into it. The bud is not up yet. Oh spring, hurry, hurry! Every year I long more for spring. Its a pig of a day – a London fog outside the windows, and I have to pull my stockings on. Think of pulling ones stockings on like winking – without noticing even. Can that happen to me again? Of course I will seize the first chance to speak of your ears. My plan is to ask Manouhkin to the flat. At the clinique he is so busy and never alone for a moment. But Ill have a shot there – all the same. Its difficult too because he speaks hardly any french. Goodbye dear precious little artist. Ever your loving Tig. Notes 1. No such notebook survives. 2. The sorry episode is evoked in a biographical sketch written by Chekhov’s brother, Mikhail, which figures as the Preface to Constance Garnett’s Letters of Anton Chekhov: ‘A wretched dentist used contaminated forceps in extracting a tooth’, as a result of which ‘he was attacked by periostitis in a malignant form. In his own words, “he was in such pain that he climbed up the wall”’ (Garnett 1920, p. 30). 3. See KM’s letter to her sister Jeanne, reminiscing about visits to the tea garden in Wellington’s botanical gardens, pp. 263–4. 4. Howard Hannay was an art critic who contributed regularly to the London Mercury (of which he was a business partner for some years) and the Athenaeum; he and his wife Winifred Lynton lived at 28 Thurlow Road, Hampstead, and were therefore near neighbours of Brett’s. 5. Gertler’s first solo exhibition at the Goupil gallery had opened that month and was being very positively reviewed – including in a detailed and attentive account by Roger Fry in the New Statesman. See Fry, p. 561. 6. Poiret’s ‘Arabian Nights’ refers only indirectly to the elaborate tales of the great literary classic. Paul Poiret (1879–1944) was one of the most eminent French dress designers of the day, whose feel for non-European modes of dress had prompted him to stylise and popularise the Japanese kimono and

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Middle Eastern tunics. His ‘Arabian Nights’ outfit was a tunic with Turkish trousers worn with a turban, first designed for his birthday party in 1911. He worked closely on costume design with Diaghilev for the Russian Ballet. 7. See CW2, pp. 476–80. KM admitted to Gerhardi that she ‘hated writing it’ (see below, p. 583). It was published in March that year.

[18 February 1922] [HRC] [Postcard] [Victoria Palace Hôtel, rue Blaise Desgoffe, Paris] Dear Brett, The pink cyclamen has come and is in front of my vanity table. I am so very happy to have it. It will hang in my room wherever I am. Eventually I shall pay you back with a story. And even then I’ll still be in your debt. I love cyclamen. Forgive this card. I am desperately tired but I had to let you know at once. I will write again in a few days. But for the next week or so I shall be a fearfully dull But a loving one. Tig

[26 February 1922] [N] [Victoria Palace Hôtel, rue Blaise Desgoffe, Paris] Sunday. Cherie,1 I must answer your letter at once because I like it frightfully. What is it doing in London today? Here it is spring. For days past it has been warm, blue & gold, sunny, faint, languishing, soft, lovely weather. Isn’t it the same over there? The reckless lift boy says ‘dans un mois il serait plein été’.2 That’s the kind of large remark I love the French for. They have very nearly hung out their sun blinds; they have quite turned the puddings into little ices in frills. But why cant I send some of this weather over to you? Can’t it be done? Look in the glass. If there is a very bright gay sunbeam flittering over your hair – I sent it from Paris – exprès. At any rate you are putting out new leaves, crepe de chine ones & baby ribbon ones. The craving for a new hat is fearful in the spring. A light, crisp, fresh new curled hat after these winter dowdies. I suffer from it now. If I had one I should wear it in bed! But the barber is cheaper. He came yesterday and gave a coup de fer3 to my wool. Now its all waves on top. (I have a great tendre4 for barbers.)

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I not only know where your new house is. But I have been there & looked over one of three little houses in Pond Street. Three lambs they were – years and years ago before Anrep was born even.5 I shall call you the little Queen B. when you are in yours, which is a kind of mixture of you & Queen Anne – Its much better to have a tiny wax bright hive. Everything will shine there. And then suppose you want to shut it up for a time you can just pop your thimble over the chimbley and all’s hidden. No good leaving those great barracks to stare house breakers in the face and shout ‘Look at me’ . . . (Do you realise I am working through your letter as I write) About painting. I agree. Good as Gertler is I shall never forget seeing a ballet dancer of his – it was the last thing I saw of his – at his studio. A ballet dancer. A big ugly nasty female dressed in a cauliflower!6 I don’t mean to be horrid; but I do not and cannot understand how he can paint such pictures. They are so dull they make one groan. Hang it all Brett – a picture must have c h a r m – or why look at it? Its the quality I call tenderness in writing – its the tone one gets in a really first chop musician. Without it you can be as solid as a bull & I don’t see whats the good. As to Ethel Sands – (isn’t her name a master piece – wouldn’t it be Ethel) her painting is a kind of ‘dainty’ affair which it doesn’t do to think about.7 You feel that ultimately where, of all places, she ought to be a woman she is only a very charming satin bow. Forgive my coarseness but there it is! Talking about feeling. I had a shock yesterday. I thought my new book would enrage people because it has too much feeling – & there comes a big review talking of the ‘merciless analysis of the man of science’.8 Its a mystery. If you do see my book read a story called The Voyage – will you? Keep it if you like it . . . See Elliot has been to your Thursdays.9 Yes he is an attractive creature; he is pathetic. He suffers from his feelings of powerlessness, He knows it. He feels weak. Its all disguise. That slow manner, that hesitation, side long glances and so on are painful. And the pity is he is too serious about himself, even a little bit absurd. But its natural; it’s the fault of London, that. He wants kindly laughing at and setting free. Yes, I love Koteliansky – no less. (Look here – darling – what can I give you? Tell me. What is the great difficulty? Show it to me. Or – can’t you . . . Don’t you trust me? You are safe. You are wrong if you do not trust me. And why wait until we meet? Even this moment will not return. I have given up the idea of Time. There is no such person. There is the Past. That’s true. But the Present and the Future are all one –) Once I settle down for a few months you must know De la Mare. He is a very wonderful man – beautiful. Now I have arrived at the word ‘primroses’ & I see them.10 Delicate pinkish stems, and the earthy feeling as one picks them so close to the damp soil. I love their leaves too, and I like to kiss buds of primroses. One could kiss them away. They feel so marvellous. But what about bluebells. Oh dear! Bluebells are just

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as good. White ones, faint blue ones that grow in shady hollows, very dark blue ones, pale ones – I had one whole spring full of bluebells one year with Lawrence. I shall never forget it. And it was warm, not very sunny, the shadows raced over the silky grass & the cuckoos sang. Later. I then got up had a big blue bath & rather a horrid lunch. Then played chess – wrote for a couple of hours, had tea & foie gras sandwiches and a long discussion with M. on ‘literature’. Now the light is lighted, outside theres a marvellous deep lilac sky and I shall work again until dinner. Its strange how nice it is here – One could scarcely be more free – The hotel servants are just a little bit impudent and that’s nice, too. There is no servility. I meant to tell you the barber was in raptures with your still life. I think that’s a great compliment – don’t you? It grows before ones eyes said he – ‘il y a de la vie – une movement dans les feuilles.’11 Excellent criticism! He good man, was small & fair & like all barbers smelt of a violet cachou12 and a hot iron. He begged, he implored me to go to the cinema near here. Downstairs it was a little mixed but upstairs on the balcon there were armchairs of such a size and beauty that one could sleep in them . . . Oh Brett, how I like simple people – not all simple people some are simple pigs – but on the whole – how much more sympathetic than the Clive Bells of this world! Whatever else they have – they are alive. What I cannot bear is this half existence, this life in the head alone. Its deadly boring. I think my story for you will be about Canaries.13 The large cage opposite has fascinated me completely. I think & think about them – their feelings, their dreams, the life they led before they were caught, the difference between the two little pale fluffy ones who were born in captivity & their grandfather & grandmother who knew the South American forests and have seen the immense perfumed sea . . . Words cannot express the beauty of that high shrill little song rising out of the very stones . . . It seems one cannot escape Beauty – it is everywhere – I must end this letter. I have just finished a queer story called The Fly about a fly that fell into an ink pot and a Bank Manager. I think it will come out in The Nation. The trouble with writing is that one seethes with stories. One ought to write one a day at least – but it is so tiring. When I am well I shall live always far away in distant spots where one can work and look undisturbed. No more literary society for me ever. As for London – the idea is too awful. I shall sneak up to Pond Street every now and again – very rarely indeed & Ill beg you not to let a soul know. Its no joke my dear to get the letters I do from people who want to meet one. Its frightening! Don’t leave me too long without letters. I have grown to look for you now and I cant do without you. I miss you. Youre my friend. See? Oh, one thing. When I do come will you ask the children to tea? I have had serious thoughts of adopting a little tiny Russian lately.14 In fact it is still in the back of my mind. It’s a secret, though.

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Easter this year is April 16th. That is March and a bit away. Blow quickly away March. Come April. Isn’t it a divine word – and in all languages its so exquisite – Avril – Avrilo. What a name for a book – April! Forgive my writing – My hand is always stiff with work. Can you read it? Yours ever, dear little artist. Tig. Notes 1. (Fr.): Darling. The term of endearment had gained a certain suggestive resonance since 1920, when the French novelist Colette, of whom KM was an ardent admirer, published her novel, Chéri. With its artful blend of sardonic wit, crisp humour, transgressive sexual mores and outspoken sensitivity, it would prove her best-loved novel. 2. (Fr.): In a month’s time, it’ll be the height of summer. 3. (Fr.): ‘A good going over with the irons’. Crimping the hair with heated iron tongs was the height of fashion that year. 4. The reported speech is a fine example of KM’s playful French, literally (but agrammatically) translating ‘soft spot’. 5. Brett was living at 6 Pond Street in Hampstead and JMM in the house next door, where Boris Anrep was also lodging. The reminiscent tone gives a mistaken impression that Anrep was a much younger artist; he was, in fact, born in 1883. 6. Gertler’s Ballet Dancers, featuring a couple of quite corpulent but no less elegant dancers, the woman wearing a broad tutu, is a charcoal drawing that he completed in 1918. 7. The artist Ethel Sands (1873–1962) developed a characteristic style in the immediate post-war years, marked by near-Pointillist, post-Impressionist and highly detailed interiors, with an attention to fabric, texture and domestic objects that has been praised by contemporary feminist art historians. 8. This review has, unfortunately, not yet been traced. 9. Despite the (voluntary?) spelling mistake, KM was, by this time, only on superficially friendly terms with T. S. Eliot, whom she and JMM had met and socialised with during the war years, especially at Ottoline’s Garsington parties, and during the period when they lived in Hampstead and JMM was editor of the Athenaeum. Later on, however, Eliot, in a 1920 letter to Ezra Pound, highlights what he perceives as a sentimental quality of KM’s personality: ‘She’s one of the most persistent and thick-skinned toadies and one of the vulgarest women I have ever met, and is also a sentimental crank’ (Eliot, p. 329). KM also came to dislike Vivienne Eliot, for her fawning attitude towards JMM. 10. Although only an indirect reference, KM would appear to be alluding to de la Mare’s 1921 fantasy novel, Memoirs of a Midget. The opening of Chapter 18 includes a very earthy, sensual description of the protagonist (a never fully named ‘Miss M’) going off to the woods to read a precious letter among the primroses. 11. (Fr.): ‘There’s a real sense of life – movement in the leaves’.

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12. ‘Cachous’ are tiny aniseed balls in a pillbox-sized tin; sold in pharmacies, these were often enhanced with essential oils to increase their therapeutic qualities, violet being one of the most popular. 13. This is one of KM’s first mentions of the last completed story she worked on – ‘The Canary’. See CW2, pp. 511–14. 14. KM recorded in a diary entry on 23 January 1922: All the whole time at the back of my mind slumbers, not now sleeps, the idea of Paris and I begin to plan what I will do when – Can it be true? What shall I do to express my thanks? I want to adopt a Russian baby, call him Anton & bring him up as mine with Kot for a godfather and Mme Tchekhov for a godmother. (CW4, p. 403)

[28 February 1922] [HRC] [Victoria Palace Hôtel, rue Blaise Desgoffe, Paris] Tuesday The pussy willows have come and they are lovely beyond words. Thank you very much indeed, please. Tig

[9 March 1922] [N] [Victoria Palace Hôtel, rue Blaise Desgoffe, Paris] 9 iii 1922 Dearest Brett I was v. glad to hear from you though you sounded rather ‘distracted’. Who is Valentine?1 And if she interferes with your painting why is she there? And why should not intellectuals love? What a queer idea! Whose is it? As for the Bloomsburys I never give them a thought. Do they still exist. They are rather pathetic in their way, but bad people to think about or consider – a bad influence. And what have I to guard against? It sounds very frightening. As to my being humble – oh dear. Thats between me and my God. I should retire behind 500 fans if anyone ever told me to be humble! You don’t imagine that reviews and letters and requests for photographs and so on make me proud – do you? Its a deep deep joy to know one gives pleasure to others – but to be told

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that increases ones store of love not pride. Also what has it got to do with ones work? I know what I have done and what I must do; nothing and nobody can change that. A whiff of London came from the last pages of your letter – a whiff of years and years ago, a kind of ashy feeling. Oh, I shall never go back to England again except en passant. Anywhere anywhere but England! As I write theres a sound of sweet scolding from the pigeons outside. Now it rains now its sunny. The March lion is chasing the March lamb but not very seriously – the lamb doesn’t mind much. They have an understanding. I was reading La Fontaine’s Fables in bed early.2 Do you know them? They are fearfully nice – too nice for words. What a character the ant is – a little drop of bitterness and fury and slamming her door in everyone’s face; and the frog – I am so sorry for him. He had a sister, too, she should have warned him. Instead she stood by and gloated. La Fontaine must have been an adorable man – a kind of Fabre,3 very distrait very amorous. He didn’t even know his own children. He forgot their faces and passed them by in the street. I don’t expect they cared. France is a remarkable country. It is I suppose the most civilised country in the world. Book shops swarm in Paris and the newspapers are written in a way that English people would not stand for one moment. There’s practically no police news. True, they did write about Landru’s execution, but so well it might have been de Maupassant!4 They are corrupt and rotten politically, thats true. But oh, how they know how to live! And there is always the feeling that Art has its place – is accepted by everybody, by the servants, by the rubbishman as well as by all others as something important, necessary, to be proud of. Thats what makes living in France such a rest. If you stop your taxi to look at a tree the driver says ‘en effet cet’ arbre est bien jolie’5 – and ten to one moves his arms like branches. I learned more about France from my servant at Menton than anywhere.6 She was pure French, highly highly civilised, nervous, eager, and she would have understood anything on earth you wished to explain to her – in the artistic sense. The fact is they are always alive – never indifferent as the English are. England has political freedom (a terrific great thing) and poetry and lovely careless lavish green country. But Id much rather admire it from afar. English people are I think superior Germans. (10 years hard labour for that remark) But its true. They are the German ideal. I was reading Goethe on the subject the other day.7 He had a tremendous admiration for them. But all through it one felt ‘so might we Germans be if only we knocked the heads of our police off.’ Its fascinating to think about nations and their ‘significance’ in the history of the world. I mean in the spiritual history. Which reminds me Ive read lately 2 amazing books about present day Russia – one by Merezhkovsky and Zinaida Hippius8 and the other by Bounin.9

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It is a very extraordinary thing that Russia can be there at our back door at furthest, and we know nothing, pay no attention, hear nothing in English. These books were in French. Both were full of threats – ‘You may think you have escaped. But you have not escaped. What has happened to us will happen to you. And worse. Because you have not heard our prayers.’ The ghastly horror and terror of that life in Petrograd10 is impossible to imagine. One must read it to know about it. But English people, people like us, would never survive as some of these Russian intellectuals have survived. We would die of so many things – vermin, fright, cold, hunger, even if we were not assassinated. At this present moment Life in Russia is rather like it was four centuries ago. It has simply gone back four centuries. And anyone who sympathises with Bolshevism has much to answer for. Dont you think that the head of Lenin is terrifying?11 Whenever I see his picture it comes over me – it is like the head of something between an awful serpent and a gigantic bug. Russia is at present like an enormous hole in the wall letting in Asia. I wonder what will happen, even in our little time. Yes, Princess Mary’s wedding seems to have been no end of a wedding.12 Even the French papers were flooded with it. I don’t think I believe that about the chairs. The same thing has been said about every such occasion. Its always said. I think its the kind of joke they make up on the Stock Exchange and dirty minded Bank Managers enjoy – a City joke. Perhaps its true. No, it doesn’t give me the creeps . . . . But do you really feel all beauty is marred by ugliness and the lovely woman has bad teeth? I don’t feel quite that. For it seems to me if Beauty were absolute it would no longer be the kind of Beauty it is. Beauty triumphs over ugliness in Life. Thats what I feel – And that marvellous triumph is what I long to express. The poor man cries and the tears glitter in his beard and that is so beautiful one could bow down. Why? Nobody can say. I sit in a waiting room where all is ugly, where its dirty, dull, dreadful, where sick people waiting with me to see the doctor are all marked by suffering and sorrow. And a very poor workman comes in, takes off his cap humbly, beautifully, walks on tiptoe, has a look as though he were in church, has a look as though he believed behind that doctor’s door there shone the miracle of healing. And all is changed, all is marvellous. Its only then that one sees for the first time what is happening. No, I don’t believe in your frowsty housemaids, really. Life is, all at one and the same time, far more mysterious and far simpler than we know. Its like religion in that. If we want to have faith, and without faith we die, we must learn to accept. Thats how it seems to me. How is your big still life – dearest? Dont let those people ‘worry’ you. Are there daffys in London yet. My pussies lasted & lasted and were a perfect surprise. I embrace you. Tig who loves you.

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Notes 1. The most likely ‘Valentine’ then mingling in Slade and Bloomsbury circles was Valentine Dobrée (see above, p. 396, n. 1), wife of the literary critic Bonamy Dobrée. Given KM’s reference to her in a 1921 letter, her query here may suggest another figure – such as the actress Valentine Tessier, who had stayed at Garsington during the war and remained sporadically in contact with Ottoline. However, given various reports of Valentine Dobrée’s frequent clashes with other figures in Brett’s circle, which are in keeping with KM’s insinuations here, it seems more likely that she is the Valentine in question and that KM had merely forgotten the name. See Holroyd, pp. 506–14. 2. The French poet, writer and fabulist Jean de la Fontaine (1621–95) published his much-loved fables between the years 1668 and 1694. Although largely influenced by the Aesopian tradition, his far-reaching explorations into verse, wit, political satire and fine-tuned anthropomorphism ensured his enduring influence and popularity. KM here refers to two of the best-known fables from the first volume, ‘La Cigale et la fourmi’ (‘The Grasshopper and the Ant’) and ‘La Grenouille qui se veut faire aussi grosse que le boeuf’ (‘The Frog who Wanted to Be as Large as an Ox’). 3. KM’s passing reference here is an eloquent reminder of her intimate familiarity with French literature and intellectual life. Jean-Henri Fabre (1823–1915) was a highly respected humanist, entomologist and poet, whose explorations of insect life, especially his series of books known as Souvenirs entomologiques (1891–1907), a scrupulous, philosophical and very ecologically sensitive study of insect behaviour, had immense popular and international success, as well as being much respected by his scientific peers. KM and JMM had come into contact with his works in the late war years, very probably while in Toulon and close to Fabre’s home, which was in Orange until his death in 1915. A biography of Fabre in English translation, written by Augustin Fabre, was published in 1921. 4. Henri Désiré Landru (1869–1922), often known as ‘The Bluebeard’, was a sinister swindler and murderer whose series of mysterious, unaccounted crimes, committed between 1915 and 1919, haunted Parisian life until his arrest in 1921. His trial and subsequent death by guillotine in February 1922 had been amply evoked in the French press. The French master of the short story, Guy de Maupassant, died well before Landru came to notoriety but KM had been a passionate reader of his often mysterious, sinister tales in the early 1900s. See CW4, pp. 88, 110–12. 5. (Fr.): ‘I agree; the tree is lovely.’ 6. KM refers to the maid, Marie, who had looked after her at the Villa Isola Bella. For KM’s affectionate evocations of Marie’s tales, see CW4, pp. 347–50. 7. As KM’s notebooks show, she had read and annotated at least two works by the great German poet, philosopher and humanist Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832), both of which include expansive reflections on English letters and on the English character in general, demonstrating Goethe’s respect for intellectual and social traditions in Britain in the late eighteenth and early nineteeth centuries: Eckermann’s Conversations of Goethe (1832, substantially revised in 1848) and Goethe’s autobiographical testimony, Truth and Poetry (1833).

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8. The Russian writers Dmitry Merezhkovsky (1865–1941) and Zinaida Gippius (1869–1945) had co-authored two works dealing specifically with the late Tsarist years and the tentative Menshevik and Bolshevik regimes in the immediate post-revolutionary era: The Tsar and the Revolution (1907) and The Reign of the Antichrist (1922). Husband and wife, they had emigrated in 1919 and settled in Paris in 1921. KM had encountered their works firstly via Koteliansky, who helped circulate them in London, and secondly via Manoukhin, who knew them both personally. KM went on to meet them in April but felt severely let down after her high expectations. 9. Ivan Bounine (1870–1953) (conventionally transliterated Bunin in English: KM tended to use French transliterations for the names of Russians she met in Paris) was the foremost Russian writer amongst the émigré circle in Paris and, like Merezhkovsky, had arrived there just one year before. Best known in Bloomsbury at the time for his short story ‘The Gentleman from San Francisco’, he was a prolific chronicler, novelist and short-story writer. Extracts of his memoirs from the revolutionary days appeared in French magazines in the early 1920s and were published in book form in 1926 (Journées maudites). KM may here be referring to his 1912 Conversations nocturnes, a harsh, disabused account of the late Tsarist years, or possibly the vividly realist novel Le Village, published in French the previous year. 10. To avoid the Germanic resonance of St Petersburg, the Russian city had been renamed Petrograd in 1914. 11. Ever since the Allied forces had launched their (highly ineffectual if not counter-productive) intervention against Bolshevism in the Soviet Union, the newspapers had published many grim reports on the emerging Bolshevik regime, under the leadership of Lenin – starkly portrayed – until his death in 1924. 12. The wedding of the Princess Royal, (Alexandra Alice) Mary, and Henry Lascelles, Earl of Harewood, on 28 February 1922, had been a lavish affair with detailed press coverage. Various newspapers, especially abroad, reported that tickets for seats to view the royal procession were being sold for up to ten guineas apiece.

[15 March 1922] [N] [Victoria Palace Hôtel, rue Blaise Desgoffe, Paris] 15 iii 1922 My lamb I never felt less like going back into my shell in my life. And please please don’t not tell me things. That would be a punishment. I wish you would trust me a little bit more. It is my fault that you cant. I will try and mend it. And I wish you were here, this minute, in this room with

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me. Writing is all very well, but we could understand each other at a glance if we were together. Brett! Now I am holding your hand. Now I am talking to the solitary you and you are talking to the solitary me. We’re sitting under a yellow sun umbrella on a big clump of rocks overlooking the sea. Wild lavender & rosemary grows in the rocky crannels and the sea sounds & where the wave lifts its that wonderful gold radiant colour. But we’ve got our backs to the world for now. Brett! When you sit down to write to me feel that I am near and that I am your secret friend who loves you. But take me! If friendship means anything it means we must be important to each other, we must make each other happy and above all we must feel sure. People who say that love and friendship depend upon the feeling of ultimate uncertainty, of danger, are all wrong. They depend on exactly the opposite feeling. Its only promiscuous, light human beings who need such a big pinch of spice to keep them going. But then so few people even want to try for love or friendship. Substitutes suit them better. Talking of this always reminds me of Lawrence who said, talking of friendship, ‘We must make a contract and feel it is as binding as the marriage contract, as important, as eternal.’ I agree, and I believe in friendship with all my soul. I like to look ahead and see you and me being friends all our lives, years ahead, meeting and talking and enjoying a treasure of memories and counting on each other and having a very fine collection of things that make us laugh. But above all feeling, as soon as we are together, warmth, joy, lightheartedness! Oh Brett, how I believe in happiness! Its only happiness that gives that ease, joyful freedom, which is essential to life. And the end of all this is – will you please once and for all believe I do not suspect you and whatever you say you do not ‘disgust’ me – If you were here, as it happens you wouldn’t have listened to a word of what Ive been saying, your eyes, green with envy would have been fixed on, hypnotised by two very old apothecary’s jars on my dressing table. Murry who is a very good nose flattener has been gazing at these for days and yesterday he bought them. They are tall milk-white jars painted with a device in apple-green, faint yellow and a kind of ashy pink. They have gold tops. On one in exquisite lettering is the word Absinthii on the other Theriaca1. We intend to keep pot pourri in them during our lives and after our deaths we intend to put our ashes in them. Im to be Absinthii and M. Theriaca. So there they stand our two little coffins on the dressing table & Ive just sent M. out for some fresh flowers to deck them out with as Ive no pot pourri. But if I am well enough to nose flatten at Easter, darling, you and I must go off with our little purses in our little hands and glare! Are you aware that there is an extremely fine Punch and Judy in the Luxembourg?2 In a theatre of its own. Stalls 2d, pit 2d too. The audience screams frightfully and some are overcome and have to be led out. But there it is. We had better buy some comfits from the stall under the

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chestnut tree and go there, too. I believe there is a one eyed thief who comes in, rather, looks round a corner who really is awful. M. said he ‘let out a yell himself’ & the little boy next to him roared. You know the kind of eye.3 Oh, I do not like Dob! Her name is good. It always reminds me of a wooden rocking horse and that is just what she sounds like. I hope she goes away soon. Your Scotch girl is very beautiful. Tell me about her will you? Tell me as much as you can. There is something so fascinating about that little photograph. And the look of youth – Ah, how lovely that is –young hands, young lips. Is she living in London? Is her little boy with her? Who is she? What is her Christian name? I feel Koteliansky would admire her face tremendously. The weather is glorious here. Warming, sunny, so mild. One hears the voices of people in the open air – a sound I love in spring and all the windows opposite mine stand wide open, so that I see at one the daughter sewing with her mother at another the Japanese gentleman, at another two young people who have a way of shutting their bedroom window very quickly and drawing the curtain at most unexpected moments . . . I can’t go out though, not even for a drive. I am and shall be for the next ten days rather badly ill. In fact I can only just get about at all. But Manoukhin says the worse one is at this time the better later on. So there’s nothing to be done but be rather dismally thankful. Later. M. has come in with 2 bunches of anemones, two small tea plates and a cake of rose thé4 soap. We have had our tea and Im going back to bed. What is a nuisance is I cannot work for the moment & Shorter has ordered 13 stories – all at one go – to be ready in July. So they are in addition to my ordinary work. I shall have to spend a furious May and June. The chestnuts are in big bud – Don’t you love chestnut buds. I shall have a look at them on Friday. I think they are almost the loveliest buds of all. Oh, your cinerarias. I wish I could see them. Do you know the blue ones, too? And the faint faint pink kind? Mother loved them. We used to grow masses in a raised flower bed. I love the shape of the petals – it is so delicate. We used to have blue ones in pots in a rather white and gold drawing room that had green wooden sun blinds – Faint light, big cushions, tables with ‘photographs of the children’ in silver frames, some little yellow and black cups & saucers that belonged to Napoleon5 in a high cupboard and someone playing Chopin – beyond words playing Chopin6 . . . Oh, how beautiful Life is. How wonderful! A knock at my door. The maid has come in to close the shutters. Thats such a lovely gesture. She leans forward, she looks up & the shutters fold like wings. Goodbye for now, my little artist.

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I cant bear to think you make Gertler’s bed & carry water jugs. It is very ugly and wrong of him. It is shocking that he should be so uncivilized. It gave me a pang of horror. Don’t do it for him. Take care of yourself. Write as soon as you can. God bless you ever your loving Tig. Notes 1. Hand-painted pharmaceutical jars were a common feature of the traditional French chemist’s shop (‘pharmacie’), generally displayed in a tall, dark, wooden cabinet that would stock up to fifty such jars. By the 1920s, these were frequently kept for decorative purposes, bestowing an aura of traditional know-how, and could indeed be bought at market stalls (as is still the case today). Absinthii was the Latin term for common wormwood, and recommended, according to Castle’s 1822 Lexicon Pharmaceuticum, for stomach complaints, jaundice and worms. Theriaca was a compound drug, used for insect and snake bites. 2. The Punch and Judy puppet theatre in the Luxembourg Gardens, in the 6th arrondissement, was a favourite source of Sunday afternoon entertainment, and remains in place to this day. 3. KM here draws an eye inside a lozenge shape. 4. (Fr.): Rose tea. 5. The ‘Napoleon’ tea service was a feature of neo-Classical Empire-style décor, reflecting the tastes of the years from 1804 to 1814. The renowned ‘Sèvres’ design service featured fine black porcelain cups with gold gilding, embossed with Napoleon’s initials, and sometimes accompanying white cups and saucers, similarly gilded, with the initials of Josephine. 6. The French–Polish pianist and composer Frédéric Chopin (1810–49) was renowned for his high romantic style, including wistful melodies and impassioned virtuoso performance. In the closing years of the nineteenth century, when the piano became a common feature in the middle-class home, his dance music and Preludes were firm family favourites.

[19 March 1922] [N] [Victoria Palace Hôtel, rue Blaise Desgoffe, Paris] My little Golden Bee, Ill simply indulge myself and write to you before answering all these letters. My bed is a battlefield of letters and press cuttings. I cant move a toe without a rustle of dead leaves. Oh, what a joy it will be to get to some remote place again where posts come only once a day! But – put all that away – It is all away – Let me think about April & Easter, and your letter, dearest. Ill answer the questions first. About coming here.

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This hotel is a bit expensive I imagine for Arthur and its not Gertler’s kind. Its very big; families come. The cheapest room is 13 francs and you are obliged to take some of your meals here – lunch 9 francs, dinner 10. It wouldn’t weigh on me at all to know you were all here. But I don’t think either A. or G. would care for it. And there is this to think of. I cant see anyone before midi.1 I have to stay in bed until then and rest i.e. not talk much. Murry wont see anyone before midi. Wild horses wont drag him from his table before then. It seems to me you’d do better at your Pantheon Hotel.2 You’d feel freer and spend less and its more at the real centre. Its much less of a big hotel with concierge, porters and so on, (I imagine) than this one. When Gertler and Arthur go back perhaps you could move here? I wouldn’t choose here if I were well. I wouldn’t be here if I were you. Its not got the right spirit – It suits us because – I am as I am for the present. Oh I am so longing to get over this last crisis and begin to climb the hill so that by the time you come I shall not be such a Job-in-the-ashes.3 Manoukhin says in eight days now the worst will be over. Its such a queer feeling. One burns with heat in one’s hands & feet and bones – then suddenly you are racked with neuritis, but such neuritis that you cant lift your arm. Then ones head begins to pound. It’s the moment when if I were a proper martyr I should begin to have that awful smile that martyrs in the flames put on when they begin to sizzle! But no matter – it will pass . . . I wish I knew what was happening to Manoukhin, though. The atmosphere of that clinique is terrible. Yesterday he simply would not and did not speak to his partner. He was so agitated that he could not speak French at all. The apparatus went wrong as usual (its always going wrong) and he banged the doors so terribly that one trembled. It seems imbecile to be in the same room with someone and to be as dumb as cattle – It seems wrong that one cannot help. I shall never get used to this – never! It is real spring here – really come. Little leaves are out. The air is like silk. But above all beyond all there is a kind of fleeting beauty on the faces of everybody – a timid look – the look of someone who bends over a new baby. This is so beautiful – that it fills one with awe – The fat old taximan has it and the fisherman on the Pont d’Alma4 that I passed yesterday and the young lady at the office with her scent and her violet cachou and her shoes like beetles. All – all are the same. For this alone one is thankful to have lived on the earth. My canaries opposite are of course in a perfect fever. They sing, flutter, swing and make love. Even the old clock that strikes over the roofs says one – two no longer, but drowsily, gently, says spring – spring . . . Yes, paint the Luxembourg gardens! Do paint a new tree, a just come out chestnut – wouldn’t that be good to paint? When the leaves are still stiff – they look as though they have sprung out of the buds – Chestnut trees are marvellous. But so are limes and acacias and umbrella pines. I cant say I like firs awfully, though. If you had lived among them as

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we did in Switzerland you would have found them stodgy. By the way the Mountain is living in Switzerland.5 Strange she should have found her ancestral home so to speak. She may be there for years. And that reminds me. Dearest could you bring me over some fine linen from Robinson & Cleavers?6 I don’t know how heavy linen weighs. I mean is 8 yards terrific? Don’t bring a snip more than you can comfortably carry. Its for pantalons. I can’t get it here, not fine or good enough. I don’t know what it costs – I haven’t an idea but Ill send a cheque as soon as you send me the bill. Please tell the man it must be a really fine quality that will wear well. Words can’t express the price they charge here for crepe de chine and charmeuse pantalons and tops at the laundry. And I have three very fine linen camisoles that I want these to ‘go’ with. I shall get the Mountain to make them. I’d like too a box of chaminade bath tablets from Morny frères.7 Theyre not far from Robinson & Cleaver are they? But leave them if they are a bore. Oh what shall I say about your Easter egg. And what can it be! I burn to know. You know I do and you’re just torturing me – rustling the paper and then hiding it away – I have an idea of what I shall give you. But I shant breathe a word until I know whether there is any possible chance of getting another. You’re not to guess what it is on pain of death. Forgive my writing. I am lying down. My precious little artist, look after yourself. Boil only one egg for Gertler, no more. Tell me what the Grosvenor man says8 – Im having a book published in Scandinavia & Ive just sold the Continental rights of the Garden Party (North Africa included)9 Do you see the black ladies making curl papers of it? I do! God bless you. My warm warm love. Tig. Notes 1. (Fr.): Twelve noon. 2. The little streets around the place du Panthéon, very close to the Luxembourg Gardens and the boulevard St Michel, offered a vast choice of, for the time, popular, affordable but also ‘respectable’ hotels, including the Hôtel de l’Univers on the rue Gay Lussac, where KM and JMM had stayed in December 1913. 3. When repenting for sins, doubt and cowardice, the biblical figure of Job performs his sorrow by sitting in sackcloth among the ashes or by putting ashes upon his head and face. See, for example, Job 42: 6: ‘Wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes.’ 4. The Alma Bridge (pont de l’Alma), built to commemorate a battle during the Crimean War, crosses the Seine from the quai Branly in the 7th arrondissement to the avenue New-York in the 8th. 5. Ida Baker was still in Switzerland, trying to rent out the Chalet des Sapins, thereby ‘minimising the strain on Katherine’s finances’ (Baker, p. 176).

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For her exchange with KM during these difficulties, see above, pp. 126–8 and 129–30. Robinson and Cleaver’s was a London department store at 156–68 Regent Street, particularly renowned for its drapery department. Morny Freres was a grand pharmacy and parfumier on the corner of Conduit Street and Regent Street. A 1918 advertisement for their ‘Chaminade’ range indicates that the fragrance is the favourite of ‘seven Royal courts’ and includes soap, bath salts, dusting powder and perfume. The Grosvenor Gallery, established in 1877, was then situated at 51a New Bond Street; it had made its name promoting artists whose experimental style was frowned upon by the Royal Academy. The Grosvenor’s May 1921 exhibition, ‘Nameless Exhibition of Modern British Painting’, had been of huge importance for the Bloomsbury and Slade artists. Bliss and Other Stories was then about to be distributed in Scandinavia but not in translation. The Garden Party and Other Stories had been published just two months previously. KM’s proactive agent, J. B. Pinker, had been negotiating distribution and translation terms and conditions.

[30 March 1922] [N] [Victoria Palace Hôtel, rue Blaise Desgoffe, Paris] Forgive writing. Am lying down & the book has no back bone. Darling Brett I see your point about Easter. As regards me it wouldn’t tire me at all for I feel we know each other too well now to tire each other. But its true the weather will be more settled in May and warmer. There is a chance still I may be able to get about and sit in the Gardens and so on and I shouldn’t be able to do that in Easter. And then Ill know my plans more in May – everything is up in the air now . . . . Also I can’t help thinking it would be a thousand times more satisfactory if you were already in your little house and no longer homeless.1 Oh you poor lamb! I think your friends are – to put it at its kindliest – terribly lacking in imagination. Why don’t any of them give you a real room and a fire with trimmings. To think of you – frail little creature that you are – blowing along the streets like a leaf in this devilish East weather, and catching cold, and having to take a room in – of all depressing places – Paddington Green!2 It is all very wrong and horrid. Couldn’t you afford a nice warm stuffy hotel like the Langham?3 There at least one is tucked in and the bath water is hot and theres someone to run messages and so on. Will that nurse look after your cold properly? And I wish I didn’t see your days dotted with buns. You need the Bes Food when youre moving. It takes such masses of energy and good humour out of one. The weather here is nothing short of horrible. Its almost dark all day – it rains and snows – drizzles with snow. I cant go out yet. I feel I shall soon come out

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in satin wallpaper stripes – after these eight weeks in one stuffy room. It has been terrible. Better not talk about it. The worst of it is I am not one atom better so far. Theres no talking to Manoukhin. He either does not listen or does not understand but shouts across one about his other cases to his partner – So soothing! I get to the point of thinking he has no other cases & that they are both living on my 300 a week in the meantime. But it may turn out better than one imagines. Perhaps this is that famous ‘darkness before dawn’ – – – – And the big ray of light is I am fearfully lucky with my writing. In fact my agent wants far more than I can do. But the greatest pleasure is all the letters I get from strangers who know nothing whatever about technique but who go through all the stories and say how sorry they are for William4 and how they understood why Anne laughed at Reggie and so on.5 I value these letters far more than any review. Its marvellous to feel these people care like that. And its amazing to find how generous they are. Fancy bothering to write all that! I had a wonderful letter from H. G. Wells yesterday, too.6 He is another incredibly generous man! I shall have to find a green place in the summer & just stay there fixed and work. Then if this has all been not successful I think Ill try and go to Nancy and have a go at the new pyscho-therapeutics.7 What confusion! Thats the result of hotels. AND – poor Murrys excitement this morning. He lost his pocketbook. This to ordinary people doesn’t matter much. I – at any rate – am so careless about money that even if I lose it and can’t afford to I don’t mind. I can’t mind. There it is. One can always sell something to get along with. But for M. it is really the deepest most terrifying tragedy. He goes white as paper. He is hopeless at once. He drifted out of my room back into his, turned over everything – pulled everything out of the waste paper basket, made my writing table a haystack – banged the doors – smiled like a person on the stage – pulled the bed about – just didn’t shake me by the heels. And his gloom is so dreadful that really one feels deadly sick – its as though one were hanging over a cliff. Finally after about half an hour in my room I got up, threw on my kimono and went off to his. And I started while he declared ‘No, it was no use. It was gone. Hed looked everywhere. The thing was hopeless.’ In about five minutes it was found. He looked like an angel as he clasped it or some saint visited by the Lord. Such is the effect of heredity! I suppose for years his family has felt like that, his mother suffered like that while she carried him and so passed it on. Devilish grind of life! But why do those people let themselves be ground. How I thank Heavens that there were a few rascals in my family. Its the rascals who save one from the peculiar tortures that M. suffers from. I keep an eagle eye on the place where the parcels are put but no egg has arrived yet, darling. As for mine – don’t scorn it. It will be the best I can do in the circumstances. Ill buy you a really good egg in May. Do you remember those rose buckles you gave me? They are really very lovely. I thought of having them mounted on a piece of black velvet & each of us wearing one for a bracelet. They are so charming. And the

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idea is nice, I think. How it would make peoples eyes pop if they had seen yours and then saw mine. Tell me if you agree – – – No, I don’t miss the Mountain for buttons. I miss her for tidying. I hate leaving my room in disorder or letting any of my personal things get out of place – and its tiring to do it oneself. Still Id far rather do it than have it done by the Mountain. It was always a false position. How is your little house? And who is helping you with it. A very good moving firm is Popes Hammersmith.8 They clean and sweep one as well & they are cheap. Have you got a servant? If I were a well strong person I would come over & offer my services. I like to think youd accept them & we would make each other cups of tea and drink it sitting round a packing case. That is nice, too. Goodbye for now, my precious little artist. Always your Tig. Notes 1. While waiting to move into her house at 6 Pond Street in Hampstead and not wishing to return to her father’s London house, Brett had been staying with various, often quite destitute, artist friends. 2. In the early years of the twentieth century, Paddington Green, and the whole Paddington area around Edgeware Road and Maida Vale in Westminster, were areas of desolation, where overcrowded, often insalubrious rows of houses stood, some awaiting demolition. The district’s decline continued until after World War Two. 3. The Langham Hotel in Marylebone, London, was, and still is, a large, fashionable and modern hotel built in the 1860s. 4. William is the tender, loving husband in KM’s story ‘Marriage à la Mode’, who stands by resolutely as his wife gets caught up in the effete vanities of posturing, artistic circles. It was first published in the Sphere on 31 December 1921. See CW2, pp. 330–8. 5. Anne and Reggie are the tentatively indecisive couple on the brink of separation, whose story is told in ‘Mr and Mrs Dove’, first published in the Sphere on 13 August 1921. See CW2, pp. 300–7. 6. The letter from Wells would not appear to have survived. He had first written in 1920, upon reading Bliss, to express his ‘gratitude and admiration’, adding that he ‘put K. M. above all other women (my Rebecca only excepted)’ (Wells 1997, pp. 57–8). After KM’s death, JMM wrote back to Wells, seeking his permission to quote from the letter; Wells agreed, adding ‘I put K. M. above the world of effort and compassion’ (p. 133). 7. The School of Nancy was a pioneering institute of psychoanalysis, teaching and practising Freudian methods of psychotherapy, open only since 1903. See above, p. 306, n. 1. 8. Popes and Son was a removals, storage and auctioneering company, based on Hammersmith Bridge Road in West London.

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[4 April 1922] [N] [Victoria Palace Hôtel, rue Blaise Desgoffe, Paris] Tuesday Dearest I sent my last letter to Thurlow Road. Did the Hannays impound it – horrid thought! This I shall send to Pond Street and hope that the painters wont light their fires with it. Shall I in future always send your letters there? It’s a very nice address. One sees it pond and all. But what I want to say first is Do come on the 18th You will? You are coming? Im to expect you then? Don’t put it off till May – I feel we shall be freer then for I dread to say who wont be in Paris in May. As it is the Schiffs have arrived. I haven’t seen them though and am not going to for a week or so, though Im awfully fond of both of them. But we must be alone – that’s flat. We must feel a bit free. Another reason. When I went to the clinique on Friday Manoukhin said that I should be on the turn in another week. Now he says it is from the 5th to the 10th one feels so ill and Ive had my 10th whack so I ought to be well on the turn by the 18th. I was rather in despair last Friday but suddenly just as I was getting on to the table Manoukhin began to talk about literature – about a story of Bunin’s and one of Kuprin’s.1 This was such a joy that after that nothing mattered and I believed in everything. We began to rejoice over what was so fine in Bunin’s work and – all was well. There is nothing on earth more powerful than love of work. I hope for the sake of your cold you are not having this weather, cold, dark, lashings of rain, strong wind – a general blast in fact. Nothing matters except the dark. Its that that gives one colds. Take care of yours, my lamb, and if you do go junketting, make yourself into a parcel Im interested in what you say of Wyndham L.2 Ive heard so very very much about him from Anne Rice and Violet Schiff. Yes I too admire his line tremendously. Its beautifully obedient to his wishes. But its queer I feel that as an artist in spite of his passions and his views and all that he lacks a real centre. Ill tell you what I mean. It sounds personal but one can’t help that: we can only speak of what we have learnt. It seems to me that what one aims at is to work with ones mind and one’s soul together. By soul I mean that ‘thing’ that makes the mind really important. I always picture it like this. My mind is a very complicated, capable instrument. But the interior is dark. It can work in the dark & throw off all kinds of things. But behind that instrument like a very steady gentle light is the soul. And its only when the soul radiates the mind that what one does matters . . . What I aim at is that state of mind when I feel my soul and my mind are one. Its awfully terribly

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difficult to get at. Only solitude will do it for me – But I feel Wyndham Lewis would be inclined to call the soul tiddley ompom. It’s a mystery, anyway. One aims at perfection – knows one will never achieve it and goes on aiming as though one knew the exact contrary – By the way do you know Marquet’s work well?3 I have a book of reproductions I will show you. He’s not a very great painter but hes most awfully good sometimes. What a bore! As I write about him he suddenly seems very small beer. And the reproduction of a picture by Nain (in the Louvre) Le Repas de Paysans4 which is four-pinned on my wall is miles and miles better than all Marquet’s kind of thing. Ive masses of things to tell you, my little artist, but I must finish my story for the Nation and I must get up. Murry is going to lunch with the Schiffs. Its nice to think I shall be alone. The funny truth is I like solitude 1000 times more than he does. He thinks he does – but he is much more restless mentally than I. Im restless physically and he not at all. That reminds me of another thing. If I get well Ill have to live 6 months of the year in England. I see that. He will never be happy without a real English HOME. But from October till May I shall go South and work – If my work goes on as it is going I hope to be able to get a small house at the back of Bandol, in the mountains there5 – & to get an ancient and her mari6 in it. My plan is – some years you & I will sneak off for a winter & early spring together. There’s no real winter. But I shall make it my working house. Can’t work at all properly in England and never shall be able to. So off we’ll go – alone – work, walk, have picnics, sit on the terrace & look at the moon, have very huge wood fires when the sun goes in. All so remote, my dear, far away, beautiful, gentle, like a land of faery. But we’ll talk of that this month. Tell me you are coming as soon as you get this letter – A card will do. I hope Arthur comes with you. Make him carrier-in-chief. Warm warm love my precious little friend. Ever your Tig. I’ve begun to listen for your knock already. Notes 1. Both Ivan Bunin (see above, p. 452, n. 9) and Aleksandr Kuprin (1870–1938) were part of the recently arrived Russian émigré circle, mostly based in the Montparnasse area of Paris. Unlike Bunin, Kuprin was desperately homesick and creatively unproductive once outside his homeland, and eventually decided to return to the Soviet Union. A selection of their short stories had been co-translated by Koteliansky and Bloomsbury associates, notably JMM, KM, D. H. Lawrence and Leonard Woolf.

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2. The Canadian-born writer and artist Wyndham Lewis (1882–1957), cofounder of the Vorticist movement and editor of the short-lived manifesto magazine Blast, had been based in London since his return from the Front, where he had served for two years as a war artist. The early 1920s saw him excelling as a powerfully avant-garde and successful painter; by the end of the decade, however, and until the late 1930s, he focused more on fiction and essay writing, developing a caustic, satiric vein that, in many ways, echoes the defiant bold lines and harsh colours of his pictures, but with an explicitly belligerent and proto-fascist viewpoint. 3. The French post-Impressionist painter Albert Marquet (1875–1947) had risen to fame in the immediate pre-war years; he was based essentially in the South of France, although he travelled extensively. 4. The three Nain brothers, Antoine, Louis and Mathieu, have always been something of a mystery in French art history, since so little is known about their early lives and even their individual contributions to a number of cosigned pictures. They were born at the turn of the seventeenth century and became prominent figures in French Classicism. Repas de Paysans is one of a series of oils depicting rural life. 5. Situated on the Mediterranean coast close to Toulon, Bandol is not, strictly speaking, close to any mountainous areas. The bay is, however, surrounded by stark, abrupt limestone hills and gorges, known as the ‘Toulon Brothers’. Other semi-mountainous outcrops in the region include the Cadière-d’Azur and Ollioules. 6. (Fr.): Husband.

[8 April 1922] [N] [Victoria Palace Hôtel, rue Blaise Desgoffe, Paris] Saturday. Brettushka, I wish I knew whether my letters arrive or not. If you get this one do please send me a card on the spot. Are you coming on the 18th. I went out today, Miss and bought myself a sweet-pretty-hat-it-was-indeed, and walked away in it carrying my dead one in a paper bag. Which is to say: That this reaction seems to be nearly over. I do feel much better. Manoukhin is very pleased – was yesterday. Oh, Brett I cant say what its like! I still dont dare to give myself up to believing all is going to be quite well. But all the same. God bless you darling. Your Tig.

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[17 April 1922] [N] [Victoria Palace Hôtel, rue Blaise Desgoffe, Paris] Easter My dearest Brett I look at my list and there are eleven letters to write this morning. But you shall come first; I have so much I want to say to you its hard to begin. First – the Easter egg did arrive on Saturday. It took nearly another day to get it through the customs. I am quite overwhelmed by it and can’t utter a word. I certainly never would have guessed that. But you must have paid so much, too. That makes me feel uncomfortable. It must have cost a fearful sum. It is too noble a gift; I shall have one day to give it back to you. But I can’t for the life of me speak about it. Overwhelmed is the only word. But I wish you hadn’t spent so much, especially as you need money now. And I cant help feeling you bought it for yourself and sacrificed it. I shall only keep it for you. Thats the only way I can. Its a good thing on the whole dearest that you are not coming this month after all – May will be better. I was a little imprudent last week, or I suppose I must have been – and ever since I last wrote Ive been – – – – as before. It will pass away again. Manoukhin said last Friday I must not walk more than 10 minutes yet, but drive everywhere. So thats what I am doing. The rest of the time I lie down again and write. But its only a li’ll bit of a downfall. In a week or two Ill be up again. Brett how dare you even breathe the idea of scrubbing. If you ever take a scrub brush in your hand I hope it will sting you and run after you like a beetle. Dont work any more than you can possibly help! Its cheaper by far to employ slaves for those jobs. I hope your servant is a good creature and will really look after you. I wish I knew more about your house and its fixings but its tiring to write such things. You’ll tell me when you come over. Im sure we shall be in Paris until the middle of June for once Manoukhin is over I must get my teeth seen to before we go off again. Then we think of making for Austria or Bavaria, and perhaps our old love, Bandol for the winter. Thats what we want to do. I foresee I shall have to pick up a young maid in Bavaria. I cant do without somebody – not a Mountain – but a maid. Who takes ones gloves to be cleaned? Looks after ones clothes, keeps them brushed and so on – and then there’s ones hair and all that – It takes such a terrific time to keep everything going There is an endless succession of small jobs – And then one wants little things bought – new sachets and toothpaste – all those things to keep renewed. I can’t keep up with it not if I was as strong as ever. There’s too much to write and too much to read and to talk about. I can’t for the life of me understand how women manage. Its easier for men because of the way they dress and so on – Also they

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aren’t dependent on small things like we are. No, a little nice Bertha or Augusta is my ambition. We nearly saw Ethel Sands last week.1 Murry quite saw Iris Moffet.2 Met her in the street. Has she been ill? He said she was so changed – he hardly knew her – Something has happened to her skin. But perhaps it was only temporary. I have been seeing my Schiffs after all. They are wonderfully kind and sensitive. There are some people whom one delights in for most complicated reasons – by delights in I mean enjoys. I suppose the pleasure is nearly all literary. The Schiffs are a perfect feast to one in that way. I could watch, listen, take in for days at a time. And then I admire Violets appearance very much – do you? Everything is so definite – her lips – her eyes, nose, teeth – and that air of radiance. She has a lovely throat, too – very full, and her gaiety is very very rare. By the way I have discovered something interesting about the Russian colony in Paris – I mean Manoukhin and his friends. They are intensely religious. Before the revolution they were all sceptics – as far from religion as the English intelligenzsia. But now that is changed. They go to church perpetually, kneel on the cold stones, pray – believe, really – in religion. This is very strange. Last Good Friday at the clinic Manoukhin was late and his partner, Donat, a handsome white bearded man with a stiff leg, talked to us about it.3 They have become mystics, said he. Mystic! That strange word one is always touching the fringes of and running away from – – – Forgive this letter – all is scraps and pieces. I am shamefully tired and only fit for business communications. I try to whip myself up but its no good. The spirit is there all right, dearest. Please read between the lines and I promise in another week or two I shall send a better different letter. Write to me when you can in spite of my little scrappy yelp of a reply . . Ive a new story coming out in the Nation called Honeymoon.4 Read it if you have the time –will you? Id like to feel you had seen it. Are you working? Can you work with all the chairs standing on their heads? How soon will it be over – your move? Do you really thrill at the thought of the little house? I’d like to fly over & talk. A man was at lunch yesterday who had left Croydon at 11.30! Goodbye for now, my little artist. I embrace you. Ever your own Tig. Notes 1. Ethel Sands was a wealthy American artist who had worked with Walter Sickert for some years; she was also an influential salon hostess, and a close friend and associate of many of the Bloomsbury Group, living alternately in London and Dieppe. See above, p. 447, n. 7.

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2. Iris Moffat: see above, p. 391, n. 5. 3. Louis Donat was a French pulmonologist who worked alongside Manoukhin in the tuberculosis clinic in Paris. 4. ‘Honeymoon’ was published in the Nation on 29 April 1922. See CW2, pp. 488–93.

[29 April 1922] [N] [Victoria Palace Hôtel, rue Blaise Desgoffe, Paris] Saturday – Dearest Brett, Many many thanks for your letter. Ill answer it first. About Joyce. Don’t read it unless you are going to really worry about it.1 Its no joke. Its fearfully difficult and obscure and one needs to have a really vivid memory of The Odyssey2 and of English literature to make it out at all. It is wheels within wheels within wheels. Joyce certainly had not one grain of a desire that one should read it for the sake of the coarseness, though I confess I find many a ‘ripple of laughter’ in it. But that’s because (although I dont approve of what he has done) I do think Marian Bloom & Bloom are superbly seen at times. Marian is the complete complete female. There’s no denying it. But one has to remember she’s also Penelope, she is also the night and the day, she is also an image of the teeming earth – full of seed, rolling round and round, and so on and so on. I am very surprised to hear a Russian has written a book like this.3 Its most queer that its never been heard of. But has Kot read Ulysses? Its not the faintest use considering the coarseness except purely critically. I am very interested that Koteliansky thinks the German Russian treaty good.4 Manoukhin and all the Russians here say it means war in the near future – for certain, for certain! It is the beginning of Bolshevism all over Europe. The Bolsheviks at Genoa5 are complete cynics. They say anything. They are absolutely laughing in their beards at the whole affair, and treating us as fools even greater than the French. The French at least have a sniff of what may happen but we go on saying ‘let us all be good’, and the Russians & Germans burst with malicious glee. I was staggered when I heard this. Manoukhin’s partner here, a very exceptional Frenchman,6 started the subject yesterday – said – why did not we English immediately join the French and take all vestige of power from Germany. This so disgusted me I turned to Manoukhin & felt sure he would agree that it simply could not be done. But he agreed absolutely. So they declare, the Russians here, we are in for another war and for Bolshevism partout.7 Its a nice prospect – isn’t it! I must say I have never in my life felt so entangled in politics as I do at this moment. I hang on the newspapers – I feel I dare not miss a

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speech. One begins to feel like Gorky8 feels that its one’s duty to what remains of civilization to care for these things and that writers who do not are traitors. But its horrible. Its like jumping into a treacle pot. However, perhaps tomorrow one will stop reading the papers or caring a fig. ABC Tumble down D The cats in the cupboard And cant see me.9 I send back your Father’s letter. Its cold – very. But after all you live a life he disapproves of absolutely and he gives you £500 a year. One can’t expect more from ones parents. And Im afraid, my dear, you don’t treat him cleverly. If you really tell him ‘dealers are fools’ you only give him a weapon to beat you with. Of course he doesn’t believe it. He believes they know their job and if they bought your pictures he’d still believe they knew their job. Then he complains you write him ‘insulting’ letters. I suppose that is really ‘unfriendly’. Well, if you do you can’t expect him to help you more than he does. There is nothing on earth like an appearance of discontent and failure to harden the hearts of men like your father. It cuts deeper than you imagine. It hurts their pride and they refuse to attempt to help. Yet I feel equally certain that if you had gone the right way about it you could have won your Father. He would have seen your rare qualities and admired them. If Im not mistaken in many ways your Father fascinates you. You enjoy him, appreciate him immensely for some qualities he has. But something prevents you from making the best of each other. Its a pity. Perhaps you will say its another case of your childish memories and surroundings. But Ah Brett, we cant plead them – We simply cant! It means the end of all personal freedom if we do. We have to simply get over them, stifle them, no root them out and fling them over the wall like weeds so that our own flowers can grow. They all bear the same flower and its got a smell that will destroy everything else – self-pity. Fatal! Fatal weed! One must be hard and just have done with it – thats all. I must end this letter. Dont take it for a real letter. Its written from bed where I lie with influenza for tumpany. I am sure Im over the worst of it today. But I still feel very boiled and put through the wringer. You see the weather here is simply beyond words. It rains and rains & its cold and it hails & the wind whistles down the corridors. Only frogs and mushrooms being noseless – could refrain from catching things – Influenza puts the fear of God into me – The very word has a black plume on its head and a trail of coffin sawdust.10 But I hope to get up and go out next week – Don’t think I am discouraged. Not a bit of it. On the contrary if a pudding head could sing – I would – M. comes in every afternoon with a fresh victim to tell me of. Everybody has got

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it – woman at milk shop – woman at library – bread woman – where does all the rain come from? And the channel is rough every day. When you come in May if I were you I’d fly. So simple – no horrid old changing from boats to trains and diving into cabins and along grisly station platforms. Flying seems so clean – like cutting out ones way with a pair of sharp scissors. With much love, dearest Ever Tig. Notes 1. James Joyce’s Ulysses had been published in Paris on 2 February that year, having been banned for obscenity in Britain after extracts were published in the little magazine, the Egoist. 2. The Odyssey is the second part of Homer’s vast poetic epic, which, along with the first part, The Iliad, represent one of the founding pieces of the Western canon, and the oldest work in Western literature to have survived to this day. As the shift from the Greek name Odysseus to the Roman name Ulysses underlines, Joyce’s Modernist novel draws on Homer’s masterpiece for its main, structure and character-shaping palimpsest. 3. The Russian Symbolist writer and poet Boris Nikolaevich Bugaev (1880– 1934), better known by the pen-name Andrei Bely, had published a vast, formally experimental and structurally complex novel, Petersburg, in 1913, which is generally held to be his masterpiece. As epic and sprawling in terms of history and literary vision as Joyce’s Ulysses, it is often referred to as one of the founding Modernist novels, but of questionable influence, given that it had still not been translated in full into English by the early 1920s. 4. From April until May 1922, an international Economic and Finance Conference met in Genoa, convened by the British Prime Minister, David Lloyd George. The conference aimed to settle some of the key international issues that had not been resolved by the Paris Peace Conference immediately after the war, foremost of which being the question of how to ensure German recovery while also exacting reparations. Although Germany and Russia were among the thirty-four nations participating, they finally drew up a separate settlement agreement in the neighbouring town of Rapallo. 5. KM’s vision of the Russian delegates at the Genoa Conference (see above, note 4), representing the newly formed Soviet government in Russia, is clearly shaped by her conversations with Koteliansky; he had been a fervent supporter of the Mensheviks and was rigorously opposed to the Bolshevik government. See above, p. 346, n. 7. 6. The partner in question is Dr Louis Donat (see above, p. 466, n. 3). 7. (Fr.): Everywhere. The popular belief in the predicted dangers of international Bolshevism was not just a reflection of fast-growing Communist groups in Western Europe. It was also part of the propaganda maintained by the countries engaged in the Allied Intervention in the Soviet Union, which aspired to overthrow the new regime. 8. The Russian writer Maxim Gorky (1868–1936) was possibly Russia’s most outspoken and politically engaged intellectual in the very early years of the

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Soviet Union. Although he had initially supported the Mensheviks (like his fellow Russian and acquaintance, Koteliansky), Gorky preferred to work with the new regime, securing better conditions for writers and artists whose livelihoods had been devastated by the ruined economy of the post-war, the revolution and the civil wars. His most pioneering undertaking was the founding of the World Literature Publishing House, which sought to employ writers as translators, and thereby disseminate contemporary and classic Russian literature abroad, and also translate foreign classics into English. It was via Gorky’s extensive network of contacts throughout the Russian diaspora that Koteliansky came to acquire the new publications that he then took to the Hogarth Press, the popular success of which helped secure the future of the Woolfs’ publishing house. 9. The nursery rhyme is one of the multitude of traditional chants to help children learn their alphabet. It is included in a firm family favourite collection from the mid-nineteeth century, edited by James Orchard Halliwell-Phillipps, The Nursery Rhymes of England: Collected from the Oral Tradition. The two-volume set was re-edited frequently throughout the second half of the nineteenth century. 10. KM is writing only eighteenth months after the end of the devastating influenza pandemic often referred to as Spanish flu, a worldwide virus that is estimated to have killed about 5 per cent of the global population, making it one of the most appalling natural disasters ever recorded. Given her increasingly frail state and weak lungs, KM had every reason to fear infection.

[3 May 1922] [N] [Victoria Palace Hôtel, rue Blaise Desgoffe, Paris] My dear Lamb If I sound cold and horrid – unloving – sometimes, forgive me. I try to help it but I don’t succeed very well. What I ought to say is ‘I am writing about Bolshevism and so on for two reasons. (1) Because it is interesting in a superficial way but (2) because I want to tide over a difficult moment. (2) is the most important thing. Its rather like the nonsense people talk in doctors’ waiting rooms. You know? Not being able to keep quiet, or to show what I feel I hand you the copy of Punch1 or whatever it is . . . Forgive me, my little Brettushka. And do understand once and for always its not for lack of love. I am so thankful you are in your house. I long to see it. Is it very nice? Are you really snug? Are you firm with your servant about feeding you properly? Heaven bless your hearth! I wish I could come this very day with my gift for the new house and sit & talk to you. Its rather an important day for me. I am beginning my long serial – half of which has to be finished in a month from now! And I have also signed away all the rest of my book to be ready sans faute2 by the end of the summer. The serial is very exciting. Its 24.000 words, a short novel in fact.3 I want

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it to end with a simply scrumptious wedding – rose pink tulle frocks for the bridesmaids, favours on the horses heads, that marvellous moment at the church when everyone is waiting – the servants in a pew to themselves – The cook’s hat – But all all divinely beautiful if I can do it – gay, but with that feeling that ‘beauty vanishes beauty passes. Though rare, rare it be’4 . . . . . Goodbye little artist. Its still cold here and my old reaction has started in the other lung now. Basta!5 Tig. Notes 1. The weekly magazine Punch, which was published in London from 1841 until 1992, was famous for its brisk comic vein, its mordant satires and its much-appreciated cartoons. A vast number of British and American writers published sketches and short stories in the magazine, which was hugely successful in the immediate pre-war years. 2. (Fr.): Without fail. 3. KM’s excitement, and the plans for the novel, commissioned by Clement Shorter, unfortunately came to nothing, a clear reflection of her fast-declining health. 4. From the second stanza of Walter de la Mare’s short poem, the much-admired ‘Epitaph’ (1908). KM is clearly quoting from memory since de la Mare’s line runs: ‘But beauty vanishes, beauty passes; / However rare – rare it be.’ 5. (It.): Enough!

[8 May 1922] [N] [Victoria Palace Hôtel, rue Blaise Desgoffe, Paris] The Mountain passes through Paris on the 10th on her way to London.1 I am going to ask her to take a parcel to you. It will consist of among other things 3 frocks of mine (I love exchanging things like this!) which I thought you might like to have for gardening in. So simple to throw off & on & when finished throw over the wall. They are quite good as people say. There is no snag. If you hate them or feel insulted give em away to the next lady who wants to sell you a fern. Monday and Hot as Blazes! Dearest Brett Do you mean the true original Eva?2 I always felt she was a wonderful creature! I feel inclined to steal her immediately – No, only in jest. But what amazing luck! I do hope she looks after you really well.

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Do you regret Thurlow Road? One always regrets that skin. One always leaves something precious – like a little hoard of treasure – buried somewhere and back one goes to it like a ghost, seeking and tapping. How I feel that about Isola Bella! But next Winter M. and I are going to spend in the South! Oh God, what a joy! Brett, as soon as I have the money the little house will be bought in the woods above Bandol. But now I have flown off, darling and I meant to say I feel this house of yours is going to be a happy one. Don’t you? Haven’t you taken it to your heart? I am going to get up today & attack solid food again. It sounds a joke but my last five days Ive had a fearful tummy upset – like poisoning – with pains & high fever – Isn’t it extraordinary! I suppose these are the final rages of the devils. The weather has been perfect & Ive been in my horrid old bed, useless as ever. But I think its on the wane again. But the warmth! the sun! the air – so soft – the bells so gentle! It is impossible not to feel happy and thankful for Life – beautiful Life. Dearest, I wouldn’t if I were you make rules about not showing your work for so and so long. Let us talk it all out when you come over. The great thing is to go on quietly, steadily, your own way. Thats the secret. I think myself you have worked too much without someone near you to discuss what you are doing as you go along – to think it out – talk it over and so on. You have not had enough attention. Some people need a tremendous great deal in order to develop their own powers. Its as though you were a kind of plant, my lamb, that needs a ‘frame’ as well as the sun, for a bit. You need cherishing. You need the feeling that you are carried in the breast of another. I don’t need that. There is something hard in me which even refuses it absolutely where work is concerned. But I know, quite simply I can give that to another. I can help others –, for some reason – (Im not ‘proud’ of it you know, any more than a water diviner is proud of his queer flair) There it just is. I wish you could make use of it. About coming over. That is for you to say. We shall be here until the end of this month, and really all times are the same, now. But do I catch just the faintest hesitation – – about leaving your house and so on just as you have got in? If its there, darling, lets put off meeting again, until later. Please tell me bang out. Oh, before I forget. If you have not bought that linen please don’t buy it. It suddenly horrifies me – the idea of anyone buying me all that awful white linen – How gruesome! How terrible! If you have bought it – Ill pay gladly – and ask you to keep it – But dont buy it for me! There would be a coffin worm in its folds. This is just a note written as usual on the flat of my back. Can you read such awful writing. Love – love – a special summer line of love. Tig.

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Notes 1. Ida Baker was due to travel back to England from Randogne via Paris, bringing the cat Wingley with her to have him rehomed. See above, pp. 153–4. 2. As KM’s letter to Brett a month later on 14 June makes clear, Eva was a servant who was to give notice soon after, in protest against being treated disrespectfully.

[13 May 1922] [N] [Victoria Palace Hôtel, rue Blaise Desgoffe, Paris] Dearest Brett, I can’t write a long letter as I would like to for I am infernally busy with work. But read in between the lines, dearest, & forgive me. About your coming. This hotel is absolutely full up. Not even a room for ½ an hour! And they don’t know when there will be one. So you’ll go to your Big Men?1 Paris looks absolutely marvelous, just now – it has never been more beautiful and so light, so airy-fairy. I hope you’ll come. If you do – would you bring me 2 tablets Cuticura soap?2 The only soap for the complexshun! Here it is so dear that one can’t afford to wash one’s face at all. You know the stuff done up in a horrid black & yellow packet, gooseberry green soap. But it is pure as a lily. I went to the clinic for the last time yesterday. Manoukhin says I am not yet ‘out of the wood’.3 My right lung is still a bad one. After 2 months of repose I have to go back for 12 more séances. However . . . . . I am infinitely better – as long as the sun shines. Why does the sun ever go in? Ask this question on one of your Thursdays & tell me what your philosophers answer! Dont be sad, my dear! Your house has tired you. Moving is dreadful. One moves everything – one’s whole being is taken up & shaken & put down again with a hammer & nails. A little holiday will make you feel different. And try not to mind your people. How tremendously you do mind them! Too much, dearest Brettushka, far too much. For if you can’t change them all your unhappy thoughts of them do no good, & they exhaust you like all useless thinking does. I know what its like. But try & shake them off. Its because you find it a bit hard to work just now that you feel as you do – isn’t it? When I cant get on – I want to – (and I find my self doing it) almost torture myself – Oh, I wish you could hear this man playing the piano – practising below me. But so beautifully! He is listening to every tone, working quietly and carefully & now and again giving himself a treat by breaking off his exercises & bursting into ‘something rich and strange’.4 Read something very nice! Be happy! Find something lovely in your garden. I wish I were with you to give you a small hug. Take care of

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yourself. I feel so tenderly towards you! If only you knew. If only you would feel yourself loved. Don’t care about the old boat. Its only for an hour or two. When you come lets go really into the question of your deafness, too. Don’t think I ignore it. I think of it often and often. I feel sure that there is a way out – not with X-rays though. Have I ever told you Ive been deaf in my right ear for nearly 2 years now with noises in my head always going on – sometimes less and sometimes more. What a warrior! And now Im starting the dentist on Monday. Pray Heaven he’ll leave me a tooth to stand on – Goodbye for now. This is, as you see just a scratch. Yours ever Tig. Notes 1. KM refers to a long-established hotel on the place du Panthéon in Paris, Hôtel des Grands Hommes, the name of which she translates literally. The Panthéon is the mausoleum where the remains of the great figures of French history are buried. 2. Cuticura was a medicated soap, recommended in popular magazines and advertisements as a cure for skin irritations. 3. KM is translating Manoukhin’s French literally. The idiom in English is ‘to be out of the woods’, meaning to be out of danger. 4. From the song ‘Full fathom five’, sung by Ariel, the wood sprite in Shakespeare’s The Tempest (I, ii): ‘Nothing of him that doth fade, But doth suffer a sea-change, Into something rich and strange.’

[5 June 1922] [N] Hotel d’Angleterre, Montana-Sur-Sierre Valais Suisse. My dearest Lamb, I must write to you before I begin work. I think of you so often, and at this moment sitting on the balcony in THE sweater, which isn’t a jot too warm but is perfect – so snug and soft – I feel as though my song of praise must reach you wherever you are. Aren’t last moments of any kind awful? Those last feverish ones at the hotel – how detestable they were.1 And I kept thinking afterwards that perhaps, darling, you felt I shouted at you in the hall. I hope to Heaven you didn’t. It is on my mind. I wasn’t as careful as I should

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have been. Forgive me! And throw away those odious great parcels if they worry you. You can’t think – you can’t imagine how you helped me. How can I repay you? But Ill try and find out a way some day. We had an awful journey. The station was crammed with a seething mob. No porters – people carrying their own luggage. No couchettes after all – only a packed 1st class carriage, coated in grime. It was Whitsun, of course – Ive never taken Whitsun seriously before but now I know better.2 Poor dear M. left things in the rack, gave a 500 note instead of a 50, lost the registered luggage tickets . . . . When we reached Sierre and that lovely clean hotel, smelling of roses and lime blossom, we both fell fast asleep on a garden bench while waiting for lunch. Then at Randogne, after shinning up a hill to reach the little cart, a big black cloud saw us far off, tore across and we’d scarcely started when down came the cold mountain rain. Big drops that clashed on one like pennies. It poured in sheets and torrents. We hadn’t even a rug. The road which has only just been dug out & is like a river bed became a river, and for the most of the time we seemed to drive on two wheels. But it was heavenly, it didn’t matter. It was so marvellously fresh and cool after Paris. A huge dog plunged after our cart & leapt into all the streams – a dog as big as a big sofa. Its name was Lulu. When we arrived, sleek as cats with the wet, a little old grey woman ran out to meet us. There wasn’t another soul to be seen. All was empty, chill and strange. She took us into two very bare plain rooms, smelling of pitch pine with big bunches of wild flowers on the tables, with no mirrors, little washbasins like tea basins, no armchairs, no nuffin. And she explained she had no servant even. There was only herself & her old sister who would look after us. I had such fever by this time that it all seemed like a dream. When the old ’un had gone Jack looked very sad. Oh, how I pitied him! I saw he had the awful foreboding that we must move on again. But I had the feeling that perhaps we had been living too soft lately. It was perhaps time to shed all those hot water taps and horrid false luxuries. So I said it reminded me of the kind of place Tchekhov would stay at in the country in Russia!3 This comforted M. so much that the very walls seemed to expand. And after we had unpacked and eaten eggs from the hen not the shop M. got into a pair of old canvas shoes & a cricket shirt. The air is so wonderful. Its not really hot here except in the sun: theres just a faint breeze – a freshet that blows from across the valley. Its all silky and spring like. The grasshoppers ring their little tambourines all day and all night too. The view is so marvellous that you must see it to believe it. And behind this hotel, dearest there are immense lawns dotted with trees; its like a huge natural park. We sat there yesterday watching the herds – a few bright sheep, an old woman with her goat, a young girl, far away with some black cows. When the beasts were being driven home at milking time they began to play. I have never

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seen a more beautiful sight. They are so joyful to be out again & in the green fields that great cows lowed softly for delight and skipped and jumped and tilted at each other and little sheep flew along like rocking horses and danced and gambolled. The slender girls with mushroom white handkerchiefs on their heads ran after them. But they caught the infection and began to laugh and sing, too. It was like the beginning of the world again. Brett, cities are cursed places. When I have my little house in the South Ill never go near them & I shall lure you away. I long for you to be here next month. The hotel will still be empty. But thats nice. It is so still. As one crosses the hall it echoes. The old woman has very kind eyes. She is simple and gentle. She keeps promising me that I will get better here, and she is determined to make me drink all kinds of teas made of fresh strawberry leaves and hay and pine needles. I suppose I shall drink them – Bless her heart! I feel a bit better today but the pain is still there and Ive got colly wobbles and a temperature still. But it will all pass. How are you? Where are you? Write to me. You won’t mind the mountains here at all. Really its not high and its all so marvellously level. And the stillness! the peace! To sit in the grass & feel little creepy things running up ones sleeve again – oh what bliss! Goodbye for now, my precious little artist. Has anyone ever told you what beautiful eyelids you have. You ought to have been told often and often – for they are very very lovely. Take care of yourself. Are you happy? I am Your very loving Tig. Notes 1. Brett’s long-planned visit to KM had taken place over the last weekend in May, just before KM set off back to Switzerland on Friday, 2 June. 2. Whitsun (‘la Pentecôte’) was (and still is) an important public holiday in France, and marked a long weekend when vast numbers of French people left the capital for family reunions. 3. Chekhov wrote a number of memorable letters from his holiday stays in the country at the homes of friends and family, often focusing on the house itself as much as the quirks and foibles of the other house guests or the hosts. KM and Koteliansky co-translated some of these, which she therefore knew intimately, as well as having read and adored the much larger selection in the volume translated by Garnett. See, for example, CW3, pp. 207–9, 212–13.

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[11 June 1922] [N] [Hôtel d’Angleterre, Montana-sur-Sierre, Switzerland] Sunday Dearest Brett Summer has deserted us, too – Its cold and we are up the clouds all day. Huge, white woolly fellows lie in the valley. There is nothing to be seen from the windows but a thick, soft whiteness. Its beautiful in its way. The sound of water is beautiful flowing through it and the shake of the cows bells. Yes, I know Utrillo’s work from reproductions;1 M. has seen it. Its very sensitive and delicate. Id like to see some originals. What a horrible fate that he should be mad. Tragedy treads on the heels of those young French painters. Look at young Modigliani2 – he had only just begun to find himself when he committed suicide. I think its partly that café life; its a curse as well as a blessing. I sat opposite a youthful poet in the filthy atmosphere of the L’Univers3 and he was hawking and spitting the whole evening. Finally after a glance at his mouchoir he said ‘Encore du sang. II me faut 24 mouchoirs par jour. C’est le desespoir de ma femme!’4 Another young poet Jean Pellerin5 (awfully good) died (but not during the evening!) making much the same kind of joke. Talking about ‘illness’, my dear, I feel rather grim when I read of your wish to bustle me and make me run! Did it really seem to you people were always telling me to sit down? To me that was the fiercest running and the most tremendous bustling and I couldn’t keep it up for any length of time. In fact as soon as I got here I wrote to the Mountain and asked her to come back and look after things as otherwise Id never be able to get any work done. All my energy went in ‘bustling’. So she’s coming back to me in a strictly professional capacity to look after us both. M. needs someone very badly, too, and I can’t face the thought of a stranger. No, Im afraid its not only a question of weak muscles; I wish it were! You ask Manoukhin! Don’t lets discuss my health. We heard from Philip yesterday to say the Browns are still in the Manorette6 and three people are promised it if they ever get out. In the event of those three people partaking of the same dish and dying he would be delighted to rent it to us. But it doesn’t sound very hopeful. M. wrote saying we would put in central heating and good bathrooms etc. as a bait. But I fear it will never be ours. I think Philip was very relieved to have Toronto7 back. The chickens had been leading him a dance, one felt. Elizabeth has such a character staying with her. I wonder if you happen to know her – Lady Mary Mallett8 – one time private secretary to the Dear Queen. She is the spit of all those people – large hat with lace veil caught on her shoulder with a diamond brooch, figure, gloves,

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shoes, rolled umbrella and hair. M. has had tremendous conversations about the D Q’s dislike of seeing anyone without her cap and so on. But I can’t get off the subject of Venice with her. She will describe Venice to me and all its beauties. When she says the word beauties she shuts her eyes. She is painting a series of water colours of wild flowers in her spare time. I think Elizabeth is suffering tortures at having her so very much on the spot, though. I must get up and start work. There’s a huge beetle creeping over my floor, so cautiously, so intently. He has thought it all out. One gets fond of insects here; they seem to be in their place and its pleasant to know they are there. M. was saying the other night how necessary snakes are in creation. Without snakes there would be a tremendous gap, a poverty. Snakes complete the picture. Why? I wonder. I feel it, too. I read an account of unpacking large deadly poisonous vipers at the Zoo the other day. They were lifted out of their boxes with large wooden tongs. Can’t you see those tongs? Like giant asparagus tongs & think of one’s feelings if they suddenly crossed like sugar tongs too – Brrr! What are you reading out of Sylvia Beach’s library?9 I am glad you have changed your opinion of her. Im sure she is kind and very decent. She knows Paris inside and out like a sleeve, I think. I do hope you haven’t sent me that frock. What wickedness! I must – I must get up. My story is waiting and my young people are going off for a picnic. Write again dearest when you are inclined. I feel you have become quite a Parisian. I hope G. is nice and even Mme D. With so much love Yours ever Tig. Notes 1. The Montmartre-born French artist Maurice Utrillo (1883–1955) is generally associated with the Paris School, which, in the late 1910s and early 1920s, consisted mostly of exiled and émigré artists, including a large community of Jewish refugees. Utrillo was plagued with mental breakdowns all his life, sometimes prompting prolonged stays in asylums. 2. Amedeo Modigliani (1884–1920) was an Italian painter and sculptor, best known for his angular portrait painting and bronze figures. He spent most of his life in Paris, where he died of tuberculosis in 1920. For a time, KM’s erstwhile friend, Beatrice Hastings, was his lover. It is even possible that KM met Modigliani during a brief period of rapprochement in her friendship with Hastings, when KM was in Paris during the spring of 1915. 3. ‘L’Univers’ was then quite a run-down café on the place de la Comédie française, and a favourite haunt for singers, actors and music-hall stars. In his later memoir, Montmartre, Francis Carco records meeting KM and JMM there unexpectedly in 1918. 4. (Fr.): Yet more blood. I get through twenty-four handkerchiefs a day. It drives my wife to distraction.

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5. The French poet and novelist Jean Pellerin (1885–1921) had been a close friend of Carco and a fellow member of the ‘Fantaisiste’ movement; he and Carco had both served in the army together, including at Gray. Pellerin had died of tuberculosis in Savoy the year before. 6. On the Garsington estate there were a number of independent cottages that were rented out, including the one nicknamed the ‘Manorette’. JMM had asked the Morrells about the possibility of renting one. 7. Frank Prewett was known as Toronto among his friends. See above, p. 391, n. 2. 8. Marie Constance Adeane (1862–1934), married to Sir Bernard Mallet, had been Maid of Honour to Queen Victoria; after her death, her family published her memoirs of her years at court (Life With Queen Victoria, 1968). 9. Sylvia Beach, who had published Joyce’s Ulysses in February that year, had founded the reputed bookshop ‘Shakespeare and Company’, then situated on rue de l’Odéon in the 6th arrondissement. She ran a lending library too, of which KM was a registered member, although it would appear that Ida Baker actually took borrowed volumes back and forth. The library’s lending register, recorded on index cards, has survived to this day, offering unexpected insights into the reading habits of the English-speaking intellectuals and general readers in Paris. See above, p. 163, n. 2.

[14 June 1922] [N] [Hôtel d’Angleterre, Montana-sur-Sierre, Valais] My dearest Brett You sent me such a lovely letter. I wanted to answer it at once. But I am working at such pressure. It sounds absurd. But it is really difficult to find time for letters, even. First, about your health. Do you feel better? Is the pain in your lung? Is there anyone who would paint you with iodine – in French tincture d’iode. Or if not won’t you buy a packet of Thermogène and clamp it on the spot & keep it there until the pain is gone.1 Do, look after yourself. Eat! Rest! Dont carry your paint box. I shall be thankful when you are here in really good air with the old girls looking after you and feeding you properly. And remember to put on warm clothes for the journey here – woolies. Its fresh in the mountains; its sometimes cold. You can always shed them in the train & then wind yourself up when you reach Sierre. Now about the journey. The night train is best. The one we took from the Gare de Lyon – 9 – something. You have to change at Lausanne next morning at about 9. But I looked on your account for Cook’s men2 & I saw two in full view. Even without them the change is perfectly simple & there is no rush. Plenty of time. At Sierre M. will meet you. I hope to be there, too. Then there is only a gentle ride ½ way up the mountains and then there is a cup of tea. This place is so flat, so full of lawns and so on that one feels as though one was on the level, or one’s eye does. I wish my heart would believe my eye but it wont. But don’t

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forget about the coolness, darling. I have a galumptious pair of cornflower blue woolen stockings I shall give you on arrival – Lawrence would swoon at sight of them. I am hoping they will keep your little toes in a gentil glow . . . Paris feels remote at last. The pianos have died down. The lift no longer goes up & down in ones head. That cursed restaurant has faded. Little creepy things have crept back and clover and the sky and a feeling as though one would in a moment give thanks to the Lord. The cherries are just beginning to flash into ripeness. There are still masses of flowers. But why do the peasants work so hard. It wrings ones heart to see them! The women can just stagger under gigantic loads and they are all bent, all hardened, like trees by a cruel wind. What will you paint here – I wonder? Herd girls, goats trees? That is interesting about the white of Paris houses. What I love, too, is white with just a tinge of pink as one sees in the South – or just a tinge of yellow. Do you like to pat houses? pat their walls? I used to go outside my little Isola Bella & pat it as if it was a cat. I hope you find your little boy again. I hope you never see that horrid Richeborough3 again. Vile man! How dare he say such things. I am v. sorry to hear about Eva. Of course I suspect J. and Mrs D. of frightening her.4 Servants are simple creatures; they don’t like surprises. They expect to be looked after (alas) and the best of them are stern moralists. If you want to live just as you like you must teach the servant to understand that – train her into strange ways & she’ll accept them. But not otherwise. They feel they have a right to expect a certain conduct from the people they serve. I am sure of that. And Sullivan turning up out of the blue must have scared your Eva. Was he drunk or was it Gertler? I must say I find that hard to forgive in your house with you away. How can people be so shamelessly insensitive. Speaking of people reminds me of your brilliant remark about Toronto – vain without vanity. I am sure that is absolutely right! What is Waterlow saying about your Thursdays. He is a bit of a mischief maker. It is because of his Marge.5 I feel he is absolutely under her thumb and her mental plumbing is so very awful. I expect you will get all the latest gossip from G. I do not like those London people, dearest. Koteliansky is the only company I really want to see; ever again. There is something – a kind of superciliousness & silly suspicion mixed in the others which makes me turn from them. They are no worse than other city people. But that is not saying much is it? The truth is I don’t want to discuss literature or art, as they do. I want to get on with it, and in leisure hours, live and love and enjoy the people I am with. Play, in fact. Play is a very necessary part of life. I must post this unsatisfactory letter. Its written as usual on my knee & so my writing has no back bone but is all wobbly like the handwriting of a fish. Forgive it.

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I still cough like billy-oh, and am short of puff and so on. The old story, in fact, just as it was when I was here before. But it ‘don’t signify, Miss Dombey’.6 This all rushes along. But its the surface. Underneath there is something steady – deep – and yours – my love for you. I too, feel we are only at the beginning. But already I have such memories of you to think over – moments, glances, words spoken and left unsaid. Feel I am with you. You are dear to me. I look forward – to a real friendship. But a close, tender friendship – no less. We shall have a marvellous time, darling. Don’t you feel that – too? With love, my precious little artist Yours Tig. Notes 1. Both ‘tincture d’iode’ and ‘thermogène’ were staple products in the French domestic medicinal cupboard. Tincture of iodine was a commonly used, pungent disinfectant, which tinged the skin an intense orange–red colour; ‘Thermogène’ was a bandage imbued with warming, supposedly anti-rheumatic agents. 2. The travel company Thomas Cook and Son had branches throughout Europe, which provided accompaniment services for travellers in transit; they advertised in many of the glossy reviews of the early 1920s. 3. Most likely a very passing figure; no Mr Richeborough in Brett’s social and artistic circles has been traced. 4. ‘J.’ refers most probably to J. W. N. Sullivan, and ‘Mrs D.’ to Valentine Dobrée. 5. (Helen) Margery Eckhard (1883–1973) was married to KM’s cousin, the diplomat Sydney Waterlow; she was often known as ‘Dawks’ in Bloomsbury circles, where she was frequently criticised for her forthright nature, which Leonard Woolf, for instance, associated with the stereotype of an ‘immensely energetic, dominating Jewish matriarch’ (L. Woolf, p. 79). 6. As is so often the case when KM’s punctuation implies a quotation, this is a partly quoted, partly reinvented pastiche, capturing the linguistic idiosyncrasies of Mr Toots in Dickens’s 1848 novel Dombey and Son. Toots is one of the minor characters in the plot and a source of comic relief. An ageing but eternal student, Toots is in love with the protagonist Paul Dombey’s elder sister Florence; he becomes tongue-tied in her presence and can only babble ‘it’s of no consequence’ to cover his awkwardness.

[22 June 1922] [N] [Hôtel d’Angleterre, Montana-sur-Sierre, Switzerland] In the Forest Dearest All the same you will be met by one of us, so be sure to let us know the exact day.

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Im sitting writing to you in a glade under a pine tree. There are quantities of little squat yellow bushes of a kind of broom everywhere that give a sweet scent & are the humming homes of bees. M. & I have been here all day. Now he is climbing up to Montana to buy a large bottle of castor oil! Its sad to feel so completely a creature of air as one does in this forest and yet to find ones insides have ordered a general strike. Such is our awful condition. Its divinely lovely out here – and warm again – with just a light breeze swinging in the trees. A little blue sky with puffs of white cloud over the mountains. You know darling I must say I think that ‘set’ in London including Mrs D. and Co1 is simply detestable. They seem to be always on the lookout for unpleasantness. I shouldn’t feel savage personally (though I understand it is your nature so to do) I should simply retire with a door between us. They are pleased when you do lash out. They feel they have drawn blood – the horrid creatures. Mrs D sounds a perfect pig of the largest kind and Carrington ought to have pulled her nose. But its such a waste of time – waste of life – waste of energy. One might as well live in the bosom of a large family as among those people: there’s no difference that I can see. Im awfully keen to see your new paintings. Last evening as I sat on a stump watching the herds pass I felt you may take furiously to cows & paint nothing but cows on green lawns with long shadows like triangles from this shaped tree* and end with a very grave cow complex. I have one. Up till now I have always more than resisted the charm of cows but now its swep’ over me all of a heap, Miss. Insects, too, even though my legs are both bitten off at the knee by large and solemn flies. Do you mind turning brown, too? Or peeling? I had better warn you. These things are bound to happen. And I am hatefully unsociable. Don’t forget that. Its on the cards you may turn frightfully against me here and brain me with your Toby.2 You see every day I work till 12.30 and again from 4.30 until supper – every blessed day Sundays included. Can you bear that? In the mornings we may even meet as I go abroad & sit under the trees. But I shall regard you as invisible & you will haughtily cut me. In this way, when we are free we feel free & not guilty. We can play & look at beetles in peace. I must get the ancient sisters to simplify their ideas of picnics, though. Today they brought M. boiled beef & trimmings in a saucepan. Its awful to open such a vessel under the very Eye of ones Maker. I like eggs, butter, bread and milk at picnics. But M. disagrees. He regards such tastes as female flippancy. Oh my story wont go fast enough. Its got stuck. I must have it finished and done with in 10 days time. Never shall I commit myself again to a stated time. Its hellish. Your Port Said hat is all faded.3 What will you say? Its an absolute lamb of a hat for out of doors – perfect. That stuffy tea cosy I bought on my way back from the dentist will stay on the shelf until I get back to civilisation. But don’t be afraid. You shall have it back the day you

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come. If I sent you the dibs could you bring me a woolly jacket a kind of cardigan – the simple sort – as simple as possible with buttons down the front – you know – in hyacinth or blue bell or crocus or pastel blue? If you can’t do it – say the word. You will always say the word wont you darling? And if you think I am a callous creature to ask you – say that, too. Its so much more restful. I am thankful you are feeling better. This place will do you a great deal of good, I hope. One eats the air in slices with big bits of sun spread on them. I do hope Gertler is nice. I feel sorry for poor little Carrington and for Partridge, too. Take care of yourself. Be happy. With much much love, my little artist Ever your Tig. * Here KM has drawn a tiny, triangular-shaped fir tree. Notes 1. As the spring–summer letters to Brett indicate, Brett’s London life was often taken up by her former Slade associates, such as Valentine Dobrée, however much their paths were separating, thus causing increasing friction and distress. 2. Toby was the nickname by which Brett’s ear trumpet was affectionately known among her friends. Her (never medically explained) deafness obliged her to rely increasingly on both the traditional ‘Toby’ and a Marconi listening machine. 3. Brett would not appear to have travelled to Egypt; the reference is most likely to an Egyptian-style fez – hence KM’s playful association with the tea cosy.

[25 June 1922] [N] Hotel d’Angleterre Montana Village Sunday. My dearest Brett, I have put this address at the top but the other is just as good. Don’t pay any attention to it. Of course it doesn’t matter a straw about the 29th. I shall be so glad when you are here in the country even though the weather is imperfect – to be very polite to it. Its warm & then its chill. Not so much windy as draughty. But where is perfect weather? Palm Beach, California, they say. But if I arrived there’d be a snow storm. The Mountain arrived yesterday. The relief to have her is so great that Ill never never say another word of impatience. I don’t deserve such a wife. All is in order already. M. and I sigh & turn up our eyes. M. in fact

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to pay her a little compliment has wrenched the ligaments of his foot & can’t walk. He is tied to a chaise longue! Isn’t it awful bad luck! But what marvellously good luck that the Mountain was here & produced bandages and vinegar and all that was needful. The Ancient Sisters of course, hovered over him, too and made him cover his foot in a poultice of parsley last night. He went to bed looking like a young leg of lamb. I wish you had been here this afternoon. They brought us in branches of cherries, all dark & glistening among the long slender leaves. I should like to have given them to my little artist. Has Cooks told you the day & hour of your arrival? Be sure to let me know, won’t you! Perhaps a wire would be safest. For we have to order the cart in advance. Now as M. can only hop and I can’t fly it will be the Mountain who will meet you at Sierre. Lean hard on her! Shes an awfully good person for those occasions and so gentle and capable. The country is looking marvellous. They are just beginning to cut the hay. You will have your choice of about 30 bedrooms but I shall have one prepared next door to Ida, so you can knock on her wall if you want anything. There’s such good honey here – dark like dark amber. I have a camera (rhymes with amber) & I intend to take ravishing photographs of you under the trees and among the calves. We really must make a little book of photographs to remember ourselves by. Be careful of yourself on the journey. Its no good. Anxious about you I always shall be when you are en voyage. Thank God theres no sea & I must say Swiss railways are the nicest I know. I mean the porters are fearfully nice – a band of brothers. But I shan’t really be happy until I see you. Yours ever and ever with tender love Tig.

[7 August 1922] [N] Sierre Monday Dearest If you don’t hear from me until Wednesday week – don’t mind! I can only reply to your letter by silence, & by clasping your hand. The reason is that my plans are all in the air and I am horribly tired & I must somehow finish this story. So I must retire into my shell, & be silent until Wednesday week. Then I shall send you a budget – But wait for me till then! All is just the same in every way. I can only do this because I know and trust you and I believe you know & trust me. Im a fearfully imperfect friend, at present. But once I get out of my silly prison I will be nicer

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in every way – please God. In the meantime, tho’ I don’t write I think about you and am as ever Your Tig. Later. Your second letter has just come about Paris. But blow Paris for the moment. Don’t think, my dear little precious artist, that because I am dumb until Wednesday week that I am changed a jot. For I am NOT! I loved your letter. Fancy old Sullivan in his cap with Sylvia . . . They made such a funny drawing as you described them! I laughed as we laughed here together. Many many thanks for the hotel. Its too dear though. Its only for the Rich Bugs not for the Poor ones. But wait! I may have a small surprise for you on Wednesday week. What a bad man Murry is to put that tombstone in your parcel, and how just like him! Its surprising he did not ask you to take the oak chest back with you filled with books. He is having a very good time. The big lady sings something beautiful, Miss – Russian & French songs & they are very gay. Goodbye for now Tig.

[10 August 1922] [N] [Telegram] [Hôtel Château Belle Vue, Sierre, Switzerland] Can you have me Wednesday

[10 August 1922] [N] [Hôtel Château Belle Vue, Sierre, Switzerland] Dearest I wired you today. This is just to say how glad I shall be if you can put me up on Wednesday. I have been horribly ill since you left; I must see Sorapure with as little delay as possible. Please don’t tell anyone I am coming, not even Koteliansky. And could you possibly, if you have the time, find out by any means an address for Ida? Any boarding house or hotel in Belsize Park? Id be most fearfully grateful. Dont make preparations for me – will you? What would be perfect would be to feel you just let me in without giving me a moment’s thought. You know what I mean? Everything will be nice, darling. Theres only one thing. If you can put me into a bedroom rather than the sitting-room . . . No, I take that back. Thats nonsense. If you knew how those orange flowery

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curtains are waving in my mind at this moment! Will you really be at your door on Wednesday? Or is it a fairy tale? Ever your loving Tig.

[11 August 1922] [N] [Hôtel Château Belle Vue, Sierre, Switzerland] My dear darling Lamb, ? Miss a turn. ? ? How did your telegram arrive so soon? I sent mine at about 3 p.m. & yours was here at 7 p.m. This is a mystery. I can’t arrive before Thursday afternoon. No sleeper (Pay Id) before then. Your clouds like Feather Boas are perfeck! This – yours – is such a very nice letter that its a good thing we shall meet so soon. I feel inclined to come by the perambulator & have done with it. You are quite right about Richard. Its splendid to know you can do that for him. Keep him to his paying up regular. That is so right, too. Why do things need so many nails. Why cant one use safety pins? They are so much quicker & they are so Madly Secure. Once you have clasped yourself to a safety pin human flesh & blood cant separate you (Let us go & see Charlie Chaplin when I come. Shall we? On the Fillums, of course, I mean). This place is flaming with Gladioli, too. As for the dahlias they are rampant everywhere. The pears which we had for lunch, are iron pears, with little copper plums & a zinc greengage or two. Ida, smelling the luggage from afar, is in her element. She is hung with tickets already and almost whistles & shunts when she brings me my tisane. I am moving already myself the writing table is gliding by & I feel inclined to wave to people in the garden. If my Papa rings you up on Wednesday will you please say I am coming Thursday? Poor Ottoline.1 I feel almost like a cannibal, using this bag. I feel it was torn fresh from her side. God forbid you should make a pincushion of the pieces left over. Elizabeth came yesterday with one of the Ladies Fair. I must say she had ravishing deep deep grey eyes. She seemed, too, divinely happy. She is happy. She has a perfect love, a man.2 They have loved each other for eight years & it is still as radiant, as exquisite as ever. I must say it

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is nice to gaze at people who are in love. Murry has taken up golf. Ive always wondered when this would happen . . . Thats all for now, little artist. Thursday Tig. [On the back of the envelope:] Would you send the address where Tom Tiddler3 can be bought, on a card. The old American asks on bended knees. Notes 1. While there is no contextual information here to indicate what prompts KM’s sudden sympathy for Ottoline Morrell, less than four weeks before, the stonemason working on the estate, Lionel Gomme (nicknamed ‘Tiger’), with whom Ottoline had had a passionate and tender affair, had died suddenly of a brain haemorrhage. Few of her close friends, however, were aware of the intimacy of their relationship. See Seymour, pp. 324–6. 2. Von Arnim’s frequent male companion at this time, and for decades to come, was Alexander Frere-Reeves (1892–1984), often nicknamed L.D. (see above, p. 25). Still a student, having gone up to Cambridge late after army service in the war, he first contacted von Arnim to express his admiration for her writing, rather as his fellow student and ex-serviceman William Gerhardi contacted KM the following year. For an account of Frere-Reeves and von Arnim’s complex companionship, see Walker 2013, pp. 231–6, 291–305. 3. ‘Tom Tiddler’ is a traditional children’s game like ‘Hide and Seek’. However, Dickens had published an anthology of Christmas stories, called Tom Tiddler’s Ground after one story in the collection, in 1861, and Arthur Quiller-Couch had also published two novelettes in one volume in 1901, bearing the title The Westcotes and Tom Tiddler’s Ground.

[late August/early September 1922] [N] [6 Pond Street, Hampstead] Wicked Little B. I observe you have been to Heals.1 Who has bought glasses? Who came in with a Huge Great Parcil? But this is to say I found you had been a Faery in my room and made it all warm and put a book on the pillow. Thank you darling. I am in a fever to see your studio and to sit tight in my scribbling basket. Love Tig.

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Notes 1. Heal and Son was (and still is) a large furniture store on Tottenham Court Road in London. Their Mansard Gallery had become a reputed venue for contemporary art and crafts exhibitions, especially of European artists. As KM’s address book indicates, she was familiar with Prudence Maufe, the interior decorator and designer who ran the gallery (see CW4, p. 457).

[late August/early September 1922] [N] [6 Pond Street, Hampstead] Dearest little B. Will you please excuse me tonight? I feel tired, and not inclined for society. I’ll get my own tea, so don’t worry about me Tig.

[late August/early September 1922] [N] [6 Pond Street, Hampstead] Private Postie To The Little Queen B. You play that Beethoven simply exquisitely. Theres no other word for it. But dont let it tire you. Its marvellous. I shall never hear it without thinking of you. You are wrought into it for me. Do paint it one day!

[late August/early September 1922] [N] [6 Pond Street, Hampstead] Thank you darling. I had to tell you – chiefly to explain why I appeared to break my promise. But I did feel you’d understand nothing short of such a contretemps1 would keep me away. Those people don’t matter, really, two straws – It was odious. But it’s over. Don’t bear them a grudge. I really feel these things happen as horrid days happen – horrid winds or skies. Your children2 were simply a joy. I absolutely loved them and I keep on remembering how sweet they were & seeing them in my minds eye – [???], hiccups and all. I really do adore little children. You were so awfully nice with them, too! Tig.

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Notes 1. (Fr.): Last-minute obstacle. 2. Presumably referring to Brett’s nieces and nephews, whom she was sketching and painting regularly in these years.

[10 September 1922] [N] [6 Pond Street, Hampstead, London] Darling little B. Here’s your apricot cover. I have put an old ribbing in its place . . . It doesn’t look bad. Will you come to tea in my room tonight & have a long-and-cosy chat after? There seem to be masses of things to say – but I don’t want to say them in a rush. And if you are safely pinned into a chair I shall know you are resting. You are frightfully clever to have made those rooms. But you know that. You are also frightfully nice. Minnie is very sad still1 & she won’t let me have no marmalade things being as they are. She will do anything rather than go, however. Well, it will all settle itself. I don’t think its anything to worry about a pin. (Hullo: marmalade has just come.) Ever & ever Tig. Its a lovely day!! Notes 1. A diary entry for the previous day, ‘Gave Minnie notice’ (CW4, p. 425), implies Minnie had been employed as a servant.

[3 October 1922] [N] Select Hotel Place de la Sorbonne Paris. 3 X 1922 Dearest I can see your eyes laughing at the name of my hotel. What a name! One can only breathe it. Never mind. If you knew how glad I am to

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be in it after our chase round Paris last night. But thats not the beginning of my letter. The beginning is you at the station and my not being able to talk to you from the carriage. I hate seeings off at stations. And the fact you’d had to run up & down all those fiendish stairs was in the back of my mind all the time . . . Did you go back and rest. How can I say take care of yourself & feel that you do it? Id like to think of you curled up in the Colossus with a li’l black boy handing you paint brushes and cream. Oh – Brett! I have not really left your little house – Its there, just round the corner. And I feel your French blood will whiff you to France at any moment. But first do your series of Portraits & Ill finish my book – Then we can take a small holiday. You know how dear you are to me. I remember every single thing. And the Beethoven means the same to me, too. ________________________________________________________ We had a divine crossing.1 Very still silvery sea with gulls moving on the waves like the lights in a pearl. It was fiery hot in Calais – whoof! It was blazing. And there were old women with pears to sell wherever you looked or didn’t look. Voici mes jolies poires!2 Yellowy green with leaves among them. Old hands holding up the satiny baskets. So beautiful. English ladies buying them and trying to eat them through their veils. So awful. The way to Paris was lovely too. All the country just brushed over with light gold – and white oxen ploughing and a man riding a horse into a big dark pond. Paris too, very warm and shadowy with wide spaces and lamps a kind of glowworm red – not yellow at all. Then began the chase. It ended in a perfectly FEARFUL room that looked like the scene of a long line of murders. The water in the pipes sobbed and gurgled and sighed all night & in the morning it sounded as though people broke open the shutters with hatchets. Then I remembered this hotel where I stayed during the bombardment. Still here. Still the same. I have a funny room on the 6th floor that looks over the roofs of the Sorbonne. Large grave gentlemen in marble bath gowns are dotted on the roof. Some hold up a finger; some are only wise. A coy rather silly looking eagle is just opposite perched on a plaque called Geologie. I like this view fearfully. Every hour a small rather subdued regretful little bell chimes. This is not at all a chic large hotel like the Victoria Palace. Its quiet. One goes out for food which is much the best arrangement. Its very cheap, too. Gone are my sumptuous days of suites and salles de bain.3 I always hated them & now I don’t need them, thank God. I rang up Manoukhin just now. He, Madame & the Secretary all talked on the phone at once. Russian, French and English. I felt I had known them all my life and the idea of meeting tomorrow is such a joy. What dear people! I shall not write to the Carpet4 until tomorrow.

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I wish you could walk into my funny little room for tea. You will at Christmas, perhaps – – – Make Mrs S. take care of you. Tell me how your household affairs go. See that she gives you good food, for she can cook really well if she is made to. Its perfect weather, so far – still and warm. Everywhere there are grapes to sell, small purple ones and yellow ones, with apples as red as wine. I think for some reason Paris is nearer ones spiritual home than London. Why? But it feels nearer. Goodbye dearest. I am thinking of you. Tell me all you can. It was happiness – really happiness when one looks back. We did have moments. We shall have more of them. Ever your loving Tig. Notes 1. Accompanied by Ida Baker, KM had left Newhaven for Dieppe, heading to Paris, on 2 October; it was to be the last time she made the journey. 2. (Fr.): Here are my fine pears. 3. (Fr.): Bathrooms. 4. KM refers here to Gurdjieff (see above, p. 176, n. 3), the nickname referring to tales of Gurdjieff’s life in Russia (often repeated by Ouspensky and Orage) when, for example, he would arrive in a city with a bale of oriental carpets and announce their sale in the local newspapers, so as to draw crowds that he would then address on questions of philosophy and theosophy. He also claimed on more than one occasion to be a carpet-seller when avoiding the question of his preaching as a guru. See Woods, pp. 237–47.

[9 October 1922] [N] Select Hotel Dearest I wish you would see what it is that gives you headaches. An aspirin bottle is not any real good. Why don’t you go to Sorapure? It makes such a terrible difference to feel well if you have to fight a winter climate. I am sure Sorapure could help me1 – Perhaps the reason is however, you have been ‘listening’ so much more lately & its been a new strain to get used to. That may be an explanation. I hope Mrs S. carries up your meals when you don’t feel like going down. Don’t forget beaten eggs in milk if you don’t want solids. I am so glad you are going to start on Milne immediately. I feel you will have a whole gallery of les jeunes2 ready by the Spring for a Show of Portraits. Its yourself you ought to paint in a turban; a creamy pinky silvery one can’t you see it?

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Dont be cross with me if I am dull just now. My cough is so much worse that I am a cough – a living walking or lying-down cough. Why I am allowed to stay in this hotel I can’t imagine. But there it is. I must have terribly kind neighbours. As soon as it gets better I shall present a bouquet to the left door and to the right. ‘From a grateful Patient.’ Its only the X rays doing their worst before they do their better. But its a nuisance. Such a queer effect on the boulevards here: the trees are out for a second spring – frail small leaves – like you see in April. Lyrics in middle age – love song by old chestnuts over 50. All the same ones heart aches to see them. There is something tragic in spring. If you knew how vivid the little house is – but vivid beyond words. Not only for itself. It exists apart from all – it is a whole in life. I think of you . . . One has such terribly soft tender feelings – But to work – to work. One must take just those feelings and work with them. Life is a mystery – we can never get over that – Is it a series of deaths and series of killings? It is that too. But who shall say where death ends and resurrection begins – Thats what one must do. Give it the idea of resurrection the power that death would like to have. Be born again and born again faster than we die . . . . Tell me, my dove, why do you ‘warn’ me. What musn’t I be ‘too sure’ of? You mystify me. Do you think I am too sure of Love? But if Love is there one must treat it as though one were sure of it – How else? If its not there Id rather be sure of that, too. Or do you mean something else? It has turned as cold as ice – and colder. The sun shines but it is soleil glacé.3 Its due north and due east all mixed up in the same frozen bag. If it wasn’t for the blue up above one would cry. Dont let our next meeting be in Paris. Its no fun meeting in hotels & sitting on beds & eating in nasty old restaurants. Lets wait a little longer & meet in the south in a warm, still place where I can put a cricket at your third ear so you can hear its song. Ever, my dearest dear Your loving Tig. Notes 1. Although KM clearly writes ‘help me’, the context makes it clear that her intended meaning was ‘could help’ or ‘could help you’. 2. (Fr.): The young. Whether the label Ford Madox Ford had given the rising generation of young avant-garde artists in a 1914 article, ‘Les Jeunes and “Des Imagistes”’ had stuck, or whether KM’s usage is merely her characteristic language shifting is unclear here. See Ford, p. 683. 3. (Fr.): Ice-cold sun.

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[15 October 1922] [N] [Select Hôtel, place de la Sorbonne, Paris] My dearest little Queen B. I never had a lovelier letter from you. And it came on my birthday – wasn’t that good fortune. Wasn’t that like you – the billiard champion? I did love you for it! You have a real very rare gift for writing letters. And Oh how nice and long they are. Arrows, little side borders, little flower beds very tight packed with words along the edge – I follow them all and even dip into the Egyptian Maze though never to find my way in it! Ah, my dear. Priceless exquisite treasures came floating out of your letter. I have gathered them all up. But that reminds me of the canary feathers. I am having a pair of wings made of them for delicate occasions. Did you ever feel anything so airy-fairy? I sat in the Luxembourg Gardens today and thought of you. I am glad you were not with me for I felt like a chat malade,1 sitting in the sun, and not a friend of anybody’s. But all was so ravishingly fall-ofthe-year lovely that I feel how you would have responded. The gardener was sweeping leaves from the bright grass. The flowers are still glorious, but still, as though suspended, as though hardly daring to breathe. Down, down, soft and light floated the leaves. They fall over babies and old people and the laughing young. The fat pigeons-out-ofthe-Ark are no longer quite so fat. But they swing between the trees just as they did, swooping and tumbling as if trying to scare one. Heavens! What a lovely earth it is! I am glad you are going to Scotland.2 I feel it may do you good to have a change. And it’s nice to think of you fishing. Forgive me if I feel the fish show off just a tiny little bit when you come near, flash about, blow bubbles, swim on their heads. But thats only my wickedness. For I feel you are very expert and grave really, and I should stand on the bank – awed! You see I’ve only fished with things like cottage loaves and a bent pin and a worm. Tell me about Scotland. I do so hope it’s going to be nice. I wonder if you will take your velour hat. It suits you marvellously. When I am rich you shall have velour hats by the dozing, and a persian lamb jacket made like your jazz velvet coat, lined with pale yellow brocade. A pinky pigeon grey very soft pleated skirt to go with it, crocodile shoes, thick grey silk stockings. And inside the coat a straight tunic of silver jersey de soie.3 I confess I am quite ravished away by you in the persian lamb coat. I have just been with you to a concert – you wearing it. Everybody turned round; the orchestra stopped; the flute fainted and was carried out. A dark gentleman stepped forward and presented you with the Order of the Sun and Moon; it was the Shah of Persia. But I must stop. Though I could go on for ever.

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It’s Sunday evening. 6.30. I am lying in bed writing to you. Just as before I get up at midi4 and have to go to bed at about half past five. But I feel far more ill this time than last time. I don’t know what is the matter. I am sick all the time – and cold. But as I’ve never imagined cold before – an entirely new kind. One feels like wet stone. Piping hot water bottles, covers, grandma jaegers, nothing will stop it. Then it goes and one burns instead. And all this in a little bandbox of a room. Never mind. It will pass. Tomorrow I am going to see Gurdjieff. I feel certain he will help me. I feel equally certain that this particular horrid hour is passing, and I’ll come out of it – please Heaven – a much nicer creature. Not a snail, love. Not a creeping worm, either. I shall come and make the whole of your garden before you can say ‘Painting-brush’ – you just wait! I saw Ottoline in the green couch, telling you of the medium. What a picture it made . . J.M. told me you’d had a Beethoven orgy. Does he seem well? And your cold? Is it gone – I do hope Mrs Saunders is being satisfactory still. My dear little rooms. I shall be in them in the spring, if I manage to escape & I really think I shall. I have seen very few people since I came – only men connected with the Institute – a very nice Doctor Young5 and a quite remarkable other man – rather like the chief mate on a cargo steamer. A type I like. Work I cant at all for the present. Even reading is very difficult. The weather is marvellous. Where it is not blue, it is gold. Oh, I must tell you. We took a taxi out to lunch today (theres no food here except supper trays) and who should be at the restaurant but (of course you guess) Mrs Dobrée. Très très très chic with such an extra passionate Sunday Paris mouth – and so terrifically at home! I must say I liked her for it. It was so young. She sat behind us. As we got out she saw me & I gave her a wretched cool nod. Not on purpose. But at that moment I was overcome with this confounded sickness & hardly knew what I was doing. But I hope she won’t think me very horrid for it. I don’t like doing such things. I am glad you wrote about Ida. I understand perfectly. And I feel that any kind of confusion we may have felt about it is over for ever. It’s only while Ida is my legs that she is so present. It’s a false position, you see. I pretend I am doing things for myself and so on. In reality I am using Ida. And that makes her wrong (for she doesn’t know where she ‘is’) and in fact it is so wrong all round that its a marvel to me we have come through. When we meet again (when I am better) you will see the difference, darling. And I want to say I trust you absolutely. I shall love you and trust you more and more. For these things always increase as one spends them; a divine kind of money. But I am still not sincere with you. In my heart I am far more desperate about my illness and about Life than I ever show you. I long to

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lead a different life in every way. I have no belief whatever in any kind of medical treatment. Perhaps I am telling you this to beg you to have faith in me – to believe that whatever I do it is because I cant do otherwise. That is to say (let me say it bang out) I may go into the Institute for 3 months. I dont know that I shall. But if I have more faith in it than in Manoukhin I certainly must. Keep this private, darling. I know you will. But don’t speak to anybody about it. Manoukhin isn’t a magician. He has cured some people – a great many – and some he hasn’t cured. He made me fatter – that is quite true. But otherwise? I’m exactly where I was before I started. I ‘act’ all the rest, because I am ashamed to do otherwise, looking as I do. But it’s all a sham. It amounts to nothing. However – this is just speculation. But as I am thinking it I felt I ought to write it to you. See? It is not a serious proposition. Don’t let us meet until I am a bit better. I realise the importance of nearness, too. But we shall have it in the future and so far differently. Tell me about your work. Goodbye for now – dearest precious little artist Ever your Tig. Notes 1. (Fr.): Sick cat. 2. The Brett family had a summer residence, which was increasingly becoming their main home, in Callander, near Stirling, in Scotland. See above, p. 356, n. 1. 3. (Fr.): Silk jersey. 4. (Fr.): Midday. 5. Dr James Carruthers Young was a former surgeon and psychiatrist, then working at the Prieuré in Fontainebleau. He called the very next day to say a room was available for KM. In September 1927, Young published an article in the New Adelphi cryptically assessing the year he spent at the Institute. See Young, p. 80.

[28 October 1922] [N] La Prieuré – Fontainebleau-Avon Seine et Marne. Dearest Brett I am so glad to get your letter saying you would quite understand if I were to join the Institute – I have joined it for a time. I thought of writing about it. But its useless. Its too much to explain in any letter and

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I have so little time to write – So will you think of me as ‘en voyage’?1 Thats much the best idea and its the truest, too. Ever K.M. You see I am taking you absolutely at your word. Notes 1. (Fr.): Travelling.

[15 December 1922] [N] [Le Prieuré, Fontainebleau-Avon] Dearest Brett Of course I listen; of course I am glad to hear. And do not think I don’t appreciate the fact that you have gone on writing. I do – fully. I wish I could write back – But for the moment there simply seems nothing to say, and I know so little of what is happening. Your visit to Selsfield1 for instance you speak of as though I know about it. But I don’t. And the Sullivan affair – scarcely at all. Its bound of course to come to a foolish end. Poor LE!2 Thats where sentimentalism leads a man. She, of course will always look for the softer bed and the softer man and always hark back to Sullivan. She is an unpleasant little creature at this stage of her development. Why see her otherwise? I am glad you are working. I don’t at this moment feel near painting, though I had a long talk about it the other evening with a man who once had a collection of Gaugin3 in Moscow. But his point was what is the use of painting unless one knows the laws of art. How can it have any compelling, real value if it is just dans le vague.4 You have to know not only the effect this painting has on you, but the principle underlying that effect. And so with music and so with literature. We play with the arts and produce something good by accident . . . We have a great deal of music here, but its eastern not western. Quite another world. The dances too are often ancient Assyrian dances, or Arabian or Dervish Dances.5 I feel as though I have lived years in the East. There are between 50 and 60 of us here all occupied in different ways. One lives in the centre of such a various active world – no, not in the centre – one is part of it. It is very different from my life of the last few years. I cannot today write of your last but one letter, dearest Brett. I rejoice for you. Goodbye for now. Ever your loving Tig.

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The tea is marvellously good. How did you know I was longing for some good tea of my own? It was one of your happiest flukes. Notes 1. Selsfield in West Sussex was the home of the publisher Vivian Locke Ellis, whose farm and estate cottages had provided work and homes for a number of their friends, including JMM (who was living there at the time), Edward Thomas, Sullivan and Dunning. 2. LE: Locke Ellis. See note 1. 3. The French post-Impressionist painter Paul Gauguin (1848–1903), as well as being heralded for his bold synthetic approach to colour and form, was remembered for his will to escape the artifices and conventions of Western civilisation and reconnect with the aesthetics and mindsets of so-called primitive eras, a quest that took him to French Polynesia and the South Seas, where he would eventually settle. Such a withdrawal from the struggles of contemporary times and lives would inevitably have found approval amongst the ascetic-minded community in Fontainebleau. 4. (Fr.): Somewhat vague. 5. The Dervish dances were practised as part of Persian, Sufi Muslim ascetic rituals, and were believed to have restorative, healing powers. The dancers’ focus on outward-orientated communal practice, thereby aiming to escape the false power of the ego, is very much part of the theosophical teaching that Gurdjieff favoured.

[31 December 1922] [N] [Le Prieuré, Fontainebleau-Avon] Dearest Brett What haven’t I to thank you for! A letter, 2 photographs and the perfectly charming little Beaver Puff. They were all my Christmas presents from England (except for a drawing from J.M.M.) I am so glad to have the photographs. Have you sold the little landscape yet? Looking at it I went back to Sierre for a moment & sat in the carriage at the hotel door about to drive away down the sunny streets and out into the vineyards. It seems years and years ago, though. The Beaver Puff is a great lamb and it feels incredibly soft – delicious. Now for your letter. We are talking at cross purposes about Laws. Dear old Cezanne didn’t discover those shapes!1 They have meant what he said they meant for thousands & thousands of years. Also one cant start laws like hares nor can one light on them in 5 weeks. I mean something utterly different – far more difficult and profound. Laws are handed down to those who have knowledge. For all I know the laws of

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painting may have to do with the planetary movements; I don’t know. But they are quite different to ‘inward spiritual beauty’. However the subject is dreadfully unprofitable, and I shouldn’t have started it. I wanted merely to hint at something, to suggest something – – no more. I am too ignorant to talk. Thank you for the two little heads of J.M.M., even though I don’t like them. I think they are too soft, too rounded. He hasn’t that full eye, that docile modelling of the lips and jaw. Did you see Rothensteins drawing of him.2 There was to my mind something very good in it. Real psychological penetration, immensely interesting. That is J.M.M. as I know him. I could not bear your J.M.M. Hes all dove and lamb – no serpent, no lion. Theres no material in him and J.M.M. has masses of material. I have asked him to come over here for a week. If he does would you buy me a pair of shoes at Lewis? in Oxford Street – ‘good old John Lewis’. I have drawn a line round the sole of one shoe to show you the size. It is made ½ of velvet ½ of cheap brocade with a long toe. I think they call it a ‘jester’ shape. They have only the one kind. And is it possible to buy in London an indoor jacket – little coat – for the evening that is both gay and warm? Something rather sumptuous looking with a snip of cheap fur on it. Its to wear at a feast where everybody else will be in evening dress & for a skirt I shall wear that purple silk of mine with the tiny wreaths of roses on it – the 10 year old one. But only you could choose me such a jacket or know where they are to be found. Do get me one if you can will you, Brettushka? & give it to J.M.M. to bring. I would like it rather on the large size. I look so ugly in tight things. Ill send you a cheque by return for both. The box that you threaten to send after the New Year is dreadfully intriguing. I shall have to send a box back by Murry. This letter is as usual written in a tearing hurry. I am supposed to be at the new theatre that we are building. I must go. This morning I made breadcrumbs for 60 people – mountains of them – A Happy New Year, dearest! I believe it will be one for you. Ever your loving Tig [Written on an enclosed piece of cut out paper:] Eight foot 643847 Velvet & figured brocade Loving Tig Notes 1. The vivid contemporary interest in the post-Impressionist artist Paul Cézanne (1839–1906) put particular emphasis on his interest in significant form, which often entailed disregarding the laws of scientific perspective

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and proportion, thereby foregrounding shape and line rather than harmonious representation. 2. The painter, printer and writer William Rothenstein (1872–1945) was, at this time, not only a highly respected artist and portraitist, and the principal of the Royal College of Art, but also a renowned art historian. He was a close friend of Gertler, Wyndham Lewis and William Orpen.

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Laura Bright (1862–1941) (m. Beauchamp)

Introduction Laura Kate Bright (‘Bee’), KM’s godmother, was a close family friend of the Beauchamps, particularly of KM’s mother, Annie Beauchamp. Her husband Louis had committed suicide in late 1917, and in a letter to her mother of 20 January 1918, after hearing the news, KM had written, ‘Poor little Godmother. Would you convey to her my loving remembrances and most sincere sympathy.’ On the same day, she wrote to JMM, saying ‘“Bees” husband has hanged himself in an outhouse.’ Following the death of her husband, Bright moved next door to the Beauchamps’ home in Wadestown, Wellington. After Annie’s death, on 8 August 1918, Harold Beauchamp would eventually marry Bright in January 1920. The letter below is an unacknowledged extract taken from a letter that KM sent to Bright in 1914, and which Bright sent for publication to the Wellington Evening Post. Gerri Kimber

[21 September 1914] [Wellington Evening Post]1 Writing from London to a Wellington resident under date 21st September, a correspondent says:– ‘Here, in London, we are in the throes of this frightful war. There are camps of soldiers in the parks and squares; in the streets there is always the sound and the sight of soldiers marching by. The big white trains, painted with the red cross, swing into the railway stations carrying their sad burdens, and often at the same time other trains leave crowded with boys in khaki, cheering and singing on their way to the front. At night London, usually so bright with lamps and electric signs, is darkened, and huge searchlights sweep the sky, and the hundreds of London newspaper boys run up and down the streets like little black crows shouting: “War! Latest news of the War! War!!” Although in many ways these are dark and depressing days,

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still they are brightened by the display of real and splendid courage on the part of all the people. The fact that England is fighting for something beyond mere worldly gain and power seems to have a real moral effect upon the people, and they are become more brave and more generous than one could have believed in days of peace. Last week I saw some of the poor Belgian refugees arriving in London, one, an old lady of 93, who had walked miles to escape the soldiers. Her house had been burned down and all her possessions were gone, but she stepped out of the train in a black dress and white muslin cap, calm, her hands folded as though she were walking into a friend’s house. The little children were heartbreaking; they stared about them as if they were dreaming. One little girl had brought her kitten all the long journey with her; and a small boy, whose parents had both been shot, carried an old shawl knotted into a doll. People seem to think that this war cannot be over for two or three years, but perhaps that is pessimistic reckoning. It is hard to believe that men can go on killing for so long in these days.’ Notes 1. Wellington Evening Post, LXXXVIII: 111, 6 November 1914, p. 6, ‘Local and General’.

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Beatrice Elvery Campbell (1883–1970) (m. Lady Glenavy)

Introduction Among the warm, tender and exquisitely detailed character sketches of KM that her friends and companions wrote after her death, few are more sparkling and colourful than those written by Beatrice Campbell (the wife of Gordon Campbell) in her misleadingly entitled memoirs, Today We Will Only Gossip, published in 1964. The title was a catchphrase of one of the Campbells’ and Murrys’ numerous mutual friends, S. S. Koteliansky, when he would arrive at the Campbells’ home for tea, to enjoy hours of fireside chatter. This warmly intimate, yet artfully mischievous note is what characterises Beatrice Campbell’s memoirs, as it does many of her superb but often very largely forgotten artworks. Born Beatrice Moss Elvery in Dublin in 1883, Campbell grew up between Dublin and Carrickmines in a richly musical and artistic AngloIrish family of ‘Free-Thinkers’ (with Quaker attachments on her mother’s side and Catholic Spanish origins on her father’s side). She was acknowledged as one of the most talented young artists of her generation when she entered the Dublin Metropolitan School of Art, and went on to win first-class medals and scholarships for painting and sculpture throughout her years of study. One of her tutors was William Orpen, who warmly acknowledged both the exceptional talents and the warm, natural beauty of his star pupil; his 1909 portrait of her captures much of her vivacious, edgy yet Pre-Raphaelite air at the time.1 Not just the art school but the whole city of Dublin in the early years of the twentieth century were exhilarating places to be growing up – they brought Campbell into contact with the artists and cultural politics of the Abbey Theatre (where she met both Yeats and Lady Gregory), and also focused her attention on the far graver underpinnings of contemporary Irish politics than her warmly welcoming but privileged, Protestant family life had led her to believe. She became a fervent defender of Irish Home Rule and independence, convictions that she expressed in her writings and her art; her 1907 prize-winning oil painting Éire is, to this day,

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acknowledged as a landmark contribution to the imaginative representation of an independent Ireland. She also became involved in suffragette militancy but somewhat more half-heartedly – she admits in her memoirs that she found Restoration Comedy and Greek drama more exciting. Her commitment to feminism, however, was life-long, and shines through in her poised, vibrant and often boldly challenging representations of women – perhaps the most striking examples being the Virgin Ironing, a 1910 pen and ink drawing, and her rendering of women’s lives in stained glass designs.2 In many ways the artistic counterpart of KM in the domain of the visual arts, Campbell’s painting style is often hard to define. It draws avidly on late nineteenth-century and especially Pre-Raphaelite idioms, but blends these more retrospective styles with astute wit and humour, a dreamy, often surrealist note, eerie fantasy and tongue-in-cheek pastiche. She also proved as skilled at stage-set and furniture design as she did in porcelain and stained glass, with a striking sense of the value of miniature forms, domestic interiors, everyday objects in close-up, and off-beat juxtapositions. A sense of the idiomatic and emotional beauty of children living in their own imaginative worlds is another of the creative insights she shared with KM, especially when we recall the plans that KM made at various times in her life to work in collaboration with an artist on illustrated storybooks for children. Campbell did indeed illustrate a number of works for children and was largely acknowledged as a fine, sensitive artist in this domain too. She remained energetically engaged in the artistic world throughout her life, with commissions coming from private collectors, publishers and architects; her most inspired and productive years are commonly held to be the early 1930s until the early 1960s. From their first meeting in 1912, when the Campbells and the Murrys were close neighbours in Hampstead and socialised extensively amid extended circles of often mutual friends (among whom figured Brett, Gertler, D. H. Lawrence, Koteliansky and Ottoline Morrell, to name but the best known), to the later months of 1922 when they lost contact, Campbell and KM remained firm, mutually supportive and respected friends. Given the whole decade of friendship, the surviving letters are something of a disappointment; Campbell admits that, following KM’s request, she did indeed burn many of their letters, as she did those received from Koteliansky. Fortunately, both Today We Will Only Gossip and the few letters we do have here survive as vibrant testimonies of that friendship. It is doubtless to Campbell’s artistic sense of quizzical detail and visual setting that we owe the memorable portraits of KM that she ‘drew in words’ in her memoirs. Take her first encounter with KM, for instance, in 1912: When we arrived, Katherine was sitting on a laundry basket at the top of the stairs, carrying on a gay conversation with a laundry-man in a high-pitched voice. She and Murry wore fisherman’s navy blue jerseys and her hair was bobbed with a fringe across the forehead. Gordon had met Katherine at the

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house of the novelist W. L. George, who was a great admirer of hers. That night, when he walked back to her flat with her, he had been impressed by her talk, the way ‘she would stop every few yards and go into a poetic rhapsody about the beauty of the city’; he liked the happy unself-conscious way in which she engaged every night-watchman they passed in conversation.3

The memoirs capture the complexity of KM’s emotional and creative life; KM’s letters to Campbell, however, show us a different side of her temperament. Firstly, it is fascinating to see her astute empathy and perceptive understanding in the context of the troubles in Ireland, and how much Campbell must be torn between the complex, often contradictory tug of a homeland and family, and a yearning to be elsewhere. Secondly, the reader of the surviving letters will be struck by the intermedial idiom they share: KM’s letters to Campbell conjure up richly visual and acoustic settings in a few words, blending fleeting voices, quivering emotions and rich colours into a tapestry of daily life – in the strongest sense of the term. A sense of a ‘woven picture’ is perhaps the striking effect, foregrounding craft, colour, the weave of textures and artistically observed detail rather than any straightforward, mimetic rendering of the real world. Campbell’s return letters to KM may not have survived, but both the characteristic idiom of the letters here – which clearly reflect the tone, in part set by an earlier exchange – and the potted sketches of life in the memoirs offer a delightful idea of their mutually enriching, finely attuned friendship. Campbell’s unfinished painting, Katherine Mansfield and S. S. Koteliansky in the Garden (1920), in the Museum of New Zealand, Te Papa Tongarewa, was rediscovered by Gerri Kimber in 2009. Claire Davison Notes 1. See Nicola Gordon Bowe’s richly illustrated and informative article, ‘The Art of Beatrice Elvery, Lady Glenavy (1883–1970)’, pp. 169–75. 2. Ibid., p. 170. 3. Glenavy, pp. 55–6.

[4 May 1916] [ATL] [Higher Tregerthen, Zennor] Thursday – My dear Bici I have been wanting to write to you but felt that Ireland wouldn’t permit1 – Now that Ive heard from you and seen Mary Clarke2 (whom I quite understand) I feel free to ask you for that prescription for poor

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Murrys remaining hair. For though he is about to be taken he must rub something into his roots while he is on sentry go – Send it when you find it . . I can imagine what you and G. must have felt. This morning there is news that 3 leaders are shot & its horrible reading. It difficult to get any coherent account of anything down here but Garvin in the Observer last Sunday very nearly brought one off.3 There is no accounting for Ireland – – The fact that while one street was under hot fire & people falling in all directions the milkmen with their rattling little vans went on delivering milk seemed as Lawrence would say ‘pretty nearly an absolute symbol’.4 Tell me more about Mary Clarke and hers when you know. If I had a box I’d send you flowers but Ive nothing but a Vinolia Soap box & the violets would arrive in a lather.5 As soon as I have a box you shall have some. This country is very lovely just now with every kind of little growing thing – and the gorse among the grey rocks is as Mrs Percy H6 would agree ‘very satisfactory’. There are a great many adders here too – How does one cure oneself of their bite. You either bathe the afflicted part with a saucer of milk or you give the saucer of milk to the adder – There is a creek close by our house that rushes down a narrow valley and then falls down a steep cliff into the sea – The banks are covered with primroses & violets and bluebells – I paddle in it & feel like a faint far off reflection of the George Meredith Penny Whistle Overture7 – but awfully faint – Murry spends all his time hunting for his horn rimmed spectacles for whenever he leaps over a stile or upon a mossy stone they fly from him – incredible distances & undergo a strange and secret change into caterpillars dragon flies or bracken uncurling. Today I cant see a yard – Thick mist and rain and a tearing wind with it. Everything is faintly damp. The floor of the tower is studded with Cornish pitchers catching the drops. Except for my little maid (whose ankles I can hear stumping about the kitchen) Im alone – for Murry & Lawrence have plunged off to St Ives with ruck sacks on their backs & Frieda is in her cottage looking at the childrens photographs, I suppose. Its very quiet in the house except for the wind and the rain & the fire that roars very hoarse and fierce. I feel as though I and the Cornish Pasty8 had drifted out to sea – and would never be seen again. But I love such days – rare, lonely days. I love above all things, my dear, to be alone. Then I lie down and smoke and look at the fire and begin to think out an EXTRAORDINARILY good story about Marseilles – Ive reread my novel today, too and now I cant believe I wrote it – I hope that G. reads it one of these days . . . I want to talk about the Ls, but if I do don’t tell Kot and Gertler for then it will get back to Lawrence & I will be literally murdered – He has changed very much – Hes quite ‘lost’ – He has become very fond of sewing, especially hemming; and of making little copies of pictures – When he is doing these things he is quiet and gentle and kind, but once you start talking I cannot describe the frenzy that comes over him.

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He simply raves, roars, beats the table, abuses everybody – But thats not such great matter. What makes these attacks insupportable is the feeling one has at the back of ones mind that he is completely out of control. Swallowed up in an acute insane irritation. After one of these attacks he’s ill with fever, haggard and broken. It is impossible to be anything to him but a kind of playful acquaintance – Frieda is more or less used to this. She has a passion for washing clothes – & stands with big bowls of blue and white water round her wringing out check tablecloths – & looking very much at home indeed – She says this place suits her. I am sure it does. They are both too rough for me to enjoy playing with. I hate games where people lose their tempers in this way – Its so witless. In fact they are not my kind at all. I cannot discuss blood affinity to beasts for instance if I have to keep ducking to avoid the flat irons and the saucepans. And I shall never see sex in trees, sex in the running brooks, sex in stones & sex in everything. The number of things that are really phallic from fountain pen fillers onwards! But I shall have my revenge one of these days – I suggested to Lawrence that he should call his cottage the Phallus & Frieda thought it was a very good idea . . . . . Its lunchtime already & here is the Pasty looming through the mist with a glimmering egg on a tray. Have you read so far? Give G. my dear love and keep it for yourself. Notes 1. Beatrice Campbell was still in London, but left for Dublin a few weeks later to get a better idea of the scale and extent of violence in the wake of the Easter Rising (see Glenavy, pp. 87–92, in which she quotes a large extract of this letter from KM and gives an elliptical retrospective account of the troubled country). In the years prior to 1922, Ireland – still officially part of the United Kingdom – teetered on the verge of civil war. Just two weeks before KM wrote this letter, the six-day-long Easter Rising had enabled the first Irish Republic to be proclaimed, only to be severely repressed within a week, at which point the British government imposed a state of martial law. The Campbells were committed to the cause of an independent Irish state, and could well have feared surveillance and censorship, given the tense domestic and international climate. 2. KM’s mention of Mary Clarke here is perplexing, given that, in her memoirs, Campbell evokes a little girl she had known as a child, Mary Clark, daughter of the clergyman in Carrickmines, close to where she grew up. She then adds: Years and years later Katherine Mansfield wrote to me, ‘Tell me more about Mary Clark’. There really was nothing to tell about Mary and I cannot remember ever having mentioned her name to Katherine; but I must have done so, and remembered the name and made it a sort of symbol for talks about our childhood. (Glenavy, p. 45) 3. Government reprisals in the wake of the Easter Rising were indeed ruthless, including the immediate execution of the leaders. James Louis Garvin was a

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pioneering, engaged and much-respected journalist who had been appointed editor of the Observer, a Sunday weekly, in 1908. Garvin’s editorial, which KM refers to, was published on 30 April 1916, and is a one-and-a-half-pagelong synopsis of the fast-evolving situation in Ireland, the shifts in political balance and new outlooks. Under the general header ‘Ireland’s Ordeal: The Sinn Fein Rebellion – German Plots and Irish Dupes – How the Rising Came – The Fight for Dublin –A Mask of Anarchy –Sir E. Carson and Mr Redmond – Hope and Tragedy’, the article sets out in thirteen separate sections a detailed overview of what it endeavours to present as an enlightened, clear-sighted opinion, insisting, above all, on the responsibility of the ‘inert and shameful feebleness of the Irish Administration, looking on helplessly while the witches’ caudron began to bubble’ (p. 9). In the years 1913–16, Lawrence was grappling, in his fictional and nonfictional writings, to express his intuitive belief in ‘absolute’ and ‘relative’ symbols, and the role they played in man’s ongoing struggle to achieve full consciousness. His contemporary essays, ‘The Crown’ and ‘Art and the Individual’, reflect these ongoing conceptual debates well. Vinolia soap products were among the leading brands of luxury toiletries at the time – as attested by 1912 adverts announcing that first-class passengers aboard the Titanic were given complimentary Vinolia Otto Toilet Soap to ensure comfort at sea. JMM’s hand-written annotation on the manuscript indicates that the reference is to ‘Mrs Percy Hutchinson’, the actress Lilias Earle, wife of fellow actor and London theatre impresario Percy Hutchinson, a portrait of whom is now in the National Portrait Gallery in London. The title of Chapter 19 in George Meredith’s first fully-fledged ‘Victorian’ novel, The Ordeal of Richard Feverel (1859), is ‘A Diversion Played on a Penny-Whistle’. KM’s allusion, read in the context of her correspondence with Beatrice Campbell and the background civil violence in Ireland, suggests far more than a mere literary device to evoke the idyllic environment. Meredith’s novel tackles generational misunderstanding and violence, and the failure of the conventional education systems to comprehend and account for deep-seated emotion. Chapter 19 functions as something of a deliberate purple passage, foregrounding the primeval strength of the passions but also gently mocking a nostalgic belief in pastoral innocence. The chapter opens with a rhetorical appeal for a Romantic flight into pre-lapsarian spontaneity (‘Away with Systems! Away with a corrupt world! Let us breathe the air of the Enchanted Island’) while the shepherd boy pipes his delightful tunes. It ends on an acerbic note, recalling that the Island’s respite – be it the fictional Golden Isle of the novel, or (read in the contemporary world of 1916) Lawrence’s belief in a new beginning in an untainted land, Great Britain in the midst of a war to protect a lost order, or Ireland in the desperate struggle for autonomy – is but a dream undercut by corrupt and cynical interests: ‘Out in the world there, on the skirts of the woodland, the self-satisfied sheep-boy delivers a last complacent squint down the length of his penny-whistle, and, with a flourish correspondingly awry, he also marches off into silence, hailed by supper’ (Meredith, p. 135). Probably a nickname for the maid she has just described.

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[14 May 1916] [ATL] [Higher Tregerthen, Zennor] Sunday Night. Ma très chère:1 I have been waiting for the time and the place to answer you in – & they both seem here. So first of all ‘thank you’ for the prescription (which you shall have back) and for your letter and the 2 papers. Nor must I forget Marjory’s account NOR Gordon’s comment upon her reason for not being a S.F.2 We have just been talking about you and G. I hope your four ears kept up a pleasant burning for we are awfully fond of you always. G. is quite sincerely and for ever Murrys only love but G. knows that – – – – – – It is still awfully difficult to credit what has happened and what is happening in Ireland. One cant get round it – This shooting, Beatrice, this incredible shooting of people!3 I keep wondering if Ireland really minds – I mean really won’t be pacified and cajoled and content with a few fresh martyrs and heroes. I can understand how it must fill your thoughts – for if Ireland were New Zealand and such a thing had happened there – – it would mean the same for me – It would really (as unfortunately George-Out-of-Wells would say) Matter Tremendously . . .4 Dear woman, I am a little afraid of jarring you by writing about the whole affair – for I know so little (except what you’ve told me) and I’ve heard no discussion or talk. Gracie Gifford’s story was spoilt by her having broken down before the jeweller in Grafton Street when she bought the ring and confided in him.5 Otherwise it was almost an Irish On The Eve of Turgeniev6 . . Poor Plunket’s picture too – a cross between Jack Squire and Willie Yeats.7 There is a strange passionate cynicism about Orpen’s drawing of women’s hands.8 Even the Daily Mirror couldn’t suppress it. It is Sunday evening. Sometimes I feel I’d like to write a whole book of short stories and call each one Sunday. Women are far more ‘sensitive’ to Sundays than to the moon or their monthly period – Does Sunday mean to you something vivid and strange and remembered with longing – – The description sounds rather like the habits contracted by Jean Jacques Rousseau when his blood was inflamed by his youth9 – or like G C. lying on his bed reading the Police Court News10 – but I don’t mean that – Sunday is what these talking people call a rare state of consciousness – and what I would call – the feeling that sweeps me away when I hear an unseen piano. Yes, that’s just it – and now I come to think of it – isn’t it extraordinary how many pianos seem to come into being only on Sunday. Lord! someone heaven knows where – starts playing something like Mendelssohn’s Melodie in F11 – or miles away – some other one plays a funny little gavotte by Beethoven12

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that you – – simply can’t bear – I feel about an unknown piano, my dear what certain men feel about unknown women – – No question of love – but simply ‘an uncontrollable desire to stalk them’ (as the Crown Prince on Big Game Shooting says).13 Not that there is even the ghost of a pianner here. Nothing but the clock and the fire and sometimes a gust of wind breaking over the house. This house is very like a house left high and dry. It has the same ‘hollow’ feeling – the same big beams and narrow doors & passages that only a fish could swim through without touching. And the little round windows at the back are just like port holes – Which reminds me – there has been a calf lying under the dining room window all day. Has anyone taken it in? It has been another misty Highland-Cattle-Crossing-the-Stream-by-Leader14 day & the little calf has lain shivering and wondering what to do with its far too big head all the day long. What time its Mother has guzzled and chewed away and looked into the distance and wondered if she were too fat to wear a tussore coat like any Christian woman. Oh, Lord. Why didst Thou not provide a tucking away place for the heads of Thy Beasts as Thou Didst for Thy Birds15 – If the calf were only something smaller I could send my soul out wrapped in a nonexistent shawl and carrying a non existent basket lined with non existent flannel and bring it in to the dead out kitchen fire to get warm and dry . . I must stop this letter. Write to me again very soon. Bici love. Notes 1. (Fr.): My dearest one. 2. (Ir.): Supporter or member of Sinn Féin, a political movement founded in 1905, whose primary goal was to attain for Ireland a government and Executive Council based in Dublin, thereby asserting the existence and the full political rights of the Irish nation. The movement had gradually gained in popular support over the past decade, and two years after this exchange of letters, would gain a majority in the national elections. Marjorie Elvery was Beatrice Campbell’s younger sister, a talented artist too but also more politically outspoken than her sister. 3. As mentioned above, the British government’s reprisals after the Easter Rising were extremely harsh, including the expeditious court martialling and execution of fifteen of the signatories of the Proclamation of the Irish Republic, thus making the political climate even more tense and spurring on the outrage and calls for revenge. 4. This would appear to be a very intriguing example of KM’s delight in literary pastiche. George Boon, the protagonist of H. G. Wells’s 1915 novel Boon, a work of caustic literary satire, refers in name and by allusion to a great many of the key writers and intellectuals of the day. George Boon is a fictional character, a popular author who recently died, and whose literary heritage is being investigated by a literary sleuth, a certain Reginald Bliss. In one particularly passionate outburst, George Boon defends all that he holds dear, all that matters, citing above all Truth, Literature, the clearing of minds, illumination, and salvation from isolation (Wells 1915, pp. 208–9).

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5. The wedding of Beatrice Campbell’s fellow artist friend Grace Gifford, a staunch Republican supporter, to her fellow nationalist, the journalist and literary editor Joseph Plunkett, had been planned for that Easter Sunday, but was put off on account of the political uprising, in which Plunkett played a leading role and for which he was arrested immediately after and courtmartialled. Grace managed to buy a ring from a local jeweller and secured the permission of the prison authorities to allow the marriage to go ahead just hours before Plunkett was executed. 6. On the Eve, by the Russian novelist and playwright Ivan Turgenev (1818–83), is a story of secret love and revolutionary unrest during the build-up to the Crimean War. KM read the novel in 1914, noting ‘what a good cinema film’ it would make in her diary (CW4, pp. 142–3). 7. The front page of the Daily Mirror on 9 May 1916 was taken up by just two main pictures with two smaller inset photographs: one of Roger Casement, the poet and diplomat, then imprisoned for his role in the Easter Rising, and a photo of him and his wife; and the other, a portrait of Grace Gifford, with an inset photo of Plunkett. The small inset photograph shows a plain, quite dour-faced Plunkett wearing spectacles rather like those worn by James Joyce. KM compares him to the Irish poet and dramatist W. B. Yeats and the London editor and writer J. C. Squire. 8. The portrait of Grace Gifford referred to above, by William Orpen, who had been her tutor at art school, had been painted in 1907 and does indeed draw the onlooker’s eye to her forearms and hands. 9. In his essentially autobiographical but self-fictionalising Confessions, the Swiss Enlightenment philosopher and novelist, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, recounts his early erotic fantasies in, for the time, quite candid detail. 10. Gordon Campbell was then Lord Chief Justice of Ireland. Criminal trials for ‘petty crimes’ (minor offences) took place in the police courts, now known as the magistrates’ courts. Updates were included in the daily newspapers, often with an explicitness of detail that would no longer be legally acceptable today. 11. The early Romantic German composer Felix Mendelssohn (1809–47) wrote little piano music and no explicitly named ‘Melodie in F’. KM is most likely referring to the Adagio in F in book 4 of his Songs Without Words (1840). 12. Ludwig van Beethoven (1770–1827) composed only one ‘Gavotte’, a complex work for four hands, and not likely to be what KM refers to here. He did, however, compose a number of minuets and polonaises, which are more in keeping with the musical memories KM evokes. 13. The Crown Prince of the German Empire, Kaiser Wilhelm II (1859–1941), who was also the grandson of Queen Victoria, had a passion for hunting and shooting, especially big game, as a number of British and Empire newspapers reported in the spring and summer of 1916. The Saturday Review, for example, in its 13 May 1916 issue, portrayed him as having ‘a real love of sport, and big game shooting [. . .] which was his seventh heaven’ (p. 474). 14. A fashion for atmospheric evocations of the Scottish Highlands, often inspired directly by the style of Landseer and typically focusing on Highland cattle, rugged hills and streams, developed throughout the nineteenth century. The ‘Leader’ probably refers to the children’s game ‘Follow my Leader’, suggesting that the cows are seen walking in a line.

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15. This is an example of KM’s delight in pastiching biblical language rather than quoting (directly or indirectly) any particular passage. The Gospels of Mark and Luke refer to the nesting places provided for the birds (Luke 9: 58; Mark 8: 20).

[15 July 1916] [ATL] [Garsington Manor, Garsington] Saturday – Dearest Bici, I am going to Cornwall on Monday to Sunnyside Cottage Mylor near Penryn. and I will write to you from there. Do write to me, too, darling, and tell me the news. I arrived at Paddington to find the station crowded with Sinn Feiners who had just arrived from Wormwood Scrubs1 and were being taken, on the points of innumerable bayonets to some other prison. Heavens! What a sight it was but they all looked very happy and they all wore bunches of green ribbon or green badges – I very nearly joined them and I rather wish I had. In great haste, darling – Thank you again for my bed – Always, Mansfield. Notes 1. Historians estimate that about 1,800 Irish volunteers and fellow Republicans who were arrested in the course of the Easter Rising reprisals were shipped to London and imprisoned in Wormwood Jail, Hammersmith, popularly known as ‘The Scrubs’. A small number were then released but most were transferred to other British jails, notably Frongoch in North Wales, a former internment camp for German prisoners of war.

[Late May 1921] [N] For the moment only

Hotel Beau-Site Baugy-sur Clarens La Suisse

Bele Beatrice I cant tell you how glad I am to hear you are dancing again – albeit ‘delicately’ as you say.

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Lo! how sweetly the Graces do it foot To the instrument! They dauncen deftly and singen sooth In their merriement.1

That means you are really better. Dont get ill again. Isn’t it awful – being ill. I lie all day on my old balcony lapping up eggs and cream & butter with no one but a pet goldfinch to bear me tompanēē. I must say the goldfinch is a great lamb. Hes jet tame & this morning, after it had rained he came for his Huntley & Palmer crumb2 with a little twinkling raindrop on his head. I never saw anyone look more silly and nice. Switzerland is full of birds but they are mostly stodgy little german trots flown out of Appendrodt’s catalogue.3 (Which reminds me of Bertha K, ma chère.)4 But all Switzerland is on the side of the stodges. Notes 1. KM quotes, doubtless from memory, from the ‘Shepherds’ Calendar’ in Edmund Spenser’s allegorical epic poem The Faerie Queene, Book VI (1590). This extract, from the ‘April’ section, is part of a pastoral eclogue. Lines 109–12 read: Lo! how finely the Graces can it foot To the instrument: They dauncen defly, and singen soote. In their merriment. 2. Huntley & Palmers were Reading biscuit makers, who, from a family business founded in 1822, had grown to become Britain’s foremost biscuit company, exporting across the Empire and holding royal warrants from a number of European monarchs. 3. At the turn of the last century, Appenrodts, originally founded by the German migrant Hermann Appenrodt, had been a hugely successful, highquality German delicatessen and luxury café with a growing number of premises in London, including on the Strand and Piccadilly. The thriving business was all but wrecked during World War One but the launch of a mail order service helped the company revive. 4. (Fr.): My dear.

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Francis Carco (1886–1958)

Introduction KM’s passionate and high-risk affair with the French writer Francis Carco is well known on both sides of the Channel, having been immortalised in partly disguised semi-fictional mode in one of her most playful yet superbly crafted short stories, ‘An Indiscreet Journey’ (1915). Short-lived though their romance was, the two writers had a broad variety of biographical and literary traits in common, suggesting that, from their first encounters, they shared a sense of quite intimate mutual understanding, from which the whirlwind liaison grew. François Marie Alexandre Carcopino-Tusoli was born in Nouméa in 1886, in the French overseas territory of New Caledonia; it was then known as the ‘Ile-du-Bagne’, meaning Hard Labour Island, which efficiently sums up both the metropolitan cynicism and the degraded colonial self-image of the times. Although in a privileged position as the son of the Inspector of State Domains, the child, who grew up in relative comfort watching shackled prisoners filing down the street, and playing after school with the local boys, would soon learn, once he arrived in Paris, that he was a lowly colonial boy, betrayed by the accent, manners and world view of the far-distant provinces. He was twenty-three years old at the time, all alone and passionate about the arts, with some published poetry and prose pieces already to his name, and an ardent longing to make his name as a writer. Like KM, he began by adapting his name: not exactly a moniker, but an abridged and more dynamic rendering of his family origins. Likewise, his map of the capital was not that of a simple visitor or tourist – it was a literary and artistic map, which inclined him to head straight to Montmartre – the heart of bohemian Paris – where he knew artists would gather. This marked the beginning of a life-long passion for the rather shabby but intense, dynamic neighbourhood where café life, city crime, music and dancing marked the rhythm of the artist’s day. After finding his place in Montmartre, he then turned to the other artistic hub of the city – Montparnasse – where bourgeois investors

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rubbed shoulders with émigrés, exiles, little magazine editors, publishers and artists. Here he found a publisher for his first poems and short stories; his first novel, Jésus-la-Caille, was published just days before the war broke out in August 1914. It became a best-seller almost overnight, its sketchbook-like glimpses of the Parisian underworld seen through the smoky fug of raucous bars – pimps, prostitution, gamblers, alcohol, rakish seduction – gaining an almost nostalgic aura as the grim horrors of war accumulated. The ‘little colonial’ had become the portraitist of Paris. He also became the ideal local to show visitors the true underside of the fashionable capital, which is exactly how he appeared to KM when JMM introduced her to the friend he had made during his first lonely months in Paris in 1911. Carco also, of course, lived in an ideal neighbourhood for observing the capital as both an insider and an outsider – his flat was on the Ile de la Cité, overlooking the river, just behind the cathedral of Notre Dame, and exactly midway between Montparnasse in the south and Montmartre in the north. Little wonder that KM was entranced when she first visited his apartment at 13 quai aux Fleurs, so called because of the rows of flower stalls on the opposite bank and the bustling flower market just downstairs. This was the apartment that he later lent to her while he was serving as a soldier in the east of France, giving her not only a rich and intimate sense of feeling at home in the capital, but also an insider’s view of civilian life, including the first ever aerial bombings, in a war-torn country. The beginnings of KM and Carco’s romance can be reconstructed from their various writings – fiction, letters, coded diary entries and confidences to friends.1 He began by sending her intimately flirtatious letters; she responded. She travelled to Paris, set on meeting him again, although he was a soldier posted in the war zone of Gray, a town near Dijon, and only officers’ wives had the permits allowing them to travel easily past security points to meet their husbands. With a mixture of forged letters, fake names, bluff and suitable clothing, KM nevertheless made it to the town and the couple spent five days together in February 1915, keeping a low profile and relishing their own adventure. Little is known of how the affair then dwindled, for both KM and Carco destroyed most of their letters as part of the cover-up, employing fictional codes and conventions to recreate their heady liaison. They met only once after the famous romance, quite by chance, in a Parisian café, in 1922. JMM was also there, and the embarrassed greeting on both sides was, so Carco said, brief and perfunctory. While KM recycled their encounter soon after returning to London as a form of pastiche fairy tale with a coded, fable-like war narrative between the lines, Carco reconstructed the story more sporadically. We find echoes in the form of character sketch and psychological insights in his 1916 novel Les Innocents;2 in succinct, rhythmic form and echoes of voice in certain poems; and later, in a memoir, Souvenirs sur Katherine

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Mansfield, not published until 1934 when he had read JMM’s editions of her letters and journal, and (by his own admission) been flattered to find so many fond references to himself.3 By that time, Carco was at the height of his literary career, his novels of alluringly wicked, uncouth marginals and seedy Parisian nightlife having become best-sellers amongst the newly literate French reading public, as well as more bourgeois conventional readers. He published prolifically – novels, biographies, memoirs, poetry and film scripts. Carco was elected to the Académie Goncourt in 1937, a public and nationwide recognition of his literary mastery; however, by World War Two, both his part-rough, part-dandy allure and the disreputable charm of his old-time Paris had begun to fade. By the time he died in 1958, just months after receiving the Grand Prix de Poésie as an acknowledgement of a career’s devotion to poetry, he was fading from public memory. He faded just as fast from conventional histories of French literature, on both sides of the Channel. Thankfully, his archives were largely preserved, often due to family vigilance and private collectors, and a Francis Carco archive trust is now in preparation in Châtillon-sur-Seine. Claire Davison Notes 1. See ‘An Indiscreet Journey’, CW1, pp. 439–50; KM’s diary: CW4, pp. 152–64; Glenavy, pp. 81–2; Baker, pp. 93–4. 2. A copy of the novel, dedicated to Carco’s friend, Jean Graven, bears the inscription, ‘A Jean Graven, en souvenir de Catherine Mansfield, qui m’a donné toutes les descriptions de Paris pendant l’autre guerre. De tout cœur, F. Carco. Lucerne 18 mars 1942’ [To Jean Graven, in memory of Catherine Mansfield, to whom I owe all the descriptions of Paris during the other war. With all my heart, F. Carco. Lucerne, 18 March 1942]. See Freyssinet, pp. 58–72. 3. See CW4, p. 229, and Carco 1934, pp. 31–2.

[c. 17 February 1915] [Carco, Les Innocents]1 [Paris] Darling, je pense dans quelques jours venir vous voir à Besançon et quitter Paris pour vous.2 Je suis dans le petit café en bas sur le quai.3 II fait un temps délicieux et je suis près de toi. Je vous donne un baiser. Je vous demande comment est votre bras et s’il est bien que je viens vers vous.

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Notes 1. Carco (1916) [1952], p. 184. 2. (Fr.): I am thinking about leaving Paris and coming to visit you in Besançon in a few days’ time. I’m in the little café below, on the embankment. The weather is divine, and I feel close to you. I send you a kiss. I wonder how your arm is, and whether I should come to you or not. 3. KM was writing from Carco’s flat on the Ile de la Cité, at 13 quai aux Fleurs, so named because it was close to the flower market.

[c. 18 February 1915] [Carco, Les Innocents]1 [Paris] Je suis venue ici à cause de vous. Je me suis promenée jusqu’à la nuit. Voici les étoiles déjà et le petit vent qui vient toujours avec elles. Dans la salle prochaine, on joue du billard. J’entends le clic! clac! des balles. La femme qui vend les cigarettes ici porte un chapeau. Pourquoi? Chéri, j’ai commencé à pleurer et pleurer . . . Dans l’après-midi j’ai trouvé un petit banc dans un jardin et je restais là, disant: Courage. Il ne faut pas. Courage! Mais tout était inutile. . .2 Notes 1. Carco 1916 (1952), p. 186. 2. (Fr.): I came here especially for you. I walked late into the night. The stars are shining already, and there is that light breeze that always comes with them. In the adjoining room, there’s a billiards game going on. I can hear the balls going click! clack! The woman selling cigarettes here wears a hat. Why? Darling, I began to cry and cry . . . During the afternoon, I found a little bench in a public garden, and sat there, saying to myself, Be Brave. You mustn’t. Be Brave! But everything was useless.

[Late March 1915] [Carco, Montmartre à vingt ans]1 [13 quai aux Fleurs] Deux jeunes gens sont arrêtés sur le quai et, malgré le froid, en face du vent, un long oh! un tres long baiser . . . Et puis, ils sont disparu . . . oui . . ., aussi vite que possible, comme si la maison brûle chez eux.2 Notes 1. Carco 1938, p. 187.

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2. (Fr.): Two young people have stopped on the embankment, and despite the cold, right in the wind, they kiss, a long, oh! Such a long kiss . . . And then, they disappear . . . yes . . ., as fast as they can, as if their house were on fire.

[Late March 1915] [Carco, Montmartre à vingt ans]1 [13 quai aux Fleurs] C’était tres curieux. J’ai entendu les pas qui courent vite sur le quai, puis la sonnerie de Garde-à-vous! Un peu de temps ensuite, on entendait les moteurs des zeppelins qui semblent dire: do-do, do-do, mille fois, comme pour vous rassurer et vous mentir au même moment. Mais, ce qui me plaisait surtout, c’était la nuit dans toutes les maisons quand on a ouvert les persiennes et la vue de toutes les personnes par la fenêtre. C’était comme un rêve. J’ai pensé que toutes ces personnes ont, subite, l’idée de voler.2 Notes 1. Carco 1938, pp. 198–9. 2. (Fr.): It was so peculiar. I heard footsteps running swiftly on the embankment, then ‘Stand to attention!’ rang out crisply. A moment later, you could hear Zeppelin engines, that seemed to be saying, do-do, do-do, a thousand times over, as if to reassure and to deceive at one and the same time. But, what I loved above all, was when night fell in the little houses, when shutters were opened, and you could see all those people at the windows. It was like a dream. It occurred to me that all those people had suddenly thought of trying to fly!

[May 1915] [Carco, Montmartre à vingt ans]1 [13 quai aux Fleurs] L’homme qui éclaire les lampes est venu avec sa petite étoile au bout d’une grande canne. Quand je vois ça, mon coeur tremble toujours, pour tous les soirs, dans toutes les grandes cités.2 Notes 1. Carco 1938, p. 185. 2. (Fr.): The man who lights the gas lamps has arrived with his little star at the end of a long wand. When I see that, my heart always quivers, at the thought of all those evenings, in all the major cities.

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Douglas Clayton (1894–1960)

Introduction Douglas Clayton, the son of Katharine Clayton, Constance Garnett’s younger sister, was a professional typist, recommended to KM by D. H. Lawrence. Edward Garnett had suggested to Lawrence that he contact Clayton, and from 1913 onwards, he typed up a large number of Lawrence’s manuscripts. He would go on to run his own small printing business in South Croydon. At the time these letters were written, KM and JMM, who had become friends with the Lawrences in mid-1913, were now living just three miles away from their cottage in Chesham. Gerri Kimber

[4 January 1915] [N] January 4th 1915

Rose Tree Cottage, The Lee, Gt Missenden.

Dear Sir, Would you kindly type me 2 copies of this short story at your earliest convenience1 – My friend Mr D H Lawrence advised me to write to you – Are you too busy to do some typing for me from time to time? Yours very truly Katherine Mansfield. Notes 1. A hand-written note in pencil at the bottom of the letter, apparently written by Clayton, indicates ‘The Little Governess’.

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[2 February 1915] [HRC] Rose Tree Cottage The Lee Great Missenden Dear Mr Clayton I beg you to forgive my delay in acknowledging your parcel & settling your account. I’ve no excuse to offer except my own dilatoriness. The typing was beautifully done, thank you – And now I cant find your account. It was seven & something so I’ll send an order for 8/- and the extra pennies – if there are any – can come off my next account Yours truly Katherine Mansfield.

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Constable & Co.

Introduction Constable & Co. (now trading as Constable & Robinson following a merger in 1999) are a London-based publishing house, originally founded in 1795 by Archibald Constable in Edinburgh, where they became Sir Walter Scott’s publisher. Always innovative, in 1813, they became the first publishing house to give authors an advance against royalties; in 1821, they introduced the format of the three-decker novel; and in 1826, with their series, ‘Constable’s Miscellany’, they became the first publishers to produce mass-market literary editions. It was Constable & Co. who, in 1897, first published Bram Stoker’s Dracula. In 1921, they became the first publishing house to advertise books on the London Underground. During KM’s lifetime, they published her collections Bliss and Other Stories (1920) and The Garden Party and Other Stories (1922), together with all of the editions of her work edited by JMM after her death, as a result of JMM’s long-standing friendship with Michael Sadleir, who had started at Constable’s in 1912, becoming a director in 1920 and rising to the position of Chairman in 1954. Gerri Kimber

[19 November 1920] [tr. Scott] [Telegram] [Menton] Could you arrange for new photograph already sent by me to appear on wrapper of Bliss Block will be supplied by Murry.1 Katherine Mansfield Notes 1. See KM and JMM’s exchange over the photo choice in Hankin, pp. 322–3.

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[c. 20 November 1920] [tr. Scott] Villa Isola Bella Garavan Menton A/M Dear Madam, I am greatly obliged to you for your letter. I am sorry it has not been found possible, even by the substitution of other blocks, to stop that horrible photograph.1 But it is a relief to know you will see it is not used for publicity purposes on any further occasion. Instead of advertising Bliss it looked to me as though it ought to describe How I Gained 28 lbs. in One Month. However – Would you kindly see that all further communications respecting my book are addressed to me personally at the above my permanent address. Letters do not take more than 2½ days & if the matter is urgent I will avail myself of the electric telegraph. Yours very faithfully Katherine Mansfield Notes 1. KM had cabled JMM on 14 November to say ‘Entreat you let no one have hideous old photograph published in Sphere important burn it’.

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Marie Dahlerup (c.1887–?)

Introduction Very little is known about Marie Dahlerup, who appears to have been a Danish schoolfriend of KM’s from her schooldays at Queen’s College in Harley Street, London. It seems that a correspondence was rekindled some time during 1919, when KM was living in England with JMM in Hampstead. The reason for the letter below, sent on 12 January 1920, is self-explanatory, although it would appear that it was given to JMM to post from England but never sent. The rest of KM’s correspondence with Dahlerup is missing. Dahlerup is mentioned several times by KM in her correspondence and in a diary entry. In a letter to Sydney Waterlow, in late March 1921, she writes, ‘I want to find a little chalet if possible near Thun – in German Switzerland [. . .] Also a Dane, a friend of mine, [Marie Dahlerup] wants to come from time to time’; in a letter to Ida Baker from 18 March 1921, ‘I shall write Marie Dahlerup to send me a list of places near Geneva’; in a letter to Sydney Schiff, c.18 April 1921, ‘I hope big, fair Marie Dahlerup will not bore you. I have not seen her since . . . I was 16. From her letters she is a dear creature’; finally, on 3 January 1922, KM recorded in her diary, ‘I dreamed I was at the Strand Palace, W.L.G. [W. L. George] having married Marie Dahlerup – big blonde – in quantities of white satin . . . (CW4, p. 398). Gerri Kimber

[12 January 1920] [ATL]

January 12th

Casetta Deereholm Ospedaletti Porto Maurizio.

My dearest Marie, I have just received your letter and I hasten to answer it. Thank you a thousand times for accepting my offer so charmingly and so

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generously, but I am more than sorry to say that since I last wrote to you (since yesterday in fact) there is a great change in my plans and I shall no longer need a companion secretary in May. What has happened is this. Perhaps you know that for nearly two years now my old school-fellow Ida Baker has been living with me and looking after me. She was leaving me in May to join her sister in South Africa, but yesterday a letter came from the sister asking her not to go, putting her off indefinitely, in fact. This of course means that she must stay with me and go on doing what she has so nobly done for me these past two years. I could not send her away. It was only because I was losing her that I ventured to write to you – because I thought there was no possibility of keeping Ida in our household. I simply hate to have to tell you all this when you have so exquisitely accepted, but, my dear, I can do nothing else. I can only hope that you will be our guest some time in the country and that we may be able to help you perhaps with some literary work. I am bound to Ida by not only ties of affection; she has seen me through some very bad times. It is only fair that now I am better she should share in the good. Your letter is of course quite confidential, dearest Marie. Thank you for telling me so much. And now let me say once more how deeply I regret having to write this – how sorry I am that I could not let you know sooner. I can only trust that you will understand the position. With very much love, my dear girl Yours ever Kathleen.

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Walter de la Mare (1873–1956)

Introduction Sadly, there is very little remaining evidence of KM’s correspondence with Walter de la Mare, the author of such supernatural classics as the poem ‘The Listeners’ and the short story ‘Seaton’s Aunt’, as well as a huge range of literature for children. The two writers first encountered one another in 1912, during KM’s time as co-editor of the little magazine Rhythm, when the older, more established writer and associate of the Georgian poets began to contribute pieces to Rhythm and its short-lived successor, the Blue Review. This marked the beginning of a longstanding professional association between KM and de la Mare, which, for a time, saw them publish work in the same literary magazines (including the London Mercury) and under the same imprint (Constable). De la Mare also wrote a favourable, anonymous review of Bliss and Other Stories for publication in the Athenaeum in January 1921.1 In addition to these professional encounters, the pair developed a warm friendship, which KM evidently cherished, even if very little of it is directly recorded in letters between the two. Just five of de la Mare’s letters to KM are held in the Newberry Library, Chicago, and even fewer of KM’s responses have come to light.2 Despite this, KM’s broader correspondence offers frequent and compelling evidence of her admiration for de la Mare and his work. KM frequently wrote about de la Mare with affection in letters to JMM, Ottoline Morrell, Dorothy Brett and Elizabeth von Arnim. In these documents, he emerges as a writer whom KM admired and to whom she often looked as an imagined reader of her work, as in her description of ‘The Lady’s Maid’ in a letter to JMM (6 December 1920) as a story ‘I’d like you and de la Mare to like – other people don’t matter’. The majority of KM’s comments about de la Mare date from the final years of her life, when she was convalescent in Menton, Montana-sur-Sierre and Paris. It was also from Paris that she wrote to him on 6 May 1922, in order to account for another letter about his 1921 novel Memoirs of a Midget, which KM had seemingly misaddressed. The ghost of this letter lingers

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in KM’s only published correspondence with de la Mare, then – entirely appropriately, given her earlier description of him to JMM (18 October 1920) as a man who ‘haunt[ed]’ her and who shared her appreciation for what she termed the ‘silent world’. KM’s letter offers a short, but telling, insight into the relationship between the two writers, in particular in her reference to their exchange of ideas about one another’s work. It includes only some passing commentary on Memoirs of a Midget, but her professed desire to ‘talk about [Miss M] for a long time’ and ‘walk through whole chapters’ may nevertheless give some indication of the kinds of conversations about writing that the pair must have enjoyed during their seemingly infrequent meetings with one another. One such encounter at KM and JMM’s Hampstead house prompted de la Mare to write the poem ‘Horse in a Field’ (To Katherine Mansfield)’, first published in the Saturday Westminster Review (later renamed the Weekly Westminster Review) in January 1922, shortly before the serial publication of KM’s story ‘The Garden Party’ began in the same paper. A year later, the poem was republished and came to serve as a eulogy for KM following her death, as de la Mare mourned the loss of his friend and colleague. For her part, KM had valued the friendship so highly that she remembered de la Mare in her will, alongside A. R. Orage, D. H. Lawrence and others, naming him as the intended recipient of a book from her library. KM’s bequest came to be fulfilled in an unexpected way with the posthumous publication of The Doves’ Nest in 1923, which featured a dedication to de la Mare. It is unclear if this editorial decision was made by KM before her death, or by JMM, and offers another tantalising gap in our knowledge about this literary friendship. Similar ambiguities are ultimately reflected in the correspondence between these two writers, which is hauntingly centred around an absence: KM’s letter about a lost letter. Jenny McDonnell Notes 1. Unsigned (Walter de la Mare) review of Bliss and Other Stories, Athenaeum, 4734 (21 January 1921), p. 67. 2. Katherine Mansfield Papers – Additions (Box 7, folders 66–70), The Newberry Library, Chicago. In her biography of Walter de la Mare, Theresa Whistler cites two additional, unpublished KM letters (one dated 2 May 1921 and the other postmarked 21 January 1922); to date, these have not been traced any further. See Whistler, pp. 306–7, p. 455 n. 14, p. 455 n. 16–17.

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[6 February 1922] [B] Victoria Palace Hotel, 6–8 Rue Blaise Desgoffe Rue de Rennes Paris. 6 ii 1922 My dear W.J.D. I have been trying to arrive at this moment ever since your letter came about J.M.Ms book.1 But the cares of my dilapitated little house take up nearly all my time. Last month I really began to breathe again, as they say, but in stalked the influenza and he is a persistent fellow; he’s not gone yet. This is very annoying. But please do not hate me for it . . . I did not expect you to write to me about my Garden Party. But I wanted you to have a copy. A strange thing – the night of the day when I last wrote to you, just before I fell asleep I saw, in the air, the envelope of my letter to you about Miss M.2 I had addressed it 14 Annesley Road.3 But it seems to me impossible you should not know how much I loved Miss M. She is part of my world. I wish you were here; I wish we could talk about her for a long time – no less than walk through whole chapters. But these are bold words. Your Fanny seems to me so much the one and only Fanny that I feel I must apologise for using her name in vain in The Nation.4 Florence (whom I feel understands Fanny best) I expected to challenge me to a duel. Speaking of Florence, there is a Florence Dela Mare in this hotel. We keep no end of an admiring eye on her. Sometimes she is late for lunch and we pine. Then she comes down to dinner in a frock to take the breath. We met her first in the lift – flew up in the air with her. And J.M.M. said ‘Florence Dela Mare’ and I said ‘of course’. But she is incognito and will not recognise us. Notes 1. JMM’s The Problem of Style had just been published. 2. The enigmatic ‘Miss M’ is the narrator of de la Mare’s Memoirs of a Midget, a fascinating and unjustly overlooked miniature masterpiece – and masterpiece in miniatures, being told by a fairy-tale-like young woman of compact size. In the Preface, de la Mare presents the story in a manner resembling a popular eighteenth-century convention: as the reflection of an extended epistolary exchange he had with ‘Miss M’. He admits the undertaking ‘was ‘no “primrose path”’, an expression that invites links with KM’s comment above, pp. 445 and 447, n. 10.

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3. De la Mare was then living at 14 Thornsett Road, Anerley, in south-east London, with his family: his wife, the actress Elfrida Ingpen, and their children, Florence, Richard, Lucy and Colin. Florence, mentioned later in the letter, was then twenty-three. 4. ‘De la Mare’s Fanny’, as KM refers to her, is the ‘mysterious and enigmatical’ schoolmistress in Memoirs of a Midget, and the daughter of Miss M’s landlady. Intrigued by the curious story of her former life, Miss M becomes completely enthralled by the appealing Miss Bowater. KM compares this compelling fictional anti-heroine with her own fictional creation, Fanny in ‘Honeymoon’, published by the Nation on 29 April 1922. See CW2, pp. 488–93.

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Oscar Raymond Drey (1885–1976)

Introduction Raymond Drey is one of many figures in the margins of various accounts of Modernist arts and theatre, but very rarely found in the floodlights. He is frequently referenced, for example, as the husband of the American artist Anne Estelle Rice, or the brother of the British artist Agnes Drey, a former pupil of Frances Hodgkins, who was later to become one of the St Ives group. Born in 1885, Drey was the eldest son of a progressively minded family based in Manchester; he studied history at Christ’s College, Cambridge, from 1903 to 1906, and then worked in Manchester editing the Manchester Play-goer in between extended stays in Paris to follow new movements in the art world more closely.1 It was here that he came into contact with the Scottish post-Impressionist J. D. Fergusson, and then JMM and KM, probably in mid-1912. He also met his future wife Anne Rice in Paris; their son David was born in 1919. Drey contributed regularly to the two little magazines that JMM and KM edited from 1912 until late 1913, Rhythm and the Blue Review, with essays and reviews of art movements, exhibitions and stage productions. Drey soon became acknowledged as an art critic who also took a lively interest in the art market as an astute and much-respected collector and patron. Essays such as those he contributed to Wyndham Lewis’s short-lived little magazine, the Tyro, show the influence of Roger Fry, as well as contemporary French avant-garde writers, while also marking the beginning of his friendship with Lewis himself, to whom he would later offer financial support.2 He wrote regularly for the Athenaeum and the New Weekly, became the art critic on the Westminster Gazette and wrote more irregularly in various London-based journals. He likewise wrote catalogues for galleries in London and Paris. Without abandoning his passion for art, however, he gradually focused more on drama, in the wake of Modernist producers and theorists such as Gordon Craig. He was also highly influenced by the new drama criticism of Huntly Carter, whose vivid conceptualisations of ‘the new spirit’ (as Carter termed it) in theatre and the arts inspired Drey to favour design and stage-set in his reviews, moving away from the more conventional mode of reviewing in

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which the prime subject was acting and psychological realism. This, in turn, inspired his interest in new dance designs and stage architecture, and the play of form, colour and shape in Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes. In the immediate post-war years, meanwhile, he was also to be found taking a lively, active interest in the launch of the review Voices. This warmly supportive, wide-ranging and resolutely modern approach to all the arts proved life-long, as warm tributes to this discretely generous and steadfast friend, relative and patron attested in the later years of his life. A single, very engaging interview with Drey, looking back over his years as art collector, husband and manager of Anne Estelle Rice, and art and drama critic, has survived and is now kept at the British Library.3 Claire Davison Notes 1. Drey was contacted by W. B. Yeats in 1911 about a suitable stage there for an Abbey Theatre production. See Kelly, p. 146. 2. See ‘Emotional Aesthetics’, The Tyro, 1, 1921, p. 10. 3. John Wodeson Interviews, BL, C1723/36.

[27 December 1921] [ATL] Chalet des Sapins Montana-sur-Sierre Valais 27 xii 1921 My dear Drey, I cant say what a pleasure it was to receive on Xmas day its very self a letter from you with the perfectly delightful enclosures. I had written to Anne just the day before; it seemed as though my letter had got there by carrier pigeon and brought the answer back. The little case is most precious for what it contained – the picture of David. My dear Drey what a shockingly proud man you must be! I should do no more work. I should just look at him, puff out my ches and say to the passers by ‘il est à nous.’1 The butler impressed me terribly. At this height and among these mountains one scarcely dare think of butlers . . My one domestic, the gentle Ernestine, who weighs about 14 stone, bounds up and down the stairs like a playful heifer and bursts into a strange terrible singing whenever she hears a pig being killed, is civilizations away from butlers. When I come to see you I expect the second footman to take

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my umbrella and I shall curtsy to Anne and present a bouquet. You are very grand but not as grand as Willy.2 His party must have been a very powerful affair, Drey. Talk about numbered cloakroom tickets – Willy will have to have them for his wives, next time. He will be a terribly busy man in Heaven. I am sure the restitution of conjugal rights is a specialité de la maison, there . .3 My cat has just leapt on to my bed and begun to clean his face and his two little chimneys. Its a queer thing. He started life in a humble way like One greater than he – he was born in a stable and was just an ordinary little black & white kitten. But since he came here he has turned into a real Persian with an enormous ruff and feathers on his legs. I suppose it is the cold – The Swiss of course, dont keep cats. They are frightened a cat might eat the old cabbage stalk they are saving up for the baby to cut its teeth on. They are a thrifty race. By the way I suppose you do not know the address of a first chop dentist in Paris? I have to go to Paris very soon and while I am there I want to put my head into the jaws of a really good painless modern man. Is there such an one? If you could send me a card with his name and address I would be awfully grateful. Are you wondering why I ask you? I have a feeling you know all these things . . . I am going as soon as my feet are on the earth again, for my teeth are falling like autumn leaves. They have very large wooden buns here for tea with nails in them and powdered glass on the top exprès pour les anglais.4 I defy anyone to grind them to powder without an ‘accident’. A Happy New Year to you – you do know how I ‘appreciated’ your letter? Thanks again dear Drey. With love from K.M. Notes 1. (Fr.): He is ours. ‘Ches’ is, of course, KM’s idiomatic way here of saying ‘chest’. 2. Although no source documents have been traced shedding light on the identity of ‘Willy’, Drey’s interest in the theatrical scene and his base in Paris may have led him to enclose (cf. ‘perfectly delightful enclosures’) a press cutting about the lavish society parties organised or attended by the French author, music critic and playwright Willy: that is, Henry Gauthier-Villars, formerly the husband and co-author of Colette. Willy was then still something of a darling in the salons and parties of the Parisian artistic set, his wit and lavish sense of show fascinating popular journalists. However, another possible ‘Willy’ might be the French-born novelist and essayist W. L. George, whose friends sometimes referred to him as ‘Willy’ George. See Marshall, pp. 125–41. 3. (Fr.): A House special. 4. (Fr.): Especially for the English.

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John Drinkwater (1882–1937)

Introduction Reviewing a collection of critical essays by John Drinkwater for the TLS, Virginia Woolf observed: Our fancy picture of Mr Drinkwater’s workshop must represent a place without ornament or ease, but everywhere the signs of strife and austerity. His criticism bears the same stamp. He speaks of poets more as a soldier in a hard fought battle might speak of another soldier fighting with him or against him than as a critic looking from a distance and without a share in the strife.1

As we might expect, every image is loaded here, so that, beneath the lines, a revealing portrait and a subtle form of contextual solidarity ring through. Drinkwater was a poet and playwright who left school at fifteen to go to work and thereby finance his passion for poetry and acting. His success as an amateur actor brought him into contact with the ‘Pilgrim Players’, a local drama company in Birmingham that he joined in 1908. At the invitation of Barry Jackson, the pioneering founder of what would soon be known affectionately as ‘the Birmingham Rep’, he became their theatre manager in 1909, thus playing a central role in the creation of Birmingham’s own professional repertory company in 1911. Their first major premises, now called the Old Rep, were inaugurated in 1913. Meanwhile, Drinkwater had also been expanding his activities as a poet, becoming involved in the circle of poets who came to be known as the Dymock poets, the central four figures of which were Drinkwater himself, Edward Thomas, Rupert Brooke and Robert Frost. The lives of both the poets and the theatre, along with those of their entire generation, were thrown into disarray by World War One. Brooke and Thomas both enlisted for military service and Frost returned to the United States. Drinkwater, however, as a staunch pacifist and member of the Birmingham Independent Labour Party, and working in a city, and a theatre, where conscientious objection, pacifism and general anti-war

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commitment were particularly strong, applied for exemption. The archives of the Birmingham Tribunal have not survived, but it is believed that either on account of his Quaker convictions, or in the name of the theatre’s wartime entertainment mission, the exemption was granted.2 Outspoken anti-war protest was, however, political gunpowder during the war years. The Birmingham Rep made its point subtly, via the repertoire of plays like Bernard Shaw’s The Inca of Perusalem and Drinkwater’s X = O, an allegorical retelling of the Trojan War. Although not staged until 1918, Drinkwater’s play Abraham Lincoln, a historical drama – the genre he become most renowned for – also sounded an eloquent defence of contemporary peace via clear parallels between Lincoln and Woodrow Wilson. The pacifist’s use of guarded metaphorical allusions to war, and an equally committed defence of peace and civilisation, are how Woolf too, in her review, pays tribute to Drinkwater’s sober, disciplined approach to furthering education and welfare, by staging classics and contemporary plays for ever wider audiences, in a theatre solidly committed to theatre as a radical art. Drinkwater remained attached to the Birmingham Rep for years, but following the popular success of his plays, he also travelled regularly to the States to work with theatre companies there. He also retained a lifelong commitment to popular and local arts, becoming one of the founding organisers of the Malvern Festival in 1929, for example. He also experimented with the emerging genre of cinema, as both a writer and a producer, incorporating poetry and sound montage into film technique. It was as a poet, as well as an actor and theatre company manager, that Drinkwater came to play a part in JMM and KM’s publishing activities. No record of their first encounter has been traced but W. L. George is very possibly the intermediary who brought them together. This would appear to have been during the last year of Rhythm, to which he contributed an essay; the little magazine also published a review of his poems. JMM returned to the theme of Drinkwater’s poetry in his critical volume Aspects of Literature.3 As the letters below show, his participation as a contributor to the Blue Review was secured from the outset. He contributed poetry and critical essays to all three issues, the most characteristic and encompassing, in terms of Drinkwater’s ‘workshop’ and his commitment to a civilisation in which the arts are a shared joy and a common heritage, being his ‘Lines Spoken at the Opening of the Birmingham Repertory Theatre, February 15th, 1913’.4 Claire Davison Notes 1. EVW2, p. 201. 2. See Maunder, pp. 112–13.

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3. See ‘Present Condition of English Poetry’, in Murry 1920, pp. 141–2. 4. See ‘Lines Spoken at the Opening of the Birmingham Repertory Theatre, February 15th, 1913’, Blue Review, 1: 2, pp. 79–81.

[November 1912] [N] [57 Chancery Lane] RHYTHM EDITORIAL Dear Mr Drinkwater. Thanks very much. We’re glad to agree to your suggestion. We’ll put you on the free list. And we hope you’ll send us another poem . . . Rhythm is having a literary supplement in December.1 It ought to be an interesting number altogether. Of course we quite agree with you that poets ought to be paid for their poetry – all manner of fine and lordlie summes.2 If only Rhythm will turn into a really big ship on a fair sea – we’ll put our belief into action . . . But dont wait until then before you send us another poem – will you. Sincerely Katherine Mansfield (For J. M. Murry.) Notes 1. The eleventh issue of Rhythm, printed in December 1912, included a literary supplement with Drinkwater’s long poem, ‘Travel Talk’, in pride of place as the lead article; it is a highly evocative depiction of a journey – part figurative, part real – in the heart of the Lake District in north-western England. 2. A passing but characteristic example of KM’s pleasure in pastiche, often used as a form of humorous diplomatic euphemism. Here, for example, the mock Elizabethan ring attentuates her need, as an editor, to tackle mundane but pressing financial questions.

[18 January 1913] [N] RHYTHM 57, CHANCERY LANE, LONDON, W.C. January 18th 1913. Dear Mr John Drinkwater, Would you review the Georgian Poetry book for us – or would you write something about your Theatre for our next number?1 We’d be so delighted & grateful if you would do either of these things.

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I am sorry that we did not see you when you were in London for the Poetry House2 occasion. Perhaps next time you’ll come & see us . . We are nearly always at home. Many people have told us how much they liked your fine poem. Sincerely yours Katherine Mansfield. Notes 1. Having contributed to the volume, Drinkwater declined the invitation to review the new anthology, Georgian Poetry 1911–1912; D. H. Lawrence, however, responded favourably. His warm review, ‘The Georgian Renaissance’, appeared in the literary supplement of the last issue of Rhythm (2: 14, pp. xvii–xx), published in March 1913. Drinkwater’s alternative contribution was finally published in the second issue of the Blue Review rather than Rhythm. It consists of a retrospective of theatre life, written in heroic couplets: ‘Lines Spoken at the Opening of the Birmingham Repertory Theatre, February 15th, 1913’ (pp. 79–81). 2. ‘The Poetry House’ was the affectionate name given by the Belgian poet and editor of The Poetry Review, Harold Monro, to the bookshop he opened in London in January, conceived from the outset as a meeting place, performance centre and bookshop specialising in English-language poetry. The first premises, at 35 Devonshire Street, remained firmly imprinted in the minds and memories of London’s cultural life, long after the lease had expired (1926) and the centre had been reopened on alternative premises.

[January 1913] [N] Rhythm 57 Chancery Lane. Dear Mr John Drinkwater. Forgive me for not answering your postcard sooner. I am ashamed: for you were prompt & it seems like ingratitude on my part. Which it wasnt. We’d be delighted to have an article on the Theatre from you & copy is due on March 1st – long time ahead. All success to your Theatre.1 What fun – having a Theatre! Sincerely yours Katherine Mansfield. Notes 1. Having been a member of the theatre’s former amateur dramatic company, ‘Pilgrim Players’, Drinkwater then became the manager of the new Birmingham Repertory Theatre when it opened in January 1913. It was a pioneering performing and commissioning company, dedicated to bringing ever wider, aesthetically exciting productions to broadening audiences.

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Lulu Dyer (1897–?)

Introduction Lulu Dyer was KM’s younger cousin, the daughter of Annie Beauchamp’s brother, Frank Dyer (1861–1938). In 1897, Frank had married Phoebe Seddon (1871–1944), daughter of Richard John Seddon (1845–1906), who served as Prime Minister of New Zealand from 1893 to 1906. Thus the Beauchamp family were connected by marriage to one of the most influential families in Wellington. Gerri Kimber

[12 March 1903] [tr. Scott] [Postcard] [Las Palmas] This is such a lovely place, darling, & we are having a very good time. Be a good little ‘Tweets.’ From Kass

[28 October 1903] [tr. Scott] [Postcard] [Queen’s College, Harley Street] How do you like this, Tweets dear? Do write old Kasslena a letter soon. Much love to Mother & Father from Kass.

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[31 August 1906] [tr. Scott] 43 Harley St., W. 31 8 06. My darling old Luls – I wonder if you have forgotten these three cousins of yours who are always talking about a certain little girl whose photograph sits on the wall and looks at them. Chad and I are writing our mail letters here – and it is so hot that we wish we were both cosily tucked into the bath and writing on the back of a soap dish with the cold tap trickling down our heads. Dear Aunt Phoeb was good & sweet to remember us with such long letters by the last Mail. We can’t tell you how we appreciated them. I wonder if you can realise now – Luls dear – what a wonderfully brave Mother you have got. Tell her how we are all longing to come down to Park Street and have a long talk. It is your birthday soon now dear – so this little note is wish you all sorts of good things. My present – I shall give you myself when I get back – Doesn’t it sound funny! Do come down to the wharf to meet us, darling – but I’m afraid you will be dreadfully grown up – Will you? Much love to Aunt Phoeb – Uncle Frank & your little self From your loving old Kass

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John Duncan Fergusson (1874–1961)

Introduction Born and raised in Edinburgh, where he was encouraged to paint by his mother, John Duncan Fergusson first travelled to Paris in the mid-1890s.1 It was there, years later in 1912, that he would meet KM with his partner, Anne Estelle Rice, through JMM, with whom he was collaborating on the little magazine Rhythm.2 Fergusson was later the best man at JMM and KM’s wedding, and KM’s wedding gift to JMM was a Fergusson painting that she had saved to purchase.3 His split from KM’s close friend Rice does not appear to have significantly altered the strikingly positive impression he first made on KM. The correspondence that survives between Fergusson and KM is scarce and limited to the year 1918. However, those of KM’s letters that do exist are both long and lively. The first two, written from Bandol, contain witty, painterly vignettes of her experiences of French life, also clearly signalling her respect for Fergusson’s talents.4 The first, written when weary from travel, implies loneliness, but the second states that while she is in real contact only with JMM and Fergusson, this is enough. The third, written after her return to London from Hampstead, contains a frank discussion of her relation to the short story, which is revealing of the closeness of their own relationship at that time, though just two years later Fergusson is absent from the list of favourite people that JMM and KM compile (22 April 1920). Angela Smith has noted the ‘affectionate mimicry’ that occurs in those of KM’s letters to Fergusson that survive, such as her reference to ‘the Art Business’, which is a borrowing of Fergusson’s phrase.5 A glimpse of the esteem in which KM held Fergusson is provided by reference to the original Ma Parker in a letter she wrote to JMM on 13 December 1917: ‘Ma Parker yesterday went to my heart. She said suddenly “Oh Miss, you do make the work go easy.” What could be a sweeter compliment. Its one I could pay to you & to J.D.F. but nobody else alive.’ This sentiment is echoed in the first letter to Fergusson below, which states: ‘it is a bad thing during this war to be apart from the one or two people who do count in one’s life’ before going on to use the pronoun ‘we’. Aimée Gasston

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Notes 1. In Paris Fergusson became familiar with the work of the Impressionists and attended life classes at the Académie Colarossi and the Académie Julian. His first solo exhibition was in 1905 at the Baillie Gallery in London, before he settled in Paris more permanently, taking a Montparnasse studio in 1907. 2. Fergusson not only designed the cover of Rhythm but also precipitated its naming through discussions with JMM. See BTW, pp. 155–6. 3. BTW, p. 216. 4. This artistic respect was mutual – Fergusson’s admiration for KM had begun when he read ‘The Woman at the Store’ (ibid.). 5. Smith 2000, p. 73.

[15 January 1918] [Morris 1974, pp. 121] My official name and address. Madame Bowden Hôtel Beau Rivage Bandol (Var.) 15.1.1918. Dear Fergusson, Take the word of a ‘sincere well wisher’ and never attempt this journey during the War. When Murry and I came down here two years ago it was nothing of an ordeal, but this time . . . Well, a hundred Bill Nobles crying Jesus Christ isn’t your sofa pillows would not be enough.1 I would not do it again for all the oranges and lemons and lovely girls dans tout ce pays.2 I would say: ‘No! Leave me on the dear old Fulham Road, let me hail the bus that none stop, go to the butcher who hasn’t any meat, and get home to find the fire is out and the milkman hasn’t come and doesn’t intend coming . . .’ Just to mention one or two details The train was not heated. There was no restaurant car. The windows of the corridor were broken and the floor was like a creek with melted snow. The cabinets did not open. There were no pillows for hire. We were hours late. The French do not suffer as we do on these occasions. For one thing I think they obtain great relief by the continual expression of their feelings, by moaning, groaning, lashing themselves into their rugs, quietening their stomachs with various fluids out of bottles, and charming the long hours away with recitations of various internal diseases from which they and their friends have suffered . . . We arrived at Marseilles to find no porters, of course. I was just staggering out when a pimp in white canvas shoes bent on reserving a place for a super pimp bounced up and gave me a blow on the chest which is still a very fine flat ripolion3 purple. ‘This, thought I,

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is Johnnie’s Marseilles’. And it was the harmonising motif of my stay there. You know the kind of thing. Waiting in a Q for one hour for a ticket and then being told I must have my passport viséd4 first, and finding myself after that at the end of the tail5 again, without even the excuse of the little woman in front of me who got on famously by tapping each man on the shoulder and saying ‘Pardon Monsieur j’attends un Bébé’.6 Even her ticket seemed to be punched ten times faster in consequence and the porter simply whisked her luggage away. It’s quite an idea pour la prochaine fois.7 When I did pass the barriers it was to discover that the train for Bandol was due to arrive at all four platforms and there was a terrific crowd on each. Every time a train came in it was thronged by people and even then not an official knew whether it was the right one or not. After two hours of this the real train did arrive, on the furthest platform of course. You picture me running on the railway lines with my rugs, suitcase, umbrella, muff, handbag, etc. and finally chucking them and myself into a lère8 where I sat for the next ten minutes in a corner saying to muff ‘Fool! do not cry. You can’t begin crying like a baby at this stage’. However, there was suddenly an immense uproar and a body of soldiers rushed the train, commandeered it and began throwing out the civilians bag and baggage. They were not at all a ‘I-tiddley-i-ty take me back to Blighty’9 crowd either. They were bad tempered and very ugly. Happily I was in a carriage with 8 Serbian officers and they put up a fight. It was very unpleasant – the soldiers swarming at the windows, tugging at the doors – and threatening to throw you out. But these good chaps lashed the doors up with leather straps, pinned the curtains together and barricaded the door into the passage. They won, and I got here in the middle of the night, walked into a dark, smoky, wet-feeling hall, saw a strange woman come forward wiping her lips with a serviette and realised in a flash that the hotel had changed hands. If you will just add to all this 1 raging chill and fever which I caught on the journey I think you will agree that it’s not a bad total . . . That was on Thursday. Today is Tuesday. I have not even unpacked yet – it is cold. Wood costs 2.50 le panier10 and this hotel is much more expensive. But I shall have to stay here until I am well. At present I spend my time getting in and out of bed – and although there is a bud or two outside the windows and a lilac-coloured sea I feel what the charwomen call ‘very low’. At night especially, my thoughts go by with black plumes on their heads and silver tassels on their tails and I sit up making up my mind not to look at my watch again for at least five minutes. However all this will pass. To Hell with it. I thought last night it is a bad thing during this war to be apart from the one or two people who do count in one’s life. After all we are not solitary palm trees in deserts – thank God – we are groups of two or three with a spring of sweet water between us and a piece of grassy shade. At this time, to go away alone to another country is a thoroughly

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bad idea. (This of course is the precisely useful moment for me to make this discovery). Are you working? You know quite well what I thought of those pictures, don’t you. I knew in a way they would be like that but that did not make them any less of a revelation. They are unforgettable. Write me a card when you feel inclined to, just to give me a hail from your ship. Goodbye for now. Yours ever, Mansfield. Notes 1. KM quotes, or rather pastiches, their mutual friend, the artist John, or Bill, Noble, renowned for his maverick behaviour and colourful, heartfelt exclamations of conviction. See above, p. 362, n. 4. 2. (Fr.): In the whole land. 3. (KM’s wordplay): A playful deformation of ‘Ripolin’, the trademark of a French brand of fast-drying, brightly coloured gloss paint, marketed since the beginning of the century. 4. (Fr.): Stamped. 5. A highly characteristic example of KM’s inter-linguistic language play. The French word for queue (la queue) also means ‘tail’. 6. (Fr.): Excuse me, sir, I am expecting a baby. 7. (Fr.): For next time. 8. (Fr.): First (class). 9. ‘Take Me Back to Good Old Blighty’ was a highly popular music-hall song dating from 1916, recounting (in a medley of mock-heroic and mock-disenchanted modes) the nostalgia of three British soldiers fighting in France. 10. (Fr.): Per basket.

[24 January 1918] [Morris 1974, pp. 124–6] [Hôtel Beau Rivage, Bandol] Thursday. My dear Fergusson, Don’t cry déja!1 at the sight of my handwriting and don’t be afraid that I shall keep on knocking at your door in this importunate way. I won’t. Only – I can’t let my last letter to you remain unanswered, on my side. Make a curl paper of it or use it ‘to stop a hole to keep the wind away’. Thanks for yours. This is an extraordinary country, very well described by an old type I saw today who was picking yellow and white jonquils in his proprieté.2 I remarked that it was winter before yesterday – ‘Eh ben – que ce que vous voulez – c’est le facon de not’ pays. Un jour nous sommes

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en plein hiver – lendemain on voyait les boutons et – puis – toute a la fois’3 and he raised up and stretched out his arms over the flowery field. That is just what has happened. The day before yesterday this whole place, swaddled up to the eyebrows, was rocking, tossing in the arms of the coldest, most biting unsympathetic nurse you could imagine. But yesterday there came a dawn when the sky and the sea were like silk, and the miracle happened – the sun came out. Toute à la fois4 the women who had looked like lean boiled fowls became beautiful and fat and rosy. Windows and doors flew open and the houses began to breathe and move. Cats, en escargot,5 appeared on the window sills. Girls appeared in the doorways plaiting wreaths of yellow immortelles, plus every green and blue pitcher went off to the fountain. Old hags in black pleated dresses, with broad black hats tied under the chin with a linen band hobbled in from the country with a load of jonquils on their backs or a pack of olive twigs, and old men swung off into the country, each with a pot of manure on a creaking barrow. There was simply one word that flew over the place like a flag – BEAU. ‘I’ fait beau. I’ fait beau. I’ fait vraiment beau’.6 I went for a walk in the afternoon round by the sea coast. My God, Fergusson, to feel the sun again on one’s breast and belly, to realise again that one had five toes on each foot and each toe has a separate voice with which to praise the Lord, and to know that the cheek that was turned to the sea burned as it used to when you were a kid! Then I turned inland. The lanes are bordered thick with wild candytuft and small marigolds; the almond trees are half in bud, half in bloom. All along the way there are little handfuls of earth thrown up, like handfuls of coffee, where the ants are busy. And everywhere you could hear the people working in the fields – you could see them digging on those flat terraces – bending down and raising up again, ample and leisurely, as though they were the children of this kingdom and so had nothing to fear. It was nearing sunset as I came home and each round bright flower was turned to the sun – a cup of light – a sun of its own, and all the olive trees seemed to be hung with bright sparkles. Yes, this is a good place to be in. One word more and then you can throw me out of the window. Here’s another thing that struck me as so ‘typical’ of these people. As I walked back along the main street I saw an old woman on the sea front. She was sitting on a little iron chair which she had planted there, about one inch from the deep sea water. And there she sat – with her back towards the sea doing a bit of crochet. This struck me mildly as ‘most unwise’ as my sister would say, as, had she coughed, sneezed or taken a false stitch, over she would have to go. However, it was no affair of mine. But another old ’un who was washing outside her door caught sight of this. Down fell the wet clothes. ‘Marthe’ she shrieked. ‘Que?’ said a voice. ‘V’en vite’. And when Marthe saw she began to laugh and clap her hands. The windows became full of heads. ‘Allez

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allez! Tu as vu Ma’am Gamel – la bas? Ah, mon Dieu tu as vu ca?’7 They came running to the doors to laugh more and all this time old Ma’am Gamel, who must have been stone deaf, sat on, doing her crochet, paying no attention at all. ‘Allez allez! elle va tomber.’ ‘Non elle ne tombe pas!’ ‘Si! elle tombe!’ ‘Ah si j’avais un orange maintenant par exemple!’8 Every one of them was simply longing to see the Comble – to see la vieille topple over9 – I could hear their laughter if she did – and I can imagine the way they would have leaned against one another, quite helpless, pointing to her old black hat and little bit of crochet floating out to sea! Well, I’ll stop. I have a vase of roses and buds before me on the table. I had a good look at them last night and your rose picture was vivid before me – I saw it in every curve of these beauties – the blouse like a great petal, the round brooch, the rings of hair like shavings of light. I thought how supremely you had ‘brought it off’. This hotel is quite deserted. I have a room at the end of a huge, dark, greenish, sousmarin10 corridor which might be miles away from anybody. I have begun to work – yesterday – and shall keep at it all I know . . . I wish I could send you steaks and butter and la richesse de la terre.11 But its no go. There’s nobody to speak to here. Just occasionally I have a word or two with the lad or with you – but that ends it. And it’s quite enough. Here’s to Art – God bless us all. Mansfield Look here – don’t even like to write. Notes 1. (Fr.): Already. 2. (Fr.): Daffodils in his garden. 3. (Fr.): ‘Well, what can you expect? – That’s how it is in our parts. One day, it’s the middle of winter, the next day, you see the buds, and then everything at once.’ 4. (Fr.): All at once. 5. (Fr.): Curled up. 6. (Fr.): It’s lovely, lovely, really lovely weather. 7. (Fr.): ‘What?’ said a voice. ‘Go quickly.’ [. . .] ‘Go on, go on. Did you see Madame Gamel down there? Oh my Lord, did you see that?’ 8. (Fr.): ‘Go on, go on, she’s going to fall.’ ‘No, she’s not falling.’ ‘Yes, she is, she’s falling.’ ‘Oh, if only I had an orange or something right now.’

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9. (Fr.): The best bit – to see the old woman falling over. 10. (Fr.): Underwater. 11. (Fr.): The riches of the earth.

[September 1918] [ATL] [2 Portland Villas, East Heath Road, Hampstead] Dear Fergusson Of course I saw the real Picasso floating between France and England & you and he meeting now & then at some little café on the pier, called, perhaps, The Laughing Parrot.1 I was delighted to see Margaret the other day.2 She looks better for her holiday already; in fact, she looked very lovely; there was a bloom and a brightness about her that made me think of a damson. I have a very warm place in my heart for Margaret. The weather here is good – its exciting. Its summer still, but in spite of the papers and the shops there is a feeling in the air that all over the round world fruit is ripening and falling. My God! These first apples – par exemple – the smell of them & when you bite into them how they bite back again sharp and sweet. I was standing outside South Kensington Station yesterday and that swindling fruiterer was holding up a bunch of grapes. His gesture seemed to cut right through the Ages – Man with Grapes once and for all, don’t you know. I wish we lived in a more generous country where people were not so passionately concerned with planting early spring chimneys and late autumn railway lines – but Ive no doubt their crops suit the soil best. Fergusson. do you get moods when you fall in love all over again from the very beginning with the Art Business? Ive got one, at present. Everything that Ive written before seems more or less a false alarm; if only I can bring this off . . . and so on. But it is extraordinary how little people have done – at any rate – at my job – and how content they have been with the chance encounter or a matrimonial stodge. All that lies between is almost undiscovered and unexplored, except for an occasional picnic, so to speak. I only hope I can take off my hat to this prospect without my head coming off too. Murry is very well – full of fire for his friends and brimstone for his enemies. He is hard at the flat ripolin job in his spare moments3 – and everything is being painted – Dont be surprised to see him on the top step of his Hampstead house – standing there to greet you – a beautiful lemon yellow. We have had some very powerful talks with Sullivan who continues to be very cheerful. (The result, I believe of bacon sans ticket.)4 This isn’t a letter: I cant write em. Its cheero – I hope all goes well. Sincerely Mansfield.

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Notes 1. Pablo Picasso (1881–1973), the hugely influential avant-garde Cubist artist, stage designer and sculptor of Spanish origin, remained in Paris throughout the war, working particularly with the Russian Ballet and other experimental theatre companies. He had known Fergusson since the pre-war years and they maintained loose connections, especially during Fergusson’s stays in France. At the time of this letter, Fergusson was engaged in his studies of submarines in Portsmouth Docks as part of his commission as a war artist; while bearing the bold imprint of Fergusson’s earlier Rhythm years, the oil paintings are clearly inspired by Cubism and camouflage art techniques, the similarities between which struck Picasso himself, as Gertrude Stein later underlined in her short biography, Picasso (1938). 2. Margaret Morris (1891–1980), a highly respected choreographer, stage designer and dancer, was then launching the Margaret Morris Movement, inspired by the dancing techniques of Isadora Duncan; she became the lifelong partner of Fergusson. 3. ‘Ripolin’ was the trademark of a French brand of fast-drying gloss paint. See above, p. 539, n. 3. 4. (Fr.): without a coupon – a reflection of the lifting of certain restrictions and rationing towards the end of the war.

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Jinnie Fullerton (1856–?)

Introduction Jinnie Fullerton was the close friend and companion of KM’s relative Connie Beauchamp, the daughter of Horatio Beauchamp, the brother of KM’s paternal grandfather Arthur Beauchamp. KM first came into contact with Connie and Jinnie during her schooldays at Queen’s College in London. A minor operation on her foot in February 1905 necessitated a stay in their nursing home in John Street, W.1. It was KM’s first operation, and a great fuss was made of her in the absence of her parents, with visits from Beauchamp relatives and friends from school. Following a disastrous stay in Ospedaletti, from September 1919 to January 1920, Connie and Jinnie suggested to KM that Ospedaletti was too isolated and that it would be better if she moved to nearby Menton instead, where they now ran a luxurious nursing home, the Hermitage, and where she could be properly looked after. KM moved into the Hermitage on 21 January 1920. In mid-February, finding the Hermitage too noisy, Connie and Jinnie invited KM to move into their private residence, the Villa Flora, where they tried to convert her to Catholicism. For a short period, KM dallied with the idea of becoming a Roman Catholic but ultimately turned away from such a commitment. KM’s descriptions of Menton at this time reveal her fondness for the town, which, she claimed, reminded her of New Zealand. Wanting a more permanent base in the area, she put down a rental deposit on the Villa Isola Bella, an empty property belonging to Connie, before returning to London at the end of April. KM would spend from September 1920 to the beginning of May 1921 at the Villa Isola Bella, where she would write eight of her best-known stories, including ‘The Daughters of the Late Colonel’. Gerri Kimber

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[18 December 1919] [Letters, 1, 1928, pp. 316–17] [Casetta Deerholm, Ospedaletti] Tuesday December 18, 1919 The doctor came yesterday and put his British foot down on all the lovely plans. I am not to get up yet and when I do only to lie on a couch or on the verandah for a few hours a day at present. My heart which evidently feels its turn has come for a little attention has been playing me tricks and I’ll have to give way to the jealous creature for the present. So bang goes the lovely Christmas! We’re more than sorry and it was lovely to have been asked to the party and I hate to be such an unsatisfactory creature. Will you and Cousin Connie forgive me? But what can one do when ones heart gives the most marvellous imitations of the big drum in a brass band – first, heard very far away in the distance, then coming nearer and nearer, then thumping so loud that you think it must break the windows and then wonderful faint, far away ‘distant’ effects – and all for an audience of one! But it’s not really ‘serious’ – only a temporary thing. I’ll have to learn to play the fife to keep it company – A comfortable old Scottish party from San Remo came to call the other day and seeing the chaste nudity of the Casetta she has since sent us a great roll of carpets and rugs that she had in store so we are a great deal snugger and warmer here.1 The doctor is definitely opposed to me moving at present. Ida takes little jaunts into San Remo and she has made several friends and I’ve plenty of work to keep me going. So that’s my programme for the present, quite a satisfactory one except that it prevents me from spreading my wings. Notes 1. The Scottish benefactress has not been identified.

[14 January 1920] [ATL] [Casetta Deerholm, Ospedaletti] Wednesday Your letter has made me spring so high that 30 francs a day is mountain peaks below! I do not know how I am to thank Cousin Connie and you for this letter.1 Will you please believe that large warm beams of gratitude are coming out of this letter and that the inkpot is flashing and stars are dropping off the pen.

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But seriously – thank you from my heart! The Hermitage sounds the very place for me, and Ida is quite content to go to the Pension Anglaise.2 I know I shall be able to earn the extra money to keep us both quite easily in such surroundings. Besides, I shall get well at such a rate that they will turn me out for a fraud by the time April is over. Could they take us soon? Ida is going in to San Remo to-day to see about our passports and so on and I wondered whether, if we can get a car, they would be ready for us to-day week (next Wednesday). Or is that too soon? We shall prepare ourselves for Wednesday, and then if we must wait a few days it will not matter. I should like if possible to take the rooms for a month to begin with, tho’ I am sure I shall stay longer. I keep re-reading your letter as I write. My dear, what trouble you have taken – and how soon you have answered. I had marked Friday in my diary as the day I could ‘perhaps’ hear. I told the doctor man that I wanted very much to leave here and he said that I must – there were no two opinions. My lungs are much better and my heart is only temporary caused, he says, by the fever and ‘acute nervous strain.’ But that will vanish away as soon as the solitary confinement is over. Notes 1. Connie Beauchamp and Jinnie Fullerton had written to invite KM to stay in Menton. Ida Baker notes, ‘I think Connie was genuinely upset at the obvious discomfort and hardships of Katherine’s life at a time when she was so ill’ (Baker, p. 145). They were also keen to convert her to Catholicism. 2. (Fr.): The English boarding house.

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John Galsworthy (1867–1933)

Introduction Although KM and John Galsworthy never met, their limited correspondence demonstrates a familiarity with one another’s work. In a letter to JMM on 23 October 1919, for example, KM comments how she feels as if she has known Galsworthy for years, despite having never met him. Although only two letters to Galsworthy survive, in these she shares her vulnerability, giving details of her work and health during the final years of her life. The ease with which KM conveys these intimate details suggests that she admired Galsworthy and his literary accomplishments. Galsworthy was fifty-four years old and garnering worldwide fame for the Forsyte series when KM first wrote to him, on 25 October 1921, responding to a letter he sent to her after the publication of Bliss and Other Stories.1 In that letter, he asks about her work and compliments ‘Bliss’ and ‘Prelude’, but says he did not enjoy ‘Je ne parle français’. KM’s response is warm with respect and expresses gratitude for his ‘noble generous praise’. She writes that she will never forget his letters and that she has even tied them up in a silk handkerchief. KM’s reviews of Galsworthy’s novels were not so magnanimous. While in the Mediterranean in 1919, she reviewed Galsworthy’s work for the Athenaeum. During late October and early November, she read Galsworthy’s newly published Saint’s Progress, calling it ‘A Standstill’ (CW3, pp. 522–6). Earlier, in a letter to Ottoline Morrell (12 June 1919), she references reading the quarterly Owl literary magazine, which included Galsworthy’s play The Sun, dismissing the entire publication as a ‘forlorn old bird’. KM did not hold back her acerbic tone in either her private letters or public criticism. Yet the two writers’ correspondence, limited though it may be, reveals a high level of mutual respect. KM sent a letter to Galsworthy on 25 October 1921 from Switzerland, where she had travelled to investigate the tuberculosis treatment methods of Swiss bacteriologist Henry Spahlinger. She had recently reviewed In Chancery, the latest tale of The Forsyte Saga, in the Athenaeum, as noted above, and soon would write a review of another volume, To Let, in the Daily News

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(CW3, pp. 719–22). In the former, she takes a more positive tone than in her previous reviews, writing, ‘In his latest novel, which is a continuation of the Forsyte Saga, Mr. John Galsworthy gives the impression of being in his real right element.’2 Yet KM still criticises Galsworthy for becoming too comfortable and familiar with the world he has created, doubting whether he can remove himself enough to invoke any mystery or imagination in readers. In another letter to Galsworthy dated 31 January 1922, just a year before she died, KM again expressed gratitude for his readership. She wrote the letter from Paris, where she was seeking the experimental treatment of Russian doctor Ivan Manoukhin, who promised to heal her tuberculosis. In the letter, she considers Galsworthy’s praise for her short story, ‘At the Bay’, and again reveals details about her work and health, particularly of months spent in bed and a deep desire to return to Switzerland. The letter is brief but sentimental. Though KM and Galsworthy ‘meet’ only through writing, their limited correspondence and public criticism of each other’s work establish them as literary peers. Bronwen Carlisle Notes 1. Though the majority of John Galsworthy’s papers were formerly held in the University of Birmingham’s Special Collections, now only part of the collection remains there. Other materials can be found at the Forbes Magazine Building, Syracuse University, New York, and the University of Texas at Austin. Letters he wrote to KM can be accessed in the ATL: MS-Papers-4321–01. 2. ‘Family Portraits’, review by KM of In Chancery by John Galsworthy and The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton. See CW3, pp. 703–6.

[25 October 1921] [Collection of Steve Forbes] Chalet des Sapins Montana sur Sierre Valais Switzerland 25 x 1921 Dear Mr Galsworthy By an unfortunate mischance your letter only reached me today. My silence must have seemed very ungracious. Though, even now, I scarcely know how to thank you. Your noble generous praise is such

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precious encouragement that all I can do is try to deserve it. I want to promise you that I will never do less than my best, that I will try not to fail you. But this sounds superficial and far from my feeling. There the letters are, tied up in the silk handkerchief with my treasures. I shall never forget them. I wish, someday, I might press your hand for them. Thank you ‘for ever’. I ought to tell you – for after all, you have the key – I have been haunting the little house in the Bayswater Road last week – looking at the place where the humming birds stood, and standing where Soames stood in the hall by the hatstand.1 How I can hear Smithers word ‘Bobbish’.2 But one must not begin. One would go on for ever. All the life of that house flickers up, trembles, glows again, is rich again, in these last moments. And then there is Soames with Fleur running out of his bosom, so swift, so careless – leaving him bare . . . Thank you for these wonderful books . . . You ask me about my work. I have just finished a new book which is to be published at the New Year. And now I am ‘thinking out’ a long story about a woman which has been in my mind for years. But it is difficult. I want her whole life to be in it – a sense of time – and the feeling of ‘farewell’. For by the time the story is told her life is over. One tells it in taking leave of her . . . Not one of these modern women but one of those old fashioned kind who seemed to have such a rich being, to live in such a living world. Is it fancy? Is it just that the harvest of the past is gathered? Who shall say! In November or December the London Mercury is publishing a day in the life of the little family in Prelude.3 If I may, I should very much like to send you a copy. The mountains here are good to live with, but it doesn’t do to look lower. The Swiss are a poor lot. Honesty and Sparsam Keit4 – in themselves – don’t warm one’s heart. But I must detain you no longer. Fare well! May all good things attend you! Katherine Mansfield. Notes 1. Throughout this passage, KM evokes memorable details from Galsworthy’s epic Forsyte Saga, the third volume of which, To Let, had just been published. Soames Forsyte is ‘the man of property’ and main protagonist of the first volume; Smither is the housekeeper at the house on the Bayswater Road where the three old and steely Forsyte aunts live with the very elderly Timothy Forsyte, described by Smither as ‘rather bobbish for his age’ in Chapter Four. Fleur is Soames’s rather whimsical, initially fickle daughter. The hummingbirds – less exotic in the novel than they may sound – are stuffed trophies kept in a cage in the stairwell. 2. The term clearly appealed to KM: she uses it to describe JMM in a letter to Brett in October 1918. See note 1 above, and p. 367.

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3. ‘At the Bay’ had appeared in the Mercury on 27 January 1922; see CW2, pp. 342–72. 4. (Ger.): Thriftiness.

[31 January 1922] [Letters, 1928, 2: pp. 179–80] [Victoria Palace Hotel, 6 rue Blaise Desgoffe, Paris] Paris, January 31, 1922 Your letter came just as I was on the point of leaving home. How happy I am that you liked At the Bay and that Madame likes my little children and the dog! But it is not your praise that I value most, although I am honoured and proud to have that. It is the fact you are watching my work, which is the most precious encouragement. Yes, I have been working a great deal, but in my horrid bed where I’ve been for the past two months. I hope there are no beds in Heaven. But I managed to finish a long story there and several short ones. Now I have come to Paris to see a Russian doctor1 who promises to give me new wings for old. I have not seen him yet – so – though it’s still a miracle – one believes. When I have seen him I shall go back to Montana again. After these long months in the mountains it’s the flower shops I long to see. I shall gaze into them as little boys are supposed to gaze into pastry-cooks. . . . I hope you are well. It would be very delightful to think we might meet one day. But please remember how grateful I am. Notes 1. Ivan Manoukhin, the physician whose revolutionary X-ray treatment was currently reported to be the much-sought-for cure for tuberculosis, even in a number of reputed medical journals. See above, p. 235, n. 2.

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Constance Garnett (1861–1946)

Introduction It would be hard to name a more active, effective and engaging intermediary between Russia and the English-speaking world in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (and, indeed, for generations beyond) than Constance Garnett. As a fine scholar, pioneering feminist and, above all, translator, she was one of the key figures who made Britain’s ‘Russian Fever’ possible, and as a result, actually shaped the mindset and cultural dynamics of Modernist literature. In the words of her son, David Garnett, writing in the midst of this passion for all things Russian that galvanised the British reading public and intellectual circles from the late 1890s until the early 1920s, she ‘probably had more effect on the minds of everybody under thirty in England than any three living men. On their attitude, their morals, their sympathies.’1 In many ways, it is tempting to see destiny in the role she came to play. Born in Brighton in 1861 into a staunchly forward-thinking, intellectual family, Constance Black was the grandchild of a Scottish engineer and shipping captain, Peter Black, who, in the 1820s, founded the family’s association with Russia by establishing lucrative trade links with St Petersburg, aboard a ship he had built himself. While this may have established ties that remained vivid in the family’s memory (for Garnett’s grandmother and father also made the trip across the Baltic), Garnett herself was hardly cut out to be the leading figure she became. She suffered debilitating health problems from childhood – including an extended period of near invalidity and extremely poor eyesight – which makes her prodigious translating achievements all the more impressive. She took comfort, however, in learning, and was encouraged by her parents and her teachers to pursue her secondary education, which led her from studying French and German to specialising in Classics. She enrolled as a student at Newnham College, Cambridge in 1879, just five years after Jane Harrison – whom Garnett and her fellows admired fervently – had marked out the path for vibrant young women scholars. Garnett herself would probably have pursued a similar academic career, had her health been better; instead, having completed her studies, she

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took employment, first at the British Museum, and then at the newly opened People’s Palace Library in the East End of London, where she gradually rose to become head librarian. It was by frequenting the world of librarians, intellectuals and émigrés – including the Russian–Jewish community in Mile End, where she walked to and from work each day – that she came to meet her future husband, Edward Garnett, whose father was one of the chief librarians at the British Museum and soon to become Keeper of Printed Books. Quickly finding her place in the fervently politicised and vibrantly intellectual Garnett family, Constance Garnett began making friends in Fabian circles, and more importantly, in the Russian émigré community who gravitated around the library. These were not the wistful, nostalgic émigrés who were to arrive a generation later; they were the political exiles and escapees fleeing Russian autocracy. They included the hot-headed, hugely exciting and, in the eyes of the Garnett sisters, very romantic anarchists Peter Kropotkin, Vera Zasulich and Sergei Stepniak. Vladimir Korolenko, Felix Volkhovsky and, more quietly in the background, Karl Marx were also frequently found in the same circles. For Constance Garnett, the most influential figure was Stepniak, along with his wife Fanny. It was he who urged her to begin learning Russian; this would be a means both to acquire the language and to render services to the Russian community, by taking up translating. This was how she first began working in the poised, collaborative fashion that she maintained throughout her life – she would settle down with a book, notepad, the few rare dictionaries that existed then and a native speaker (Fanny Stepniak initially), and either read the text sentence by sentence or, when her poor sight prevented her from reading, listen to the text being read aloud, and note down or dictate a translation. Stepniak was a demanding taskmaster; he soon had her translating Turgenev’s fiction, along with political essays. By this time, Garnett was the mother of a young child, David, the future writer and Bloomsbury member, born in 1892. When David was just a few months old, she left him in the care of her husband’s family and set off on an intrepid trip to Russia, again urged on by Stepniak. The ‘respectable’ justification for the voyage to Moscow, St Petersburg and Nizhny Novgorod was cultural and linguistic; but she was also joining the network of friends and benefactors who were taking money and books into Russia to help fund the anarchist and socialist revolutionary movements, and smuggling manuscripts back out of the country. It was during this stay that Garnett visited Tolstoy, by that time not only one of the foremost novelists and philosophers of his generation, but also, in the eyes of the Russian autocratic state, a dangerously outspoken leader, and a recently excommunicated one, to boot. Tolstoy entrusted a volume of his own writing to the young traveller, urging her to translate that too upon her return.

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Once back in England after the seven-week trip – undertaken at the height of winter – Garnett’s path for the rest of her life was marked out. She and Edward settled in Kent, in a neighbourhood soon to be known as ‘Dostoevsky Corner’ on account of the Russian and East European exiles and émigrés who began clustering there – amongst whom was Joseph Conrad, who was to become a life-long friend, despite having no sympathies with the Garnett family’s pro-Russian passions. Garnett returned once more to Russia, in 1904, this time taking the twelve-yearold David, who later wrote vividly about the visit, but otherwise she travelled little and quite literally devoted most of her time to translating. After winning a number of prestigious prizes for her Turgenev translations, she turned to Tolstoy; then, in the early 1910s, she undertook the whole of Dostoevsky’s œuvre, each volume being avidly taken up by the passionately pro-Russian intellectual circles of late Edwardian and early Georgian London – including, of course, the Bloomsbury Group. From Dostoevsky she turned to Chekhov, who was still hardly known as a writer and only reticently acknowledged as a playwright. In late 1922, the first volume of her complete edition of Gogol was published, and rapturously received. Nor did her activities as a translator stop at volume upon volume of fiction; political commitment continued to inflect her translating priorities – she was particularly keen to ensure that Chekhov’s account of the penal colony and hospitals on Sakhalin island was circulated in English, for example, as well as political essays and fables by Tolstoy and Herzen. This political and ethical engagement was indeed life-long: at the age of 72, she wrote a long, passionate and intricately argued letter to Leonard Woolf, taking him to task for his harsh judgements and lack of cultural compassion in a review of a work about the early years of the Soviet government published in the New Statesman.2 This was a rare act of outspoken protest and indignant self-expression, however. As a general rule, Garnett preferred the modest self-effacement of the translator in the sidelines and shadows of intellectual and cultural life, loathe even to write prefaces to the various collected editions that she translated. She likewise dreaded social visits – including an announced visit from KM and JMM that Edward planned in 1922. By then, she had received warmly admiring letters from both of them, and indeed had written a beautifully expressive reply to KM’s letter published here: The translator has many hours of despondency in which the struggle to adjust the conflicting claims of two languages is seen clearly in all its hopelessness [. . .] What has given me courage to persevere all these years in face of the always increasing sense of the difficulty – the impossibility – of successful achievement, has been the hope that contact with the work of the great Russians – even at second hand – must have its influence on the best of the younger generation – that it could not leave them unchanged [. . .]

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Now you – representative as you are of the most talented and intellectual among the young people – tell me I have achieved my aim!3

KM’s letter, with its glowing enthusiasm and praise expressed for the translator’s laborious, meticulous devotion to the cause of bringing all the great nineteenth-century Russian writers to the British reading public, mostly for the very first time, must surely be taken as her ultimate recognition of Garnett’s impressive achievement. It has both the warm sincerity and the poised balance of reflective assessment, and was of course written unprompted, just after the publication of the twelfth and final volume of Garnett’s translations of Chekhov’s stories. Her better-known, more often quoted snipe at Constance Garnett in a letter to Koteliansky, written in mid-August 1919 (‘Mrs G [. . .] seems to take the nerve out of Tchekhov before she starts working on him, like the dentist takes the nerve from the tooth’), is of a different nature already – a one-off jibe, perhaps spoken more to convince Koteliansky of her commitment to their co-translating venture than as a genuine qualitative judgement. They were, after all, trying to get their collection of letters from Chekhov to his friends into print before Garnett’s own volume of Chekhov’s letters came out. It is a witty (and very Chekhovian) simile,4 but shallow in terms of substance. It also fades into insignificance when we recall that, even when she had the choice, KM read and quoted her favourite Russian authors as translated by Garnett, in preference to other translators who, by the late 1910s, were also in circulation, and this includes her own.5 The Russophile author William Gerhardi, it is worth noting, did likewise. Much as one might feel certain that KM and Garnett would have found tremendous pleasure in each other’s company, the proposed visit in spring 1922 never came about. Garnett herself was daunted, and even terrified at the prospect, as an anguished letter to her husband reveals: I feel terrified at the thought of the Murrys coming! Don’t you think it’s best not to destroy the illusion but to remain a shrouded mysterious figure living in seclusion? At the same time I should like to see them. You must decide when you see. I should fancy her a rather difficult person, very what used to be called fin-de-siècle and decadent.6

KM, meanwhile, was by then only irregularly in England, and was increasingly debilitated by illness. For the same reason, she never had the joy of discovering the Garnett translation of Gogol’s Dead Souls (the two volumes of which constituted in itself an opus of ‘just short of half a million words’).7 It is another missed opportunity that is much to be regretted in the KM–Garnett relationship, for surely the sparkling wit, mischievous parody and breathless mock-epic voice that Garnett was the first to reveal in English translation would have appealed hugely to KM’s

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own creative vein, by far excelling the more poised, restrained soberness of both the first, very ethnographic English version, and the French translation she had read in the past. An unsigned review in the New Statesman points exactly to heady, musical qualities in Gogol’s prose that were equally foremost in KM’s own aesthetic credo, and invites a host of links, yet to be explored, between the two writers’ idiosyncratic, delicately political, blissfully sardonic humour and their cruelly short, endlessly uprooted lives: It was not the misery of the serfs that distressed Gogol, but the futility and unlovely crankiness of those who lumpishly rode on their backs [. . .] He does not turn his eyes from ugliness and misery, yet what he laughs at might make him weep at will – if he thought. He is an uncensorious and unfastidious as Dickens, without Dickens’ sudden spates of moral indignation; and Gogol’s careless cheerfulness – this kindly indifference, which is not indifference so much as pity become accustomed to the sight of pain – introduces us to the common, everyday atmosphere of Russian life [. . .] His style, now popular, now eloquent, is always direct. Mrs Garnett’s translation is by far the best we possess. It succeeds in rendering what we divine to be the lyric rush of such passages as Gogol’s famous apostrophe to the Troïka; we catch in her version the silvery jingle of Gogol’s bells.8

It is yet another cruel twist of fate that this new public acknowledgement of Gogol and Garnett’s ‘masterpiece’, which inadvertently opens up another window on KM’s own Russian world, and was published in an issue whose main focus was Russian and East European literature and politics, appeared the week after KM’s death. Claire Davison Notes 1. David Garnett, letter to his mother, late autumn 1916, in Richard Garnett, p. 304. 2. Leonard Woolf, ‘Mr Monkhouse and Moscow’, New Statesman and Nation, 6: 142, p. 606. Although addressing Woolf directly, Garnett’s letter was intended as a public statement, which she sent to the New Statesman; the editor chose, however, not to publish it. See Richard Garnett, pp. 339–41. 3. Quoted in Richard Garnett, pp. 309–10. 4. See KM’s letter to Brett above, dated 14 February 1922. 5. See above, p. 475, n. 3. 6. Dated April 1922. Quoted in Richard Garnett, pp. 310–11. 7. Richard Garnett, p. 318. 8. D. M., ‘Russia’s Humorist’, New Statesman and Nation, 20: 510, p. 459.

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[8 February 1921] [HRC] Villa Isola Bella Garavan Menton A/M 8 ii 1921. Dear Madam, As I laid down my copy of War & Peace tonight I felt I could no longer refrain from thanking you for the whole other world that you have revealed to us through these marvellous translations from the Russian.1 Your beautiful industry ends Madam in making us almost ungrateful. We are almost inclined to take for granted the fact that the new book is translated by Mrs Constance Garnett. Yet my generation (I am 32) and the younger generation owe you more than we ourselves are able to realise. These books have changed our lives, no less. What could it be like to be without them! I am only one voice among so many – I do appreciate the greatness of your task, the marvel of your achievement. I beg you to accept my admiration and my deepest gratitude. Yours faithfully Katherine Mansfield. Notes 1. Constance Garnett’s translation of Tolstoy’s greatest work – the epic novel set in the era of the Napoleonic wars, published in Russian in 1869 – had first been published in 1904. Although KM’s letters and journal confirm that she had already read the novel, she returned to it in 1921–2 and made quite copious reading notes, which reflect her state of mind at the time as much as her intimate engagement with the novel. See CW4, pp. 440–2.

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Edward Garnett (1868–1937)

Introduction ‘It is evident from the general tone of writers in the English Press and in our periodical literature that the tone of the Russian mind and the Russian attitude to life are a profound mystery to the educated Englishman,’ announced Edward Garnett in March 1905.1 The formidable task of changing this gaping cultural misunderstanding, despite (or perhaps partly fuelled by) the prevailing mood of ‘Russian Fever’ that was inspiring intellectuals and ‘educated’ readers alike, was one that Edward Garnett had taken on himself. And it was a mission he fulfilled admirably. Born into the fervently intellectual, London-based Garnett family in 1868, Garnett was the son of Richard Garnett, the writer and librarian at the British Museum, later to become Keeper of Printed Books. He was the third of six children, all of whom were impressively well read, zestily free-thinking and, in various ways, drawn to the radical political circles of their time. Looking back fondly on the Garnett siblings, his wife Constance Garnett – whom Garnett married in 1889 – wrote, ‘There is something so individual, so racy and delicious about the Garnetts (on the male side) – the combination of extraordinary benevolence and unworldliness with deep disillusionment and the best of spirits – and their lively minds.’2 Garnett’s grandson Richard, meanwhile, summed him up as follows: Edward, on the other hand, was a congenital outsider, never accepting received opinions and original in his literary judgements, but continually inhibited in his own work by his acute critical sense. He loved to tease those he was fond of and was witty and entertaining in company, but apt to be morbidly depressed when alone.3

Garnett was, in any case, startling proof of what could be achieved by a voraciously curious mind in a richly bookish home environment, but without any conventional education to speak of (he left secondary school at the age of sixteen). In many ways, Garnett did for publishing and critical editing what his wife did for translation: they were both exceptional, life-long, cultural

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intermediaries, giving the best of their time and energies to the discovery, circulation and understanding of writings by others. His most recent biographer estimates that, by 1917, he was assessing up to 500 books a year for his then employer, John Lane at the Bodley Head Press.4 One decade later, the rate at which he was receiving, reading, assessing and editing manuscripts was no less intense, and he was also publishing works of his own. Nor was he ever content merely to read, report and turn to the next volume. He read, edited, advised, discussed manuscripts in progress, met up with aspiring authors and introduced them to literary London, and then helped promote their new publications by bringing them into his own journalistic endeavours. Garnett, however, owed the recognition of his literary talents and development of this hugely productive literary career, as well as his rather half-hearted involvement in the radical political circles of the time, to his wife, who had already left university and found employment in the British Museum when she met the as yet drifting young Garnett, who lived mostly at home reading books. It was Constance who encouraged him to take a position as reader, ‘talent-spotting’ for the London publishing house Fisher Unwin, and Constance too who first took him off to meetings of the Fabian Society. It was to his father and his sister Olive, on the other hand, that he and Constance owed the decisive encounters with the Russian anarchists and radical revolutionaries then gravitating around the reading rooms of the British Museum.5 It was these Russian exiles, who had fled repression, censorship and autocracy in Russia and were now actively campaigning and propagandising in intellectual and free-thinking circles in London, who set him on the path to become one of the most proactive, inspirational and reliable literary critics and editors of his day. His prefaces to volumes of Russian literature, often translated by Constance Garnett, along with his regular columns in the Speaker, the Academy and the Athenaeum and his works of literary history, quickly became required reading for anyone engaging in the rediscovery of Russia’s literature and cultural politics. A revealing expression of the ideals to which he believed the literary critic should aspire is found in his 1900 review of a recently translated critical survey of Russian literature, in which he takes the author, the Polish writer Kazimierz Waliszewski, to task for insidiously seeking to weigh upon his reader’s responses to Russian literature: In dozens of cases M. Waliszewski advances ingenious or learned or brilliant reasons to show us why we should discount the beliefs and judgments of Russian literature itself. Now this extremely critical attitude of mind, however stimulating it may be to literary students, is out of place when you seek to introduce one people into the mind, the genius, the national spirit of another people [. . .] The reader does not want the critic except as a far-sighted introducer, he wants to understand, to penetrate, to realise fully how this foreign nation feels and thinks and acts, and why it is these people have thoughts and feelings so different to our own.6

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Inevitably, his own era’s dominant mindset, in its tendency to essentialise the spirit of an age and a nation, may strike today’s reader as dated and rather dubious. In terms of both his quest as an intermediary, for a certain neutrality, and his comparative method, however, he was as pioneering as he was influential, reading avidly across the canon, irrespective of pre-established literary hierarchies, opening up novel dialogues between English, German, French and Russian literatures, and maintaining a keen preference for the contemporary rather than the Classical. His fine literary instinct and steadfast reliability were acknowledged indirectly by the dazzling array of authors who came to depend on his editorial insights and readerly sensibility, once they had entrusted their book manuscripts to him. Even a cursory glance at the list of authors he advised and edited shows up the extent to which he was not only hugely expanding the British reception of European writers, but also shaping the course of English literature itself: the list includes John Galsworthy – who dedicated the first volume of The Forsyte Saga to him – Joseph Conrad, Edward Thomas, T. E. Lawrence and, in later years, H. E. Bates and Henry Green. Foremost among the emerging British writers he championed, however, was D. H. Lawrence, for whom Garnett was no less than a mentor in the early years of his writing career. Garnett was by then working for Duckworth and wrote to Lawrence, suggesting he submit some short stories for the American review Century. These were turned down in the end, but Garnett began reading Lawrence’s plays and poems, and recommending publication. The pattern of their intense literary exchanges was set, and as their friendship grew, so Lawrence turned to Garnett for advice on a work in progress – this was ‘Paul Morel’, which would slowly develop into Sons and Lovers, published in 1913.7 This was also the year when Lawrence’s activities as a short-story writer allowed KM and Garnett’s worlds to overlap. It is amusing to note that these were professional contacts, from one publisher and editor to another, even if, in 1913, Garnett was then a middle-aged, respected literary critic, journalist and lead editorial adviser at Duckworth’s, and KM just twenty-five years old, struggling to make a living between London and Paris, an emerging young writer and the newly appointed co-editor of a little magazine, often self-financed and managed largely from home. The poised assurance of her letter, however, suggests that, if she was daunted by the renowned publisher with whom she had to negotiate publishing rights, she certainly was not going to show it. While this is their only extant exchange in writing, their paths crossed in the years to come, when their social circles overlapped. Their first meeting would appear to be in Sussex in 1919, when they were both guests of Virginia and Leonard Woolf; KM and Virginia, however, set off for a walk on the Downs and were keener on enjoying each other’s company than conversing as a group. Then in April 1922, by which time he was working for Cape,

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Garnett wrote to his wife, announcing that he was bringing ‘the Murrys’ to the Cearne, their house in Kent. Constance Garnett, however, who was then in convalescence, was daunted by the prospect and urged her husband to bring them only if he was really sure the meeting would be a success, noting, ‘You must decide when you see her.’8 They then met for a quiet lunch in London but the Kent visit did not materialise, probably more a reflection of KM’s own increasingly frail condition by this time rather than the Garnetts’ decision not to pursue their acquaintanceship. What was said over lunch, or whether the more social visit to meet Constance would have been a success or not, can only be conjectured. What is certain is that there was intense mutual respect between them. Of KM, for example, Garnett later wrote, ‘her genius stood out so finely in the younger generation’s record’.9 By this time, Garnett was a formidable figure, intellectually as well as physically. H. E. Bates’s first impression of him was as a semi-patriarchal, semi-diabolical figure in a floppy cloak-like overcoat, a grey scarf wound round his neck like a python, and a preposterously small felt hat. He had grey hair, grey jowl-like cheeks that quivered ponderously like the gills of an ancient turkey, and he appeared to have lost himself completely. He staggered about for some moments like a great bear unable to recall the steps of a dance he had just begun, and then hung up his coat, hat, scarf and walking-stick on the hat-stand.10

His grandson Richard notes, ‘I have to admit this is very much the grandfather I remember.’11 Garnett continued, however, first to intimidate and then to inspire love, respect and affection in all those who came to know him until his death in 1937. Claire Davison Notes 1. Edward Garnett, ‘Maxim Gorky’, The Speaker, 11 March 1905, p. 570. 2. Letter to her son David (which perhaps explains the otherwise perplexing parenthetical reflection), written in 1924 and quoted in Richard Garnett, p. 50. 3. Ibid. 4. See Helen Smith’s admirable biography of Garnett (2017), which in fact opens into a cultural biography of London’s publishing world in the early twentieth century: The Uncommon Reader: A Life of Edward Garnett, p. 268. 5. See Olive Garnett (1989), Tea and Anarchy: The Bloomsbury Diary of Olive Garnett 1890–1893. 6. Edward Garnett (1900), ‘Russian Literature’, The Academy, 58: 1456 (31 March), p. 267. 7. In 1992, the editors of the new Cambridge University Press critical edition of the novel restored the text to its pre-edited state, polemically including

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the passages from the proofs that Garnett had deleted, or recommended that Lawrence delete. The edited material increased the text by nearly 10 per cent. The editors’ introduction claimed that Garnett’s intrusive ‘pruning’ amounted to ‘censorship’. See Lawrence, Sons and Lovers, Helen and Carl Baron (eds), pp. xlix–lv. See Richard Garnett, p. 310. Letter to JMM upon KM’s death; quoted in Helen Smith, p. 285. Bates, p. 11. Richard Garnett, p. 310.

[30 January 1913] [HRC] January 30th

Rhythm 57 Chancery Lane, E.C.

Dear Mr Edward Garnett. I had a letter from Mr Lawrence tonight in answer to one Id sent him asking him for a story for Rhythm.1 Oh I think the simplest thing is for me to send you his letter.2 Here it is. And we would be quite willing & glad to publish ‘The Soiled Rose’ simultaneously with the Forum.3 If that isn’t satisfactory may we trouble you to send us one of Mr Lawrence’s stories? Faithfully yours Katherine Mansfield. Notes 1. KM’s letter to Lawrence marked the beginning of their complex and often intense friendship, but also reflects her proactive approach to co-editing Rhythm. 2. See Lawrence 1979, p. 501. On 26 January, Lawrence had written: Dear Miss Mansfield, I can’t send you a story from here, not at once, because I haven’t one. But The Forum is publishing one in either March or February – I am not sure – called ‘The Soiled Rose’ – a sickly title, but not a bad story. If it were for March, might you not publish simultaneously? Ask Edward Garnett, will you – he got the Forum man to take the story for me. (p. 507) 3. The story that Lawrence proposed, ‘The Soiled Rose’, finally appeared in the first issue of the Blue Review (pp. 6–23), in May 1913, after Rhythm had been forced to close as a result of financial difficulties and mismanagement. The American mainstream journal Forum published Lawrence’s story in their March issue.

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[February 1913] [Berg] [Rhythm, 57 Chancery Lane, E.C.] Dear Sir Here it is – Im sorry. I explained to Mr Lawrence that we dont pay: I made it quite clear1 – Sincerely K.M. Notes 1. Lawrence’s letters to Garnett, dated 26 January and 1 April, confirm that he had responded positively to her request for a story contributed freely. To KM, he replied, ‘I am as poor as a church mouse, so feel quite grand giving something away’ (p. 507). ‘I wanted to do it’, he then tells Garnett; ‘[. . .] if you disapprove then I promise I won’t anymore’ (Lawrence 1979, p. 510).

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Mary Gawthorpe (1881–1973)

Introduction ‘Sleeping, not talking’ was the recreational activity that Mary Gawthorpe recorded as part of her self-portrait in the 1913 Suffrage Annual and Woman’s Who’s Who.1 It was a gently humorous but very fair assessment of the focused, self-sacrificing and intense energies that Gawthorpe devoted to the cause of women’s suffrage from 1905 until 1918. She was born in Leeds, into a lower middle-class family, but benefited from the new pupil–teacher and scholarship systems that allowed her to gain a place at Manchester’s Victoria University. Her classmates, mostly of similar origin and sharing similar ideas in terms of radical politics and women’s rights, included Christabel Pankhurst and Emily Wilding Davison. After obtaining a degree, Gawthorpe then won a music scholarship and trained as a singer and pianist – talents that she would later lend to the suffrage cause, along with her rousing public-speaking skills and her tempestuous energies – despite suffering from delicate health all her life. Although a convinced defender of women’s emancipation, Gawthorpe’s political allegiances were first with the teaching profession – she was active in the National Union of Teachers – and then the Independent Labour Party and the Fabian Society; she also joined the Leeds Theosophical Lodge, where she first heard A. R. Orage speak. She was converted to the radical suffrage cause by Christabel Pankhurst’s imprisonment, resigning from all her other undertakings, including teaching, to work single-mindedly for the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU). Soon after taking up active militant action in London, she was arrested and imprisoned in Holloway. Upon her release, she was looked after by Millicent Fawcett until she was well enough to take up full-time action again. This took her to towns and factories across the British Isles. Two successive prison sentences finally damaged her health more lastingly, prompting her to withdraw from campaigning in 1910, in favour of propagandising. In November 1911, she and another former classmate from Manchester, the now better-known suffragette and writer Dora Marsden, became co-editors of a new journal, the Freewoman – A Weekly Feminist Review. It was during the

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months preceding the launch that the two women contacted a number of writers hoping for their support, either financially or as contributors, among whom was KM.2 Judging by KM’s reply, she and Gawthorpe had not previously met, although both had been frequenting Orage’s New Age offices during the course of the previous year, and were also both friends or acquaintances of Beatrice Hastings. Marsden and Gawthorpe’s partnership at the Freewoman was shortlived, and within six months Gawthorpe had tired of office work and returned to campaigning. After another round of brutal mistreatment in prison, however, she retired from active service in Britain. She left for the United States in 1916, where she took up consciousness-raising again, moving from feminist action to labour reform once the suffrage bill was passed. She finally settled definitively in the States, marrying and becoming an American citizen in 1921. Although she remained devoted to the feminist cause, following the cause of European feminist movements avidly and helping to disseminate British suffrage writing and social histories in North America, Gawthorpe’s distance from her former comrades played against her when later accounts of the suffragette movement were written. To this day, she remains one of the movement’s lesserknown figures, sometimes referenced in notes but never the focus of any sustained account of the fight for suffrage reform. Claire Davison Notes 1. See Crawford, p. 242. 2. According to Bruce Clarke, Gawthorpe played ‘a pivotal early role in moving Marsden toward the literary orbit of the Freewoman. When the Freewoman was being planned in 1911, Marsden had relied heavily on Gawthorpe’s connections with A. R. Orage and the New Age’ (Clarke, p. 91).

[4 September 1911] [BL] 69 Clovelly Mansions, Gray’s Inn Road. W.C. 4 September 1911 Dear Miss Mary Gawthorpe, Yes, I remember hearing about the paper in the spring from Miss Marsden – I think – at B. H.’s room in Chancery Lane.1

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Thanks very much for inviting me; I should be grateful if youd put me in touch with Miss Marsden – Are particulars obtainable – on policy – price – weekly or monthly etc? Heaven knows were in need of something that is not a newspaper or a ‘Mss Bull’2 – although we certainly dont deserve it. Very sincerely yours Katherine Mansfield. Notes 1. Along with her fellow radical feminist Dora Marsden (1882–1960), a staunch defender of the WSPU and the cause of the suffragettes in the fight for women’s political representation, Gawthorpe was actively canvassing for support for the feminist magazine that they were launching. By September 1911, they were in the very final stages of preparation: the first issue of the Freewoman appeared the following November. Gawthorpe’s role as co-editor alongside Marsden lasted only three months. 2. John Bull refers to the popular cartoon character epitomising the stolid, reliable English gentleman. Caricatures of Bull flourished in the early twentieth century – especially at high points of national tension, such as the Boer Wars, the Entente Cordiale, the fight for women’s suffrage and the lead-up to World War One. KM’s evocation of a Mss Bull, presumably either his sister or his mother, would, by analogy be an archetypal English woman, the type frequently caricatured as ‘Mrs Grundy’.

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William Gerhardi (1895–1977)

Introduction The correspondence between KM and William Gerhardi1 is limited to a very short period – less than two years – at the end of her life. The warm ring of intimacy and the vibrant creative dialogue that gradually emerge, however, suggest that these letters provided one of her richest and most treasured solaces during those months, and a much-needed escape from the difficulties of her daily life: by mid-1921, KM was almost pathologically on the move, in search of a cure for her tuberculosis. The first letter that KM received from William Gerhardi, completely out of the blue, is dated 17 June 1921. Gerhardi was then an unknown undergraduate at Worcester College, Oxford, studying English and Russian literature (with additional classes at the Faculty of Music). Since childhood, he had dreamed of becoming a writer – his juvenilia include skits, dramatic sketches, short fiction and libretti.2 He was prompted to write to KM after attending a cycle of talks at the university given by JMM,3 who had made parallels between Chekhov’s stories and those by his wife – a writer unknown to Gerhardi. The potential Chekhov link, however, struck a chord. Here was a writer with whom Gerhardi was intimately familiar and whose poetics he admired. He rushed off to read KM’s stories, was by his own admission bowled over by ‘Je ne parle pas français’ and ‘The Daughters of the Late Colonel’, and was inspired to write her a letter of admiration and praise. KM responded warmly and so began their epistolary friendship; they never met, despite plans to do so, which the letters recurrently evoke. Gerhardi was soon asking permission to send her the manuscript of his first novel, to which she agreed. The key element here, and doubtless the keynote that appealed instantly to KM, was that, although an Englishman, Gerhardi had grown up and been educated in St Petersburg. By all accounts, he spoke Russian as well as, if not better than, he did English, and aspired to bring the rich fabric of Russian literature alive in his own literary productions. Although an undergraduate when he first wrote to KM, Gerhardi was no naive young student; he arrived at Oxford University as part of a

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programme for war veterans. Having trained briefly as a soldier and in cavalry regiments from 1915 (and proving, in his own words, ‘the greatest fake of a soldier alive’4), his linguistic skills assured him a commission from the War Office to work in Russia as an officer in the Allied Military Forces. Based firstly at the British Embassy in Petrograd (St Petersburg) in 1917, he experienced the February and October Revolutions at first hand; then, in 1918, he was appointed to the British Military Mission on a long and inglorious Allied expedition east, eventually reaching Vladivostock, where his fellow soldiers and commanders included Major-General Knox, Major Phelps Hodges, R. H. Bruce Lockhart and Konni Zilliacus. This overwhelming first-hand experience, and the slightly quizzical, sceptical onlooker’s eye, form the basis of the manuscript that Gerhardi sent to KM – ‘Futility: A Novel on Russian Themes’. As the letters that follow attest, KM instantly took to the novel; she wrote suggesting slight improvements (which he heeded) and also a potential publisher – Cobden-Sanderson, who accepted the manuscript. Gerhardi asked her to be the honorary ‘godmother’ of the novel, and from the second edition onwards, she was the named dedicatee. He could hardly have chosen a more suitable tutelary figure. Futility is a richly Chekhovian novel in theme, structure and character; it is also subtly Mansfieldian. The literary and stylistic presence of KM is likewise to be felt in Gerhardi’s second novel, The Polyglots (1925), as well as in his short story collection Pretty Creatures (1927). He went on to enjoy an initially highly successful literary career, and also an immensely prolific one, constantly poised between two worlds. Throughout his life, and in nearly all his professional undertakings, he drew on canny blends of both England and Russia’s literary and formal traditions in order to represent or recreate the two cultures in various media. His Anton Chehov (1923), for instance, which he mentions in passing to KM while working on the project, was the first literary monograph on the author in the English language. He also wrote an innovatively crafted biography of the Romanov dynasty, The Romanovs (1940), very much inspired by Tolstoy’s novel, War and Peace. An adamant pacifist and internationalist, Gerhardi was especially committed to Anglo-Russian affairs in times of international crisis. In 1940, he offered his services to the BBC, the British Council, the Ministry of Information and the War Office as both a linguist and go-between, and many of his finest Cold War radio broadcasts (until the 1970s), promoted broader Western perspectives on Russian culture and history, and a common transEuropean cultural heritage. Gerhardi never lost sight of KM’s decisive role in his literary apprenticeship, however. This is demonstrated by his autobiographical Memoirs of a Polyglot, for example, and also in a wealth of unpublished materials – letters to his mother and to JMM, radio interviews and journalism. For KM scholars, one item stands out in the rich Gerhardi archive now at Cambridge University: the photo she sent him (carefully preserved and

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dated November 1921), to which she refers in her letter of 21 November 1921.5 Claire Davison Notes 1. Although usually referenced as ‘Gerhardie’, Gerhardi did not add the final ‘e’ to his name until 1967. Since KM knew him by the earlier spelling, it has been maintained here. 2. The early notebooks, along with a host of letters, drafts and photographs, are now kept in the Gerhardi archive, Cambridge University: Add 8292. Surviving copies of Gerhardi’s letters to KM are now at the ATL: MS Papers 4003–38–40. 3. JMM’s lecture tour of Oxford took place in May 1921, and the lectures were subsequently published as The Problem of Style (1922). 4. Gerhardi 1973 (1931), p. 134. 5. C: Add 8292/191/7.

[23 June 1921] [ATL] c/o The Nation & The Athenaeum 10 Adelphi Terrace W.C.2 23 vi 1921 Dear Mr Gerhardi, I cannot tell you how happy I am to know that The Daughters of the Late Colonel has given you pleasure.1 While I was writing that story I lived for it but when it was finished, I confess I hoped very much that my readers would understand what I was trying to express. But very few did. They thought it was ‘cruel’; they thought I was ‘sneering’ at Jug and Constantia; they thought it was ‘drab’. And in the last paragraph I was ‘poking fun at the poor old things’. Its almost terrifying to be so misunderstood. There was a moment when I first had ‘the idea’ when I saw the two sisters as amusing, but the moment I looked deeper (let me be quite frank) I bowed down to the beauty that was hidden in their lives and to discover that was all my desire . . . All was meant, of course, to lead up to that last paragraph, when my two flowerless ones turned with that timid gesture, to the sun. ‘Perhaps now.’ And after that, it seemed to me, they died as truly as Father was dead. You will understand, therefore, how I prize your wonderfully generous letter telling me my attempt was not in vain. I can only

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repay you by trying not to fail you in the future. And that, believe me, I shall do. Yours sincerely, Katherine Mansfield Montana Switzerland Notes 1. Gerhardi had spontaneously contacted KM, after hearing JMM lecture in Oxford and evoke the writings of his wife. Gerhardi’s letter, dated 17 June 1921, begins, Dear Miss Mansfield, I hope you won’t mind if I write to tell you how extremely beautiful I think your story is. I am speaking of ‘The Daughters of the Late Colonel’ I have only just read it, and I have never read anything of yours before. I think it is, and in particular the last long paragraph towards the end, of a quite amazing beauty.’ (ATL: MS Papers 4003–37–1) Referring to exactly the same sentences that reviewers and readers had, according to KM, misconstrued, Gerhardi insists, ‘The restraint of that particular paragraph is such that the climax leaves one breathless. I hope you won’t think it presumptious [sic] on my part to point out to you these qualities in your own work’ (ATL: MS Papers 4003–37–1–2).

[21 October 1921] [ATL] Chalet des Sapins Montana-sur-Sierre (Valais) Switzerland. 21 x 1921 Dear Mr Gerhardi, I am very honoured by your request.1 The trouble is I live so far away. Would you dare to send a new-born child all this distance? I would read it with pleasure, and tell you just what I think. Thats what you want, isn’t it? But I think the distance will frighten you & I shall perfectly understand if it does. Swiss postmen are honest creatures, once it gets to Switzerland. That’s true. Do what you think best. Yours sincerely Katherine Mansfield.

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Notes 1. Gerhardi had been looking in vain for a publisher for his first novel, completed since his return from the Allied Intervention and inspired both by the mission and by the Chekhovian sense of ‘futility’ that had pervaded it. As he records in his memoirs, ‘Many months later, ignored by [Hugh] Walpole and [Arnold] Bennett it occurred to me that Katherine Mansfield might like my “Futility” and if so, find a publisher.’ See Gerhardi 1973 (1931), p. 172).

[4 November 1921] [ATL] [Chalet des Sapins, Montana-sur-Sierre] 4 xi l921 Your novel arrived safely today. I am going to read it this week-end. V. many Thanks for the impressive coupons.1 K.M. Notes 1. The precise sense of ‘coupon’ here, as elsewhere in KM’s letters, is unclear. The word was used at the time to denote press cuttings, source documents, proofs or evidence, travel papers and tokens of exchange (for example, during rationing). Given both KM’s relaxed sense of creative multilingualism and Gerhardi’s impressive ease as a polyglot, a French resonance may well be implied (that is, cuttings).

[12 November 1921] [ATL] Chalet des Sapins Montana-sur-Sierre Valais xii xi 1921 Dear Mr Gerhardi, First of all, immediately, I think your novel is awfully good.1 I congratulate you. It is a living book. What I mean by that is, it is warm; one can put it down and it goes on breathing. I think it has defects. But before we speak of them Id like to tell you the things I chiefly admired.

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I think, perhaps, the best moment is at the end; the scene of your hero’s return and his walk with Nina. There you really are discovered – a real writer. There is such feeling, such warmth, in those chapters – Nina’s ‘whimsical’ voice, those kittens, the sofa with broken springs, the ‘speck of soot on your nose’ – and then, at the very end the steamer that would not go. I am not quoting these things at random, for their charm. But because, taken altogether, they seem to convey to the reader just the ‘mood’ you wished to convey. I think at the very beginning the tone is just a trifle tragic as it ought not to be. But once you are launched its remarkable how quickly and easily you take the reader into that family; and how real you make the life, the ways, the surroundings. Fanny Ivanovna is very good. I see her. But if you were here I would go into details in a way I cant in a letter. And another thing that is good is the play of humour over it all. That makes it flexible, warm, easy, as it should be. Only in chapter XI, in your description of the ‘sisters’ I think you falsify the tone; it seems to me. You begin to tell us what we must feel about them, what the sight of them perched on the chairs and sofa really meant, and thats not necessary. One feels they are being ‘shown off’, rather than seen. And you seem in that chapter to be hinting at something, even a state of mind of your hero’s, which puts the reader off the scent, a little. But thats just my feeling, of course. Now we come to your second ‘plot’, as it were, the Admiral, Sir Hugh & the Russian General. What opportunities you must have had, what excellent use you made of those opportunities. This part of your book is interesting for several reasons. I mean the ‘situation’ quâ situation is immensely attractive, and your principal characters are painted to the Life – – They are almost too good to be true. Your Russian General is a rare find. I have known just such another, though he wasn’t a General. But the beating in the face, in my friends case was ‘beaten to death, simply –’, and the reason was ‘to use the English formula the man was a blighter. . .’2 I think the only thing that does not convince me is Nina’s novel – that feels ‘strained.’3 It seems to stand out too clearly, to be out of focus, even. Its such a remarkable thing to have done that instead of wondering why she did it, one stops short at how. It gives the reader the wrong kind of shock. Two things more I want to say. One is there are so many unexpected awfully good things that one comes upon as one reads, with a small shock of delight. Its as though, being taken by the author through his garden you suddenly discover, half tucked away, another flowery tree. ‘So you have these in your garden, too . . .’ Thats the feeling. It makes one want to see more of your work. The other is – I don’t think this book really holds together enough, even allowing for the title. It ought to be more squeezed and pressed and moulded into shape and wrung out – if you know what I mean. And sometimes the writing is careless. All the same, if I were you,

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I would publish it more or less as it stands. I would let it go. You will have to take out a good many of the Russian expressions and single words.4 I expect you hear them so distinctly in your brain that you feel they must be there. But they will put people off. – – – At that moment I lit a cigarette & reread what I have written, with dismay. In trying to be honest I sound carping and cold. Not a bit what I feel. Let me end where I began by warmly, sincerely congratulating you. Thats the most important thing of all. And when I say I don’t think your novel ‘holds together enough’ please remember I’m speaking ‘ideally’. I hope you will write to me. If you feel offended please tell me. Its not easy to talk man to man at a distance. And heres your book back again. The Swiss who can let nothing in or out of their country without taking a share, have, I am afraid, nibbled the edges of the cover. I press your hand warmly5 Yours sincerely Katherine Mansfield. P.S. The rain thumped. Dont you mean the rain drummed? Notes 1. KM had read the first draft of the novel and not the typescript, which, on KM’s recommendation, was finally published by Cobden-Sanderson. A copy of this draft manuscript is now held at the University Library, Cambridge, and attests to the attention that Gerhardi gave to KM’s recommendations here, almost systematically revising the draft in accordance with her advice. Gerhardi’s hand-written inscription at the foot of this letter indeed underlines this: ‘Note. “Futility” was then overhauled, thanks to K. M.’s helpful advice. W. G.’ See C: MS–Add. 8292–37–99. Publisher’s proofs of the novel, handcorrected by the author, are now at the ATL. 2. KM’s attention to details of plot and her perceptive character analysis confirm that she had taken her role as reader to heart. The Russian friend in question is Koteliansky, who, as Leonard Woolf, KM and D. H. Lawrence, among others, observe, was particularly fond of the English word ‘blighter’. 3. In the manuscript draft of the novel, Gerhardi favours a circular narrative structure: Nina (one of the three Bursanov sisters) is the character who, at the end, undertakes to write the story of the family fiascos. The device that KM singles out for its ‘strained’ effect is indeed written out of the published version, to be replaced instead by the narrator himself deciding, as very meagre consolation for having lost the woman he loves, to tell their story instead. 4. KM’s advice is heeded within limits, in terms of retaining a material sense of the Russian language hovering beneath the surface of the purportedly English voices. The published novel retains a good many exclamations and passing, quite transparent, Russicisms, which are not unlike the Gallicisms KM delights in, in her letters to fellow Francophones – and notably Anne Estelle Rice, as KM’s correspondence with her attests. See Volume 2 of this edition.

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5. KM is here using a literal translation of a classic Russian formula for closing letters, which she also used with Koteliansky, and which figured in the Chekhov letters they co-translated; they were not retained in the published Athenaeum selection that they co-signed.

[21 November 1921] [ATL] Chalet des Sapins Montana-sur-Sierre Valais 21 xi 1921 Dear Mr Gerhardi, Your fearfully nice letter makes me wish that instead of upsetting your table you would sit down at mine & drink tea and talk.1 But I hasten to answer it for this reason. Have you found a publisher for your novel? I know Cobden-Sanderson very well.2 I should be delighted to write to him about it if you would care for me to do so. He is a publisher who has only been going for a couple of years or so but he has a very good name already. He produces his books excellently; he takes an interest in them . . . If you care to send him yours I shall ask Middleton Murry to write as well. For I confess, I let him see your novel. Was that a bad breach of confidence? I hope not. He agreed, enthusiastically that it ought to be published . . . Yes, he did remember you at that lecture; as soon as I mentioned your name he recalled the occasion. You know – if I may speak in confidence – I shall not be ‘fashionable’ long. They will find me out; they will be disgusted; they will shiver in dismay. I like such awfully unfashionable things – and people – I like sitting on doorsteps, & talking to the old woman who brings quinces, & going for picnics in a jolting little waggon, and listening to the kind of music they play in public gardens on warm evenings, and talking to captains of shabby little steamers, and in fact, to all kinds of people in all kinds of places. But what a fatal sentence to begin. It goes on for ever. In fact one could spend a whole life finishing it. But you see I am not a high brow. Sunday lunches and very intricate conversations on Sex and that ‘fatigue’ which is so essential and that awful ‘brightness’ which is even more essential – these things I flee from. I’m in love with life – terribly. Such a confession is enough to waft Bliss out of the Union . . . I am sending you a postcard of myself & the two knobs of the electric light.3 The photographer insisted they should be there as well.Yes I live in Switzerland because I have consumption. But I am not an invalid.

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Consumption doesn’t belong to me. Its only a horrid stray dog who has persisted in following me for four years, so I am trying to lose him among these mountains. But ‘permanently compelled’ oh – no! If you are ever in the mood to talk about writing I hope you will believe me when I say how happy I shall be – as a ‘fellow worker’ – to listen. I am glad you enjoyed Bertie Russell.4 ‘Nimble’ is just the word for him. Goodbye. I hope you will write wonderful stories; numbers of them. One could not wish anyone greater happiness than that. Yours sincerely, Katherine Mansfield. Notes 1. Unfortunately, like most of the letters that Gerhardi sent to KM, the one she evokes does not appear to have survived. 2. Richard Cobden-Sanderson (1884–1964) was the son of the Arts and Crafts printer, bookbinder and publisher Thomas James Cobden-Sanderson – the renowned founder of the Doves Press and the much-esteemed Doves typeface – and the militant suffragette and socialist reformer Anne Cobden. Richard Cobden-Sanderson had begun his own publishing company in Holborn, London, and was working with the same literary agent as KM, J. B. Pinker. As KM’s indications make clear, the same love of beautifully bound and printed books ran from father to son. 3. Gerhardi kept the signed photograph, which is now in the archive of collected papers at Cambridge University Library. It is the portrait taken with a threequarter profile, showing KM in a V-necked jersey – which now features on the front jacket of CW4, but without the ‘knobs of [. . .] electric light’ reflecting on the backdrop. 4. Richard Cobden-Sanderson’s father was the godfather of the philosopher, writer and historian Bertrand Russell. Russell had recently returned from China and Japan (where the local press reported that he died of pneumonia), and had been giving talks on his extended stay there. However, KM’s comments may imply that Gerhardi had enjoyed a work by Russell rather than a talk; in this case, given Gerhardi’s own background, the work by Russell that was most likely to attract his attention was his 1920 pamphlet The Theory and Practice of Bolshevism, or the series of articles on early Soviet Russia published in 1920–1 in the Nation, following Russell’s earlier visit to Russia, which included an extended interview with Lenin.

[30 November 1921] [ATL] Montana November. Dear Mr Gerhardi, I wrote to Mr Cobden-Sanderson on the 28th of this month. I do hope you will arrive at some satisfactory arrangement with him. Many

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thanks for your letter. Dont think Im kind. I feel so strongly that writers ought to have a real claim on each other. K.M.

[4 February 1922] [ATL] Victoria Palace Hotel 6 Rue Blaise Desgoffe Rue de Rennes Paris iv ii 1922 Dear Mr Gerhardi, Wont you let me know what has happened about your novel. I have so often wondered. I hope you will write and tell me when it is going to be published Another thing. Do you know Lady Ottoline Morrell who lives at Garsington? Would you care to? She is a personality and her house is exquisite and one meets there people who might ‘interest’ you. Im thinking of the literary point of view as well as the other. I have come down from my mountains and am living in Paris until May. Oh, the flower shops after nothing but snow and pine trees! It is devilish not to be rich enough to go inside them. I stand and stare like a little boy in front of a pastry cooks. Yours very sincerely, Katherine Mansfield.

[8 February 1922] [ATL] Victoria Palace Hotel 6–8 Rue Blaise Desgoffe Rue de Rennes Paris. 8 ii 1922 Dear Mr Gerhardi, I can’t tell you how honoured I am by your asking me to be Godmother.1 I have the warmest feelings towards your little nouveau né2 and shall watch its first steps with all the eagerness a parent could desire. I cast about in my mind as to what to send it. Not a silver mug. No, not a mug. They only tilt them over their noses and breathe into

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them. Besides, the handle of mine, being silver was always red hot, so that I had to lap up what was inside, like a kitten . . . The matter I see demands time for consideration. But very seriously, I am most happy Cobden-Sanderson liked your book. I am sure it will be a success. And I look forward to reading it again and making other people read it. All success to you and many thanks. Please do not praise me too much. It is awfully nice to be praised, but at the same time it makes me hang my head. I have done so little. I should have done so much more. There are these rows of stories, all waiting. . . All the same, I cant deny that praise is like a most lovely present, a bright bouquet coming to one (but gently! I hope) out of the air. Dont imagine for one moment though, that I think myself ‘wonderful’. That is far from the truth. I take writing too seriously to be able to flatter myself. Ive only begun. The only story that satisfies me to any extent is the one you understand so well ‘The Daughters of the Late Col.’ & parts of Je ne parle pas. But Heavens! what a journey there is before one! By the way, for proof of your being a writer you had only to mention a bath chair & it crept into your handwriting. It was a queer coincidence. I had just been writing a bath chair myself and poor old Aunt Aggie who had lived in one & died in one, glided off, so that one saw her in her purple velvet steering carefully among the stars and whimpering faintly as was her terrestial wont when the wheel jolted over a particularly large one.3 But these conveyances are not to be taken lightly or wantonly. They are terrible things. No less. I hope if you do come to Paris at Easter you will come and see me. By then I expect I shall have a little flat. I am on the track of a minute appartement with a wax-bright salon where I shall sit like a bee writing short stories in a honeycomb. But these retreats are hard to find. I am here undergoing treatment by a Russian doctor Ivan Manoukhin, who claims to have discovered a cure for tuberculosis by the application of X rays. It is a mystery. But it sounds marvellous. And at present I am full of wandering blue rays like a deep sea fish. The only real trouble is its terribly expensive. So much so that when I read the price I felt like Tchekhov wanted Anna Ivanovna to feel when she read his story in a hot bath4 – as though someone had slung her in the water & she wanted to run sobbing out of the bath room. But if it all comes true it means one will be invisible once more – no more being offered chairs and given arms at sight. A close season for ever for hot water bottles and glasses of milk. Well people dont realise the joy of being invisible – its almost the greatest joy of all. But Ill have to write at least a story a week until next May, which is a little bit frightening. Oxford, from the papers sounds very sinister.5 And why when people receive anonymous boxes of chocolate do they always wait to hand them round until friends come to tea. What ghouls they are, to be sure! Professor X who saved the lives of Doctor and Mrs F. sounds profoundly

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moved. I should feel very tempted were I in Oxford to – hm – hm – better not. No doubt the secret police has steamed this letter over a cup of warm tea . . . Goodbye. We will leave Lady Ottoline then. Perhaps if it is a very good strawberry season you might one day much later care to go over – she is not at all fierce. I must tell you, Mr Gerhardi, that you write the most delightful letters. Yours very sincerely Katherine Mansfield. My new book I am terrified to say comes out on the 23rd.6 I had wanted to send you a copy; I shall not be able to. When I am rich I shall send you a copy at once. Notes 1. Gerhardi had invited KM to become the book’s honorary ‘godmother’; she is the named dedicatee in the 1922 American edition and in the subsequent reprints of the Cobden-Sanderson edition. Gerhardi’s hand-written note in the edition bought by Jacques Schwartz, an American manuscript collector, reads, ‘This is my first book, dedicated to dear, dear Katherine Mansfield, who found me my first publisher, after thirteen had refused it’ (ATL: MSX–2934). 2. (Fr.): Newborn baby. 3. KM’s ‘Aunt Aggie in a bath chair’ features in the story ‘Mr and Mrs Williams’ (CW2, pp. 472–5). 4. KM refers here to Chekhov’s account of his ongoing work on drafts for a novel, described in a letter to his friend, the journalist and publisher Alexei Sergueyevich Souvorin, dated 23 February 1891. This letter is not among those KM co-translated with Koteliansky, although it may have been in the collection that was lost. In Garnett’s translation, the extract reads as follows: ‘I shall bring Anna Pavlovna a copy on vellum paper to read in the bathroom. I should like something to sting her in the water, so that she would run out of the bathroom sobbing.’ See Constance Garnett 1920, pp. 230–1. 5. There had been a spate of ‘poisoned chocolate’ scares in the wake of the sensational ‘Armstrong Case’ currently on trial in Hay, in which Major Herbert Rowe-Armstrong was being tried for the attempted murder of a fellow solicitor, Mr Oswald Martin, having allegedly tried to kill his colleague, firstly by anonymously sending him a box of Fullers chocolates, containing arsenic, and then by serving him a poisoned chocolate scone at a tea party. In the case of the Oxford alert just that week, The Times on 6 February had reported: Suspect Chocolates at Oxford – Mysterious Gift to Vice-Chancellor. Suspicion has arisen that a box of chocolates recently sent to the ViceChancellor of Oxford University, Dr Farnell, may contain poison. The box reached him by post, bearing the Oxford postmark, and the box was

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collected letters of katherine mansfield, vol. 1 wrapped in brown paper. [. . .] When the chocolates were received, they were covered with white powder. This was not regarded with suspicion, but at tea afterwards the attention of a university professor was called to them. He examined them, and advised Mrs. Farnell not to eat any pending further investigation. (p. 7)

6. The Garden Party and Other Stories, published by Constable & Co.

[3 March 1922] [ATL] Paris 3 iii 1922 Dear Mr Gerhardi, I meant – only the first chapter – not the ‘confession’.1 No, I don’t think thats a bit too ‘tragic’. I can assure you I never stick pins into my cat; he’s far more likely to stick pins into me. And the reason why I used the ‘florid’ image was that I was writing about a garden party.2 It seemed natural, then, that the day should close like a flower. People had been looking at flowers all the afternoon, you see. Thank you for your delightful letter. I shall write en quelques jours.3 Just for the moment Im having rather a fight with the rayons X.4 Yours ever Katherine Mansfield. Notes 1. In a pencil-written note at the bottom of the postcard, Gerhardi adds, ‘“Futility” in the original version’, confirming that they are still discussing his revisions to the novel following KM’s advice, even if it had now been accepted for publication. See C: MS–Add. 8292–37–99. 2. A second pencil-written annotation by Gerhardi sheds light on KM’s comment. The note reads, ‘I had written jokingly to K.M. of a criticism overheard on that score.’ Despite KM’s mention of a ‘garden party’ here, the precise nature of this exchange remains opaque, since ‘The Garden Party’ is not one of her most strikingly floral stories, and the closing note (and, indeed, the whole sorrowful closing sequence) refers back to the musical subtext of the story, so that the story hardly closes ‘like a flower’. In the absence of any further elucidations, and indeed lacking most of the letters Gerhardi himself wrote, such details must remain ambiguous. Such queries notwithstanding, letters like this one attest the extent to which both KM and Gerhardi had taken their role as privileged reader of each other’s work to heart, and were discussing details of their writerly craft with a degree of mutual respect and a

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discerning eye – something KM had hardly done with other friends, however intimate or trusted. 3. (Fr.): In a few days’ time. 4. (Fr.): X-rays. By using the French term, KM puts the emphasis on the actual rays penetrating the body. The French term for an X-ray was ‘radiographie’.

[11 March 1922] [ATL] Paris 11 iii 1922 My dear Mr Gerhardi, Please do not think of me as a kind of boa-constrictor who sits here gorged and silent after having devoured your two delightful letters, without so much as a ‘thank you’. If gratitude were the size and shape to go into a pillar box the postman would have staggered to your door days ago. But Ive not been able to send anything more tangible. I have been – I am ill. In two weeks I shall begin to get better. But just for the moment I am down below in the cabin, as it were, and the deck, where all the wise and happy people are walking up and down & Mr Gerhardi drinks a hundred cups of tea with a hundred schoolgirls is far away – But I only tell you this to explain my silence. Im always very much ashamed of being ill; I hate to plead illness. Its taking an unfair advantage. So please let us forget about it . . . Ive been wanting to say – how strange how delightful it is you should feel as you do about The Voyage.1 No one has mentioned it to me but Middleton Murry. But when I wrote that little story I felt that I was on that very boat, going down those stairs, smelling the smell of the saloon. And when the stewardess came in and said ‘we’re rather empty, we may pitch a little’ – I can’t believe that my sofa did not pitch. And one moment I had a little bun of silk-white hair and a bonnet and the next I was Fenella hugging the swan neck umbrella. It was so vivid – terribly vivid – especially as they drove away and heard the sea as slowly it turned on the beach. Why – I don’t know. It wasn’t a memory of a real experience. It was a kind of possession. I might have remained the Grandma for ever after if the wind had changed that moment. And that would have been a little bit embarrassing for Middleton Murry . . . But don’t you feel that when you write? I think one always feels it. Only sometimes it is a great deal more definite. Yes, I agree with you the insulting reference to Miss Brill would have been better in French.2 Also there is a printer’s error ‘chère’ for ‘cherie’. Ma petite chère sounds ridiculous.3 . .

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And yes, that is what I tried to convey in The Garden Party. The diversity of life and how we try to fit in everything, Death included. That is bewildering for a person Laura’s age. She feels things ought to happen differently. First one and then another. But life isn’t like that. We haven’t the ordering of it. Laura says ‘But all these things must not happen at once.’ And Life answers ‘Why not? How are they divided from each other.’ And they do all happen, it is inevitable. And it seems to me that there is beauty in that inevitability.4 I wonder if you happened to see a review of my book in ‘Time and Tide’.5 It was written by a very fierce lady indeed. Beating in the face was nothing to it. It frightened me when I read it. I shall never dare to come to England. I am sure she would have my blood like the Fish in Cock Robin.6 But why is she so dreadfully violent; one would think I was a wife beater, at least, or that I wrote all my stories with a carving knife. It is a great mystery. Is it Spring yet in Oxford? Here, as the taxi hurls me to the clinic and back I look everywhere for signs. But the March lion is still prowling after the March lamb and now it rains now its sunny. When I go down in the lift and its raining the little lift-boy says ‘C’est l’hiver encore’7 but when I come up and theres a gleam of sun he cries ‘Dans un mois il serait pleine été.’8 I like the French for these large remarks . . . They are specially comforting after the cautious Swiss. Please forgive a dull letter. As soon as I am really ‘up’ again I shall write another. But this goes with my warm, sincere thanks, dear Mr Gerhardi, for your wonderfully generous praise – Ill try & deserve some of it one day. Yours ever Katherine Mansfield. Notes 1. See ‘The Voyage’, CW2, pp. 371–9. As a fellow long-distance traveller with strong memories of travelling by sea, Gerhardi’s sensitive response to KM’s story makes particular sense, and points to just one of the common features in their life stories (that is, the sense of being partly in abeyance, a liminal figure belonging in no one place), which meant they quickly slotted into a warm, almost conspiratorial friendship, understanding both how life felt, and how the poetics of narrative could best capture this. 2. Presumably referring to the sarcastic comments overheard by Miss Brill at the bandstand: ‘It’s her fu–fur that is so funny,’ giggled the girl. ‘It’s exactly like a fried whiting’ (CW2, p. 374). In French translation, she would say something like ‘On dirait du merlan frit’; in French, the expression ‘faire des yeux de merlan frit’ (to have eyes like fried whiting) means to assume a pretentious, affected or sanctimonious air. To be called a ‘merlan’, a whiting, especially in the eighteenth century, was an insult, implying foppishness, ridicule or effeminacy. 3. Unfortunately, to this day, the printer’s error has persisted in all traced editions of ‘Miss Brill’. The mistake, replacing ‘darling’ by ‘dear’, means not only

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that the grammatical correction of the endearment is impaired (‘ma petite chère’ – my little dear – not being accepted usage since ‘chère’ here is adjectival) but also that the cajoling, condescendingly sexual insinuations of ‘ma petite chérie’ (my little darling) are lost. As KM underlines here, the essential, searing pathos of ‘The Garden Party’ comes from the setting side by side of dreadful, yet everyday, accidental tragedy and festive anticipation and merriment. See CW2, pp. 401–14. Time and Tide published Mary Agnes Hamilton’s succinct but scathing review of The Garden Party on 3 March 1922, p. 204. See above, p. 52, n. 7. In the English nursery rhyme ‘Who Killed Cock Robin?’, the Fish replies to the question, ‘Who caught his blood?’, ‘I, said the Fish / With my little dish, / I caught his blood.’ (Fr.): It’s still winter. (Fr.): In a month’s time, it’ll be the height of summer.

[14 June 1922] [ATL] Hotel d’Angleterre Montana-sur-Sierre (Valais) Suisse 14 vi 1922 My dear Mr Gerhardi, Your handwriting on the envelope made me feel a guilty thing; I hardly dared open the letter. And when I did there wasn’t a single reproach in it. That was very kind of you – very generous. The truth is I have been on the pen point of writing to you for weeks and weeks but always Paris – horrid Paris – snatched my pen away. And during the latter part of the time I spent nearly every afternoon in a tight, bony dentist’s chair while a dreadfully callous American gentleman with an electric light on his forehead explored the root canals or angled with devilish patience for the lurking nerves. Sometimes, at black moments, I think that when I die I shall go to the DENTISTS . . . I am glad you did not come to Paris after all;1 we should not have been able to talk. Its too distracting. It is like your ‘twelve complete teas ices and all’ – all the time. One is either eating them, or watching other people eat them, or seeing them swept away or hearing the jingle of their approach, or waiting for them, or paying for them, or trying to get out of them (hardest of all). Here, its ever so much better. If, on your walk today you pass one of those signs with a blameless hand pointing to the Hotel d’Angleterre, please follow. The cherries are just ripe; they are cutting the hay. But there are English delights, too. Our speciality is the forest à deux pas,2 threaded with little green paths and

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hoarse quick little streams. If it happens to be sunset, too, I could show you something very strange. Behind this hotel there is a big, natural lawn – a wide stretch of green turf. When the herds that are being driven home in the evening come to it they go wild with delight. Staid, black cows begin to dance, to leap, to cut capers. Quiet, refined little sheep who look as though buttercups would not melt in their mouths suddenly begin to jump, to spin round, to bound off like rocking-horses. The goats are complete Russian Ballet dancers; they are almost too brilliant. But the cows are the most surprising and the most naive. You will admit that cows don’t look like born dancers – do they? And yet my cows are light as feathers, bubbling over with fun. Please tell dear little Miss Helsingfors that its quite true they do jump over the moon.3 I have seen them do it – or very nearly. Ah, Mr Gerhardi, I love the country! To lie on the grass again and smell the clover! Even to feel a little ant creep up one’s sleeve was a kind of comfort . . . after one had shaken it down again . . . I have been thinking about your book today. I see it is announced in the Nation.4 I do feel little Cobden-Sanderson is the right man for a first novel. He has not too many people; hes very keen; and he advertises well. Also he has a very good reputation and people are curious about his books. They look out for them. I am very anxious to see a copy and you may be sure I shall tell my friends not to miss it. What are you writing now? Have you begun another novel? Is it possible to write at Oxford. You always sound so gay – and I feel the little telegraph boy you mention in your letter was the last of a long line of little telegraph boys. And shall you go to Garsington, I wonder? I don’t mind Lady Ottoline’s dresses. If you know her you accept them; you wouldn’t have them different. They are all part of her. But they do offend your sense of the très chic, I feel . . . It is a pity. Julian, the daughter, is very attractive. And she’s so fresh, so unspoilt, young in a way your Nina is young.5 I am in the middle of a very long story written in the same style – horrible expression! – as The Daughters of the Late Colonel. I enjoy writing it so much that even after I am asleep – I go on. The scene is the South of France in early Spring. There is a real love story in it, too, and rain, buds, frogs, a thunderstorm, pink spotted Chinese dragons.6 There is no happiness greater than this leading a double life. But its mysterious, too. How is it possible to be here in this remote, deserted hotel and at the same time to be leaning out of the window of the Villa Martin listening to the rain thrumming so gently on the leaves and smelling the night-scented stocks with Milly? (I shall be awfully disappointed if you don’t like Milly.)7 Have you read Bunin’s stories. They are published in English by the Hogarth Press. The Gentleman from San Fransisco is good, but I dont care much for the others. 8 He tries too hard. He’s too determined you shall not miss the cucumbers and the dyed whiskers. And the last

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story called Son I can’t for the life of me understand. I met Bunin in Paris and because he had known Tchekhov I wanted to talk of him.9 But alas! Bunin said ‘Tchekhov? Ah – Ah – oui, j’ai connu Tchekhov. Mais il y a longtemps – longtemps.’ And then a pause. And then, graciously, ‘II a écrit des belles choses.’ And that was the end of Tchekhov. ‘Vous avez lu mon dernier . . .’10 I shall be here until the end of August. After that I go back to Paris for two months and then I want to go to Italy to a little place called Arco near the Lake of Garda for the winter. When you are in the mood please write to me and tell me what you are writing. I am sorry you did not like The Fly and glad you told me. I hated writing it. Yes I remember the story about the little boy and the buzzing insects. His father came home from the town and found him sitting up to the table cutting Kings & Queens out of a pack of playing cards. I can always see him.11 Here comes my ancient landlady with a cup of tea made from iceland moss and hay flowers. She is determined to make a new man of me – good old soul – and equally convinced that nothing but herb tea will do it. My inside must be in a state of the most profound astonishment. Goodbye for now. All success – every good wish for your book. And don’t be grateful to me, please; Ive done nothing. Yours ever Katherine Mansfield. Notes 1. This passing mention points to one of a whole series of meetings planned but which never materialised, since either KM or Gerhardi was distracted, ill, indisposed or otherwise held up at the last minute. Until KM’s last letter, however, they continued to make plans for their first encounter. 2. (Fr.): Just two steps away. 3. In the children’s nursery rhyme ‘Hey Diddle Diddle’, the cow jumps over the moon. Miss Helsingfors has not been identified but the name could well be a sobriquet – Helsingfors being the old name for the Finnish capital of Helsinki, where Gerhardi’s brother Victor had settled after leaving St Petersburg during the revolutionary upheavals. 4. The column ‘From the Publisher’s Table’ in the Nation and Athenaeum, published on 6 June 1922, announces a series of new publications from CobdenSanderson, including ‘a first novel on Russian themes by Mr. William Gerhardi. Mr. Gerhardi is an Anglo-Russian who, as military attaché to the British Embassy, Petrograd, saw both revolutions. His novel, entitled “Futility” is a tragi-comedy of contemporary existence in Russia’ (p. 386). 5. Nina is one of the three Bursanov sisters who make up the very Chekhovian trio of sisters in Futility. Whimsical, fickle and capricious, she is hopelessly adored by the narrator, Andrei Andreiech, the equally Chekhovian, hapless, constantly prevaricating ‘hero’.

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6. These details are all to be found in KM’s ‘The Doves’ Nest’, a story she apparently became disenchanted with. See CW2, pp. 448–61. See also KM’s notes on the story in progress in CW4, p. 375: I finished Mr and Mrs Dove yesterday. I am not altogether pleased with it. It’s a little bit made up. It’s not inevitable. I mean to imply that those two may not be happy together – that that is the kind of reason for which a young girl marries. But have I done so? I don’t think so. Besides it’s not strong enough. I want to be nearer, far, far nearer than that. I want to use all my force even when I am tracing a fine line. And I have a sneaking notion that I have, at the end, used the doves unwarrantably. 7. Milly Fawcett is the protagonist of ‘The Doves’ Nest’, an incisive, alert character desperately longing for a change in her sedate life at the Villa Martin. See, for example, p. 452: ‘Milly felt a yearning – what was it? – it was like a yearning to fly.’ 8. The Hogarth Press edition of Bunin’s stories, The Gentleman from San Francisco and Other Stories, had been published earlier that year. The title story had been co-translated by D. H. Lawrence and Koteliansky, and both Leonard and Virginia Woolf collaborated on the copy-editing of all the stories in the volume. 9. KM met Bunin via the intermediary of Manoukhin in late May 1922. See above, p. 452, n. 9. 10. (Fr.): ‘Ah yes, I knew Chekhov once. But long, long ago [. . .] He wrote some fine things [. . .] Have you read my latest?’ 11. Gerhardi and KM here refer to the little six-year-old boy Petya in Chekhov’s short story ‘Not Wanted’, published in 1917 in the collection The Party and Other Stories and translated by Constance Garnett. The title of KM’s 1922 collection, The Garden Party and Other Stories could thus be seen as a homage to the Russian author she so revered.

[10 July 1922] [ATL] Hotel Chateau Belle Vue Sierre (Valais) 10 vii 1922 My dear Mr Gerhardi, Many many thanks for your book.1 I am delighted to have it, and I think it looks awfully nice. Ive read it again from beginning to end. How good it is! (Here, as you don’t believe in such a thing as modesty you will say ‘Yes isn’t it.’) But I can only agree. Don’t change, Mr Gerhardi. Go on writing like that. I mean with that freshness and

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warmth and suppleness, with that warm emotional tone and not that dreadful glaze of ‘intellectuality’ which is like a curse upon so many English writers . . . And there’s another thing. You sound so free in your writing. Perhaps that is as important as anything. I don’t know why so many of our poor authors should be in chains, but there it is – a dreadful clanking sounds through their books, and they never can run away, never take a leap, never risk anything . . . In fact its high time we took up our pens and struck a blow for freedom. To begin with – what about Walpole?2 He is a ripe, fat victim. I agree with every word you say about him, his smugness is unbearable, his ‘Oh my Friends let us have Adventures’ is simply the worst possible pretence.3 You see the truth is he hasn’t a word to say. It is a tremendous adventure to him if the dog gets into the kitchen & licks a saucepan. Perhaps it is the Biggest Adventure of all to breathe ‘Good Night, dear Lady’ as the Daughter of the County hands him his solid silver bedroom candlestick. All is show, all is made up, all is rooted in vanity. I am ashamed of going to the same school with him – but there you are. And he’s Top Boy with over £7000 a year and America bowing to the earth to him . . . . Its very painful. But after this long parenthesis let me come back to ‘Futility’ one moment. Shall I tell you what I think you may have to guard against? You have a very keen, very delightful sense of humour. Just on one or two occasions (par exemple when you took Nina into a corner & slapped her hand to the amusement of the others)4 I think you give it too full a rein. I wonder if you feel what I mean? To me, that remark trembles towards – – – a kind of smartness – a something too easy to be worth doing. I hope one day, we shall have a talk about this book. Let me once more wish it & you every possible success. Now for your photograph. Its so kind of you to have sent it to me. I am very happy to have it. When I possess a room with a mantelpiece again on the mantelpiece you will stand. Judging by it you look as though you were very musical. Are you? I am extremely interested to hear of your book on Tchekhov.5 Its just the moment for a book on Tchekhov. I have read, these last weeks, Friday Nights by Edward Garnett which contains a long essay on him.6 But little is said & what is said doesn’t much matter. For instance, Garnett seems greatly impressed by the importance of T’s scientific training as a doctor, not the indirect importance (I could understand that) but the direct. He quotes as a proof The Party & T’s letter in which he says ‘the ladies say I am quite right in all my symptoms when I describe the confinement.’7 But in spite of T’s letter that story didn’t need a doctor to write it. There’s not a thing any sensitive writer could not have discovered without a medical degree. The truth of that ‘importance’ is far more subtle. People on the whole understand Tchekhov very little. They persist in looking at him from a certain angle & he’s a

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man that won’t stand that kind of gaze. One must get round him – see him, feel him as a whole. By the way isn’t Tolstoi’s little essay on The Darling a small masterpiece of stupidity.8 – And when you say you don’t think T. was really modest. Isn’t it perhaps that he always felt, very sincerely, that he could have done so much more than he did. He was tormented by Time, and by his desire to live as well as to write. ‘Life is given us but once.’ 9 Yet, when he was not working he had a feeling of guilt; he felt he ought to be. And I think he very often had that feeling a singer has who has sung once & would give almost anything for the chance to sing the same song over again – Now he could sing it . . . But the chance doesn’t return. I suppose all writers, little and big, feel this but T. more than most. But I must not write about him; I could go on and on and on . . . Yes, the title of your novel is lovely, and from the practical standpoint excellent. I see so many pretty little hands stretched towards the library shelf . . . ‘About Love’.10 I don’t see how any body could avoid buying a copy. But très serieusement,11 I am so glad you are at work on it. Do you intend to ‘adopt a literary career’ as they say? Or do you have to make literature your mistress.12 I hope Bolton is not a permanent address if you dislike it so.13 I was there 17 years ago. I remember eating a cake with pink icing while a dark intense lady told me of her love for Hadyn Coffyn14 & that she had 13 photographs of him in silver frames in her bedroom. I was very impressed, but perhaps it wasn’t a typical incident. I meant to tell you of the lovely place where I am staying but this letter is too long. The flowers are wonderful just now. Don’t you love these real summer flowers? You should see the dahlias here, big spiky fellows, with buds like wax, and round white ones and real saffron yellow. The women are working in the vines. Its hot and fine with a light valley wind. Goodbye. I am so glad we are friends. Yours ever Katherine Mansfield. Notes 1. Widely acclaimed in literary London when published by Cobden-Sanderson in July 1922, Gerhardi’s first novel, Futility, has been eclipsed in histories of British literature by other Modernist landmarks of 1922 – which included Joyce’s Ulysses, Woolf’s Jacob’s Room and Eliot’s The Waste Land. 2. Hugh Walpole (1884–1941) was a prolific and often successful novelist and essayist, born in New Zealand. KM reviewed his novel Jeremy in 1919 and The Captives in 1920 (see CW3, pp. 493–5, 670–1). 3. Although the features KM objects to can be traced in a number of Walpole’s novels from 1922 and before, his jaunty-toned, adventure-packed The Young Enchanted (1921) may be foremost in her mind here.

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4. In Futility, an exuberant party ends with a lovers’ squabble between the narrator, Andrei Andreiech, and his intermittently beloved, Nina. She responds to his exalted passions by ostentatiously spitting water into his face, for which he slaps her. The novel constantly shifts from scenes of near-farcical domestic melodramas to bluntly sobering accounts of revolutionary and civil war-torn Russia. 5. Although largely based on his experience as a commissioned officer in St Petersburg in 1917–18 and then with the Allied Military Expedition in Siberia during the Civil War (1919–20), Futility was Gerhardi’s most Chekhovian novel. It draws inspiration from all four of the major plays in terms of form, dramatic sequencing, themes and stock characters. One year later, Gerhardi’s literary study, Anton Chehov, the first book-length study of the author and playwright to be published in English, was warmly received. The British reception of Anton Chekhov himself remained hesitant until the 1920s. 6. Edward Garnett’s Friday Nights: Literary Criticisms and Appreciations was a collection of Garnett’s major literary reviews from over the past twenty years, including a substantial, thirty-page essay on ‘Tchehov and his Art’ – which takes issue in places with some of JMM’s appraisals of the writer. 7. See Chekhov’s letter to the writer and editor N. A. Leiken, dated 15 November 1888: My ‘Party’ has pleased the ladies. They sing my praises wherever I go. It really isn’t that bad to be a doctor and to understand what one is writing about. The ladies say the description of the confinement is true. In the story for the Garshin sbornik I have described spiritual agony. (C. Garnett 1920, p. 107) Since KM quotes a slightly different translation, the letter may well have figured in the collection she and Koteliansky co-translated but which got lost in transit. 8. See Tolstoy’s essay ‘Chekhov’s Intent in The Darling’. Although warmly enthusiastic about the story, Tolstoy’s reading comes as something as a surprise and is generally felt to be at odds with Chekhov’s own convictions. He reads the story as a firmly anti-feminist statement, in which the character Olga is the ideal woman, the very opposite of ‘whole of the absurd and evil activity of the fashionable woman movement’, because she devotes herself heart and soul to her husband and son. While critics tend to agree that this was not Chekhov’s intent, they remain bemused by the story, not knowing whether to read it as sincere or subversive. 9. From Chekhov’s story ‘An Anonymous Story’, included in Constance Garnett’s translation in the collection The Lady with the Dog and Other Stories (1917). The line is spoken by the first-person narrator, who is, in many respects, a persona of the author, and a fellow sufferer from tuberculosis. The passage in which the line occurs is as revealing about Chekhov’s mindset as it is about KM’s when reading and retaining the passage: ‘That’s all very well,’ I said, thinking a little. ‘I believe it will be easier and clearer for the generations to come; our experience will be at their service.

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collected letters of katherine mansfield, vol. 1 But one wants to live apart from future generations and not only for their sake. Life is only given us once, and one wants to live it boldly, with full consciousness and beauty. One wants to play a striking, independent, noble part; one wants to make history so that those generations may not have the right to say of each of us that we were nonentities or worse. . . . I believe what is going on about us is inevitable and not without a purpose, but what have I to do with that inevitability? Why should my ego be lost?’ (p. 290)

10. Gerhardi’s proposed novel never got beyond draft form. ‘About Love’ is also the title of a 1898 short story by Chekhov. 11. (Fr.): Very seriously. 12. KM is alluding to another letter from Chekhov to Souvorin, dated 11 September 1888, in which he asserts, ‘Medicine is my legal wife, and literature is my mistress.’ The letter is included in the collection published in the Athenaeum, chosen and co-translated by KM and S. S. Koteliansky (see CW3, p. 213). 13. Gerhardi’s parents had settled in Bolton when they fled Russia and returned to Britain immediately before the Bolshevik Revolution in November 1917. 14. Hayden Coffin (1862–1935) was an actor and singer who featured regularly on the London stage in comic operas, ‘ballad concerts’ and musicals in the early 1900s.

[late July 1922] [ATL] Hotel Chateau Belle Vue Sierre Valais Switzerland Dear Mr Gerhardi, I had a letter from Mr Pinker, my agent, today, asking me if I would put him in touch with you. I hastened to send him your address & to say he might mention my name. If you have not already got an agent I’d most cordially recommend Mr Pinker to you. What a good notice of Futility in the Lit. Supt1 I hope you’re having splendid reviews. Yours ever Katherine Mansfield Notes 1. Edward Shanks wrote a short but very astute review of Gerhardi’s novel for the TLS, published on 20 July 1922. Having analysed Gerhardi’s idiosyncratic comic mode, he concludes:

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It is a story which Tchehov omitted to tell and which Gerhardi has now told from another point of view and in different terms. [. . .] And the extraordinary individual merit of his book is that he can narrate all the painful and horrible complications, down to Fanny’s husband of convenience so inconveniently slow in dying of cancer, with humour and yet without levity, with life and convincing truth and yet without solemnity. The performance is, without exaggeration, astonishing. (p. 473)

[late July 1922] [ATL] [Hôtel-Château Belle Vue, Sierre] Dear Mr Gerhardi, I have written to you, since this letter, to the same wrong address. It was a business letter with regard to my agent Mr Pinker. Have you received it?1 Yours sincerely Katherine Mansfield Notes 1. At the bottom of the correspondence card KM had written on, Gerhardi has noted in pencil ‘K.M.’s letter (N° 12) [i.e. the one written 10 July], erroneously addressed to Yorkshire instead of Lancashire, was returned to her by the P. O. at Sierre. She sent it to me a second time, with this slip.’

[c. 21 August 1922] [ATL] 6 Pond Street Hampstead N.W. Dear Mr Gerhardi, I am in London for a few weeks. Is there any chance of seeing you? I should so much like to meet the author of so successful a godchild. I hear golden opinions of ‘Futility’ from everyone. Did you get my letter about Pinker? If you do not reply to this one I shall begin to believe I have offended you. I hope not. Yours very sincerely Katherine Mansfield. The telephone number is Hampstead 2140.

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[26 August 1922] [ATL] 6 Pond Street Hampstead NW3 26 viii 1922 No, dear Mr Gerhardi, I don’t always feel I have offended you I only felt it once when the pause was so long. But now its hard to write to you when I know you are laughing at my poor little ‘y’s and ‘g’s and ‘d’s. They feel so awkward; they refuse to skip any more. The little ‘g’ especially is shy, with his tail in his mouth like an embarrassed whiting.1 I am very very sorry you are ill. I hope you will soon be better. I shall send you a little packet of tea on Monday. Please have a special little pot made and drink it with un peu de citron2 – if you like citron. It tastes so good when one is in bed – this tea, I mean. It always makes me feel even a little bit drunk – well, perhaps drunk is not quite the word. But the idea, even, of the short story after a cup or two seems almost too good to be true, and I pledge it in a third cup as one pledges ones love – – I have decided to stay in London for three months. Then I go to Italy to the Lago di Garda. Perhaps we shall meet before then. I have taken a minute flat at this address and by the end of next week I shall be working again. I have a book to finish and I want to write a play this autumn . . . . Its very nice to be in London again, rather like coming back to one’s dear wife. But I wish the intelligentsia were not quite so solemn, quite so determined to sustain a serious conversation only. They make one feel like that poor foreigner arraigned before Mr Podsnap on the hearthrug in ‘Our Mutual Friend’.3 I shall never, while Life lasts, be able to take life for granted in the superb way they do. Are you able to work? I am glad Middleton Murry’s short notice pleased you.4 I hope the Evening News man has done you proud, too.5 And someone wrote to me and wondered if you would come to lunch one Sunday. But who am I to say. Your letter has not come back from Sierre yet. I am very much ashamed of my geography. With many good wishes Yours ever Katherine Mansfield. Notes 1. Although Gerhardi’s letter would not appear to have survived, KM’s letter implies that he, like generations of critics since, struggled to make sense of KM’s notoriously difficult-to-read handwriting, especially towards the end of her life.

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2. (Fr.): A little lemon. 3. Chapter 11 of Dickens’s comic masterpiece Our Mutual Friend, very aptly entitled ‘Podsnappery’, recounts a dinner party held by the Podsnaps and attended by a foreign gentleman, during which the latter is questioned mercilessly, ‘as if he were a child hard of hearing’, given lessons in basic English grammar and pronunciation, and treated to an encomium of England, Englishmen and the English Constitution. 4. JMM had published a joint review of Gerhardi’s Futility and D. H. Lawrence’s Aaron’s Rod, entitled ‘Two Remarkable Novels’ (Nation and Athenaeum, 12 August 1922, p. 655). Of Futility, he notes: It is not an imitation Russian novel of the kind with which we have, alas! become familiar of late. Mr. Gerhardi succeeds most admirably in seeing all round the fantastic little microcosm which, like an iridescent bubble, he conveys into his pages; [. . .] The consequence is that he has written a book which is in itself delightful, and casts a small but clear and shrewd light upon the strange complexion of the Russian spirit and the imbecility of our own efforts during the war to make it subservient to our purposes. 5. Both the Evening News and the Evening Standard had published glowing reviews of the novel on 23 August 1923; the TLS, Mercury and Daily Telegraph also spoke enthusiastically of the work, underlining its great originality and depth.

[early October 1922] [ATL] Select Hotel Place de la Sorbonne Paris. What a name. You must only breathe it. Dear Mr Gerhardi, Im very shaken today after a small minor revolution in the night. I put a vacuum flask full of boiling tea on the table by my bed last night and at about 2 oclock in the morning there was a most TERRIFIC explosion. It blew up everything. People ran from far an near. Gendarmes broke through the shutters with hatchets, firemen dropped through trap doors. Or very nearly. At any rate the noise was deafening and when I switched on the light there was my flaschino1 outwardly calm still but tinkling internally in a terribly ominous way and a thin sad trickle oozed along the table. I have nobody to tell this to today. So I hope your eyes roll. I hope you appreciate how fearful it might have been had it burst outwardly and not inwardly. Bien peur, Mr Gerhardi.2 I am so sorry we have not met in England. But after all I had to come abroad again and I shall spend the next

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3 months in Paris instead of London. Perhaps we shall not meet until you are very old. Perhaps your favourite grandson will wheel you to my hotel then (Im doomed to hotels) and instead of laughing, as we should now, a faint, light airy chuckle will pass from bath chair to bath chair – – – I don’t awfully like the name of your new book, but I am sure the booksellers will.3 But then I don’t very much like the idea of so called somersaults in the first person. But I am certain the public will. I wonder for how long you have put aside your novel About Love. Please tell me when you take it up again. No, I didn’t see the English review. Was the lady Princess Bibesco?4 A most dreadful young person – very very emõrtional. Its raining. I must rescue my dear little John Milton from the window sill. Rescued . . . I have written to John Middleton Murry whose address is Selsfield House. East Grinstead. Sussex. I am sure he will be only too delighted.5 I wish you’d send a copy of your book to him. He would be immensely interested.6 People went on asking me about Mr Gerhardi. His past, his present, his future, his favourite jam, did he prefer brown bread for a change sometimes. I answered everything. I hope to have rather a better book out in the spring. Im glad you are staying with Cobden Sanderson. Goodbye. Are you quite well again? The weather is simply heavenly here. Katherine Mansfield. Notes 1. KM’s neologism, pastiching Italian and German lexical derivations to depict a little flask. The German for flask is ‘Flasche’. 2. (Fr.): Very frightened, Mr Gerhardi. 3. In his most recent letter to KM, dated 2 October 1922, Gerhardi had written, ‘I have put aside my novel “About Love”. So far I know nothing about love. I am writing another novel – a light one, in the first person, with a number of so-called somersaults, etc., called “Bubble?” May I ask your opinion of the title?’ (C: MS–Papers–4003–39–1). 4. Gerhardi had written: Oh, dear Miss Mansfield, if you have a moment to spare do look into the October number of the English Review and you will see a short story by . . . Oh! I can’t remember the name, but anyhow she is “the first woman diplomat”, daughter of, I think, the Bulgarian Minister, Secretary of the Washington Legation, etc. Read it. It’s astounding. It’s . . . it’s emotional dysentery. (C: MS–Papers–4003–39–1) The short story, ‘A Roman Dream – A Psalm for Two Souls’ was by Najeda Stancioff (Stancioff 1922, pp. 372–6).

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5. Gerhardi’s letter had begun with a request: Mr. Middleton Murry has a book called The Countries of the Mind, which contains a ‘critical credo’. I have found it convenient to divide my book on Chehov into five chapters, on Mr. Murry’s lines. And having done so, it was natural that I should find it even more convenient to use his definitions of the five symphonic movements for my chapter headings [. . .] It seemed to me as I make bold use of them that Mr. Murry meant his idea to be used. But now, as I read through my book, it seems to me that I may be stealing some else’s property. I thought I had better ask you rather than write direct. (C: MS–Papers–4003–39–1–2) 6. Following KM’s advice, Gerhardi did indeed send his critical study Anton Chehov to JMM, who reviewed it at length in the TLS on 6 December 1923.

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Mark Gertler (1892–1939)

Introduction Mark Gertler grew up in the East End of London, the son of desperately poor Jewish–Polish immigrants. At the age of fourteen, harbouring ambitions to become a painter, he was employed as an illustrator in a workshop making stained-glass windows before he secured a place in 1908 at the Slade School of Fine Art, supported by the Jewish Educational Aid Society. Gertler was the first East End Jew to win a place at the Slade, and it was here that he established himself as a prominent member of a new generation of artists who went on to shape the direction of modern British art: these included Stanley Spencer, C. R. W. Nevinson, Paul Nash and Dora Carrington, with whom Gertler conducted a protracted and passionate on–off relationship for many years. In 1913, Gertler came under the patronage of Edward Marsh, who described him as ‘the greatest genius of the age’.1 It was Marsh who put Gertler in touch with Gilbert Cannan, a lawyer-turned-writer who lived in a converted windmill at Cholesbury, Buckinghamshire. Throughout 1914, Gertler was a frequent visitor to the Mill House, and it was here that he met KM for the first time. The surviving correspondence between KM and Gertler is scant and does not adequately reflect the long and, in many ways, significant association between the two. In this single surviving letter, KM declares her sense of comradeship with Gertler: ‘Kamerad! Kamerad!’ As a working-class Jew of Polish origin, Gertler was acutely aware that his background placed him at odds with many of his English friends and, particularly, patrons. In December 1912, for example, he described himself to Carrington as ‘an outcast’: ‘By my ambitions I am cut off from my own family and class and by them [his ambitions] I have been raised to be equal to a class I hate! They do not understand me nor I them.’2 In 1916, both KM and Gertler became regular visitors to Ottoline Morrell’s manor house at Garsington, a centre for a circle of writers, artists and conscientious objectors during the war. KM and Gertler were never entirely comfortable here, neither of them possessing the social confidence or financial security of many among the Garsington set.

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Morrell, for instance, observed that KM ‘was suspicious of me’ and ‘feels unsure of her position, partly because she is a New Zealander and is not yet very easy or natural in England’.3 This shared ‘outsider’ status led to understanding and sympathy between KM and Gertler. On first meeting KM, Gertler reported to Carrington: ‘I like Katherine Mansfield’.4 And KM later observed: ‘How sympathetic Gertler can be’ (to Ottoline Morrell, 2 December 1918). KM’s letter to Gertler also highlights her sense of affinity with him as a fellow artist. Through Dorothy Brett (who had been Gertler’s contemporary at the Slade), KM would have learned that Gertler had recently returned from Paris, where he had seen Auguste Pellerin’s extensive collection of works by Cézanne. ‘Heavens!’ he had written to Brett, ‘what a sensation it was, seeing them in the “flesh” at last!’5 KM’s reference to this trip in her letter shows her interest in Gertler’s development as an artist. KM and Gertler first met in late 1914, and caused something of an upset when they kissed each other at a Christmas Day party held at Cannan’s Mill House, acting out rather too enthusiastically the love scene in an impromptu play devised by JMM. In a letter sent to Lytton Strachey the following day, Gertler offered this account of the episode: I got so drunk that I made violent love to Katherine Mansfield! She returned it, also being drunk. I ended the evening by weeping bitterly at having kissed another man’s woman and everybody trying to console me. Drink has curious and various effects on me. This party was altogether an extraordinary one. So interesting was it that all the writers of Cholesbury feel inspired to use it in their work.6

Indeed, Lawrence derived the plot for his next novel from the Cholesbury play: in Women in Love (1920), Gudrun (KM) leaves Gerald (JMM) for the German sculptor, Loerke (Gertler). It is this incident that KM also has in mind when she later writes to JMM, telling him that the protagonist of her story ‘Je ne parle pas français’, Raoul Duquette, originates in both Francis Carco, her lover in 1915, and Gertler (3 and 4 February 1918). Gertler was also present at the notorious episode at London’s Café Royal in August 1916, when KM snatched away a collection of Lawrence’s poetry that was being derided by another group of diners. Gertler provided a detailed account of the incident in a letter to Ottoline Morrell, and when Lawrence heard of the episode in a letter from Samuel Koteliansky, he immediately wrote it into Women in Love as the chapter titled ‘Gudrun in the Pompadour’. In a letter to Carrington sent in January 1915, Gertler observed of the Cholesbury Christmas party that no one present had known whether to take his kiss with KM ‘as a joke or scandal’ but, seeing that he and JMM ‘were just as friendly afterwards, they had to take it as a joke’.7 However, at least one biographer has suggested that there might have been something more behind the play-acting. Claire Tomalin argues that, after the Cholesbury kiss, ‘Gertler decided that he liked Katherine, and wanted

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to know her better’ and that, in the summer of 1916, the two ‘made something like an assignation’.8 Quoting a letter sent to Koteliansky on 20 June 1916, Tomalin argues that Gertler was dismayed to find that KM had left Garsington for Cornwall – and JMM – before he had arrived. However, KM’s rocky relationship with JMM was the subject of much speculation between Gertler, Koteliansky and Lawrence at this time, and Gertler’s letter reads less like that of a spurned lover than it does of an intrigued, gossiping friend. KM was acutely aware of her position within these gossipy epistolary exchanges. In 1916, for instance, she writes to Beatrice Campbell: ‘I want to talk about the Ls, but if I do don’t tell Kot and Gertler for then it will get back to Lawrence & I will be literally murdered’ (4 May 1916). And towards the end of August 1917, after learning that there was a rumour going round that she had been sleeping with Gertler, KM wrote to Virginia Woolf: ‘don’t let THEM ever persuade you that I spend any of my precious time swapping hats or committing adultery – I’m far too arrogant & proud. However, let them think what they like’ (23 August 1917). Beatrice Campbell’s autobiography, appropriately titled Today We Will Only Gossip (1964), describes how ‘Gertler’s appetite for parties was insatiable [. . .] Socially he was a great success, for he seemed to know everyone and was invited everywhere.’9 In his own letters, Gertler makes reference to many ‘an exciting and adventurous evening’ spent with KM.10 However, KM increasingly sought to extricate herself from Gertler’s social world and the ‘gossip’ that she associated with it. In 1919, for instance, she writes to Brett, declaring that ‘I have to keep solitary as I can – to have nobody depending and to depend as little as I can’: ‘Life today is such an affair that I don’t feel one can afford to rub shoulders with the world that goes to Parties [. . .] Gossip – tittle tattle, Nina Hamnett & Gertler spreading the news – all that fills me with horror’ (10 June 1919). KM was right to be a little wary of Gertler. A letter that he sent in 1917 to Ottoline Morrell shows him quoting from and mocking a letter that KM had sent to Morrell, which he had evidently been shown.11 Yet KM’s letter to Gertler highlights that she did not quite succeed in rising above petty ‘tittletattle’. Prefaced with a drawing of a figure waving a flag of ‘Peace’, KM’s letter offers an apology for telling something about Gertler to JMM in confidence, which JMM then related to Brett, who inevitably then told Gertler. The precise nature of what was said is not clear, but it may have resulted from KM’s desire to hurt Gertler after he allegedly said to her, on her return to London in April 1920 after receiving treatment for her tuberculosis in a clinic in Menton: ‘“Well Katherine, I hear you’ve got it. Do you spit blood and so on? Do all the things in the books? Do they think youll get over it”’ (to JMM, 10 October 1920). When she heard the news in late 1920 that Gertler, not yet thirty years old, had also been diagnosed with tuberculosis, KM’s letters to JMM reveal both concerned interest in Gertler’s condition and, after his previous insensitivity to her own

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illness, some enjoyment at the ‘irony’ of his contracting the same disease (4 October 1920). Chris Mourant Notes 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11.

Quoted in Woodeson, p. 110. Gertler, p. 49. Morrell 1974, pp. 148, 150. Gertler, p. 79. Quoted in Woodeson, p. 268. Gertler, p. 77 Ibid., p. 79. Tomalin, pp. 132, 150. Glenavy, p. 79. Gertler, p. 126. KM had written to Morrell in October, comparing the revue actor George Robey and comedian Teddie Gerard with the singing of Natasha Rostov in Tolstoy’s War and Peace: ‘I cannot feel amused by Teddie Gerard when my mind is so full of Natasha’s singing’ (22 or 29 October 1917). In Gertler’s letter to Morrell, sent on 10 November, he pokes fun at KM: ‘Ah! Hah! Hem! Hem! as George Robey would say. But I forget, we must not talk of George Robey “whilst Natasha still sings!”’

[Late May 1920] [BL] [2 Portland Villas, East Heath Road, Hampstead] My dear Gertler, Will you please accept my assurance that I did not mean what I told Murry to go any further – ever.1 A friend of mine told me the silly, stupid ‘gossip’ & talking CONFIDENTIALLY to John I repeated it – Of course I fully and absolutely accept your statement. It was a typical, idiotic London rumour. As such I told it John – I never dreamed he’d retell it or Id rather have done anything than start a grimy snowball. My fault – for not making him realise it was for his ear alone. But let’s stop it – please. The odious affairs are too horrid. Will you come and have tea with me one afternoon & tell me what you told them about Cezannes pictures – Could you come next Wednesday – you needn’t talk about Cezanne if you don’t want to.2 Kamerad! Kamerad! Dont lets pay any attention to rumours. Id never have breathed a word except to John. Yours Katherine.

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Notes 1. The nature of the gossip that spread via KM and JMM to Gertler, Brett (see above, p. 381, n. 1) and Ottoline Morrell, to cite only some of the protagonists in their circle, has not been ascertained. His biographer evokes a quarrel one week earlier with JMM after the latter proposed to crib Gertler’s thoughts on Cézanne for an article in the Athenaeum if Gertler did not have time to write something (MacDougall, p. 190). In the past fortnight, Gertler had also been diagnosed with tuberculosis, so tensions among the group were more acute than usual. 2. Gertler had recently returned from a visit to Paris with the Dobrées, who wanted to introduce him to a number of contemporary collectors and dealers (MacDougall, p. 188). The stay included a trip to see the Pellerin collection of Cézannes, then displayed at the Galerie Druet; one week earlier, he had run into JMM and spoken vibrantly about the Cézannian vein of post-Impressionism, which he believed Roger Fry and Clive Bell (the foremost proponents of Cézanne’s post-Impressionism) had over-intellectualised and even misunderstood. For his letter to Carrington, see Gertler, p. 80.

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Arnold Gibbons

Introduction Very little is known of Arnold Gibbons beyond the few details that can be found in KM’s letters to him. On one of the letters Richard Murry received from KM and that later found their way to the Alexander Turnbull Library, Richard notes that Gibbons was a classmate from high school – the Emanuel School in Wandsworth, founded by Anne Sackville, sister of the better-known Thomas Sackville, and therefore a distant aunt of Vita Sackville-West. Gibbons had been writing stories at the time, hence Richard Murry’s suggestion that he show some of his work to KM. Her obvious lack of effusive praise clearly dissuaded the budding writer: Richard Murry went on to study engineering and later worked as a lighting technician in the theatre. Claire Davison

[27 May 1922] [ATL]

On and after June 1st Hotel Angleterre Montana-sur-Sierre (Valais) Suisse

27 v 1922 Dear Arnold Gibbons, In a recent letter from Arthur-or-Richard I read you had had the idea of letting me see some of your work sometime. Do you still feel inclined to do so? Is that right? I’d feel most awfully happy and honoured if you would show me some of your stories. Its harder to know which is the greater pleasure – writing stories or reading other people’s. And can I

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talk them over when I’ve read them? The address at the top will find me until August. I won’t ask you to send them to Paris, one can attend much better in Switzerland. I hope you and the person I like to think of as my young brother are enjoying this weather. Until I hear from you I’ll look forward to those stories. Yours very sincerely Katherine Mansfield.

[24 June 1922] [ATL] Hotel d’Angleterre Montana Village (Valais) Suisse 24 vi 1922 Dear Mr Arnold Gibbons, I feel I have kept your stories a long time. Forgive me if it seems too long. The days pass so quickly here and although I have been on the pen-point of writing to you several times it is only now that Ive got down to it. Very many thanks for your letter & for letting me see the five stories.1 I’d like immensely to talk about them a little – But you’ll take what I say as workshop talk, will you? – as from one writer to another. Otherwise one feels embarrassed. I think the idea in all the five stories is awfully good. And you start each story at just the right moment and finish it at the right moment, too. Each is a whole, complete in itself. But I don’t feel any of them quite come off. Why? Its as though you used more words than were necessary. There’s a kind of diffuseness of expression which isn’t natural to the English way of thinking. I imagine your great admiration for Tchekhov has liberated you but you have absorbed more of him than you are aware of and he’s got in the way of your individual expression for the time being. Its very queer; passages read like a translation!2 Its as though you were in his shadow and the result is you are a little bit blurred, a bit vague. Your real inmost self (forgive the big words but one does mean them) doesn’t seem to be speaking except occasionally. Its almost as though you were hiding and hadn’t the – shall I call it courage? – of your own fine sensitiveness. When you do get free of Tchekhov plus all you have learnt from him you ought to write awfully good stories – ‘Pleasure’ gives me an idea of how good. There you seem to me very nearly in your own stride. It is convincing. One

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believes in that little cat and its meat for breakfast; one sees your old chap wiping the glass case with his handkerchief; & one sees his audience turn & then turn back to him. I think this story is much the best of the five. To return to your Russianization for a moment. It seems to me that when Russians think they go through a different process to what we do. As far as one can gather they arrive at feeling by a process of – – – spiritual recapitulation. I don’t think we do. What I imagine is we have less words but they are more vital; we need less. So though one can accept this recapitulating process from Russian writers it sounds strange to me coming from your pen. For instance, in Going Home you get in five lines: ‘enthusiasm, doubtful, mistrust, acute terror, anxious, joy, sadness, pain, final dissolution, filth and degradation. Or (p.2) the unhappiness, the misery and cruelty, all the squalor & abnormal spiritual anguish.’ Again, last page but one of The Sister ‘futility, monotony, suffocated, pettiness, sordidness, vulgar minuteness.’ When one writes like that in English its as though the nerve of the feeling were gone – Do you know what I mean? I realise its all very well to say these things – but how are we going to convey these over tones, half tones, quarter tones, these hesitations, doubts, beginnings, if we go at them directly? It is most devilishly difficult, but I do believe that there is a way of doing it and thats by trying to get as near to the exact truth as possible. Its the truth we are after, no less (which, by the way, makes it so exciting.) To come to a few details. In Going Home would the wife say ‘old dog’s body?’ That sounds to me like a woman in a public bar talking. Its almost too strange. In Emptiness – I am not sure that a v. young baby can bite its mother’s breast so as to cause cancer. If it did – if the breast were removed surely she would never suckle it still. Cancer is a recurring thing. And at any rate the idea is frightful – it overweights the whole story. Its a whole most terrible story, itself. And (this is so grim that really I hardly dare.) – How are you going to prevent the same baby – no, I leave that to my horrid imagination. ––––––– Has this letter offended you – I wonder? I hope it hasn’t. If you ever feel inclined to talk about this short story writing at any time Id be most sincerely glad to hear from you. Again thanking you for showing me these Yours ever [Signature has been cut from page] John Middleton Murry sends his regards & remembrances* *Written vertically on left side of page.

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Notes 1. Gibbons would not appear to have found a publisher for these stories, if indeed he ever actively sought one, after receiving this feedback from KM. 2. Here, and indeed throughout the letter, KM’s comments give but a vague idea of the stories Gibbons had written, but they do provide extended and explicit insights into her own poetic and creative credo, and her own perception of what might constitute ‘Russian’ style. Her ideas are especially revealing, considering that she too had been so intently engaged in reading and studying Chekhov’s art in exactly the same era, and also discussing Chekhov with Gerhardi and Koteliansky.

[13 July 1922] [ATL] Hotel Chateau Belle Vue Sierre Valais Switzerland. 13 vii 1922 Dear Mr Gibbons, I am appaled that I expressed myself so clumsily as to make it possible for you to use the word ‘plagiarism’. I beg you to forgive me; it was far from my meaning. It was absorbed I meant. Perhaps you will agree that we all, as writers, to a certain extent, absorb each other when we love. (I am presuming that you love Tchekhov.) Anatole France1 would say we eat each other, but perhaps nourish is the better word. For instance Tchekhov’s talent was nourished by Tolstoi’s Death of Ivan Ilyitch.2 It is very possible he never would have written as he did if he had not read that story. There is a deep division between the work he did before he read it & after . . . All I felt about your stories was that you had not yet made the ‘gift’ you had received from Tchekhov your own. You had not yet, finally, made free with it & turned it to your own account. My dear colleague, I reproach myself for not having made this plainer . . . Id like, if I may, to discuss the other points in your letter. Let me see if I understand you. You mean you can only ‘care’ for such things as the little cat, the old man, the note of a bird, in the period of reaction against your belief in Pain & a life of sacrifice & yourself. But as your belief is all-important to you that period of reaction means little. Am I right? Therefore the last of the five stories was the only one you really cared about for there you express your very self . . . I mean, you are writing with real conviction. Do you know what I feel? To do this successfully you will have to do it more indirectly3 – you will have to

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leave the student out. Now there is a moment in that story where you succeed. Its where the little girl’s throat works – she weeps – She wants the apple & is afraid she is not going to have it. (Always remembering this is just my personal feeling) Your student argues, explains too much. He ought perhaps to have said not a single word. But I hope you will go on writing. The important thing is to write – to find yourself in losing yourself. (There is no truth profounder.) I do not know myself whether – this world being what it is – pain is not absolutely necessary. I do not see how we are to come by knowledge & Love except through pain. That sounds too definite expressed so baldly – If one were talking one would make reservations . . . . Believe in pain I must. Yours ever Katherine Mansfield. I shall always be glad to hear from you. Notes 1. Doubtless referring to Anatole France’s essay ‘Apologie pour le Plagiat’, first published in Le Temps in 1891, in which he defends a reader or apprentice writer’s need to take up the voice of their literary mentors as a means to understand style and voice. France was one of his country’s foremost novelists, dramatists and critics in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. He was also highly respected by his fellow writers, and largely admired on account of his tireless engagement in the ethical debates of his times. 2. Tolstoy’s extended short story or novelette The Death of Ivan Ilyich, published towards the end of his career in 1891, is a devastating self-examination to which a sick man and former highly respected judge submits himself when he realises the end of his life is approaching. 3. KM draws here on advice she had herself absorbed during her years of apprenticeship. Whether deliberately or not, she also adopts a tone very reminiscent of that used by Chekhov in his advice to young authors. See, for example, CW3, pp. 230–50, and Garnett 1920, pp. 301–6.

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Frederick Goodyear (1887–1917)

Introduction Educated at Christ’s College, Finchley, and then Brasenose College, Oxford, where he would meet and befriend JMM, Goodyear was, for a time, one of KM and JMM’s closest friends. Once out of Oxford, he took up journalism, contributing essays and reviews to various periodicals. He was a contributor to Rhythm, a short-lived little magazine co-founded by JMM and Michael Sadleir, which ran only from 1911 to 1913 but nevertheless would have a significant influence on the emergence of European Modernism. During the winter of 1913–14, Goodyear accompanied KM and JMM to Paris. In 1914, he took up a temporary job as a Master at Charterhouse School, before accepting a post in April 1914 as Assistant Manager of Oxford University Press in Bombay. When war broke out, he sailed home, enlisted in the Artists’ Rifles and was sent to the Front in May 1915, rising to the rank of Corporal in the Royal Engineers in September 1915, as an observer in the Meteorological Department. In the summer of 1916, he was sent back to England, and during one period of leave in July, he visited KM and JMM in Mylor, Cornwall. He finally obtained a commission in the Essex Regiment in February 1917, joining his new battalion in March 1917. He was badly wounded in the battle of Arras and died shortly afterwards on 23 May 1917. In 1920, his father published a poignant tribute to his dead son: Frederick Goodyear, Letters and Remains 1887–1917. Naturally shy, Goodyear’s nevertheless warm nature and quick wit endeared him to KM, whose shock at his death was exceeded only by that of her own brother, Leslie Beauchamp. KM retained very few letters from her correspondents but she kept and treasured those from Goodyear. The teasing, flirtatious nature of her letters to him hint at her deep affection, which, but for the presence of JMM, might well have developed into something more substantial. Gerri Kimber

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[4 March 1916] [ATL] Villa Pauline Bandol (Var) Sunday. Mr F.G Never did cowcumber lie more heavy on a female’s buzzum than your curdling effugion which I have read twice and wont again if horses drag me.1 But I keep wondering, and cant for the life of me think, whatever there was in mine to so importantly disturb you. (Henry James is dead.2 Did you know?) I did not, swayed by a resistless passion say that I loved you. Never the less Im prepared to say it again looking at this pound of onions that hangs in a string kit from a saucepan nail. But, Betsy love, what has that got to do with the Kilner Idea? I recognise the Kilner Idea, I acknowledge it and even understand it, but whats it got to do with me?3 Nothing. I don’t want to rob you of it . . . And why should you write to me as though Id got into the family way with H.G.W.4 and driven round to you in a hansom cab to ask you to make a respectable woman of me? Yes, youre bad tempered, suspicious and surly. And if you think I flung my bonnet over you as a possible mill, my lad, you’re mistook. So shut up about your Fire Whorls and a Hedgehog and send me no more inventories of those marbil halls wherein of aforetime they did delight to wander.5 In fact, now I come to ponder on your last letter I don’t believe you want to write to me at all & Im hanged if Ill shoot arrows in the air. But perhaps that is temper on my part; it is certainly pure stomach. Im so hungry, simply empty, and seeing in my minds eye just now a surloin of beef, well browned with plenty and gravy and horseradish sauce and baked potatoes I nearly sobbed. There’s nothing here to eat except omelettes and oranges and onions. Its a cold, sunny windy day – the kind of day when you want a tremendous feed for lunch & an armchair in front of the fire to boa constrict in afterwards. I feel sentimental about England now – English food, decent 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 cant ‘faire une infusion avec’ not a blade that isn’t bon pour la cuisine.6 By God, Id 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, in their houses – what appaling furniture – and never one comfortable chair. If you want to talk the only possible thing to do is to go to bed. Its 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

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& will go on talking and pointing to the ceiling – or a friend drops in for tea and asks you if you believe in Absolute Evil. How can you give your mind to these things when youre 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; its 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 name . . Write to me again when everything is not too bunkum. Goodbye for now With my ‘strictly relative’ love ‘K.M.’ Notes 1. The opening sentence and, indeed, many of the idiomatic turns of phrase later in the letter are extended pastiches of the characteristic style and voice of Mrs Gamp, a midwife and night-nurse in Dickens’s Martin Chuzzlewit (1842), particularly when she addresses her friend, the day-nurse Betsy Prig, who is just as addicted to cucumbers and alcohol as Mrs Gamp. Hence, ‘Betsy love’. As this draft letter shows, Goodyear and KM shared a common, exuberant pleasure in pastiche and parody. 2. The great Anglo-American late realist / early Modernist novelist Henry James (1843–1916) had died on 28 February of that year. 3. The Kilner jar, designed and patented by the Kilner company, was suited to high-temperature preserving and bottling techniques that enabled freshly cooked foods to be safely sealed and stored. Although first used in the midnineteeth century, the method was widely recommended and publicised during the war, to help avert food shortages. 4. H. G. Wells was notorious for a number of sometimes flamboyant love affairs and for the children he sometimes fathered along the way. 5. Regrettably, the letter to which KM refers does not appear to have survived. 6. (Fr.): Brew to make tea [. . .] tasty in cooking.

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Frank Harris (1856–1931)

Introduction Depending on the angle at which the photographer or cartoonist captures him, Frank Harris can have the look of a portly country squire, a roguish casino croupier or a stocky but dapper gentleman. This ever-changing but unmistakeably self-assured air, whatever role he might be playing, is wholly appropriate, given the variety of profiles and activities that Harris managed to pack into a single life. He was born in Galway, Ireland, on St Valentine’s Day, 1856, was schooled in Wales and went to Kansas, where members of his family already lived, to study law in 1872. If his autobiography were to be believed, his actual education counted for very little, however, since he spent far more of his time seducing young beauties and horse-riding with cowboys. However, in the words of his close friend and first biographer, Hugh Kingsmill, ‘no one but a salamander would risk the stake for the accuracy of a single statement in Harris’s autobiography’.1 Whatever Harris’s talents for self-fictionalising, a certain number of verifiable facts still point to the astonishing degree of success and variety that characterised his early years. Less than eight years after being called to the bar in Kansas, he occupied positions teaching English at Brighton College in Britain and then Philology at the University of Heidelberg, Germany; he had been married and, within months, widowed, and he had begun working as a journalist in London. Only a year after publishing his first article, he was appointed editor of the Evening News. The decade that followed was equally action-packed: he left the News for the Fortnightly Review; he became a candidate for the Conservative Party and then resigned a few months later; he wrote an admiring letter to Oscar Wilde after reading his 1891 essay ‘The Critic as Art’, thereby initiating a friendship that would remain steadfast and vibrant until Wilde’s death in Paris, and indeed beyond, since Harris’s impressive and influential biography of his friend defended both Wilde’s pioneering Aesthetics and his bold sexual honesty, thereby flying in the face of moral judgement and family pressures. Still in the same second decade after graduating, Harris began publishing fiction and adapting short stories for the stage;

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he also purchased the Saturday Review – largely thanks to the wealthy widow he married in 1887. From this point until World War One, Harris continued to accumulate and broaden his activities – as a playwright, a hotel owner in Monte Carlo, a literary agent (including for Winston Churchill’s father), a novelist and a critic. At possibly the height of his powers, in June 1912, in Dan Rider’s, then a highly popular bookshop and artistic meeting place off St Martin’s Lane, London, he first met KM, brought along by JMM who was already one of the group of writers, painters and journalists who frequently gathered there.2 The afternoon was so intense and explosive that Kingsmill later used it as the opening scene of his short biography of Harris. Harris launched into a tirade, lampooning and scorning the dithyrambic article JMM had written on him, published in Rhythm the following month, in which he declared that Harris was not only ‘a master of life’ and author of stories that were ‘among the supreme creations of art’, but also ‘on a spiritual equality with William Shakespeare, perhaps without the supreme poetic gift, yet for intellect and power of divination his spiritual equal’.3 JMM ran from the room, humiliated and in tears, followed by KM, after she had exclaimed ‘Oh, he’ll kill himself!’4 Upon discovering who the as yet unknown woman was, Harris was mortified, since he had been keen to meet her. Kingsmill was sent to pacify everyone, and the evening ended with the four of them happily talking literature at the Café Royal. Within only a few years, the wheel of fortune had turned. Harris, having lionised and been lionised by the literary and journalistic world of London, encountered acute financial difficulties, ran up against the courts, left for the States, and then was largely spurned by the press for writing a polemical study of contemporary affairs, England or Germany?, published in 1915, which took sides with Germany. From then on, he continued to shift from one occupation to another, but on account of failure or dismissal rather than burgeoning success. He went on writing but his readership too fell into decline. He settled in Nice on the French Riviera, where, to regain popularity and escape encroaching poverty, he determined to write an autobiography of Shaw, but increasingly called on Shaw to complete the chapters he could no longer manage. The volume was finally published three months after Harris’s death. As a writer and critic, Harris is largely forgotten today; there are just two works that are sometimes mentioned in cultural surveys of the early twentieth century. The first is his début novel, The Bomb (1908), a grim study of the American anarchist milieu; a new translation into French was published to acclaim in 2015. The second is his four-volume series Contemporary Portraits, which remains a treasure trove for cultural historians. Nevertheless, Harris remains a fascinating figure on the cusp of the old century and the new.5 He had the self-made, pioneering spirit of the mid-nineteenth century; he socialised actively in the decadent and

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fin-de-siècle circles of the literary aesthetes; and he used his impressive range of editorial undertakings in the London dailies to recruit and promote many of the emerging writers later to become Britain’s foremost Modernists. Claire Davison Notes 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

Kingsmill, p. 24. Ibid., p. 9. John Middleton Murry, ‘Who is the Man?’, Rhythm, 2: 2, p. 37. Kingsmill, p. 11. See Philippa Pullar’s biography of Harris (1975) for the most recent study of the life of this perplexing, often venerated and just as often bitterly criticised figure.

[Summer 1912] [HRC] [69 Clovelly Mansions, Gray’s Inn Road] Night time. I want to write and thank you for the time we spent with you today, and to say how much we enjoyed ourselves – It is always so wonderful to be with you and hear you speak. Then everything is not only possible, but splendidly possible, and everything that happens is an adventure – something vivid and fine. I count myself very privileged you have made ‘this art business’ far more serious than ever before to me – and I thought it meant almost everything in the past years – but now I seem to realise for the first time what it may mean – and knowing you, and hearing you – I must needs go humbly.1 Ever since I have loved Tiger2 we have spoken of you. You are our hero and our master – always. Katherine Mansfield Notes 1. The exalted tones may strike a curious note today, given Harris’s marginal place in most cultural histories of the early twentieth century. At the time, however, Harris was a hugely admired, albeit maverick figure, with a shrewd businessman’s approach to the art world, as well an impassioned, often iconoclastic sense of how literary texts should be read and written. He thus became something of a mentor for many aspiring authors – as evidenced by ‘What is

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the Man?’, the extended piece of hero-worship signed by JMM that appeared in Rhythm in 1912 (2: 6, pp. 37–9). Hugh Kingsmill opens his biography of Harris with an evocation of Harris’s inspirational encounters with JMM and KM, wryly adding, Frank Harris was fifty-seven at this time. His two books on Shakespeare and his anarchist novel, The Bomb, had not long been published; his Oscar Wilde was in manuscript; he was writing short stories and portraits of his contemporaries in the English Review, and a number of young enthusiasts were beginning to collect around him. Everything was in his favour, except himself. (Kingsmill, p. 12) 2. KM and JMM self-styled themselves at this time as ‘The Two Tigers’.

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Violet Hunt (1862–1942)

Introduction Isobel Violet Hunt, daughter of the artist Alfred William Hunt, was brought up in the milieu of the celebrated Pre-Raphaelite group of artists. A writer and well-known literary hostess, she held a literary salon at Campden Hill in London during the 1910s, which was frequented by many well-known authors of the day, including Rebecca West, Ezra Pound, Joseph Conrad, Wyndham Lewis, D. H. Lawrence and Henry James. In 1908, she helped Ford Madox Hueffer (later known as Ford Madox Ford) establish the influential literary magazine The English Review. An early feminist, she founded the Women Writers’ Suffrage League in 1908 and, indeed, many of her novels have feminist themes. Hunt never married, though she had a series of affairs, notably with Somerset Maugham and H. G. Wells. However, her best-known liaison was with the married Hueffer, who lived with her from 1910 to 1918, before leaving her to start a relationship with the young artist Stella Bowen, with whom he lived until 1927. In addressing Hunt as ‘Mrs Hueffer’ in 1921, KM was clearly being ‘polite’, since it was common knowledge amongst their literary circle that she had never been married to Hueffer. The letter seemingly indicates that she and JMM had met Hunt several years previously, in Sussex, possibly at Knap’s Cottage in Selsey, a coastal town near Chichester, or perhaps at the home of their friend Mary Hutchinson, who also lived near Chichester. Gerri Kimber

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[30 April 1921] [Berg] [Isola Bella address crossed out] c/o The Nation & Athenaeum 10 Adelphi Terrace London W.C.2. 30 iv 1921 Dear Mrs Hueffer We should have loved to have come to your Party on May the fifth but we are too far away. Thank you so much for asking us. Your note sent us whirling back to that afternoon visit in the little house near Chichester1 I feel – shortly after Queen Victoria came to the throne. But it must have been a little later than that, really – With warm remembrances from us both Yours very sincerely Katherine Mansfield. Notes 1. In the early 1910s, Violet Hunt had rented Knap’s Cottage in Selsey, a coastal town near Chichester, as a weekend residence; her main home was in Campden Hill, London.

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Mary Hutchinson (1889–1977)

Introduction Mary Hutchinson (née Barnes) was a writer and socialite. In 1910, she married the barrister St John Hutchinson, and in the same year her cousin, Lytton Strachey, introduced her to the Bloomsbury Group. She and her husband entertained writers and artists such as Mark Gertler, T. S. Eliot, Aldous Huxley and Virginia Woolf. Bisexual, Hunt had several affairs outside of her marriage, mostly with other members or associates of the Bloomsbury Group, including Clive Bell from 1914 until 1927, and both Aldous Huxley and his wife, Maria, from 1922 to 1930. She also had a brief affair with Vita Sackville-West and was an intimate friend of Virginia Woolf’s. She maintained a close friendship with T. S. Eliot from 1916 until the end of his life. All of the letters below, except for one, were written in 1916, the period when KM and JMM first became intimate with Ottoline Morrell and her circle at Garsington Manor, where they also became acquainted with several members of the Bloomsbury Group. The final letter, written in 1920 and published here for the first time, reveals how, even though they were spending periods abroad, KM and JMM were still very much connected to literary London, mainly as a result of JMM’s prestigious editorship of the Athenaeum. By mid-September, however, within a few weeks of writing this letter, KM had moved to Menton and her friendships with people such as Hutchinson would slowly diminish. Gerri Kimber

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[11 November 1915] [HRC] 5 Acacia Road Thursday – Dear Mrs Hutchinson, Thank you for your kind note – I should like very much to come to dinner on Monday evening at ¼ to 8. It is awfully nice of you to say that you liked the sketches in the Signature.1 I am busy with a book of them & its so pleasant to think that they’ve given you pleasure – Im rather ashamed to have mentioned the Café Royale business2 – If I think people don’t see me I expect the worst – – Very silly – Until Monday Yours very sincerely Katherine Mansfield Notes 1. KM’s evocative prose sketches, ‘Autumns: I’ and ‘Autumns: II’, signed ‘Matilda Berry’, had been published in the 4 October issue of Signature, a short-lived journal that ran for only three issues, founded and co-edited by D. H. Lawrence, KM and JMM, and to which only the co-editors contributed. See CW1, pp. 451–8. 2. The context implies that the two women had crossed paths at the Café Royal, without Mary Hutchinson recognising or catching sight of KM. No other record of the slight misunderstanding has been traced. The Café Royal, on Regent Street, London, had been founded by a French wine merchant in 1865. It soon became the favourite meeting place of artists, actors and writers. A year later, it was where KM made a dignified exit, rescuing a book of poetry by Lawrence from friends who were mocking it, an incident Lawrence then immortalised in the chapter ‘Gudrun at the Pompadour’, in Women in Love.

[15 November 1915] [HRC] [Telegram] St. Johns Wood

2.45pm

Very much regret that I cannot dine with you tonight leaving England suddenly a day earlier and simply in chaos please forgive me Katherine Mansfield

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[20 December 1915] [HRC] [Postcard] [Bandol] I do hope you have forgiven me, for I am so sorry that I did not see you before I left England. It is lovely here – very early spring and sunshine which melts in one’s mouth. Salutations sincères1 Katherine Mansfield. Notes 1. (Fr.): Heartfelt greetings.

[early August 1916] [HRC] Sunnyside Cottage Mylor Near Penryn Dear Mrs Hutchinson Thank you for your delightful letter. I’d love to spend a week with you, for every time we have met I have wished I could see more of Mary Hutchinson & the possibility has seemed so remote – But just let me tell you how I am situated – Murry is, at this moment, hovering too dreadfully between the Ministry of Munitions, the latrines of India, the flies of Aden & a certain Bureau Internationale in the Haymarket.1 One of these must absorb him in September and until I know which it is and when it is to be I don’t feel that I can even unreasonably leave him. . . But that gay week end & the prospect of meeting Lytton Strachey2 again is awfully intriguing & hard to give up – You do understand – dont you? that I hate to have to say ‘no’. And will you let me know when you are in London again & if I may come & see you the next time that I am in town. With infinite regret Yours very sincerely Katherine Mansfield. Notes 1. Having previously been exempted from military service on account of ill health (including bad eyesight, pleurisy and suspected tuberculosis), JMM had been recalled for a health check-up and then advised to find himself alternative war service if he wanted to avoid conscription. He was currently being

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considered for a number of posts, before being attached to the War Office as an interpreter and foreign press reviewer. 2. Lytton Strachey was Margaret’s cousin, and it was through his intermediacy that she gradually became part of the Bloomsbury and artistic circles in the early 1910s. Margaret and her husband, St John Hutchinson, had recently rented Eleanor House in West Wittering, Sussex, where they frequently organised weekend parties over the summer months.

[Late August 1916] [HRC] Sunnyside Cottage Mylor Near Penryn Yes, I will send you a telegram. I long to come for a little before the end of September – But do I get out of the train at Chichester – & what happens then? I haven’t an idea where West Wittering is1 – Can one row there in a little boat from anywhere – or does one walk – Will you just tell me what happens – & then when I send the telegram if you will just wire back ‘yes’ or ‘no’ I can come without waiting for a letter – It is a very grey day shot with red geraniums – I feel inclined to wear a little black toque with a lace veil to my nose & drive to West Wittering in a little closed cab with a bunch of parma violets in my hand for you . . . Katherine M. Notes 1. The village of West Wittering is seven miles from Chichester, on the Manhood Peninsula at the mouth of Chichester harbour.

[18 September 1916] [HRC] 4 Logan Place, Kensington. Monday. Dear Mrs Mary Hutchinson May I come & stay with you from this next Friday until Monday at West Wittering? I should like to so much – If this isn’t ‘convenient’ to you, please don’t hesitate to say ‘no’ but if it is I will look out a train & send you a telegram saying when I arrive at Bosham.1 – That is right isn’t it?

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I cannot write a word for Monday morning is in full swing here – with laundry carts bowling by. Such a heavenly morning, too, far, far too lovely to be carted away in seven baskets. I hope I shall see you on Friday – Katherine Mansfield. Notes 1. A neighbouring village, also on the coast, and at the time more easily accessible from the train station.

[Early October 1916] [HRC] 3 Gower Street Dear Mary Hutchinson I hope that you will come to see me when you are ‘settled’ in your new house1 – and for my part I hope that we shall continue the same conversation ever so often – What will you think of Colette, I wonder – – – and will you find her ‘sympathetic’.2 For me she is more real than any woman Ive ever known. London is sad and dull – The only thing to do is to hug the fire and smoke & read & write – We are almost established here. Carrington’s friends climb up to her heaven kissing attics3 – I hear them like the younger generation passing my door – simply incredibly young – Please give my salutations to Clive Belle4 – I am so glad to hear he is better – My love to you Katherine Mansfield. Notes 1. The Hutchinsons were currently moving to their new London home near Regent’s Park. 2. KM had long been fascinated by the French music-hall singer and actress, journalist and writer Sidonie Gabrielle Colette (1873–1954), as much for her acutely crafted, psychologically astute novels and short stories as for her sometimes bohemian lifestyle at the heart of Paris’s fin-de-siècle and Modernist circles. Colette had a number of close contacts with her cross-Channel contemporaries, via mutual friends such as Violet Trefusis, Nathalie Clifford Barney, Winifred de Polignac and Rachilde.

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3. Dora Carrington had recently moved into the upper floor of ‘The Ark’, the house on Gower Street that she shared, on and off, with Brett, KM and JMM, described by Miranda Seymour as ‘a hotbed for espionage’ (Seymour, p. 276) 4. Since 1915, Mary Hutchinson had been involved in a romantic but very open liaison with Bloomsbury art critic Clive Bell; their affair lasted until 1927.

[19 July 1920] [HRC] 19 Jul 1920

2 Portland Villas East Heath Road Hampstead NW3

My dear Mary Thank you so much for asking us to your party. I am so sorry we can’t come: I have a wretched cold – as a result of this cursed weather – I hope you are well and happy. Yours sincerely Katherine Mansfield.

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Alice Jones (1878–1970)

Introduction The expanding number of small printing presses and the multiplication of little magazines and reviews from the 1890s until the 1930s relied massively on the goodwill and efficiency of an emerging secretarial profession, which, especially during and after World War One, offered new employment horizons for women, trained in shorthand and equipped with the latest, vital office equipment – the telephone and typewriter. Within the publishing industry, this newly qualified workforce did not just handle the daily administrative tasks of the office; they were receiving and acknowledging correspondence between writers, and following the details of exchanges by typing and filing responses; they were transcribing and typing up manuscripts, and staying abreast of whose works were to be published and whose turned down, keeping the office diaries and records of the often decisive meetings between potential writers and their editors and agents, and frequently keeping abreast of the accounts too. In other words, while working in the shadows and margins of the publishing world, they were often to be found at the heart of various interlocking literary networks. Alice Louisa Jones is a case in point. In the words of her grandson, Jones was ‘on the periphery of the Bloomsbury Group’.1 She occupies but the odd footnote in collected editions of Modernist writers’ correspondence that identify her as a secretary, first in an MP’s office, then at the Nation and the Athenaeum. Although clearly one of the class of ‘educated men’s daughters’ that Virginia Woolf later did so much to retrieve from history, little is known about her formative years.2 Jones had been Philip Morrell’s secretary from 1916 and gave birth to their child, Philip Hugh, in 1917. The child was one of the little group of Morrell’s offspring that Ottoline took under her wing. Jones then took up employment as a secretary, moving through a number of journals as their fortunes rose and fell, and eventually becoming the assistant of the literary editor at the Nation. She also worked freelance as a typist. In both functions, she gained the respect of writers and contributors like Leonard and Virginia Woolf, KM and JMM, and some years later, Ethel Smyth and Julian Bell; she, of

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course, followed the course of decades of magazine correspondence and book publishing by typing the letters and manuscripts. There are few precise records of her activities; it is perhaps unsurprising that the little we do know about Alice’s life comes from other women’s letters and diaries. A kindly word from KM in 1922, regretting she could not help in ‘a more neighbourly way’, suggests that Jones lived for a while in Hampstead. Virginia Woolf notes in her diary in 1938, by which time Jones was living in Sussex, that she looked like ‘a pricked air ball flopped on the floor’.3 As for Jones’s role at the Athenaeum office in Adelphi Terrace, she clearly had the unquestioning trust and confidence of both JMM and KM, and fulfilled tasks that included typing, receiving and sorting correspondence and dispatching books for review. A mixture of kindness, efficiency and goodwill clearly defined her activities on the sidelines of publication, beyond helping to keep administrative matters in order: when JMM failed in his promises to send his wife the extra reading matter she was yearning for in France, it was to ‘Mrs Jones’ that KM turned to ask for copies of The Lancet or Country Life. The latter doubtless had a literary appeal for KM but the former was of a different order – she was relying on The Lancet for the latest news on medical research and, above all, for indications of breakthroughs in the treatment of tuberculosis. Claire Davison Notes 1. Stephen Hugh-Jones, interviewed by Cambridge social anthropologist Alan MacFarlane. Available at: (last accessed 2 April 2019). 2. See Woolf 2006, pp. 20–1, 57–61. 3. DVW5, p. 164.

[Late January 1920] [HRC] L’Hermitage Menton. Dear Mrs Jones: Would you kindly send me a copy of the paper that had my review of Agate in it1 – Mr Murry will know the one I mean. I have never received it. It is you who send me the papers – isn’t it? If you knew how I look forward to them! I hope your little boy is well again. I was so sorry to hear he had been ill. It ought to be spring weather all the year round for little people under ten – and never any winter. Yours sincerely, Katherine Middleton Murry.

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Notes 1. KM was writing a review of Responsibility, the latest novel by dramatist, theatre critic and diarist James E. Agate (1877–1947), for the Athenaeum, to be published that month. See ‘Words, Words, Words’ (CW3, pp. 558–60). Although little remembered now, the British-born, Francophile and Francophone author was fast becoming one of Britain’s most respected theatre reviewers and critics, having come to light after the publication of his vivid and detailed recollections of military life during the war. As the tone and leading metaphors of KM’s review underline, she was keenly aware that Agate’s writing was dramatic rather than novelistic.

[14 February 1920] [HRC] [Postcard] Villa Flora Menton. Dear Mrs Jones This is my permanent address until May for the papers. I hope the little one has got over his bronchitis . . . I shall love to see him one day. Mr Murry once promised me Country Life.1 Will you ask him if he wants to break his promise? K.M. Notes 1. KM was apparently hoping to receive copies of the British weekly magazine Country Life, founded in 1897 at the height of the late Victorian and finde-siècle nostalgia for rural settings and customs. Under the editorship of keen nature writer and science-fiction author Peter Anderson Graham (1856– 1925), the magazine was then also reputed for the quality of its literary coverage, including extracts and reviews of new fiction and poetry.

[23 February 1921] [HRC] [Villa Isola Bella, Garavan, Menton] 23 II 1921. Dear Mrs Jones, Here have all these weeks gone by & I have never thanked you for so kindly sending me those papers. Thank you now. It was v. good of you to have gone to the trouble for me.

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Although it was inevitable it is sad to think there is no more Athenaeum.1 I wish things had fallen out differently. And I never saw your little boy after all. Miss Baker is bringing him a tiny present with best wishes from us both. Yours sincerely Katherine Mansfield Murry. Notes 1. Sales figures for the Athenaeum had fallen drastically, especially since the beginning of the war, and in January 1921, just seven years before celebrating its centenary, the periodical (once one of London’s most illustrious literary publications) was forced to merge with the Nation. For an overview of JMM’s editorship of the journal, see Kaplan 2010, pp. 104–16.

[24 July 1921] [ATL] Chalet des Sapins Montana-sur-Sierre (Valais) Switzerland 24 VII 1921. Dear Mrs Jones: Please forgive me for not having written to you sooner but I have to keep all my letter writing for Sunday just now; I am so hard pressed with a book, that won’t be finished, during the week. It is more than kind of you to have sent me the photograph of your perfectly lovely little boy! You must indeed be proud of him. Please give him my love & thanks for it, too . . . I think the way you have had it taken is so charming, too – showing his arms and hands. Children are a joy to look at . . . I do hope I shall see the small original one day. I shall try not to tell him how lovely he is – but thats always rather hard. England seems to have had a real summer at last. The Daily News arrives here gasping & even The Nation looks warm. Here on our mountain tops we are hot, too, but never too hot. And we step out of our front door and our back door into a forest which is always cool. With kindest regards Yours very sincerely Katherine Mansfield Murry.

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[5 February 1922] [HRC] V ii 1922

Victoria Palace Hotel 6–8 Rue Blaise Desgoffe Rue de Rennes Paris.

Dear Mrs Jones, Thank you very much. The Lancet turned up in record time.1 And now I am going to ask you if you would kindly forward any letters that arrive at the office for me to the above address. I am staying in Paris for the course of treatment and I shall not return to Switzerland. Will this be troubling you too much? It would be simpler if you entered the postage expenses etc., to J.M.M s account and I will settle (or try to get out of settling) with him. He is staying up in the mountains with his beloved little black and white cat to bear him company. Yours very sincerely Katherine Mansfield Murry. Notes 1. The Lancet was, and still is, a well-established general medical journal, with detailed reports of the most recent research in medicines, surgery and medical research. As KM’s letters and notebooks attest, it often provided her with up-to-date information on new methods for the treatment of tuberculosis – including vaccination and the X-ray treatments offered by Manoukhin, which it presented as a promising breakthrough for a number of years.

[22 February 1922] [HRC] Victoria Palace Hotel Wednesday 6–8 Rue Blaise Desgoffe Rue de Rennes Paris. Dear Mrs Jones, I am so very sorry to hear what a bad time your brave little Hugh is having. It must be an anxiety to you! Must he really have another operation for adenoids and tonsils on Saturday? I wonder if you have heard of the great success of a hospital in Chelsea where children are treated for both without operating. I read a good deal about the whole subject recently in the Daily News but unfortunately I did not keep the letters.1 They made a strong case for not operating. But you must know a great deal more about these things than I do. I do hope that,

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in any case, Hugh will soon be better. Its warm and sunny again here; I hope it is in London. I shall try and get out and send him a little Easter gift. With our very best wishes to you both Yours sincerely Katherine Mansfield Murry. Notes 1. Radiology was currently being tried as an efficient means to treat tonsillitis, notably using similar X-ray treatments (with Roentgen rays) to those believed to relieve the symptoms of tuberculosis. These methods, along with other non-surgical techniques, were popularised in April 1922, when the widely read and reviewed book Adenoids and Diseased Tonsils: Their General Effect on Intelligence was published; it was written by the American doctor Margaret Cobb Roberts.

[3 May 1922] [HRC] [Victoria Palace Hôtel, rue Blaise Desgoffe, Paris] Paris. 3 v 1922 Dear Mrs Jones, Will you please pardon me and ask Hugh to for not have answered your letter and thanked him for the lovely post card before! I have had influenza and am still in the stage of getting over it. The weather here has been glacial and so damp that everybody has caught cold. I am so glad to hear from your letter to JMM today that Hugh is better. It seems too dreadful that he should have had such a bad time. Poor little chap! You must be very proud of his courage but still one would rather little children didn’t have to be brave. I do hope this will be the very last of his battles, and I wish I were in London so that I could show you in a little more neighbourly way how much I wish him well. Yours very sincerely Katherine Middleton Murry.

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[7 May 1922] [HRC] 7 v 1922

Victoria Palace Hotel Rue Blaise DesGoffe Rue de Rennes.

Dear Mrs Jones, I wonder if you would be so kind as to send to Constable for a copy of my book1 & post it to Mrs Anne Estelle Rice Drey 80 Church Street Kensington with the enclosed page. I should be so grateful. And could you send me a copy of the May Storyteller published by Cassells.2 If you are too busy of course I shall understand. I am so glad to hear your better news. Yours very sincerely, Katherine Middleton Murry. Notes 1. Constable had just published The Garden Party and Other Stories. 2. The Story-Teller was a monthly illustrated magazine published in London by Cassell’s and then edited by Newman Flower, under whose editorship an impressive array of emerging and established short-story writers were welcomed as contributors. KM’s ‘A Cup of Tea’ featured in the May 1922 issue (see CW2, pp. 461–7).

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Hugh Jones (1917–2010)

Introduction If we were to judge only from the extant letters from KM, we would know that ‘little Hugh’ was a small boy who spent an inordinate amount of time being poorly. He has been ill when he draws pictures for KM, and receives the thank you letter we read below in return, but his bouts of ill health also run through KM’s letters to his mother like a leitmotif: ‘I hope your little boy is well again,’ she writes in January 1920; ‘I hope the little one has got over his bronchitis,’ she continues the following month; two years on, ‘brave little Hugh’ is suffering again and due for ‘another operation for adenoids and tonsils’; and three months after that, only just getting over a ‘bad time’ but being brave about it.1 If childhood shapes the adult, then these ongoing battles with infection – in the immediate post-war years, moreover, when the Spanish flu epidemic was also at its height – then we have the answer to the illustrious career that ‘little Hugh’ went on to build. Philip Hugh Jones was born in August 1917, but was only ever known to family and friends as ‘Hugh’. ‘Philip’ was his father’s name: Philip Morrell, the Liberal Party MP and staunch pacifist, whose wife Ottoline opened up their family home, Garsington Manor, during the war to welcome friends seeking war work in order to escape conscription, and artistically minded soldiers needing time to rest before returning to the Front. Ottoline also ensured that the children that Philip fathered outside their marriage were taken good care of, and little Hugh was one of them.2 Hugh Jones’s mother had been Morrell’s secretary; after her son’s birth, she worked as an administrative assistant at the Athenaeum, and thus, through JMM, met KM. Hugh went to Highgate School and won a scholarship to King’s College, Cambridge, qualifying in medicine in 1942; he then spent the remainder of the war years at the Medical Research Council, studying the effects of exposure to fumes and toxic gases on army vehicle operators. Here was the official beginning of a career devoted to pneumonology and lung physiology – even if some may argue it was the impression made on him from receiving a kind letter from a lady who died soon after from a bad infection of the lungs. Whatever the inspiration behind his vocation, Hugh Jones went on to become one of Britain’s leading chest physicians,

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completing pioneering research, notably in domains such as the noxious effects of asbestos in industrial environments and coal dust on miners’ lungs, asthma and emphysema. In his free time, Hugh Jones was also a keen explorer and mountain climber, an amateur anthropologist and a talented artist – as befits someone whose mother was ‘on the periphery of the Bloomsbury Group’.3 Claire Davison Notes 1. See above, pp. 620–4. 2. The name was later hyphenated on to his surname, Jones, after the Morrells’ own baby, also named Hugh, died in 1906 aged only three days old. 3. See above, p. 619.

[5 May 1922] [Letters, 1928, 2: pp. 210–11] [Victoria Palace Hotel, rue Blaise Desgoffe, Paris] May 5, 1922 My dear little Hugh, First I must beg your pardon for not having thanked you for that lovely postcard you painted for me. But I wanted to run out and buy you a little present to pop in the letter and I have not been able to yet, for I have been ill, too. But I won’t forget. The very first time I go out I will drive to a shop that sells presents. How very nicely you painted that bee-hive. I have always wanted to live in a bee hive, so long as the bees were not there. With a little window and a chimney it would make a dear little house. I once read a story about a little girl who lived in one with her Grandma, and her Grandma’s name was old Mrs Gooseberry. What a funny name!1 Mr Murry thinks you write very well. He liked the ‘R’ best. He said it looked as if it was going for a walk. Which letter do you like making best? ‘Q’ is nice because of its curly tail. I have pinned the postcard on the wall so that everybody can see it. I hope you are nearly well again. With much love from ‘Mrs Murry’ Notes 1. It has not unfortunately been possible to ascertain whether KM had really read a story of an old Mrs Gooseberry who lived in a beehive, or whether she started making the tale up to delight little Hugh.

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Stone, Jean E. (1977), Katherine Mansfield: Publications in Australia 1907–9, Sydney: Wentworth Books. Symons, Arthur (1903), Plays, Acting and Music, London: Duckworth. ––––– (1904), Studies in Prose and Verse, London: Dent. ––––– (1906), Studies in Seven Arts, London: Dutton. Thacker, Andrew (2016), ‘“A True Magic Chamber”: The Public Face of the Modernist Bookshop’, Modernist Cultures, 11: 3, pp. 429–51. ––––– (2019), ‘Of Bliss and Blushing: Cities and Affect in Katherine Mansfield and Jean Rhys’, in Gerri Kimber, Isobel Maddison and Todd Martin (eds), Katherine Mansfield and Elizabeth von Arnim, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Tomalin, Claire (2012), Katherine Mansfield: A Secret Life, London: Penguin. Waley, Arthur (1918), A Hundred and Seventy Chinese Poems, London: Constable. Walker, Jennifer (2011), ‘After Ann Veronica. “The Episode of Little e”: Fact or Fiction?’, Journal of the H. G. Wells Society, 34, pp. 31–2. ––––– (2013), Elizabeth of the German Garden – A Literary Journey, Brighton and Hove: Book Guild. ––––– (2018), ‘After Hornsey Lane’, Tinakori, 1, January, pp. 28–50. Available at: (last accessed 13 May 2019). Wells, H. G. (1909), The History of Mr Polly, London: Collins. ––––– (1915), Boon, the Mind of the Race, The Wild Asses of the Devil and The Last Trump, Prepared for Publication by Reginald Bliss, with An Ambiguous Introduction by H. G. Wells (Who is in Truth the Author of the Entire Book), London: Fisher Unwin. –––– (1934), Experiment in Autobiography, London: Gollancz. ––––– (1997), The Correspondence of H. G. Wells, vol. 3, David C. Smith (ed.), London: Routledge. Whistler, Theresa (1993), Imagination of the Heart: The Life of Walter de la Mare, London: Duckworth. Woodeson, John (1972), Mark Gertler: Biography of a Painter, 1891–1939, London: Sidgwick & Jackson. Woods, Joanna (2001), Katerina: The Russian World of Katherine Mansfield, Auckland: Penguin. Woolf, Leonard (1980) [1963–9], An Autobiography, 2 vols, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Woolf, Virginia (1975–80), The Letters of Virginia Woolf, 6 vols, Nigel Nicolson and Joanna Trautmann (eds), London and New York: Houghton Harcourt. ––––– (1977–84), The Diary of Virginia Woolf, 5 vols, Anne Olivier Bell and Nigel Nicolson (eds), London and New York: Houghton Harcourt. ––––– (1986–2011), The Essays of Virginia Woolf, 6 vols, Andrew McNeillie and Stuart Clarke (eds), London: Hogarth Press.

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––––– (1987), ‘The New Crusade’, in The Essays of Virginia Woolf, vol. 2, Andrew McNeillie (ed.), New York and London: Harcourt Brace, p. 201. ––––– (2006) [1938], Three Guineas, Jane Marcus (ed.), New York and London: Harcourt. Wordsworth, Dorothy (1897), Journals of Dorothy Wordsworth, 2 vols, William Knight (ed.), London: Macmillan. Wordsworth, William (1888), Complete Poetical Works, London: Macmillan. Wright, Mabel Osgood (1906), The Garden, You and I, New York: Macmillan. Young, James Carruthers (1927), ‘An Experiment at Fontainebleau: A Personal Reminiscence’, New Adelphi, 1: 1, September, pp. 26–40. Zimring, Rishona (2016), ‘Rethinking Mansfield through GaudierBrzeska: Monumentality and Intimacy’, in Claire Davison and Gerri Kimber (eds), Katherine Mansfield’s French Lives, Leiden: Brill-Rodopi, pp. 209–22.

Archives – manuscript sources Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington (ATL) Bodleian Library, Oxford (B) British Library, London (BL) Cambridge University Library, Cambridge (C) Harry Ransom, University of Texas at Austin (HRC) Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of English and American Literature, the New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations (Berg) Huntington Library, San Marino, California (H) Newberry Library, Chicago (N)

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Index

Aaron’s Rod (Lawrence, D. H.), 591n ‘About Love’ (Chekhov, A.), 389, 390n, 586, 588n, 592, 592n Abraham Lincoln (Drinkwater, J.), 531 Acacia Road, 161n, 177–8, 269, 271, 390, 424, 426n, 614 The Academy, 558, 560n Adam International Review, 340 Adeane, Marie Constance, 478n Life With Queen Victoria, 478n The Adelphi, 436n Adelphi Terrace, 18, 304, 308, 314, 568, 612, 620 Adenoids and Diseased Tonsils: Their General Effect on Intelligence (Roberts, M.), 624n ‘The Admiral’s Broom’ (Bevan, F.; Weatherly, F.), 296n The Adventures of Elizabeth in Rügen (von Arnim, E.), 22 The Advocate, 15 ‘After Ann Veronica. “The Episode of Little e”: Fact or Fiction?’ (Walker, J.), 26n ‘After Hornsey Lane’ (Walker, J.), 26n Agate, James E., 620, 621n Responsibility, 621n The Age of Innocence (Wharton, E.), 548n Aiken, Conrad, 15–18, 17n–19n, 119n The Charnel Rose, Senlin: A Biography, and Other Poems, 18n Collected Short Stories of Conrad Aiken, 18n Costumes by Eros, 17 ‘Letters from America’, 15–16, 18n ‘Meretrix: Ironic’, 19n Preludes for Memnon, 19n Scepticisms: Notes on Contemporary Poetry, 15 Selected Letters of Conrad Aiken, 18n Selected Poems, 15 ‘The Short Story as Poetry’, 17n, 19n Ushant: An Essay, 16, 18n–19n ‘Your Obituary, Well Written’, 17

Ainger, William Bradshaw, 73–6, 74n, 351n Alice-for-Short (De Morgan, W.), 282n All the Dogs of My Life (von Arnim, E.), 26n L’Allegro (Milton, J.), 381n Allison, J. Murray, 250n (ed.) Official Illustrated Catalogue of the Queen’s Doll’s House, 250n ‘Almost a Tragedy: The Cars on Lambton Quay’ (Mansfield, K.), 235n ‘The Aloe’ (Mansfield, K.), 300n, 345n Alpers, Antony, 3, 11n, 66, 269, 325, 326n, 332, 335n, 356n, 381n The Life of Katherine Mansfield, 11n, 326n, 356n, 381n ‘Alpine Club’, 417n ‘American Poetry’ (Murry, J. M.), 19n Amiel, Henri Frédéric, 290, 291n Journal intime, 291n Anatomy of Melancholy (Burton, R.), 389, 389n Andersen, Hans Christian, 290 Anderson, Ethel, 234, 235n Anet, Claude, 314n Ariane, jeune fille russe, 314n La Révolution russe – chroniques, 314n Anna Karenina (Tolstoy, L.), 284n D’Annunzio, Gabriele, 283, 284n Il Piacere, 284n L’Innocente, 284n ‘An Anonymous Story’ (Chekhov, A.), 587n Anrep, Boris, 63n, 445, 447n Anton Chehov (Gerhardi, W.), 567, 587n, 593n ‘Apologie pour le Plagiat’ (France, A.), 603n The April Baby’s Book of Tunes (von Arnim, E.), 321n ‘Arabian Nights’ (Poiret, P.), 442, 443n–4n Ariane, jeune fille russe (Anet, C.), 314n ‘The Ark’, 372, 372n, 492, 618n see also Gower Street

637

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von Arnim, Elizabeth (née Beauchamp, Mary Annette), 3, 10, 20, 22–5, 26n, 27–32, 29n, 33n–5n, 35–45, 37n, 41n, 43n, 46n, 47–8, 48n–50n, 50–8, 52n, 54n–7n, 60–4, 60n–4n, 69, 95n, 120n, 122n, 123–5, 125n–6n, 127, 144n, 146, 147n, 150n, 160n, 186n, 189n, 200n, 208, 209n, 215, 220, 220n, 224n, 232, 232n, 239n, 240, 241n, 247, 249, 250n, 253, 254n, 265, 268, 277n, 303n, 304–5, 307, 308n, 313, 321n, 323n, 324, 342n, 373n, 393, 399, 399n, 401, 406, 408n, 428, 435–6, 476–7, 485, 486n, 523, 523n The Adventures of Elizabeth in Rügen, 22 All the Dogs of My Life, 26n The April Baby’s Book of Tunes, 321n The Caravaners, 23 Christine, 22 Christopher and Columbus, 24 The Cottage in the Air, 43n Elizabeth and Her German Garden, 20, 22, 26n The Enchanted April, 20, 25, 26n, 46n, 64n, 254n In the Mountains, 22 The Jasmine Farm, 25 Mr Skeffington, 25 The Pastor’s Wife, 22, 26n The Princess Priscilla’s Fortnight, 23, 43n Priscilla Runs Away, 26n, 43n Vera, 25, 31, 33n, 54n, 303, 406, 408n, 428 von Arnim, Felicitas Joyce, 23–4, 323n von Arnim-Schlagenthin, Graf Henning August, 21, 23 Art (Bell, C.), 426n ‘Art and the Individual’ (Lawrence, D. H.), 506n ‘The Art of Beatrice Elvery, Lady Glenavy (1883–1970)’ (Gordon Bowe, N.), 503n Arts and Crafts movement, 23, 172n, 282n, 574n As You Like It (Shakespeare, W.), 217n Ashton, Winifred see Dane, Clemence Aspects of Literature (Murry, J. M.), 19n, 34n, 531, 532n Asquith, Elizabeth Charlotte Lucy see Bibesco, Elizabeth I Have Only Myself to Blame, 324 Asquith, Herbert, 102n, 324, 350n, 417n ‘At a Country House’ (Chekhov, A.), 417n ‘At the Bay’ (Mansfield, K.), 28n, 35n, 41n, 56n, 160n, 209n, 250n, 266n, 271, 295n, 340, 397n, 405n, 413n, 418n, 436n, 548n, 550, 550n The Athenaeum, 15–16, 18n, 24, 39n, 43, 96, 97n, 138n, 207n, 296n, 324n, 327n, 329, 331n, 363n, 372n, 377n, 382n, 388n, 443n, 447n, 523, 524n, 527, 547, 558, 573n, 588n, 598n, 613, 619–20, 621n–2n, 622, 626 Athenaeum (Cat), 93, 94n, 101n, 175n, 373–4, 375n, 387

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Auden, W. H., 1 Austen, Jane, 24, 38, 39n–40n Emma, 38, 39n Mansfield Park, 39n Australia, 20, 35n, 186n, 206n, 223–4, 235n, 239n, 277n, 287n, 295n, 336, 343n, 361n An Autobiography (Woolf, L.), 480n ‘Autumns: I’ (Mansfield, K.), 270, 614n ‘Autumns: II’ (Mansfield, K.), 271, 614n ‘Ave Atque Vale’ (Swinburne, A.), 32, 34n ‘Awake’ (de la Mare, W.), 43n Bad Wörishofen, 71, 180, 186–7, 186n, 258 Baillot, Juliet, 350n Baker, Dora Meath, 375n Baker, Ida, 1–2, 6, 9–10, 29n, 35n, 40n, 46n, 52n, 65–9, 71n, 74n–5n, 79n, 81n–2n, 84n, 86n, 91n, 93n–4n, 97n–8n, 100n, 105n, 107n, 113n, 116n, 118n, 122n, 124n, 128n, 133n, 136, 139n, 142, 142n–4n, 147n–8n, 150n, 152n, 154n, 160n, 162n–4n, 166n–7n, 171n–2n, 175n–6n, 180–1, 181n, 199, 203n, 221n, 237n, 261n, 268n, 269, 318, 333, 339, 403n, 457n, 472n, 478n, 490n, 514n, 521–2, 546n, 622 Katherine Mansfield: The Memories of L.M., 10n, 46n, 52n, 66–70, 74n, 81n, 86n, 93n, 118n, 122n, 133n, 144n, 152n, 154n, 160n, 166n, 172n, 176n, 180, 181n, 261n, 457n, 514n, 546n Ballet Dancers (Gertler, M.), 447n de Balzac, Honoré, 286, 287n La Comédie humaine, 287n Bandol, 81n, 88n, 149, 150n, 181, 190, 194, 228, 300, 462, 463n, 464, 471, 536–9, 605, 615 Bank of New Zealand, 163n, 179, 193n, 223, 234, 288n, 290n, 317, 333, 335 Barclay, Florence L., 429n Barkas, Amy, 177–8 Barkas, Frederick, 177 Barkas, Mary, 177 Baron, Carl, 561n (ed.) Sons and Lovers, 559, 561n Baron, Helen, 561n (ed.) Sons and Lovers, 559, 561n Bartrick-Baker, Evelyn (Vere), 287, 289n, 317, 363n, 388n Bates, H. E., 559–60, 561n Edward Garnett – A Personal Portrait, 561n Baudelaire, Charles, 34n, 283n, 296n Baugy-sur-Clarens, 510 Beach, Sylvia, 56n, 163, 163n, 477, 478n Beach Thomas, William, 137, 137n Beauchamp, Annie Burnell (née Dyer), 21, 26n, 65, 71n, 97n, 111n, 179–81, 181n, 193n, 196, 204n, 209n, 210, 217n–18n, 220n, 223, 227n, 239n, 258, 261n, 268, 318, 333, 363n, 499, 534 Beauchamp, Arthur, 20, 26n, 184n, 256n, 544

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index Beauchamp, Charlotte Mary (m. Waterlow), 26n, 63n, 65–7, 76, 76n, 84, 113, 121, 122n, 125, 137, 138n, 180–1, 185, 186n, 188, 191–2, 193n, 195–6, 198–206, 203n, 207n, 208, 209n, 210–13, 215, 217–20, 222, 222n, 226, 229, 231–3, 232n, 235n, 236, 239, 249, 250n, 253, 254n, 255, 257–9, 261n, 262–6, 276, 279, 286, 288n, 289, 293, 298–302, 302n–3n, 305, 311, 342, 342n, 385, 402, 415 Beauchamp, Constance (Connie), 92n, 94n–5n, 145–6, 147n, 199, 205, 231, 379n, 544–5, 546n Beauchamp, Cradock, 119n, 230n, 235n Beauchamp, Elizabeth Weiss (Louey, née Lassetter), 20, 26n, 273, 323n Beauchamp, Ethel B., 230n ‘The Cruise of the Lizzie’, 230n Beauchamp, Harold, 16, 26n, 33n, 119n, 179–80, 197n, 198, 200n, 206n–7n, 217n, 223–5, 225n, 232n, 235n, 237n, 250, 251n, 254n, 256n, 257, 259n–61n, 268, 271n, 279n–80n, 287n, 302n, 306n, 317–18, 336, 377n, 499 ‘A Business Man’s Notes’, 251n ‘Land of Big Things’, 251n Reminiscences and Recollections, 200n, 225n, 259n, 271n Beauchamp, Henry (Gardy), 26n, 277n, 290n, 332 Beauchamp, Henry Herron, 20, 23, 26n, 186n, 194n, 268n, 323n Beauchamp, Horatio, 544 Beauchamp, Jeanne, 66–7, 124n, 137, 138n, 161, 180, 183, 191–2, 193n, 194, 196, 199–200, 205, 205n, 207, 207n, 211n, 215, 222, 222n, 228–9, 231, 245n, 246, 248, 250n, 254n, 255, 256n, 257–8, 260, 261n, 264, 266, 269–70, 274, 289, 298–301, 303n, 305, 306n, 307, 311, 443n Beauchamp, Leslie (Chummie), 181, 209, 209n, 221, 229, 230n, 234, 255, 257, 260, 264, 267n, 268–71, 272n, 289, 291n, 299–301, 301n, 321, 337, 435n, 604 Beauchamp Lodge, 87n, 289, 290n, 292, 295n, 299, 332–3 Beauchamp, Mary Annette see von Arnim, Elizabeth Beauchamp, Ralph (Rally), 146, 147n, 240, 241n Beauchamp, Richard, 257 Beauchamp, Sydney (‘Sinner’), 26, 26n, 33n, 37n, 55n, 119n, 238, 239n Beauchamp, Vera, 6, 8, 65–6, 86, 96, 121, 122n, 180, 185, 186n, 197n, 198, 200, 202, 203n, 211n, 216n, 228, 230n, 234, 238, 258, 261n, 263, 270–1, 273–6, 275n–6n, 279–80, 279n, 285–6, 287n, 289, 290n–1n, 292–4, 295n, 298n, 299–304, 301n–3n, 310, 310n, 317

6178_Davison & Kimber.indd 639

639

Beaunis, Henri, 306n ‘Beauty Passes’ (de la Mare, W.), 251n Beerbohm, Max, 25 Beethoven, Ludwig von, 509n Bell, Andrew Beauchamp Mackintosh, 310 Bell, Anne Olivier (ed.) The Diary of Virginia Woolf, 326n, 347n, 354n, 360n, 372n, 620n Bell, Clive, 105n, 342n, 423, 426n, 446, 598n, 613, 617, 618n Art, 426n Bell, James Abbot Mackintosh (Mack), 86, 87n, 122n, 196, 197n, 212, 215, 219, 238, 273–4, 295n, 301, 301n, 303, 306, 308, 310 The Wilds of Maoriland, 87n Bell, John, 310n Bell, Julian, 619 Bell, Vanessa, 347n, 373n, 391n, 426n Belloc, Hilaire, 312 Belloc Lowndes, Marie Adelaide, 137, 138n, 250n, 312–16, 313n, 316n I, Too, Have Lived in Arcadia, 313n The Lodger, 313n The Lonely House,, 313 Studies in Wives, 313n Bely, Andrei, 468n Petersburg, 468n Bendall, Edith Kathleen (Edie), 317–21, 321n, 323n The Little Girl with the Fringe, 323n Bendall, William Edward, 317 Bennett, Arnold, 570n Benson, E. F., 8, 292, 295n Sheaves, 8, 292, 295n Berlin, 21–2, 90, 90n, 167 Bernard, Arthur, 50n, 120n Bernheim, Hippolyte, 306n Between Two Worlds: An Autobiography (Murry, J. M.), 67, 72, 537n Bevan, Frederick, 296n ‘The Admiral’s Broom’, 296n Bi Palatinoids, 83n, 86, 87n Bibesco, Antoine, 102n, 324 Bibesco, Elizabeth (née Asquith), 100, 101n, 324–7, 327n, 350n, 592 Short Stories, Poems and Aphorisms, 326n Bibesco, Hélène, 324 Birrell, Augustine, 25 The Black Diamond (Young, B.), 37n, 256n Black, Dora (m. Russell), 25, 37n, 54n Blake, William, 381n Mirth and her Companions, 381n Blanchard, R. U., 17n–18n A Reviewer’s ABC: Collected Criticism of Conrad Aiken from 1916 to the Present, 17n–18n Blast, 463n ‘Bliss’ (Mansfield, K.), 18, 88n, 118, 547, 573 Bliss and Other Stories (Mansfield, K.), 15, 37n, 132n, 256n, 366n, 458n, 519, 523, 524n, 547

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Bloomsbury Group, 60n, 95n, 105n, 190n, 325, 342n, 356n, 363n, 373n, 375n, 391n, 402n, 408n, 426n, 448, 451n–2n, 458n, 462n, 465n, 480n, 552–3, 613, 616n, 618n, 619, 627 The Blue Review, 209n, 523, 527, 531, 532n–3n, 561n Blunden, Edmund Charles, 250n, 329–30, 330n–1n, 382, 382n ‘Chinese Pond’, 329 Old Homes, 329–30 Selected Poems, 330n ‘Wilderness’, 329 Boch, Eugène, 295n Bois de Boulogne, 54n The Bomb (Harris, F.), 608, 610n Boon, the Mind of the Race, The Wild Asses of the Devil and The Last Trump, Prepared for Publication by Reginald Bliss, with An Ambiguous Introduction by H. G. Wells (Who is in Truth the Author of the Entire Book) (Wells, H. G.), 508n Borrow, George, 293, 296n Lavengro – The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest, 297n Boswell, James, 54n The Life of Samuel Johnson, 54n Bottermund, Rudolf, 71n Bouchage, Ambroise, 93–4, 94n, 99, 100n, 101–2, 315n Boulton, James T., 631 (ed.) The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, 189n, 561n–2n Bounine, Ivan see Bunin Bowden, George, 7, 67, 71n, 180, 258, 260n, 277n, 332–4, 335n Bowen, Elizabeth, 324, 326n Bowen, Stella, 611 Brady, Edwin James, 224, 336–8, 337n–8n Brawne, Fanny, 402n Brett, Dorothy, 2–3, 6–8, 10, 35n, 48n, 60, 60n, 62, 63n, 96, 97n, 98, 100n, 105n, 106, 130, 137, 138n, 155, 212, 214n, 221, 242, 270, 315n, 329, 339–44, 341n–3n, 345n–7n, 346–55, 350n, 352n, 356n, 357–64, 360n, 366–92, 366n, 369n, 372n, 379n, 381n, 383n, 394, 394n, 396–7, 396n, 399–400, 399n, 402–3, 402n, 405–6, 409, 411–16, 413n, 419–23, 419n, 423n, 425–34, 431n, 435n, 436–8, 440, 442, 443n, 444–6, 447n, 448, 451n, 453, 458, 460n, 463–4, 466–7, 469–72, 472n, 475–6, 475n, 478, 480n, 482, 482n, 488n, 489, 494–7, 494n, 502, 523, 549n, 555n, 595–6, 598n, 618n Conversation Piece at Garsington, 342n ‘Katherine’, 341n Still Life with Fruit and Frog, 345n Umbrellas, 342n, 346n, 350n Brett, Reginald Baliol, 97n

6178_Davison & Kimber.indd 640

Brett: From Bloomsbury to New Mexico, A Biography (Hignett, S.), 341n, 345n, 381n Bright, Laura (m. Beauchamp), 33n, 197n, 223, 306n, 499 The Brimming Cup (Canfield, D.), 253, 254n British Theatre and the Great War: New Perspectives (ed. Maunder, A.), 531n Broadhead, W. Smithson, 105n, 402n Brontë, Charlotte, 283, 285n, 294 Jane Eyre, 285n Brontë, Emily, 283, 285n, 294 Wuthering Heights, 285n Brooke, Rupert, 530 Brooke, Sylvia Leonora, 383n–4n Toys, 383n Brooke-Pechell, Gladys see Dobrée, Valentine Brooker, Peter, 19n, 88n (ed.) The Oxford Critical and Cultural History of Modernist Magazines, 19n, 88n Browning, Robert, 286, 288n Bugaev, Boris Nikolaevich, 468n Bunin, Ivan, 137, 138n, 452n, 461, 462n, 582–3, 584n Conversations nocturnes, 452n ‘The Gentleman from San Francisco’, 138n, 452n The Gentleman from San Francisco and Other Stories, 584n Journées maudites, 452n Le Village, 452n Burton, Robert, 389n Anatomy of Melancholy, 389, 389n ‘A Business Man’s Notes’ (Beauchamp, H.), 251n Butscher, Edward, 16, 18n Conrad Aiken: Poet of White Horse Vale, 18n Byron, George Gordon, 36n ‘The Prisoner of Chillon’, 36n Café Royal, 595, 608, 614, 614n Campbell, Beatrice (née Elvery, also Lady Glenavy), 1, 6, 8, 117, 117n, 370, 370n, 501–3, 503n, 505n–6n, 508n–9n, 514n, 596, 597n Katherine Mansfield and S. S. Koteliansky in the Garden, 503 Campbell, Gordon, 117n, 370n, 501, 509n Campbell-Smith, Duncan, 5, 11n Masters of the Post: The Authorized History of the Royal Mail, 11n Canada, 66, 86, 211n, 212, 214–15, 228, 230n, 274, 302n, 305, 307, 310–11, 391n ‘The Canary’ (Mansfield, K.), 48n, 61n, 239n, 339, 448n Canfield, Dorothy, 253, 254n The Brimming Cup, 253, 254n Cannan, Gilbert, 188, 189n, 356n, 594–5 Cannan, Mary (née Ansell), 188, 189n, 595 Canning, Minnie Lucie, 433n

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index ‘Captain Ribnikov’ (Kuprin, A.), 74n, 345n Captives (Walpole, H.), 586n The Caravaners (von Arnim, E.), 23 Carco, Francis, 72, 72n, 477n–8n, 512–16, 514n–16n, 595 Les Innocents, 513–15, 515n Jésus-la-Caille, 513 Montmartre à vingt ans, 477n, 515–16, 515n–16n Souvenirs sur Katherine Mansfield, 513, 514n Carcopino-Tusoli, François Marie Alexandre see Carco, Francis Carlisle, Bronwen, 548 Carlton Hill, 424, 426n ‘Carnation’ (Mansfield, K.), 67, 79, 80n, 362n Carpenter, Edward, 283, 284n Civilisation, Its Cause and Cure, 285n Carreño, Teresa, 294n Carrington, Dora, 340, 352n, 372n, 394n, 407, 408n, 424, 481–2, 594–5, 598n, 617, 618n Carrington, Noel (ed.) Selected Letters of Mark Gertler, 597n–8n Carroll, Lewis, 48n, 185n, 301n, 394n The Complete Works of Lewis Carroll, 185n, 394n ‘Jabberwocky’, 394n Through the Looking Glass, 48n, 185n ‘The Walrus and the Carpenter’, 301n Carswell, Donald, 381n, 433n Carswell, John, 381n Lives and Letters: A. R. Orage, Katherine Mansfield, = Beatrice Hastings, John Middleton Murry, S. S. = Koteliansky, 1906–1957, 381n Carter, Huntly, 527 Carton, Paul, 51n, 438n Caruso, Enrico, 409, 410n Casement, Roger, 509n Casetta Deerholm, 122n, 128n, 152n, 377, 521, 545 Cazalet, Thelma, 25 ‘Centenary’ (Mason, B.), 321n Century, 559 Cézanne, Paul, 497n, 595, 598n Chalet des Sapins, 24, 27–31, 35, 35n, 37–41, 37n, 46n, 52n, 69, 104–7, 124n, 142n, 200, 207, 210, 230, 263, 265, 302–3, 310, 339, 392, 394, 394n, 397, 400, 403, 406, 409, 411, 413–14, 418, 420–1, 423, 426–7, 429, 431–2, 434, 436, 457n, 528, 548, 569–70, 573, 622 Chalet Soleil, 23–5, 40, 50, 56n, 59, 146, 209n Chancery Lane, 532–3, 561–2, 564 Chaplin, Aubrey, 408n Chaplin, Charlie, 175n, 375n, 408n, 485 The Charnel Rose, Senlin: A Biography, and Other Poems (Aiken, C.), 18n

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641

Chaucer Mansions, 262 ‘Chekhov and the Buried Life of Katherine Mansfield’ (Polonsky, R.), 328n Chekhov, Anton (also Chehov, Tchekhov, Tchekov), 10, 43n, 97n, 129, 129n, 135, 138, 138n, 328n, 390n, 415–16, 417n–18n, 436n, 441, 443n, 448n, 474, 475n, 553–4, 566–7, 570n, 573n, 576, 577n, 583, 583n–4n, 585, 587n–8n, 600, 602, 602n–3n ‘About Love’, 389, 390n, 586, 588n, 592, 592n ‘An Anonymous Story’, 587n ‘At a Country House’, 417n The Cherry Orchard, 42, 43n The Lady with the Dog and Other Stories, 587n ‘Not Wanted’, 584n ‘Chekhov’s Intent in The Darling’ (Tolstoy, L.), 587n Chéri (Colette, S.), 447n The Cherry Orchard (Chekhov, A.), 42, 43n Chesney Wold, 198, 268, 270 ‘“A Child of the Sun”: Katherine Mansfield, Orientalism and Gurdjieff’ (Kimber, G.), 29n ‘The Child-Who-Was-Tired’ (Mansfield, K.), 334 ‘Chinese Pond’ (Blunden, E.), 329 Cholmondeley, Alice, 22 Chopin, Frederic, 124, 290, 291n, 454, 455n Christine (von Arnim, E.), 22 Christopher and Columbus (von Arnim, E.), 24 Church Street, 341, 343, 346, 348–50, 625 Churchill, Winston, 143, 143n, 415, 417n, 423, 425n, 608 ‘Painting as a Pastime’, 425n ‘La Cigale et la fourmi’ (de la Fontaine, J.), 451n Circulating Genius: John Middleton Murry, Katherine Mansfield and D. H. Lawrence (Kaplan, S.), 345n, 622n Civil Service Supply Association, 78, 78n Civilisation, Its Cause and Cure (Carpenter, E.), 285n Clarke, Bruce, 564n Dora Marsden and Early Modernism: Gender, Individualism, Science, 564n Clarke, Mary, 503–4, 505n Clarke, Stuart (ed.) The Essays of Virginia Woolf, 326n, 531n Clayton, Douglas, 517–18, 517n Clayton, Katharine, 517–18 Clifton, Harry, 300n Clifton Terrace, 216, 217n Clovelly Mansions, 260–1, 334–5, 564, 609 Cobden, Anne, 574n Cobden-Sanderson, Richard, 39n, 567, 572n, 573–4, 574n, 576, 577n, 586n Cobden-Sanderson, Thomas James, 23, 574n Coffin, Hayden, 588n

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Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 285n, 355, 356n, 396n The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, 396n Colette, Sidonie Gabrielle, 447n, 529n, 617, 617n Chéri, 447n The Collected Poems of Katherine Mansfield (Mansfield, K., eds Kimber, G.; Davison, C.), 35n, 87n, 184n, 270–1, 281n Collected Short Stories of Conrad Aiken (Aiken, C.), 18n Come and Find Me (Robins, E.), 291n La Comédie humaine (de Balzac, H.), 287n The Complete Works of Lewis Carroll (Carroll, L., ed. Woollcott, A.), 185n, 394n Confessions (Rousseau, J.), 509n Conrad Aiken: Poet of White Horse Vale (Butscher, E.), 18n Conrad, Joseph, 38, 553, 559, 611 Constable & Co., 48n, 52n, 112n, 124, 205n, 215n, 366n, 388n, 396, 409, 411, 519, 523, 578n, 625, 625n Constance Garnett: A Heroic Life (Garnett, R.), 555n, 560n–1n Contemporary Portraits (Harris, F.), 608 Continental Times, 90, 90n Conversation Piece at Garsington (Brett, D.), 342n Conversations nocturnes (Bunin, I.), 452n Conversations of Goethe (Eckermann, J.), 53, 54n, 451n Cooper, Duff, 144n Cooper, George, 278n Cooper, Gladys, 143n Corelli, Marie, 279n, 286, 287n SS Corinthic, 198, 295n Cornwall, 67, 69, 78–85, 84n, 220n, 311, 354, 356n, 368n, 510, 596, 604 Costumes by Eros (Aiken, C.), 17 The Cottage in the Air (von Arnim, E.), 43n Counter-Attack and other Poems (Sassoon, S.), 359n Countries of the Mind (Murry, J. M.), 30n, 34n, 110n, 291n, 593n Country Life, 620–1, 621n The Court Journal: Court Circular and Fashionable Gazette, 146, 147n Craig, Gordon, 527 Crawford, Elizabeth, 564n The Women’s Suffrage Movement: A Reference Guide, 564n Crimean War, 457n, 509n ‘The Critic as Art’ (Wilde, O.), 607 The Critical Response to Katherine Mansfield (ed. Pilditch, J.), 18n Crone, Nora, 269 A Portrait of Katherine Mansfield, 259n Crosby, Arthur, 276, 277n–8n Croucher, A., 102n ‘The Crown’ (Lawrence, D. H.), 506n ‘The Cruise of the Lizzie’ (Beauchamp, E.), 230n

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Cunard, Nancy, 417n–18n ‘A Cup of Tea’ (Mansfield, K.), 625n Cushman, Keith, 6, 11n ‘The Letters’, 11n D. H. Evans, 106n Dahlerup, Marie, 99, 100n, 521 The Daily Chronicle, 107, 107n, 402, 402n The Daily Herald, 39n The Daily Mirror, 407, 507, 509n The Daily News, 36, 107n, 110n, 126n, 216, 391n, 407, 547, 622–3 The Daily Review of the Foreign Press, 347n The Daily Telegraph, 591n Dane, Clemence, 42, 42n Will Shakespeare: An Invention in Four Acts, 43n Dangerous Ages (Macaulay, R.), 37n, 256n Dare, Zena, 402n ‘The Daughters of the Late Colonel’ (Mansfield, K.), 68, 108n, 221n, 258, 264n, 417n, 544, 566, 582 David Copperfield (Dickens, C.), 76n, 343n Davison, Claire, 154n, 308n, 313, 326, 503, 514, 528, 531, 555, 560, 564, 568, 599, 609, 620, 627 (ed.) The Collected Poems of Katherine Mansfield, 35n, 87n, 184n, 270–1, 281n (ed.) The Edinburgh Edition of the Collected Works of Katherine Mansfield, vol. 4 – The Diaries of Katherine Mansfield, including Miscellaneous Works, 6, 35n, 39n, 43n, 46n, 50n–1n, 54n–6n, 66, 68, 71n, 84n, 92n, 100n, 138n, 150n, 160n, 184n–6n, 258, 259n, 274, 278n, 281n–2n, 284n, 287n–9n, 297n, 313, 318, 320, 326n–7n, 339, 356n, 402n, 409n, 413n, 436n, 448n, 451n, 487n–8n, 509n, 514n, 521, 556n, 574n, 584n ‘Near Misses: From Gerhardi to Mansfield (and back), via Chekhov’, 308n Davison, Emily Wilding, 563 ‘The Day is Done’ (Longfellow, H.), 75n, 250n Days Bay, 320 de la Mare, Walter, 41–2, 41n, 43n, 116n, 250n–1n, 266, 396, 435, 436n, 445, 447n, 470n, 523–4, 524n–6n ‘Awake’, 43n ‘Beauty Passes’, 251n ‘Epitaph – To a Beautiful Lady’, 34n, 470n ‘Horse in a Field’, 524 ‘The Listeners’, 523 Memoirs of a Midget, 447n, 523–4, 525n–6n ‘Seaton’s Aunt’, 523 The Three Mullar-Mulgars, 116n, 266, 396 The Veil and Other Poems, 41n, 43n De Morgan, William, 282n Alice-for-Short, 282n Joseph Vance, 281, 282n

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index ‘The Dead’ (Joyce, J.), 410n Dead Souls (Gogol, N.), 554 The Death of Ivan Ilyich (Tolstoy, L.), 603n The Death of Society: Conte de Fée Premier (Wilson, R.), 109n Debenhams, 106n Déjeuner sur l’herbe (Manet, E.), 397n Delville, Jean, 295n Devon Hospital, 83, 84n The Dial, 15, 138n, 435 Diana of the Crossways (Meredith, G.), 281n The Diary and Letters of Marie Belloc Lowndes (ed. Lowndes, S.), 313n The Diary of Virginia Woolf (Woolf, V., eds Bell, A.; Nicolson, N.), 326n, 347n, 354n, 360n, 372n, 620n Dickens, Charles, 76n, 145, 343n, 350n, 480n, 486n, 555, 606n David Copperfield, 76n, 343n Dombey and Son, 480n Martin Chuzzlewit, 350n, 606n Our Mutual Friend, 590, 591n Tom Tiddler’s Ground, 486n Dieppe, 154n, 465n, 490n Diment, Galya, 43n–4n, 52n ‘Katherine Mansfield’s Russian Healers’, 44n, 52n ‘Post Diagnosis: Bashkirtseff, Chekhov and Gorky through Mansfield’s Prism of Tuberculosis’, 43n Dismorr, Jessie, 353n Ditchling, 171, 172n Dobrée, Bonamy, 396n, 451n, 598n Dobrée, Valentine (née Brooke-Pechell, Gladys), 396n, 451n, 480n, 482n, 493, 598n ‘The Doll’s House’ (Mansfield, K.), 122n, 250n–1n, 270, 436n Dombey and Son (Dickens, C.), 480n The Dominion, 275n–7n, 317, 319, 321n Donat, Louis, 51n, 465, 466n, 468n Donne, John, 45, 46n ‘The Ecstacy’, 46n Dora Marsden and Early Modernism: Gender, Individualism, Science (Clarke, B.), 564n ‘Dorothy Brett’s Umbrellas (1917)’ (Spalding, F.), 342n Dostoevsky, Fyodor, 157n, 425n, 553 Winter Notes, 425n ‘The Doves’ Nest’ (Mansfield, K.), 249, 433, 584n The Doves’ Nest and Other Stories (Mansfield, K.), 524 ‘Le Dr Stephani et les sanatoriums’ (Galofaro, S.), 26n Dracula (Stoker, B.), 519 Drey, Anne Estelle see Rice, Anne Estelle Drey, Oscar Raymond, 116n, 138n, 527–9, 528n–9n

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Drinkwater, John, 530–3, 532n–3n Abraham Lincoln, 531 ‘Lines Spoken at the Opening of the Birmingham Repertory Theatre, February 15th, 1913’, 531, 532n–3n ‘Travel Talk’, 532n Dryhurst, Sylvia, 413n du Maurier, Gerald, 143, 143n Dublin, 56n, 116n, 136, 501, 505n–6n, 508n Dubliners (Joyce, J.), 410n Duckworth, George, 559 Dudeney, Alice Louisa, 275, 277n The Orchard Thief, 275, 277n Dulac, Edmund, 417, 418n Duncan, Isadora, 543n Dunning, Millar Durroch, 171, 172n, 496n Dupin, Amantine-Lucile Aurore see Sand, George Dyer, Annie Burnell see Annie Beauchamp Dyer, Belle (Aunt Belle), 76, 76n, 191–2, 193n, 194, 229, 250n, 264, 293, 317, 364n Dyer, Edith Amy (Kitty), 217n Dyer, Frank, 218n, 234, 534 Dyer, Joseph, 179 Dyer, Lulu, 6, 218, 218n, 234, 474, 534 Earle, Lilias, 506n The Earth Child (Mansfield, K.), 184n, 271 Eckermann, Johann Peter, 53, 54n, 309n, 451n Conversations of Goethe, 53, 54n, 451n Eckhard, Margery, 480n Ecole de Nancy, 306n ‘The Ecstacy’ (Donne, J.), 46n ‘The Education of Audrey’ (Mansfield, K.), 276, 277n Edward Garnett – A Personal Portrait (Bates, H.), 561n The Egoist (Meredith, G.), 281n The Egoist, 468n Einstein, Albert, 63, 63n Éire (Elvery, B.), 501 ‘The Elephant‘, 67–9, 79, 79n, 87–8, 357, 358n, 360, 361n, 362, 364–5 see also Portland Villas Eliot, George, 372, 372n Eliot, T. S., 15–16, 447n, 586n, 613 The Letters of T. S. Eliot, 447n The Waste Land, 586n Eliot, Valerie, 447n (ed.) The Letters of T. S. Eliot, 447n Eliot, Vivienne, 447n Elizabeth and Her German Garden (von Arnim, E.), 20, 22, 26n Elizabeth of the German Garden – A Literary Journey (Walker, J.), 26n, 34n–5n, 486n Elvery, Beatrice Moss see Campbell, Beatrice Éire, 501 Virgin Ironing, 502 Elvery, Marjorie, 508n Eminent Victorians (Strachey, L.), 206n Emma (Austen, J.), 38, 39n

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The Enchanted April (von Arnim, E.), 20, 25, 26n, 46n, 64n, 254n England or Germany? (Harris, F.), 608 The English Review, 88, 88n, 90, 592n, 610n, 611 d’Epinay, Louise, 50, 51n ‘The Episode of little e’ (Wells, H. G.), 34n ‘Epitaph – To a Beautiful Lady’ (de la Mare, W.), 34n, 470n Erlkönig (Schubert, F.), 321 Erskine, Lindy, 318–19, 321n The Essays of Elia (Lamb, C.), 285n The Essays of Virginia Woolf (Woolf, V., eds McNeillie, A.; Clarke, S.), 326n, 531n The Evening News, 590, 591n, 607 The Evening Post, 181n, 237n, 251n, 277n, 288n, 499, 500n The Evening Standard, 591n The Evening Star, 251n ‘An Experiment at Fontainebleau: A Personal Reminiscence’ (Young, J.), 494n Experiment in Autobiography (Wells, H. G.), 34n Fabian Society, 284n, 558, 563 Fabre, Augustin, 451n Fabre, Jean-Henri, 449, 451n Souvenirs entomologiques, 451n The Faerie Queene (Spenser, E.), 46n, 511n ‘Family Portraits’ (Mansfield, K.), 548n Farbman, Grisha, 161, 161n ‘Father and the Girls’ (Mansfield, K.), 61n, 159n Fawcett, Millicent, 563 Fergusson, J. D., 74n, 76, 83, 124, 353, 353n, 361n, 362, 363n, 527, 536–7, 537n, 539–40, 542, 543n Poise, 354n Fielding, Henry, 209n Joseph Andrews, 209n ‘First Novels’ (Mansfield, K.), 382n Fitzherbert Terrace, 214n, 225, 257, 269, 275, 279, 281–2, 285, 289, 291, 298, 317–18, 322, 337–8 Flaubert, Gustave, 30–1, 286 Fleg, Lizzie, 221, 221n ‘The Fly’ (Mansfield, K.), 113n, 147n, 443, 446, 583 de la Fontaine, Jean, 451n ‘La Cigale et la fourmi’, 451n ‘La Grenouille qui se veut faire aussi grosse que le boeuf’, 451n Fontainebleau-Avon, 63, 69, 162–73, 175, 222, 245n, 252, 254, 324, 494–6, 494n, 496n Ford, Ford Madox, 88n, 491n, 611 ‘Les Jeunes and “Des Imagistes”’, 491n ‘Literary Portraits: XXXVI’, 491n Foreign Affairs, 39n Forster, E. M., 22–3, 375, 375n ‘The Game of Life’, 375n

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The Forsyte Saga (Galsworthy, J.), 547–8, 549n, 559 The Fortnightly Review, 607 The Forum, 561, 561n Foster, Stephen, 437n ‘Nellie Bly’, 437, 437n France, 1, 25, 57, 57n, 59n, 74n, 76, 77n, 87n, 102, 122n, 126n, 127, 137n–8n, 161, 175, 177–8, 192, 199, 204, 208, 221, 226–8, 227n, 231, 252, 269, 272n, 279n, 301n, 302–3, 306n, 311–13, 325, 356n, 377n, 379, 391, 393, 420, 432, 438n, 449, 463n, 475n, 489, 513, 539n, 542, 543n, 582, 603n, 605, 620 France, Anatole, 602, 603n ‘Apologie pour le Plagiat’, 603n ‘Francis Carco, The Poet of “Paname”’ (Freyssinet, G.), 72n, 514n Frank Harris (Kingsmill, H.), 609n–10n Frank Harris (Pullar, P.), 609n Frederick Goodyear, Letters and Remains 1887–1917 (Goodyear, F.), 604 The Free Lance, 228, 230n, 274n, 279n The Freeman, 15–16, 18, 19n, 119n The Freewoman – A Weekly Feminist Review, 563–4, 564n–5n Frere-Reeves, Alexander, 25, 486n Freud, Sigmund, 54n, 306n, 460n Freyssinet, Giles, 72n, 514n ‘Francis Carco, The Poet of “Paname”’, 72n, 514n Friday Nights: Literary Criticisms and Appreciations (Garnett, E.), 587n From Serfdom to Socialism (Hardie, K.), 277n Frost, Robert, 530 Fry, Roger, 373n, 391n, 426n, 443n, 527, 598n ‘The Goupil Gallery’, 443n Fullerton, Jinnie, 92n, 147n, 167n, 544, 546n Funk, Casimir, 438n Futility (Gerhardi, W.), 87n, 308n, 567, 570n, 572n, 578n, 583n, 585, 586n–7n, 589, 591n Galofaro, Sylvie Doriot, 26n ‘Le Dr Stephani et les sanatoriums’, 26n (ed.) Un Siècle de tourisme à CransMontana: Lectures du territoire, 26n Galsworthy, John, 110n, 547–8, 548n–9n, 559 The Forsyte Saga, 547–8, 549n, 559 In Chancery, 547, 548n Saint’s Progress, 547 The Sun, 547 To Let, 110n, 547, 549n Gamages, 432n ‘The Game of Life’ (Forster, E.), 375n ‘The Garden Party’ (Mansfield, K.), 217n, 271, 524, 578n, 580, 581n

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index The Garden Party and Other Stories (Mansfield, K.), 16, 25, 48n, 112n, 119n, 132n, 147n, 215n, 221n, 232n, 239n, 247n, 266n, 306n, 388n, 410n, 458n, 519, 578n, 584n, 625n The Garden, You and I (Wright, M.), 373n Garnett, Constance (née Black), 328n, 390n, 418n, 443n, 475n, 517, 551–8, 555n–6n, 560, 577n, 584n, 587n, 603n (ed.) The Lady with the Dog and Other Stories, 587n (ed.) Letters of Anton Chekhov to His Family and Friends, 328n, 418n, 443n, 577n, 587n, 603n Garnett, David, 551–3, 555n, 560n Garnett, Edward, 517, 552, 557–61, 560n–2n, 585, 587n Friday Nights: Literary Criticisms and Appreciations, 587n ‘Maxim Gorky’, 560n ‘Russian Literature’, 560n Garnett, Olive, 560n Tea and Anarchy: The Bloomsbury Diary of Olive Garnett 1890–1893, 560n Garnett, Richard, 555n, 557, 560n–1n Constance Garnett: A Heroic Life, 555n, 560n–1n Garsington Manor, 7, 194n, 339, 342n, 346n–7n, 347, 350n, 353–4, 359, 359n, 369, 369n, 374, 391n, 393, 407, 419, 423, 432, 435n, 440, 447n, 451n, 478n, 510, 575, 582, 594, 596, 613, 626 Gasston, Aimée, 176n, 341, 536 Gathorne-Hardy, Robert (ed.) Ottoline at Garsington: Memoirs of Lady Ottoline Morrell 1915–1918, 348n, 356n, 435n, 597n Gauguin, Paul, 496n Gauthier-Villars, Henry, 529n Gawthorpe, Mary, 563–4, 564n–5n ‘The Gentleman from San Francisco’ (Bunin, I.), 138n, 452n The Gentleman from San Francisco and Other Stories (Bunin, I.), 584n George, David Lloyd, 350n, 468n ‘George Eliot’ (Woolf, V.), 372, 372n George, W. L., 36, 503, 521, 529n, 531 Georgian Poetry (ed. Marsh, E.), 532, 533n ‘The Georgian Renaissance’ (Lawrence, D. H.), 533n Gerhardi, William, 4, 10, 50n, 87n, 129n, 308n, 316n, 330n, 409n, 444n, 486n, 554, 566–70, 568n–70n, 572n, 573–5, 574n, 577–82, 577n–8n, 580n, 583n–4n, 584, 586n–93n, 588–92, 602n Anton Chehov, 567, 587n, 593n Futility, 87n, 308n, 567, 570n, 572n, 578n, 583n, 585, 586n–7n, 589, 591n Memoirs of a Polyglot, 567, 568n, 570n The Polyglots, 567

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Pretty Creatures, 567 The Romanovs, 567 Gertler (MacDougall, S.), 598n Gertler, Mark, 189n, 340, 343n, 346n, 365, 370, 372, 375n, 376, 381n, 384, 393, 396n, 407, 408n, 425, 436, 442, 443n, 445, 447n, 455–7, 479, 482, 498n, 502, 504, 594–7, 597n–8n, 613 Ballet Dancers, 447n Selected Letters of Mark Gertler, 597n–8n Gibbons, Arnold, 599–600, 602, 602n Gibson, Robert, 69, 85, 86n, 87 Gide, André, 58n, 172n Gifford, Grace, 507, 509n Gilson, Roy Rolfe, 323n In the Morning Glow, 323n Gippius, Zinaida, 138n, 452n The Reign of the Antechrist, 452n The Tsar and the Revolution, 452n Glasgow School of Art, 295n Glenavy, Beatrice see Campbell, Beatrice Today We Will Only Gossip, 117n, 370n, 501–2, 503n, 505n, 514n, 596, 597n Glyn, Elinor, 286, 287n Three Weeks, 286, 287n Goethe, Johann Wolfgang, 46n, 53, 54n, 308, 309n, 449, 451n Truth and Poetry, 451n van Gogh, Vincent, 340, 394n, 421n Sunflowers, 421n Gogol, Nikolai, 157n, 553–5 Dead Souls, 554 Gomme, Lionel, 486n Goodyear, Frederick, 604, 606n Frederick Goodyear, Letters and Remains 1887–1917, 604 Gordon Bowe, Nicola, 503n ‘The Art of Beatrice Elvery, Lady Glenavy (1883–1970)’, 503n Gorky, Maxim, 95n, 161n, 467, 469n ‘The Goupil Gallery’ (Fry, R.), 443n de Gourmont, Remy, 50, 52n Gower Street, 372n, 617, 618n see also ‘The Ark’ Graham, Peter Anderson, 621n Grant, Duncan, 80n, 373n, 391n Granville-Barker, Harley, 284n The Graphic, 250n Graves, Robert, 391n, 435n Green, Henry, 559 Gregory, Isabella Augusta (Lady), 501 ‘La Grenouille qui se veut faire aussi grosse que le boeuf’ (de la Fontaine, J.), 451n Griffin, Nicholas (ed.) The Selected Letters of Bertrand Russell, 346n Grzhebin, Sonia, 161n The Guardian, 70, 70n Gulliver’s Travels (Swift, J.), 396, 397n Gurdjieff, George, 64n, 69, 163n, 164, 173–5, 174n, 176n, 245n, 254n, 490n, 493, 496n

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Gurdjieff Reconsidered – The Life, The Teachings, The Legacy (Lipsey, R.), 64n ‘Gustave Flaubert’ (Murry, J. M.), 30n Halliwell-Phillipps, James Orchard, 388n, 469n The Nursery Rhymes of England: Collected from the Oral Tradition, 469n Hambourg, Boris, 281n Hambourg, Mark, 287, 288n Hamilton, Henry, 279n The School Girl, 279n Hamilton, Ian, 410n Hamilton, Mary Agnes, 51, 52n, 581n Hamlet (Shakespeare, W.), 31, 33n, 316n Hamnett, Nina, 372, 373n, 375n, 435n, 596 Hamptons and Sons, 358n Handel, George Frideric, 29n, 346n Theodora, 346n Hankin, C. A., 17n, 46n, 269, 271n, 330n, 519n Katherine Mansfield and Her Confessional Stories, 271n (ed.) The Letters of John Middleton Murry to Katherine Mansfield, 17n, 46n, 271n, 330n, 519n Hannay, Howard, 442, 443n, 461 Hardie, Keir, 275, 277n, 284n From Serfdom to Socialism, 277n Hardy, Thomas, 32, 34n, 277n, 415, 417n ‘A Singer Asleep’, 34n Harley Street, 65, 102, 198, 220n, 297n, 317, 521, 534–5 Harris, Frank, 607–8, 609n–10n The Bomb, 608, 610n Contemporary Portraits, 608 England or Germany?, 608 Harrison, Austin, 88n Harrison, Jane, 551 Hastings, Beatrice, 284n, 477n, 564 Haughton, Hugh (ed.) The Letters of T. S. Eliot, 447n Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 283, 285n, 286 The Scarlet Letter, 285n Hazlitt, William, 283, 285n Liber Amoris, or, The New Pygmalion, 285n Table-Talk, 285n Headland Hotel, 77–85, 354 Heal and Son, 267n, 487n Heinemann, William, 366n Hémon, Louis, 308n Marie Chapdelaine, 308, 308n Henderson-Morley, Dorothy (Lady), 144n Her Love Against the World (Howard, W.), 361, 361n The Hermitage, 204, 544, 546, 620 Herne (Mrs), 187, 189n Herrick, Ruth, 65, 79, 80n, 85, 87n Herzen, Alexander, 553 Heseltine, Philip, 433n Higher Tregerthen, 220n, 503, 507

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Hignett, Sean, 341n, 345n, 356n, 381n Brett: From Bloomsbury to New Mexico, A Biography, 341n, 345n, 381n ‘His Sister’s Keeper’ (Mansfield, K.), 270 Histoire de ma vie (Sand, G.), 356n The History of Mr Polly (Wells, H. G.), 377n Hitchcock, Alfred, 312, 313n The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog, 313n Hodgkins, Frances, 527 Hogarth Press, 87n–8n, 199, 346n, 429n, 469n, 582, 584n Holroyd, Michael, 451n Lytton Strachey: The New Biography, 451n Homer, 56n, 315n, 468n The Iliad, 468n The Odyssey, 56n, 466, 468n Honey (Mrs), 83, 84n ‘Honeymoon’ (Mansfield, K.), 147n, 465, 466n, 526n ‘Horse in a Field’ (de la Mare, W.), 524 Hôtel Beau Rivage, 81n, 150n, 190, 194, 537, 539 Hôtel Beau-Site, 315, 510 Hôtel Château Belle Vue, 60–2, 155, 237, 239, 241, 306, 330, 484–5, 584, 588–9, 602 Hôtel d’Angleterre, 56–8, 56n, 69, 150n, 155, 157–60, 162, 235, 237n, 473, 476, 478, 480, 482, 581, 599–600 Hôtel de l’Univers, 201, 457n Hôtel des Grands Hommes, 473n Howard, Walter, 361n Her Love Against the World, 361, 361n Hudson, Bernard, 35n, 36, 37n, 105, 105n, 114, 121, 146, 149, 209 Hudson, Stephen see Schiff, Sydney Hugh-Jones, Stephen, 620n Hugo, Victor, 168, 169n, 296n Hulme, T. E., 347n A Hundred and Seventy Chinese Poems (Waley, A.), 28n Hunt, Alfred William, 611 Hunt, Violet, 611, 612n, 613 Huntley & Palmers, 511n Hutchinson, A. S. M., 249, 250n, 253, 254n This Freedom, 249, 250n, 253 Hutchinson, Mary, 611, 613–17, 614n, 617n–18n Hutchinson, Percy, 506n Hutchinson, St John, 613, 616n–17n von Hutten, Bettina see Riddle, Betsey Huxley, Aldous, 342n, 350n, 363n, 372n, 388n, 408n, 435n, 613 Huxley, Julian, 350n I Have Only Myself to Blame (Asquith, C.), 324 I, Too, Have Lived in Arcadia (Belloc Lowndes, M.), 313n ‘I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud’ (Wordsworth, W.), 49n ‘An Ideal Family’ (Mansfield, K.), 105n

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index If All These Young Men (Wilson, R.), 109n Il Piacere (D’Annunzio, G.), 284n The Iliad (Homer), 468n The Illustrated London News, 418n Imagination of the Heart: The Life of Walter de la Mare (Whistler, T.), 524n ‘In a Café’ (Mansfield, K.), 283n, 336 In a German Pension (Mansfield, K.), 258 In Chancery (Galsworthy, J.), 547, 548n ‘In the Botanical Gardens’ (Mansfield, K.), 282n, 336, 338n In the Morning Glow (Gilson, R.), 323n In the Mountains (von Arnim, E.), 22 The Inca of Perusalem (Shaw, G. B.), 531 ‘An Indiscreet Journey’ (Mansfield, K.), 72n, 86n, 512n, 514n L’Innocente (D’Annunzio, G.), 284n Les Innocents (Carco, F.), 513–15, 515n ‘“An intellectual comradeship”: A Reassessment of the Relationship between George Bowden and Katherine Mansfield’ (Kimber, G.), 335n Italy, 28, 62, 64, 96, 122n, 127, 150n, 160–1, 189n–90n, 204–5, 254n, 305, 308n, 311, 368, 400–1, 583, 590 J. McDowell & Company (D.I.C.), 286, 288n ‘Jabberwocky’ (Carroll, L.), 394n Jackson, Barry, 530 Jacob’s Room (Woolf, V.), 429n, 586n James, Henry, 605, 606n, 611 Jane Eyre (Brontë, C.), 285n The Jasmine Farm (von Arnim, E.), 25 ‘Je ne parle pas français’ (Mansfield, K.), 97n, 268, 377n, 566, 595 Jeremy (Walpole, H.), 586n Jésus-la-Caille (Carco, F.), 513 La Jeune Belgique, 283n ‘Les Jeunes and “Des Imagistes”’ (Ford, F.), 491n John, Augustus, 325, 408n, 435n John Lewis, 106n, 169n, 497 Jones, Alice Louisa, 619–25 Jones, Hugh, 626–7, 627n Jones, Kathleen, 269, 341n Katherine Mansfield: The Story-Teller, 341n Jones, William Tudor, 276, 277n Joseph Andrews (Fielding, H.), 209n Joseph Vance (De Morgan, W.), 281, 282n Journal intime (Amiel, H.), 291n Journal of Katherine Mansfield (Mansfield, K., ed. Murry, J. M.), 5, 16–17, 321n Journal of Katherine Mansfield, Definitive Edition (Mansfield, K., ed. Murry, J. M.), 328n Journals of Dorothy Wordsworth (Wordsworth, D., ed. Knight, W.), 34n Journées maudites (Bunin, I.), 452n Joyce, James, 56, 56n, 410n, 466, 468n, 478n, 509n, 586n ‘The Dead’, 410n

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Dubliners, 410n Ulysses, 56, 56n, 466, 468n, 478n, 586n Juliet (Mansfield, K.), 277n ‘K.M. by Ottoline Morrell’ (Morrell, O.), 345n ‘K.M. – fifty years after’ (Mantz, R.), 251n Kaplan, Sydney Janet, 17, 325, 345n, 622n Circulating Genius: John Middleton Murry, Katherine Mansfield and D. H. Lawrence, 345n, 622n Karori, 121, 122n, 198, 217n, 238, 257, 262, 268–70 ‘A Karori Story’ (Mansfield, K.), 263n Katerina: The Russian World of Katherine Mansfield (Woods, J.), 490n Katherine (Brett, D.), 341n Katherine Mansfield and Her Confessional Stories (Hankin, C. A.), 271n ‘Katherine Mansfield and Music: Nineteenth Century Echoes’ (da Sousa Correa, D.), 297n Katherine Mansfield and S. S. Koteliansky in the Garden (Campbell, B.), 503 ‘Katherine Mansfield, Fairy Tales and Fir Trees: “the story is past too: past! past! – that’s the way with all stories”’ (Kimber, G.), 291n The Katherine Mansfield Notebooks (Mansfield, K., ed. Scott, M.), 271n ‘Katherine Mansfield – How Kathleen Beauchamp Came into Her Own’ (Mills, T.), 225n Katherine Mansfield: A Biography (Meyers, J.), 70n, 321n Katherine Mansfield: A Literary Life (Smith, A.), 537n Katherine Mansfield: A Secret Life (Tomalin, C.), 321n, 597n Katherine Mansfield: Publications in Australia (Stone, J.), 225n, 337n–8n Katherine Mansfield: The Early Years (Kimber, G.), 26n, 70n–1n, 80n, 87n, 119n, 122n, 154n, 179n, 198n, 204n, 209n, 235n, 267n, 276n, 287n–8n, 295n, 317–18, 323n Katherine Mansfield: The Memories of L.M. (Baker, I.), 10n, 46n, 52n, 66–70, 74n, 81n, 86n, 93n, 118n, 122n, 133n, 144n, 152n, 154n, 160n, 166n, 172n, 176n, 180, 181n, 261n, 457n, 514n, 546n Katherine Mansfield: The Story-Teller (Jones, K.), 341n Katherine Mansfield’s Letters to John Middleton Murry, 1913–1922 (Mansfield, K., ed. Murry, J. M.), 11n ‘Katherine Mansfield’s Russian Healers’ (Diment, G.), 44n, 52n Kay, Alexander, 67, 190, 193n, 205, 225, 229, 300, 335 Keats, John, 402n

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Kelly, John, 528n A W. B. Yeats Chronology, 528n Kennedy, Amanda, 276, 278n ‘Rêverie – Star of the Sea’, 278n Keynes, John Maynard, 372n Killorin, Joseph (ed.) Selected Letters of Conrad Aiken, 18n Kimber, Gerri, 26n, 29n, 70n–1n, 80n, 87n, 119n, 122n, 154n, 176n, 178–9, 198, 204n, 209n, 235n, 267n, 276n, 287n–8n, 291n, 295n, 310, 317–18, 323n, 330, 334, 337, 499, 503, 517, 519, 521, 534, 544, 604, 611, 613 ‘“A Child of the Sun”: Katherine Mansfield, Orientalism and Gurdjieff’, 29n (ed.) The Collected Poems of Katherine Mansfield, 35n, 87n, 184n, 270–1, 281n (ed.) The Edinburgh Edition of the Collected Works of Katherine Mansfield, vol. 3 – The Poetry and Critical Writings, 43n, 97n, 107n, 109n–10n, 138n, 207n, 284n, 328n, 331n, 345n, 382n, 413n, 418n, 475n, 547–8, 548n, 586n, 588n, 603n, 621n (ed.) The Edinburgh Edition of the Collected Works of Katherine Mansfield, vol. 4 – The Diaries of Katherine Mansfield, including Miscellaneous Works, 6, 35n, 39n, 43n, 46n, 50n–1n, 54n–6n, 66, 68, 71n, 84n, 92n, 100n, 138n, 150n, 160n, 184n–6n, 258, 259n, 274, 278n, 281n–2n, 284n, 287n–9n, 297n, 313, 318, 320, 326n–7n, 339, 356n, 402n, 409n, 413n, 436n, 448n, 451n, 487n–8n, 509n, 514n, 521, 556n, 574n, 584n (ed.) The Edinburgh Edition of the Collected Works of Katherine Mansfield, vols 1 and 2 – The Collected Fiction, 2, 28n, 41n, 48n, 56n, 61n, 68, 72n, 80n, 86n, 88n, 91n, 105n, 108n, 113n, 122n, 147n, 159n, 217n, 235n, 239n, 247n, 263n, 266n, 270–1, 277n, 282n–3n, 288n, 300n, 321n, 337n–8n, 351n, 362n, 409n, 418n, 429n, 433n, 436n–7n, 444n, 448n, 460n, 466n, 514n, 526n, 550n, 577n, 580n–1n, 584n, 614n, 625n ‘“An intellectual comradeship”: A Reassessment of the Relationship between George Bowden and Katherine Mansfield’, 335n ‘Katherine Mansfield, Fairy Tales and Fir Trees: “the story is past too: past! past! – that’s the way with all stories”’, 291n Katherine Mansfield: The Early Years, 26n, 70n–1n, 80n, 87n, 119n, 122n, 154n, 179n, 198n, 204n, 209n, 235n, 267n, 276n, 287n–8n, 295n, 317–18, 323n ‘“That Pole Outside Our Door”: Floryan Sobieniowski and Katherine Mansfield’, 259n Kingsmill, Hugh, 50n, 607–8, 609n–10n Frank Harris, 609n–10n

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Kirkpatrick, B. J., 61n Knap’s Cottage, 611, 612n Knight, William (ed.) Journals of Dorothy Wordsworth, 34n Knightsbridge, 243 Korolenko, Vladimir, 552 Koteliansky, S. S., 31, 34n, 67, 74n, 95–6, 95n, 97n, 129n, 138n, 161, 161n, 189n, 314n, 339, 345n–6n, 360, 362, 370, 370n, 384, 390, 390n, 393, 405, 405n, 408n, 410n, 418n, 426n, 432, 435, 436n, 442, 445, 448n, 452n, 454, 462n, 466, 468n–9n, 475n, 479, 484, 501–2, 504, 554, 572n–3n, 577n, 584n, 587n–8n, 595–6, 602n Kropotkin, Peter, 552 Kuprin, Aleksander, 74n, 137, 138n, 345n, 461, 462n ‘Captain Ribnikov’, 74n, 345n Kuri (dog), 161, 210, 211n, 214, 305 Labour News, 39n Ladies’ Home Journal, 295n, 299n The Ladies Newspaper and Court Circular, 147n Lady Chatterley’s Lover (Lawrence, D. H.), 345n The Lady with the Dog and Other Stories (Chekhov, A., ed. Garnett, C.), 587n The Lady’s Dressing Room (Swift, J.), 196n ‘The Lady’s Maid’ (Mansfield, K.), 147n, 523 Lamb, Charles, 283, 285n The Essays of Elia, 285n Lambton Quay, 234, 235n, 288n, 317, 319, 336 The Lancet, 233, 235n, 620, 623, 623n ‘Land of Big Things’ (Beauchamp, H.), 251n Landru, Henri Désiré (The Bluebeard), 449, 451n Langham Hotel, 458, 460n Larsson, Carl, 377n On the Sunny Side, 377n Other People’s Children, 377n Las Palmas, 534 Lascelles, Henry, 35n, 452n Lassetter, Elizabeth Weiss (Louey, m.Beauchamp), 20 ‘The Last Days of Katherine Mansfield’ (‘Olgivanna’), 174n Lavengro – The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest (Borrow, G.), 297n Lavery, Hazel (née Martyn), 415, 417n Lavery, John, 415, 417n Lawrence and Murry: A Twofold Vision (Lea, F. A.), 11n Lawrence, D. H., 6, 9, 67, 138n, 181, 188, 189n–90n, 220n, 340, 344, 345n, 367, 368n, 370n, 401, 433n, 446, 453, 462n, 479, 502, 504–5, 506n, 517, 524, 533n, 559, 561–2, 561n–2n, 572n, 584n, 591n, 595–6, 611, 614n Aaron’s Rod, 591n

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index ‘Art and the Individual’, 506n ‘The Crown’, 506n ‘The Georgian Renaissance’, 533n Lady Chatterley’s Lover, 345n The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, 189n, 561n–2n ‘Paul Morel’, 559 ‘The Soiled Rose’, 561, 561n Sons and Lovers, 559, 561n Women in Love, 345n, 433n, 595, 614n Lawrence, Frieda, 2n, 181, 188, 189n–90n, 220n, 269, 340, 367 Not I But the Wind, 190n Lawrence, T. E., 559 Le Gallienne, Richard, 283, 283n–4n Le Prieuré, 63, 64n, 162–71, 173, 175, 200, 222, 252, 254, 254n, 494–6, 494n Lea, F.A., 11n, 347n Lawrence and Murry: A Twofold Vision, 11n The Life of John Middleton Murry, 347n Leaves of Grass (Whitman, W.), 284n Leblanc, Georges, 94n Lee, Vernon, 25 Leeming, Owen, 181n, 275n, 322 The Sisters of Kezia: Katherine Mansfield Remembered, 181n, 275n Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich, 450, 452n, 574n ‘A Letter to a Lady in Paraguay’ (Woolf, V.), 326n ‘The Letters’ (Cushman, K.), 11n The Letters and Journals of Katherine Mansfield: A Selection (Mansfield, K., ed. Stead, C. K.), 11n ‘Letters from America’ (Aiken, C.), 15–16, 18n Letters of Anton Chekhov to His Family and Friends (ed. Garnett, C.), 328n, 418n, 443n, 577n, 587n, 603n The Letters of D. H. Lawrence (Lawrence, D. H., ed. Boulton, J.), 189n, 561n–2n The Letters of John Middleton Murry to Katherine Mansfield (Murry, J. M., ed. Hankin, C. A.), 17n, 46n, 271n, 330n, 519n The Letters of Katherine Mansfield (Mansfield, K., ed. Murry, J. M.), 11n, 330 The Letters of T. S. Eliot (Eliot, T. S., eds Eliot, V.; Haughton, H.), 447n The Letters of Virginia Woolf (Woolf, V., eds Nicolson, N.; Trautmann, J.), 80n, 347n Lewis, Wyndham, 462, 463n, 498n, 527, 611 Liber Amoris, or, The New Pygmalion (Hazlitt, W.), 285n Liberty, 88, 88n, 106, 106n Liébault, Ambroise-Auguste, 306n The Life of John Middleton Murry (Lea, F. A.), 347n The Life of Katherine Mansfield (Mantz, R.; Murry, J. M.), 70n The Life of Katherine Mansfield (Alpers, A.), 11n, 326n, 356n, 381n ‘Life of Ma Parker’ (Mansfield, K.), 145, 147n, 536

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649

Life of Oscar Wilde (Sherard, R.), 71n The Life of Samuel Johnson (Boswell, J.), 54n Life With Queen Victoria (Adeane, M.), 478n Lindsay, Norman, 317 ‘Lines Spoken at the Opening of the Birmingham Repertory Theatre, February 15th, 1913’ (Drinkwater, J.), 531, 532n–3n Linscott, Robert, 16 Lipsey, Roger, 64n Gurdjieff Reconsidered – The Life, The Teachings, The Legacy, 64n ‘The Listeners’ (de la Mare, W.), 523 ‘Literary Portraits: XXXVI’ (Ford, F.), 491n The Little Girl with the Fringe (Bendall, E.), 323n ‘The Little Governess’ (Mansfield, K.), 517n Live to be Useful: The Story of Annie Lee and her Irish Nurse (anonymous), 54n Lives and Letters: A. R. Orage, Katherine Mansfield, Beatrice Hastings, John Middleton Murry, S. S. Koteliansky, 1906–1957 (Carswell, J.), 381n Lives of the Noble Greeks and Romans (Plutarch), 48, 48n Locke Ellis, Vivian, 164, 164n, 311n, 496n The Lodger (Belloc Lowndes, M.), 313n The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog (Hitchcock, A.), 313n Logan Place, 616 Lohengrin (Wagner, R.), 292, 295n London, 3, 8, 15–16, 18, 18n–19n, 20–1, 23–4, 26n, 28n–9n, 30, 41n, 43n, 45, 51, 51n, 53, 54n–6n, 62–3, 65, 67, 70, 71n–2n, 74n, 75, 76n, 78n, 82n, 84n, 87n–8n, 92, 98n, 99, 100n, 102n, 103, 106n, 108, 122–3, 126n, 128n, 131, 145, 146n–7n, 154n, 161n, 163, 163n, 167, 169, 169n, 176–8, 176n, 185n, 188, 190n, 191, 193n–4n, 197n, 198–9, 205n, 206, 218n, 224, 226, 234–5, 235n, 238, 240–2, 244, 246–8, 246n, 251, 253, 255, 257–8, 260, 261n–2n, 266, 267n, 269, 272–4, 276, 277n–9n, 279, 282n–4n, 288n, 289, 290n–1n, 293, 295n–6n, 304, 307–8, 311, 316–21, 324–5, 329, 332–4, 337, 345–6, 345n–7n, 351n, 354–5, 354n, 357, 358n, 360, 361n, 364–5, 368, 371n, 373n, 377n, 378, 390, 393, 396, 397n, 402, 408n, 410n, 411, 415, 417n–18n, 420, 423–4, 425n–6n, 430n, 443–6, 449–50, 452n, 454, 458n, 460n, 463n, 465n, 470, 470n, 479, 481, 482n, 487n, 488, 490, 497, 499–500, 505n–6n, 509n–11n, 513, 519, 521, 526n, 527, 532–3, 533n, 536, 537n, 544, 552–3, 557–60, 560n, 563, 574n, 586n, 588n, 589–90, 592, 594–7, 607–9, 611–13, 612n, 614n, 615, 617, 617n, 622n, 624, 625n London Academy of Music, 198

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The London Mercury, 16, 18n, 41, 41n, 68, 108, 108n, 214, 258, 264, 264n, 411, 413n, 415, 417n, 435, 439, 443n, 523, 549, 550n, 591n The Lonely House, (Belloc Lowndes, M.), 313 Longfellow, Henry, 75n, 250n ‘The Day is Done’, 75n, 250n Looe, 77–85, 78n, 81n, 84n, 352, 354 Lowell, Amy, 189n Lowndes, Frederick Sawrey A., 312, 313n Lowndes, Susan, 313n (ed.) The Diary and Letters of Marie Belloc Lowndes, 313n Lunn, Arnold, 49, 125, 125n, 220n Lunn, Henry, 49, 50n, 125, 125n Lutyens, Edwin, 250n Luxembourg Gardens, 55–6, 56n, 141, 166n, 420, 455n, 456, 457n, 492 Lycidas (Milton, J.), 397n Lynd, Robert, 413n ‘A Tragic Comedienne’, 413n Lynd, Sylvia (née Dryhurst), 411 Lynton, Winifred, 443n Lytton Strachey: The New Biography (Holroyd, M.), 451n Macaulay, Rose, 36, 37n, 256n Dangerous Ages, 37n, 256n MacDonald, Ramsay, 417n McDonnell, Jenny, 524 MacDougall, Sarah, 598n Gertler, 598n MacFarlane, Alan, 620n McKenzie, Kitty, 70, 71n McNeillie, Andrew (ed.) The Essays of Virginia Woolf, 326n, 531n McTeague: A Story of San Francisco (Norris, F.), 261n Maeterlinck, Maurice, 280, 280n–1n, 283 Mallet, Bernard, 478n The Manchester Guardian, 39n, 277n The Manchester Play-goer, 527 Manet, Edouard, 395, 397n, 401, 402n Déjeuner sur l’herbe, 397n Manners, Diana, 143, 144n Mannooch, Sylvia, 388n Manoukhin, Ivan, 44n, 45, 51n–2n, 56n, 62, 109, 124n, 129n, 137, 141, 149, 200, 211n, 213, 235n, 421n, 425, 439, 452n, 454, 456, 459, 461, 463–6, 466n, 472, 473n, 476, 489, 494, 548, 550n, 576, 584n, 623n Mansfield, Katherine ‘Almost a Tragedy: The Cars on Lambton Quay’, 235n ‘The Aloe’, 300n, 345n ‘At the Bay’, 28n, 35n, 41n, 56n, 160n, 209n, 250n, 266n, 271, 295n, 340, 397n, 405n, 413n, 418n, 436n, 548n, 550, 550n

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‘Autumns: I’, 270, 614n ‘Autumns: II’, 271, 614n ‘Bliss’, 18, 88n, 118, 547, 573 Bliss and Other Stories, 15, 37n, 132n, 256n, 366n, 458n, 519, 523, 524n, 547 ‘The Canary’, 48n, 61n, 239n, 339, 448n ‘Carnation’, 67, 79, 80n, 362n ‘The Child-Who-Was-Tired’, 334 The Collected Poems of Katherine Mansfield, 35n, 87n, 184n, 270–1, 281n ‘A Cup of Tea’, 625n ‘The Daughters of the Late Colonel’, 68, 108n, 221n, 258, 264n, 417n, 544, 566, 582 ‘The Doll’s House’, 122n, 250n–1n, 270, 436n ‘The Doves’ Nest’, 249, 433, 584n The Doves’ Nest and Other Stories, 524 The Earth Child, 184n, 271 The Edinburgh Edition of the Collected Works of Katherine Mansfield, vol. 3 – The Poetry and Critical Writings, 43n, 97n, 107n, 109n–10n, 138n, 207n, 284n, 328n, 331n, 345n, 382n, 413n, 418n, 475n, 547–8, 548n, 586n, 588n, 603n, 621n The Edinburgh Edition of the Collected Works of Katherine Mansfield, vol. 4 – The Diaries of Katherine Mansfield, including Miscellaneous Works, 6, 35n, 39n, 43n, 46n, 50n–1n, 54n–6n, 66, 68, 71n, 84n, 92n, 100n, 138n, 150n, 160n, 184n–6n, 258, 259n, 274, 278n, 281n–2n, 284n, 287n–9n, 297n, 313, 318, 320, 326n–7n, 339, 356n, 402n, 409n, 413n, 436n, 448n, 451n, 487n–8n, 509n, 514n, 521, 556n, 574n, 584n The Edinburgh Edition of the Collected Works of Katherine Mansfield, vols 1 and 2 – The Collected Fiction, 2, 28n, 41n, 48n, 56n, 61n, 68, 72n, 80n, 86n, 88n, 91n, 105n, 108n, 113n, 122n, 147n, 159n, 217n, 235n, 239n, 247n, 263n, 266n, 270–1, 277n, 282n–3n, 288n, 300n, 321n, 337n–8n, 351n, 362n, 409n, 418n, 429n, 433n, 436n–7n, 444n, 448n, 460n, 466n, 514n, 526n, 550n, 577n, 580n–1n, 584n, 614n, 625n ‘The Education of Audrey’, 276, 277n ‘Family Portraits’, 548n ‘Father and the Girls’, 61n, 159n ‘First Novels’, 382n ‘The Fly’, 113n, 147n, 443, 446, 583 ‘The Garden Party’, 217n, 271, 524, 578n, 580, 581n The Garden Party and Other Stories, 16, 25, 48n, 112n, 119n, 132n, 147n, 215n, 221n, 232n, 239n, 247n, 266n, 306n, 388n, 410n, 458n, 519, 578n, 584n, 625n ‘His Sister’s Keeper’, 270

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index ‘Honeymoon’, 147n, 465, 466n, 526n ‘An Ideal Family’, 105n ‘In a Café’, 283n, 336 In a German Pension, 258 ‘In the Botanical Gardens’, 282n, 336, 338n ‘An Indiscreet Journey’, 72n, 86n, 512n, 514n ‘Je ne parle pas français’, 97n, 268, 377n, 566, 595 Journal of Katherine Mansfield, 5, 16–17, 321n Journal of Katherine Mansfield, Definitive Edition, 328n Juliet, 277n ‘A Karori Story’, 263n The Katherine Mansfield Notebooks, 271n Katherine Mansfield’s Letters to John Middleton Murry, 1913–1922, 11n ‘The Lady’s Maid’, 147n, 523 The Letters and Journals of Katherine Mansfield: A Selection, 11n The Letters of Katherine Mansfield, 11n, 330 ‘Life of Ma Parker’, 145, 147n, 536 ‘The Little Governess’, 517n ‘A Marriage of Passion’, 262n ‘Marriage à la Mode’, 28n, 460n ‘Mr and Mrs Dove’, 105n, 460n, 584n ‘Mr and Mrs Williams’, 577n ‘Mr Conrad’s New Novel’, 382n ‘A Pic-Nic’, 90n ‘Prelude’, 17, 85, 87n–8n, 223, 250n, 266n, 270, 345n–6n, 353, 360, 404, 436n, 547, 549 Prelude, 199 ‘Rewa’, 286, 288n ‘The Samuel Josephs’, 436n ‘She and the Boy; or, the Story of the Funny-Old-Thing’, 270 ‘Silhouettes’, 336 ‘Six Years After’, 271 ‘Sixpence’, 105n ‘The Stranger’, 258 ‘A Suburban Fairy Tale’, 2 ‘Taking the Veil’, 214n, 437n ‘A Tear in the Eye of a Violet’, 428 ‘The Tiredness of Rosabel’, 351n ‘A Tragic Comedienne’, 413n The Urewera Notebook by Katherine Mansfield, 179, 184n–6n, 201n ‘Vignettes’, 336–7 ‘The Voyage’, 246, 247n, 445, 579, 580n ‘Weak Heart’, 321 ‘The Wind Blows’, 271 ‘The Woman at the Store’, 537n Mansfield, Margaret, 179 Mansfield Park (Austen, J.), 39n Mantz, Ruth Elvish, 66, 70n, 180, 251n, 333, 335n ‘K.M. – fifty years after’, 251n

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The Life of Katherine Mansfield, 70n ‘Swing on the Garsington Gate’, 335n Māori, 180, 182–3, 184n–6n, 201, 201n, 291, 294n, 320, 435n Marcus, Jane (ed.) Three Guineas, 326n, 620n Marie Chapdelaine (Hémon, L.), 308, 308n Mark Gertler: Biography of a Painter, 1891–1939 (Wodeson, J.), 597n Marquet, Albert, 462, 463n ‘A Marriage of Passion’ (Mansfield, K.), 262n ‘Marriage à la Mode’ (Mansfield, K.), 28n, 460n Marsden, Dora, 563–5, 564n–5n Marsh, Edward, 594 (ed.) Georgian Poetry, 532, 533n Marshall and Snelgrove, 170, 170n, 429, 430n Marshall, Ann Herndon ‘Turning the Tables: Katherine Mansfield and W. L. George’, 529n Martin Chuzzlewit (Dickens, C.), 350n, 606n Martyn, Hazel, 417n Marx, Karl, 552 Mas des Roses, 25 Mason, Bruce, 319, 321n ‘Centenary’, 321n ‘Woburn Home honours 100-year-old artist’, 321n ‘Master and Man’ (Tolstoy, L.), 414n Masters of the Post: The Authorized History of the Royal Mail (Campbell-Smith, D.), 11n Maufe, Prudence, 487n Maugham, Somerset, 611 Maunder, Andrew, 531n (ed.) British Theatre and the Great War: New Perspectives, 531n de Maupassant, Guy, 286, 288n, 451n Pierre et Jean, 288n ‘Maxim Gorky’ (Garnett, E.), 560n Maxwell (Mrs), 35n, 37n, 40, 108, 113, 133, 133n Mediterranean, 64n, 150n, 463n, 547 Melmouth, Sebastian see Wilde, Oscar Memoirs of a Midget (de la Mare, W.), 447n, 523–4, 525n–6n Memoirs of a Polyglot (Gerhardi, W.), 567, 568n, 570n The Memoirs of Charles J. Yellowplush (Thackeray, W.), 263n Mendelssohn, Felix, 507, 509n Songs Without Words, 509n Mendès, Catulle, 283, 283n Menton, 91–5, 94n, 97–8, 97n, 100, 100n, 102–3, 106, 122, 128n, 147n, 167, 167n, 199–200, 204–6, 314, 315n, 326–7, 329, 377–9, 384–8, 449, 519–20, 523, 544, 546n, 556, 596, 613, 620–1

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Meredith, George, 280, 280n–1n, 283, 504, 506n Diana of the Crossways, 281n The Egoist, 281n Modern Love, 281n The Ordeal of Richard Feverel, 506n ‘Meretrix: Ironic’ (Aiken, C.), 19n Merezhkovsky, Dmitry, 138n, 449, 452n The Reign of the Antechrist, 452n The Tsar and the Revolution, 452n Meyers, Jeffrey, 70n, 321, 321n Katherine Mansfield: A Biography, 70n, 321n Meynell, Alice, 332 Michelet, Jules, 50, 51n Mignonette, 50, 52n, 85, 86n, 216 Mill, John Stuart, 294, 297n On Liberty, 297n The Subjection of Women, 297n Mills, Tom, 224, 225n, 252, 285, 287n, 336 ‘Katherine Mansfield – How Kathleen Beauchamp Came into Her Own’, 225n Milne, Herbert, 407, 408n, 490 Milsom (Dr), 276, 279n, 286 Milton, John, 31, 34n, 381n, 397n, 592 L’Allegro, 381n Lycidas, 397n Paradise Lost, 34n Mirth and her Companions (Blake, W.), 381n Mitchell, J. Lawrence, 70, 200, 258, 271 Modern Love (Meredith, G.), 281n Modigliani, Amedeo, 391n, 476, 477n Moffat, Curtis, 391n Moffat, Iris (née Tree), 390, 391n, 435n, 466n Monro, Harold, 533n Montana-sur-Sierre, 24, 26n, 27–8, 30–1, 35–41, 35n, 43, 46n, 51, 52n, 58, 68–9, 102n, 104–7, 105n, 109, 112, 113n, 116n, 118n, 120n, 122n, 131, 132n, 135n, 150n, 155, 157–62, 159n, 167, 200, 207–8, 210–11, 220n, 230, 233, 235–6, 263, 265, 302–3, 310, 315n, 339, 392, 394, 400, 403, 406, 409, 411, 413–14, 418, 420–1, 423, 426–7, 429, 431–2, 434, 436, 439, 442, 473, 476, 478, 480–2, 523, 528, 548, 550, 569–70, 573–4, 581, 599–600, 622 Montmartre, 421n, 477n, 512–13 Montmartre à vingt ans (Carco, F.), 477n, 515–16, 515n–16n Montparnasse, 462n, 512–13, 537n Moore, Annie Frances (Dina), 334 Moore, George, 418n Morell, Thomas, 346n Morgan, Evan, 435n Morley, Dora, 143 Morny Freres, 41, 41n, 458n Morrell, Julian, 342n, 350n, 432, 433n, 582 Morrell, Ottoline, 34n, 67, 80n, 111n, 172n, 191, 194n, 203, 342n, 345n–8n, 347–9, 350n, 351, 355, 356n, 358–9,

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359n–60n, 362, 365–8, 369n, 371, 376, 408n, 411, 417n, 422–3, 429n, 431–2, 433n, 440, 441n, 447n, 451n, 478n, 485, 486n, 493, 502, 523, 547, 575, 577, 582, 594–6, 597n–8n, 613, 619, 626, 627n ‘K.M. by Ottoline Morrell’, 345n Ottoline at Garsington: Memoirs of Lady Ottoline Morrell 1915–1918, 348n, 356n, 435n, 597n Morrell, Phillip, 7, 194n, 350n, 358, 359n–60n, 369n, 441n, 478n, 619, 626 Morris, Margaret, 537, 539, 543n Morris, William, 281, 282n, 283, 284n, 293 Moscow, 51n, 95n, 176n, 495, 552 Mourant, Chris, 597 ‘Mr and Mrs Dove’ (Mansfield, K.), 105n, 460n, 584n ‘Mr and Mrs Williams’ (Mansfield, K.), 577n ‘Mr Conrad’s New Novel’ (Mansfield, K.), 382n ‘Mr Monkhouse and Moscow’ (Woolf, L.), 555n Mr Skeffington (von Arnim, E.), 25 Muir, Jean, 410n Murry, John Middleton ‘American Poetry’, 19n Aspects of Literature, 19n, 34n, 531, 532n Between Two Worlds: An Autobiography, 67, 72, 537n Countries of the Mind, 30n, 34n, 110n, 291n, 593n ‘Gustave Flaubert’, 30n (ed.) Journal of Katherine Mansfield, 5, 16–17, 321n (ed.) Journal of Katherine Mansfield, Definitive Edition, 328n (ed.) Katherine Mansfield’s Letters to John Middleton Murry, 1913–1922, 11n The Letters of John Middleton Murry to Katherine Mansfield, 17n, 46n, 271n, 330n, 519n (ed.) The Letters of Katherine Mansfield, 11n, 330 The Life of Katherine Mansfield, 70n Poems, 38, 39n, 377n The Problem of Style, 52n, 316n, 389n, 525n, 568n The Things We Are, 46n, 52n, 139n ‘Two Remarkable Novels’, 591n Murry, Richard (Arthur), 97n, 100, 137, 138n, 221n, 382n, 485, 599 Nain, Antoine, 462, 463n Le Repas de Paysans, 462, 463n Nain, Louis, 462, 463n Le Repas de Paysans, 462, 463n Nain, Mathieu, 462, 463n Le Repas de Paysans, 462, 463n Nash, Paul, 594 Nassenheide, 22–3, 26n

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index

653

The Nation, 7, 36, 38, 39n, 67, 79, 80n, 96, 138n, 146, 147n, 331n, 358, 359n, 361, 362n, 387, 388n, 413n, 440, 446, 462, 465, 466n, 525, 526n, 574n, 582, 619, 622, 622n The Nation and Athenaeum, 18, 37n, 39n, 304, 308, 314, 417n, 568, 583n, 591n, 612 National Portrait Gallery, 506n The Native Companion, 224, 235n, 282n, 287n, 336, 337n–8n ‘Near Misses: From Gerhardi to Mansfield (and back), via Chekhov’ (Davison, C.), 308n ‘Nellie Bly’ (Foster, S.), 437, 437n Nelson, Geoffrey, 375n Nevinson, C. R. W., 347n, 594 Paint and Prejudice, 347n The New Adelphi, 494n The New Age, 90, 90n, 177, 262n, 270, 284n, 334, 347n, 438n, 564, 564n The New Statesman, 119n, 443n, 553, 555, 555n The New Statesman and Nation, 313n, 555n The New Weekly, 527 The New York Post, 18n New Zealand, 7, 20, 23, 26n, 67, 70, 74n, 76, 80n, 87n, 119n, 177–80, 181n, 184n–6n, 198, 209n, 217n–18n, 223, 225, 225n, 230n, 231, 233–4, 237, 237n, 241n, 245, 247n, 250, 250n, 252–3, 257, 260n–1n, 262, 264n, 273–4, 277n–8n, 282, 283n, 288n, 294n–5n, 297n, 300n, 310–11, 317–18, 321–2, 332–4, 336, 351n, 415, 503, 507, 534, 544, 586n The New Zealand Herald, 237n The New Zealand Home Journal, 299n The New Zealand Listener, 319 The New Zealand Mail, 181n, 274n New Zealand Railways Magazine, 225n New Zealand Times, 181n, 263n, 275n Nicolson, Nigel (ed.) The Diary of Virginia Woolf, 326n, 347n, 354n, 360n, 372n, 620n (ed.) The Letters of Virginia Woolf, 80n, 347n Night and Day (Woolf, V.), 413n SS Niwaru, 198 de Noailles, Anna, 325 Noble, John (Bill), 361, 362n, 537, 539n Norris, Frank, 261n McTeague: A Story of San Francisco, 261n Not I But the Wind (Lawrence, F.), 190n ‘Not Wanted’ (Chekhov, A.), 584n Nouvelle Revue Française, 58n, 172n The Nursery Rhymes of England: Collected from the Oral Tradition (HalliwellPhillipps, J.), 469n Nys, Maria, 372n

Oei, Hui-lan see Wellington, Koo ‘Of Bliss and Blushing: Cities and Affect in Katherine Mansfield and Jean Rhys’ (Thacker, A.), 164n Official Illustrated Catalogue of the Queen’s Doll’s House (eds Allison, J.; Squire, J. C.), 250n Old Homes (Blunden, E.), 329–30 Old Junk (Tomlinson, H. M.), 331n Old Vicarage, 364 Oldfield (Miss), 82, 82n ‘Olgivanna’, 174n ‘The Last Days of Katherine Mansfield’, 174n On Liberty (Mill, J.), 297n On the Eve (Turgenev, I.), 509n On the Sunny Side (Larsson, C.), 377n Orage, A. R., 163n, 270, 334, 436n, 490n, 524, 563–4, 564n The Orchard Thief (Dudeney, A.), 275, 277n The Ordeal of Richard Feverel (Meredith, G.), 506n Orpen, William, 498n, 501, 507, 509n Ospedaletti, 122n, 128n, 150n, 152n, 199, 377, 521, 544–5 Ostrovsky, Julia Osipovna (or Ostrowska), 174n–5n O’Sullivan, Vincent, 5 (ed.) The Edinburgh Edition of the Collected Works of Katherine Mansfield, vols 1 and 2 – The Collected Fiction, 2, 28n, 41n, 48n, 56n, 61n, 68, 72n, 80n, 86n, 88n, 91n, 105n, 108n, 113n, 122n, 147n, 159n, 217n, 235n, 239n, 247n, 263n, 266n, 270–1, 277n, 282n–3n, 288n, 300n, 321n, 337n–8n, 351n, 362n, 409n, 418n, 429n, 433n, 436n–7n, 444n, 448n, 460n, 466n, 514n, 526n, 550n, 577n, 580n–1n, 584n, 614n, 625n The Otago Daily Times, 277n The Otago Witness, 278n Other People’s Children (Larsson, C.), 377n Ottoline at Garsington: Memoirs of Lady Ottoline Morrell 1915–1918 (Morrell, O., ed. Gathorne-Hardy, R.), 348n, 356n, 435n, 597n Ottoline Morrell: Life on a Grand Scale (Seymour, M.), 369n, 433n, 486n, 618n Our Mutual Friend (Dickens, C.), 590, 591n Ouspensky, Pyotr, 163, 163n, 490n The Outlook, 418n Oxford, 194n, 296n, 308, 316, 376, 389n, 568n–9n, 576–7, 577n, 580, 582, 604 The Oxford Critical and Cultural History of Modernist Magazines (eds Brooker, P.; Thacker, A.), 19n, 88n Oxford Movement, 282n Oxford Street, 169n–70n, 188, 272, 430n, 497

The Observer, 138n, 424, 504, 506n The Odyssey (Homer), 56n, 466, 468n

Paint and Prejudice (Nevinson, C.), 347n ‘Painting as a Pastime’ (Churchill, W.), 425n

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Palace Hôtel, 26n, 27, 105n Palliser, Eileen, 87n Pankhurst, Christabel, 563 SS Papanui, 67, 280n, 291, 294n Paradise Lost (Milton, J.), 34n Paris, 21, 33n, 41, 44–5, 44n, 46n, 47–8, 50, 51n, 52, 54–9, 54n, 56n–8n, 62–3, 67–8, 72n, 74n, 75, 77n, 94n, 108–14, 116–17, 119–20, 123–4, 126, 128–32, 129n, 134–6, 135n, 138–40, 138n, 142–5, 142n, 147–54, 147n, 154n, 156, 161, 163n–4n, 166n, 167–8, 168n, 170, 188, 192, 195, 199–202, 210–13, 213n, 215–18, 218n, 220–1, 232–4, 236, 238, 241–2, 245n, 249, 251–2, 266, 283n, 286, 287n, 304–5, 306n, 307, 324, 362n, 388, 392, 397n, 411, 420, 421n, 425–6, 425n, 428, 430, 432, 434, 436, 438–41, 444, 448–9, 448n, 452, 452n, 455, 458, 461, 462n, 463–6, 466n, 468n, 469–70, 472, 472n–3n, 474, 477, 477n–8n, 479, 484, 488–93, 490n, 512–15, 514n–15n, 523, 525, 527, 529, 529n, 536, 537n, 543n, 548, 550, 559, 575–6, 578–9, 581, 583, 591–2, 595, 598n, 600, 604, 607, 617n, 623–4, 627 Parker, Millie, 184n Parkes, Bessie Rayner, 312 Parratt, Walter (Sir), 21 Partridge, Ralph, 393, 394n, 482 The Pastor’s Wife (von Arnim, E.), 22, 26n Pater, Walter, 286, 288n, 318 ‘Paul Morel’ (Lawrence, D. H.), 559 Payne, Evelyn, 65, 203, 204n Payne, Joseph Frank, 65, 204n, 238, 239n Payne, Sylvia, 65, 68, 221, 221n, 270 Pellerin, Auguste, 595, 598n Pellerin, Jean, 476, 478n, 598n Pember-Reeves, Maud, 319 Round About a Pound a Week, 319 Pension du Lac, 391 The People’s Home Journal, 295n Peploe, Samuel John, 353, 353n Perkins, Aeneas (General), 209, 209n Perkins, John Charles Campbell, 198, 203n, 209n, 302n de Perrot, Susie, 69, 122n, 133, 136, 140, 142, 142n, 151n, 154n Petersburg (Bely, A.), 468n Petrograd see St. Petersburg ‘A Pic-Nic’ (Mansfield, K.), 90n Picasso (Stein, G.), 543n Picasso, Pablo, 542, 543n Pickthall, Cecil Marmaduke, 198–9 The Picture of Dorian Gray (Wilde, O.), 289n Pierre et Jean (de Maupassant, G.), 288n Pilditch, Jan, 18n (ed.) The Critical Response to Katherine Mansfield, 18n Pinker, Eric S., 146n, 588–9 Pinker, J. B., 458n, 574n, 588–9

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Plays, Acting and Music (Symons, A.), 284n Ploegsteert Wood, 269 Plumridge, Anna, 181, 184n, 274 (ed.) The Urewera Notebook by Katherine Mansfield, 179, 184n–6n, 201n Plunkett, Joseph, 509n Plutarch Lives of the Noble Greeks and Romans, 48, 48n Poems (Murry, J. M.), 38, 39n, 377n The Poetry Review, 533n Poiret, Paul, 442, 443n ‘Arabian Nights’, 442, 443n–4n Poise (Fergusson, J.), 354n Poisson, Jeannette Antoinette (Madame de Pompadour), 278n Polonsky, Rachel, 328n ‘Chekhov and the Buried Life of Katherine Mansfield’, 328n The Polyglots (Gerhardi, W.), 567 Pond Street, 62, 63n, 242–8, 251, 311, 339, 445–6, 447n, 460n, 461, 486–8, 589–90 Portland Villas, 46n, 67, 79n, 97n, 144n, 172n, 175n, 199, 206, 207n, 358n, 361n, 364, 366, 368–74, 376, 378, 380–3, 542, 597, 618 see also ‘The Elephant’ A Portrait of Katherine Mansfield (Crone, N.), 259n ‘Post Diagnosis: Bashkirtseff, Chekhov and Gorky through Mansfield’s Prism of Tuberculosis’ (Diment, G.), 43n Pound, Ezra, 447n, 611 Pounds, John, 192, 194n ‘Prelude’ (Mansfield, K.), 17, 85, 87n–8n, 223, 250n, 266n, 270, 345n–6n, 353, 360, 404, 436n, 547, 549 Prelude (Mansfield, K.), 199 Preludes for Memnon (Aiken, C.), 19n Pretty Creatures (Gerhardi, W.), 567 Prewett, Frank, 391n, 429n, 478n The Princess Priscilla’s Fortnight (von Arnim, E.), 23, 43n Priscilla Runs Away (von Arnim, E.), 26n, 43n ‘The Prisoner of Chillon’ (Byron, G.), 36n The Problem of China (Russell, B.), 39n The Problem of Style (Murry, J. M.), 52n, 316n, 389n, 525n, 568n Proust, Marcel, 324–5, 382n Pullar, Philippa, 609n Frank Harris, 609n Punch, 469, 470n Punch and Judy, 453, 455n Quai aux Fleurs, 513, 515–16, 515n Queechy (Warner, S.), 36, 36n The Queen, 146, 147n Queen’s College, 9, 21, 23, 65, 80n, 87n–8n, 185n, 198, 220n, 224, 257, 273, 279n, 289n, 297n, 317, 323n, 339, 363n, 388n, 521, 534, 544

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index The Queen’s Hall, 197n, 278n, 296n Quiller-Couch, Arthur, 486n The Westcotes and Tom Tiddler’s Ground, 486n Raleigh, Walter (Prof.), 316n Redcliffe Road, 73–5, 77, 85, 85n, 87, 89–90, 203, 347, 351–2, 357–8, 360, 362–3 Reid, Nicolas, 279n The Reign of the Antechrist (Merezhkovsky, D.; Gippius, Z.), 452n Reminiscences and Recollections (Beauchamp, H.), 200n, 225n, 259n, 271n The Renascence of Wonder (Watts-Dunton, T.), 296n Renoir, Pierre-Auguste, 395, 397n, 401, 402n Woman with a Letter, 397n Renshaw, Charles Mitford, 205n, 245n, 248, 250n, 254n, 257 Le Repas de Paysans (Nain, A.; Nain, L.; Nain, M.), 462, 463n Responsibility (Agate, J.), 621n ‘Rethinking Mansfield through GaudierBrzeska: Monumentality and Intimacy’ (Zimring, R.), 154n ‘Rêverie du Soir’ (Trowell, A.), 276, 278n, 281n ‘Rêverie – Star of the Sea’ (Kennedy, A.), 278n A Reviewer’s ABC: Collected Criticism of Conrad Aiken from 1916 to the Present (Blanchard, R. U.), 17n–18n La Révolution russe – chroniques (Anet, C.), 314n ‘Rewa’ (Mansfield, K.), 286, 288n Rey, Ernestine, 32, 35n, 39–40, 46n, 51, 52n, 105, 105n, 110, 117–19, 124n, 126n, 144n, 146, 150–1, 161, 162n, 394n, 398, 400, 416, 433, 528 Rhys, Estelle, 80n Rhythm, 66, 72n, 74n, 117n, 261n, 353n, 356n, 523, 527, 531–3, 532n–3n, 536, 537n, 543n, 561–2, 561n, 604, 608, 609n–10n Ribni (doll), 73, 74n, 345n Rice, Anne Estelle (m. Drey), 35n, 74n, 116n, 137, 138n, 212, 340, 353, 353n, 355, 461, 527–8, 536, 572n, 625 Richards, Grant, 205, 205n, 207n Richardson, Dorothy, 51n, 438n Riddle, Betsey, 399n–400n The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (Coleridge, S.), 396n Rinsberry, Rebecca, 66 Rippman, Walter, 296n, 318 Ritchie, Maud, 25, 29, 29n Robbins, Amy Catherine, 405n Roberts, Margaret Cobb, 624n Adenoids and Diseased Tonsils: Their General Effect on Intelligence, 624n Robins, Elizabeth, 289, 291n Come and Find Me, 291n Robinson and Cleaver, 457, 458n

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Robison, Gerald, 319–20 Rodenbach, Georges, 283, 283n ‘A Roman Dream – A Psalm for Two Souls’ (Stancioff, N.), 592n The Romanovs (Gerhardi, W.), 567 Rose Tree Cottage, 187, 189n, 225, 517–18 Rossetti, Dante Gabriel, 293, 296n Rothenstein, William, 497, 498n Round About a Pound a Week (Pember-Reeves, M.), 319 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 52n, 507, 509n Confessions, 509n Royal Academy of Arts, 376, 458n Royal Academy of Music, 277n Royal College of Art, 498n Royde Smith, Naomi, 188, 190n Rubens, Paul A., 278n–9n Three Little Maids, 278n Ruddick, Marion, 209, 209n Rue de Tournon, 72, 202 Ruskin, John, 283, 283n Russell, Bertrand, 24–5, 33n, 37n, 39n, 48n, 54n, 345n–6n, 574, 574n The Problem of China, 39n The Selected Letters of Bertrand Russell, 346n ‘Sketches of Modern China’, 39n The Theory and Practice of Bolshevism, 574n Russell, Dora see Black, Dora Russell, John Francis, 24, 33n Russia, 44n, 155, 161n, 227n, 297n, 301n, 314n, 346n, 449–50, 468n, 474, 490n, 551–3, 558, 567, 574n, 583n, 587n–8n ‘Russian Literature’ (Garnett, E.), 560n Sackville, Anne, 599 Sackville, Thomas, 599 Sackville-West, Vita, 599, 613 Sadleir, Michael, 519, 604 St. John’s Wood, 178, 614 St Petersburg, 314n, 450, 452n, 551–2, 566–7, 583n, 587n Saint’s Progress (Galsworthy, J.), 547 Saleeby, C. W., 332 ‘The Samuel Josephs’ (Mansfield, K.), 436n San Remo, 149, 150n, 545–6 Sand, George (née Dupin, Amantine-Lucile Aurore), 52n, 291n, 355, 356n Histoire de ma vie, 356n Sands, Ethel, 445, 447n, 465, 465n Sargent, John Singer, 410n Sassoon, Siegfried, 359n, 360, 391n Counter-Attack and other Poems, 359n The Saturday Review, 509n, 608 The Saturday Westminster Review, 524 The Scarlet Letter (Hawthorne, N.), 285n Scepticisms: Notes on Contemporary Poetry (Aiken, C.), 15 Schiff, Sydney, 57, 57n, 137, 149, 221, 409n, 461–2, 465, 521

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Schiff, Violet (née Beddington), 2, 11n, 17n, 57, 57n, 137, 149, 205n, 221, 461–2, 465 Schlumberger, Jean, 172n Schlumberger, Paul, 166n, 172n Schlumberger, Suzanne, 172n The School Girl (Hamilton, H.), 279n Schopfer, Jean see Anet, Claude Schubert, Franz, 297n, 321n Erlkönig, 321 Scotland, 8, 352, 354–5, 356n, 359n, 362, 365, 399, 402n, 404, 492, 494n Scott, Margaret, 5, 72, 270, 310–11, 519–20, 534–5 (ed.) The Katherine Mansfield Notebooks, 271n Scott-Moncrieff, William Dundas, 382n Scriven (Mrs), 96, 97n, 152, 154n, 159, 160n Seale Hayle Military Hospital, 84n Seaman, Elizabeth Cochrane, 438n ‘Seaton’s Aunt’ (de la Mare, W.), 523 Seddon, Phoebe, 218n, 534 Seddon, Richard John, 218n, 223, 241n, 534 Seddon, Rubi, 240, 241n Select Hôtel, 74n, 166, 166n, 488, 490, 492, 591 The Selected Letters of Bertrand Russell (Russell, B., ed. Griffin, N.), 346n Selected Letters of Conrad Aiken (Aiken, C., ed. Killorin, J.), 18n Selected Letters of Mark Gertler (Gertler, M., ed. Carrington, N.), 597n–8n Selected Poems (Aiken, C.), 15 Selected Poems (Blunden, E.), 330n Selfridge & Co. Ltd, 69, 106, 106n, 123, 269, 272 Seymour, Miranda, 369n, 433n, 486n, 618n Ottoline Morrell: Life on a Grand Scale, 369n, 433n, 486n, 618n Shakespeare and Company, 56n, 163n, 478n Shakespeare, William, 24, 36, 42, 43n, 45, 46n, 50, 66, 315n, 399, 405–6, 416, 473n, 608, 610n As You Like It, 217n Hamlet, 31, 33n, 316n The Tempest, 46n, 473n Venus and Adonis, 315n Shand, Lamont, 332 Shanks, Edward, 147n, 588n Shaw, George Bernard, 23, 283, 284n, 288n, 390, 391n, 531, 608 The Inca of Perusalem, 531 ‘She and the Boy; or, the Story of the FunnyOld-Thing’ (Mansfield, K.), 270 Sheaves (Benson, E. F.), 8, 292, 295n Sherard, Robert Harborough, 71n Life of Oscar Wilde, 71n Short Stories, Poems and Aphorisms (Bibesco, E.), 326n ‘The Short Story as Poetry’ (Aiken, C.), 17n, 19n

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Shorter, Clement, 32, 35n, 56, 56n, 121, 250n, 454, 470n Sickert, Walter, 465n Un Siècle de tourisme à Crans-Montana: Lectures du territoire (ed. Galofaro, S.), 26n Sierre, 60–2, 124, 146, 155, 237–9, 241–2, 306–7, 315n, 330, 391, 474, 478, 483–5, 496, 584, 588–90, 589n, 602 The Signature, 270–1, 614n ‘SIGNES OF SPRING: A Letter from Katherine Mansfield’ (Smith, A.), 176n ‘Silhouettes’ (Mansfield, K.), 336 Simpson-Hayward, George, 295n ‘A Singer Asleep’ (Hardy, T.), 34n The Sisters of Kezia: Katherine Mansfield Remembered (Leeming, O.), 181n, 275n Sitwell, Edith, 417n ‘Six Years After’ (Mansfield, K.), 271 ‘Sixpence’ (Mansfield, K.), 105n The Sketch, 214, 214n, 418n, 436, 437n, 440 ‘Sketches of Modern China’ (Russell, B.), 39n Slade School of Art, 60n, 100n, 340, 346n–7n, 373n, 391n, 394n, 396n, 402n, 413n, 451n, 458n, 482n, 594–5 Small, Gertie, 172, 172n Smith, Ali, 176n, 537n ‘SIGNES OF SPRING: A Letter from Katherine Mansfield’, 176n Smith, Angela, 536 (ed.) The Edinburgh Edition of the Collected Works of Katherine Mansfield, vol. 3 – The Poetry and Critical Writings, 43n, 97n, 107n, 109n–10n, 138n, 207n, 284n, 328n, 331n, 345n, 382n, 413n, 418n, 475n, 547–8, 548n, 586n, 588n, 603n, 621n Katherine Mansfield: A Literary Life, 537n Smith, Helen, 560n The Uncommon Reader: A Life of Edward Garnett, 560n–1n Smyth, Ethel, 25, 619 Sobieniowski, Floryan, 258, 260n, 333 ‘The Soiled Rose’ (Lawrence, D. H.), 561, 561n Songs Without Words (Mendelssohn, F.), 509n Sons and Lovers (Lawrence, D. H., eds Baron, C.; Baron, H.), 559, 561n Sorapure, Victor, 55, 55n, 98, 100n, 101, 146, 238, 241–4, 249, 253, 366n, 409, 484, 490 da Sousa Correa, Delia, 297n ‘Katherine Mansfield and Music: Nineteenth Century Echoes’, 297n Souvenirs entomologiques (Fabre, J.), 451n Souvenirs sur Katherine Mansfield (Carco, F.), 513, 514n Souvorin, Alexei Sergueyevich, 418n, 577n, 588n Spahlinger, Henri, 101, 102n, 398, 399n, 547 Spalding, Frances, 342n ‘Dorothy Brett’s Umbrellas (1917)’, 342n

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index The Speaker, 558, 560n The Spectator, 138n Spencer, Stanley, 594 Spenser, Edmund, 46n, 511n The Faerie Queene, 46n, 511n The Sphere, 35n, 56, 56n, 105n, 121, 146n, 159, 160n, 207, 221, 237, 250n, 402, 402n, 407, 408n, 460n, 520n Squire, J. C., 16, 41n, 250n, 507, 509n (ed.) Official Illustrated Catalogue of the Queen’s Doll’s House, 250n Stancioff, Najeda, 592n ‘A Roman Dream – A Psalm for Two Souls’, 592n Stanley, Mary Elizabeth, 308n Stead, C. K., 2, 11n (ed.) The Letters and Journals of Katherine Mansfield: A Selection, 11n Stein, Gertrude, 313, 543n Picasso, 543n Stephani, Théodore, 26n, 35n, 102n, 315n, 392n Stephen, James, 408n Stepniak, Fanny, 552 Stepniak, Sergei, 552 Stevenson, Robert Lewis, 155, 156n, 290n Still Life with Fruit and Frog (Brett, D.), 345n Stoker, Bram, 519 Dracula, 519 Stone, Jean, 225n, 336, 337n–8n Katherine Mansfield: Publications in Australia, 225n, 337n–8n The Story-Teller, 625n Strachey, Lytton, 205n, 342n, 352n, 356n, 394n, 408n, 595n, 613, 615, 616n Eminent Victorians, 206n The Strand, 425n ‘The Stranger’ (Mansfield, K.), 258 Stratford-upon-Avon, 33n Street, G. B., 417n Strephon and Chloé, Letter to a Young Lady on Her Marriage (Swift, J.), 196n Studies in Prose and Verse (Symons, A.), 287n–8n Studies in Seven Arts (Symons, A.), 282n, 296n–7n Studies in Wives (Belloc Lowndes, M.), 313n The Subjection of Women (Mill, J.), 297n ‘A Suburban Fairy Tale’ (Mansfield, K.), 2 Sullivan, John William Navin (J. W. N.), 16, 34n, 362, 363n, 365, 388n, 393, 398, 407, 416, 424, 429, 429n, 479, 480n, 484, 495, 542 Sullivan, Sylvia, 387, 398, 424, 429, 429n, 484 The Sun (Galsworthy, J.), 547 Sunflowers (van Gogh, V.), 421n Sunnyside Cottage, 510, 615–16 Swainson (Miss), 198, 257, 269 Swift, Jonathan, 196n, 397n Gulliver’s Travels, 396, 397n The Lady’s Dressing Room, 196n

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Strephon and Chloé, Letter to a Young Lady on Her Marriage, 196n Swinburne, Algernon Charles, 32, 34n, 293, 296n ‘Ave Atque Vale’, 32, 34n ‘Swing on the Garsington Gate’ (Mantz, R.), 335n Switzerland, 16, 20, 23, 52n, 63, 68–9, 99–103, 102n, 109n, 130–1, 148n, 154, 159n, 175, 207, 209n, 214, 230, 241–2, 249, 253, 258, 263, 302–5, 315–16, 368, 370, 390, 402, 415, 431, 433, 438n, 440, 442, 457, 457n, 475n, 476, 480, 484–5, 511, 521, 547–8, 569, 573, 588, 600, 602, 622–3 The Sydney Morning Herald, 319 The Symbolist Movement in Literature (Symons, A.), 284n Symons, Arthur, 71n, 282n, 283, 284n, 287n–8n, 296n–7n Plays, Acting and Music, 284n Studies in Prose and Verse, 287n–8n Studies in Seven Arts, 282n, 296n–7n The Symbolist Movement in Literature, 284n Table-Talk (Hazlitt, W.), 285n ‘Taking the Veil’ (Mansfield, K.), 214n, 437n Taylor, Moira, 321, 321n Tea and Anarchy: The Bloomsbury Diary of Olive Garnett 1890–1893 (Garnett, O.), 560n ‘A Tear in the Eye of a Violet’ (Mansfield, K.), 428 The Tempest (Shakespeare, W.), 46n, 473n Le Temps, 603n Tennant, Margot, 102n, 324 Tessier, Valentine, 451n Thacker, Andrew, 19n, 88n, 164n ‘Of Bliss and Blushing: Cities and Affect in Katherine Mansfield and Jean Rhys’, 164n (ed.) The Oxford Critical and Cultural History of Modernist Magazines, 19n, 88n Thackeray, William Makepeace, 263n The Memoirs of Charles J. Yellowplush, 263n ‘“That Pole Outside Our Door”: Floryan Sobieniowski and Katherine Mansfield’ (Kimber, G.), 259n Theodora (Handel, G.), 346n The Theory and Practice of Bolshevism (Russell, B.), 574n The Things We Are (Murry, J. M.), 46n, 52n, 139n This Freedom (Hutchinson, A. S. M.), 249, 250n, 253 Thomas Cook and Son, 480n Thomas, Edward, 496n, 530, 559 Thomas, William Beach, 137, 137n Thorndon Quay, 297n

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Three Guineas (Woolf, V., ed. Marcus, J.), 326n, 620n Three Little Maids (Rubens, P.), 278n The Three Mullar-Mulgars (de la Mare, W.), 116n, 266, 396 Three Weeks (Glyn, E.), 286, 287n Through the Looking Glass (Carroll, L.), 48n, 185n Tidmarsh Hall, 352n Time and Tide, 51, 52n, 580, 581n The Times, 53, 54n, 87n, 121, 128n, 145, 148, 205, 207, 207n, 226, 227n, 240, 247, 276, 278n, 312, 357, 367, 577n Times Literary Supplement, 30n, 87n, 358n, 372n, 530, 588n, 591n, 593n Tinakori Road, 217n, 257, 266n, 300n, 317, 338n ‘The Tiredness of Rosabel’ (Mansfield, K.), 351n RMS Titanic, 506n To Let (Galsworthy, J.), 110n, 547, 549n Today We Will Only Gossip (Glenavy, B.), 117n, 370n, 501–2, 503n, 505n, 514n, 596, 597n Tolstoy, Lev Nikolaevitch, 283, 284n–5n, 291n, 345n, 414n, 416, 552–3, 556n, 567, 586, 587n, 597n, 602, 603n Anna Karenina, 284n ‘Chekhov’s Intent in The Darling’, 587n The Death of Ivan Ilyich, 603n ‘Master and Man’, 414n War and Peace, 284n, 345n, 556, 567, 597n Tom Tiddler’s Ground (Dickens, C.), 486n Tomalin, Claire, 321n, 595–6, 597n Katherine Mansfield: A Secret Life, 321n, 597n Tomlinson, Henry M., 137, 138n, 331n, 435, 436n Old Junk, 331n Toys (Brooke, S.), 383n ‘A Tragic Comedienne’ (Lynd, R.; Mansfield, K.), 413n Trapp, Burney, 278n Trapp, Eliza, 278n Trautmann, Joanna (ed.) The Letters of Virginia Woolf, 80n, 347n ‘Travel Talk’ (Drinkwater, J.), 532n Tree, Iris see Moffat, Iris La Tribuna Illustrata, 146n Trinder, Harry, 248, 250n, 364n ‘Trois Morceaux pour Piano’ (Trowell, A.), 281n Trowell, Arnold (Thomas), 71n, 276, 278n, 281n, 289, 290n, 318, 426n ‘Rêverie du Soir’, 276, 278n, 281n ‘Trois Morceaux pour Piano’, 281n Trowell, Garnet, 71n, 147n, 180, 258, 275n, 281n, 288n, 289, 290n–1n, 318, 323n, 332, 426n

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Trowell, Thomas Luigi, 286, 288n, 289, 290n, 322, 323n, 426n Truth and Poetry (Goethe, J.), 451n The Tsar and the Revolution (Merezhkovsky, D.; Gippius, Z.), 452n Turgenev, Ivan, 364, 366n, 509n, 552–3 On the Eve, 509n Turner, W. J., 408n ‘Turning the Tables: Katherine Mansfield and W. L. George’ (Marshall, A.), 529n ‘Two Remarkable Novels’ (Murry, J. M.), 591n The Tyro, 527, 528n Ulysses (Joyce, J.), 56, 56n, 466, 468n, 478n, 586n Umbrellas (Brett, D.), 342n, 346n, 350n The Uncommon Reader: A Life of Edward Garnett (Smith, H.), 560n–1n United States, 15, 18n, 24–5, 325, 530, 564 Urewera, 201n, 259n The Urewera Notebook by Katherine Mansfield (Mansfield, K., ed. Plumridge, A.), 179, 184n–6n, 201n Ushant: An Essay (Aiken, C.), 16, 18n–19n Utrillo, Maurice, 476, 477n Valéry, Paul, 58n Variations in Blue and Green (Whistler, J.), 282n The Veil and Other Poems (de la Mare, W.), 41n, 43n Venus and Adonis (Shakespeare, W.), 315n Vera (von Arnim, E.), 25, 31, 33n, 54n, 303, 406, 408n, 428 Victoria Palace Hôtel, 43–4, 46n, 47–8, 50, 52, 54–5, 57–8, 108–14, 116–17, 119–20, 123–4, 126, 128–30, 132, 134–6, 138–40, 142–4, 147–8, 150–2, 154, 200, 211–13, 215, 217, 218n, 232, 438, 440–1, 444, 448, 452, 455, 458, 461, 463–4, 466, 469–70, 472, 525, 550, 575, 623–5, 627 ‘Vignettes’ (Mansfield, K.), 336–7 Villa Flora, 91, 91n, 147n, 377–9, 379n, 544, 621 Villa Isola Bella, 92–5, 94n, 97–8, 100, 102–3, 122, 128n, 147n, 200, 206, 314, 316, 326–7, 384–8, 451n, 471, 479, 520, 544, 556, 612, 621 Villa Pauline, 228, 300, 605 Le Village (Bunin, I.), 452n Virgin Ironing (Elvery, B.), 502 ‘Virginia Woolf’ (Walpole, H.), 313n Voices, 528 Volkhovsky, Felix, 552 ‘The Voyage’ (Mansfield, K.), 246, 247n, 445, 579, 580n

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index A W. B. Yeats Chronology (Kelly, J.), 528n Wadestown, 191, 193n, 198, 254n, 318, 499 Wagner, Richard, 21, 294, 295n, 297n Lohengrin, 292, 295n Waipunga Riverside, 182, 184n Waley, Arthur, 28n A Hundred and Seventy Chinese Poems, 28n Waliszewski, Kazimierz, 558, 558n Walker, Jennifer, 26, 26n, 34n–5n, 95n, 186n, 486n ‘After Ann Veronica. “The Episode of Little e”: Fact or Fiction?’, 26n ‘After Hornsey Lane’, 26n Elizabeth of the German Garden – A Literary Journey, 26n, 34n–5n, 486n Walpole, Hugh, 22–3, 208, 209n, 313, 313n, 570n, 585, 586n Captives, 586n Jeremy, 586n ‘Virginia Woolf’, 313n The Young Enchanted, 586n ‘The Walrus and the Carpenter’ (Carroll, L.), 301n War and Peace (Tolstoy, L.), 284n, 345n, 556, 567, 597n Ward, Joseph George, 240, 241n, 288n Warlock, Peter see Heseltine, Peter Warner, Susan, 36n Queechy, 36, 36n The Waste Land (Eliot, T. S.), 586n Waterlow, Charlotte see Beauchamp, Charlotte Waterlow, Sydney, 26n, 34n, 63n, 199, 342n, 372n, 407n, 479n–80n, 521 Waters, Val, 209n Watts, A. M., 114, 116n Watts, George Frederic, 296n Watts, Janet, 70, 70n Watts-Dunton, Theodore, 293, 296n The Renascence of Wonder, 296n ‘Weak Heart’ (Mansfield, K.), 321 Weatherly, Frederic, 296n ‘The Admiral’s Broom’, 296n Webber, Elsie, 182–3, 184n Webster, Garcia, 276, 279n The Weekly Westminster Review, 524 Wellington, 67, 71n, 90n, 122n, 177, 179–81, 193n, 198, 204n, 209n, 213, 214n, 217n–18n, 221n, 223–5, 230n, 235n, 241n, 250n, 254n, 256n, 257, 267n, 268–9, 273–4, 276, 277n–9n, 281n, 287n–8n, 290n, 295n, 297n, 300n, 317–22, 321n, 337–8, 338n, 435n, 443n, 499, 534 Wellington College, 269, 319 Wellington Koo (Mrs, née Oei, Hui-lan), 417, 418n Wellington Underwriters’ Association, 317 Wellington Unitarian Church, 277n

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659

Wells, H. G., 23, 34n, 208, 209n, 377n, 405, 405n, 408n, 411, 459, 460n, 508n, 606n, 611 Boon, the Mind of the Race, The Wild Asses of the Devil and The Last Trump, Prepared for Publication by Reginald Bliss, with An Ambiguous Introduction by H. G. Wells (Who is in Truth the Author of the Entire Book), 508n ‘The Episode of little e’, 34n Experiment in Autobiography, 34n The History of Mr Polly, 377n West, Rebecca, 119n, 313, 611 The Westcotes and Tom Tiddler’s Ground (Quiller-Couch, A.), 486n The Westminster Gazette, 188, 190n, 263n, 527 Weston, T. S. (Captain), 280n Wetherell, Elizabeth see Warner, Susan Wharton, Edith, 548n The Age of Innocence, 548n Whistler, James Abbott McNeill, 282n, 294, 297n, 524n Variations in Blue and Green, 282n Whistler, Theresa, 524n Imagination of the Heart: The Life of Walter de la Mare, 524n Whitman, Walt, 283, 284n–5n Leaves of Grass, 284n Wilde, Oscar (Sebastian Melmouth), 67, 70, 71n, 282n–4n, 283, 288n–9n, 296n, 318, 321n, 607, 610n ‘The Critic as Art’, 607 The Picture of Dorian Gray, 289n ‘Wilderness’ (Blunden, E.), 329 The Wilds of Maoriland (Bell, J.), 87n Wilhelm II (Kaiser), 342n–3n, 509n Will Shakespeare: An Invention in Four Acts (Dane, C.), 43n Williams, Leonard, 102, 102n Wilson, Janet, 176n Wilson, Romer, 108n–9n, 160n The Death of Society: Conte de Fée Premier, 109n If All These Young Men, 109n Wilson, Woodrow, 531 ‘The Wind Blows’ (Mansfield, K.), 271 Wingley (cat), 46n, 68, 94n, 97n, 100, 101n, 110, 113–15, 116n, 118, 121, 128, 130, 136, 140, 145, 147n, 149, 152, 160n, 175n, 210, 214, 405, 414, 424, 437, 472n Winter Notes (Dostoevsky, F.), 425n Wishart, Margaret, 85, 87n, 332 ‘Woburn Home honours 100-year-old artist’ (Mason, B.), 321n Wodeson, John, 528n Mark Gertler: Biography of a Painter, 1891–1939, 597n ‘The Woman at the Store’ (Mansfield, K.), 537n

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660

collected letters of katherine mansfield, vol. 1

Woman with a Letter (Renoir, P.-A), 397n Women in Love (Lawrence, D. H.), 345n, 433n, 595, 614n Women: A Cultural Review, 26n Women’s Royal Navy Service, 358n Women’s Social and Political Union, 563, 565n The Women’s Suffrage Movement: A Reference Guide (Crawford, E.), 564n Wood, Clara Finetta, 65, 183, 185n, 297n Wood, Henry, 293, 296n Woodeson, John, 597n Woodhay, 161, 199, 206, 207n, 214, 216, 220, 233, 235, 237, 242–4, 248, 257–8, 303n Woodifield (Mr), 113, 113n, 124, 130, 149 Woods, Joanna, 490n Katerina: The Russian World of Katherine Mansfield, 490n Woolf, Leonard, 346n–7n, 408n, 462n, 480n, 553, 555n, 559, 572n, 584n, 619 An Autobiography, 480n ‘Mr Monkhouse and Moscow’, 555n Woolf, Virginia, 8, 16, 19n, 67, 80, 80n, 87n, 313, 324–6, 326n, 346n–7n, 350n, 353, 354n, 356n, 360n, 372, 372n, 401, 413n, 418n, 426n, 429, 429n, 469n, 530–1, 559, 584n, 586n, 596, 613, 619–20, 620n The Diary of Virginia Woolf, 326n, 347n, 354n, 360n, 372n, 620n The Essays of Virginia Woolf, 326n, 531n ‘George Eliot’, 372, 372n Jacob’s Room, 429n, 586n ‘A Letter to a Lady in Paraguay’, 326n The Letters of Virginia Woolf, 80n, 347n Night and Day, 413n Three Guineas, 326n, 620n The Years, 350n

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Woollcott, Alexander (ed.) The Complete Works of Lewis Carroll, 185n, 394n Wordsworth, Dorothy, 3n, 32, 35n, 285n, 355, 356n Journals of Dorothy Wordsworth, 34n Wordsworth, William, 49n, 356n ‘I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud’, 49n Wörishofen see Bad Wörishofen World War One, 52n, 69, 147n, 194n, 227n, 230n, 267n, 269, 274, 321, 349, 351, 358n, 375n, 391n, 417n, 435n, 511n, 530, 565n, 608, 619 World War Two, 18n, 26n, 69, 460n, 514 Wright, Mabel Osgood, 373n The Garden, You and I, 373n Wuthering Heights (Brontë, E.), 285n Yates (Miss.), 120, 122n, 136 The Years (Woolf, V.), 350n Yeats, W. B., 501, 507, 509n, 528n ‘The Yellow Book’ (How Germany Forced the War), 227n–8n, 283n Young, Brett, 36, 37n, 256n The Black Diamond, 37n, 256n The Young Enchanted (Walpole, H.), 586n Young, James Carruthers, 493, 494n ‘An Experiment at Fontainebleau: A Personal Reminiscence’, 494n ‘Your Obituary, Well Written’ (Aiken, C.), 17 Zasulich, Vera, 552 Zimring, Rishona, 154n ‘Rethinking Mansfield through GaudierBrzeska: Monumentality and Intimacy’, 154n Zola, Emile, 277n, 282n

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