Complete Works by Katherine Mansfield

Author:Katherine Mansfield [Mansfield, Katherine]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2014-11-17T00:00:00+00:00

To Richard Murry

September 1920

I was very glad to hear from you. The drawing of the Flight into Mentone was really superb—Athy was the spit of himself. Yes, I think you’d find the South of France was good country. I could be content to stay here for years. In fact I love it as I’ve never loved any place but my home. The life, too, is so easy. There is no division between one’s work and one’s external existence—both are of a piece. And you know what that means. My small, pale yellow house with a mimosa tree growing in front of it—just a bit deeper yellow—the garden full of plants, the terrace with crumbling yellow pillars covered with green (lurking-place for lizards) all belong to a picture or a story. I mean they are not remote from one’s ideal—one’s dream. The house faces the sea, but to the right there is the Old Town with a small harbour—a little quai planted with pepper and plane trees. This Old Town, which is built flat against a hill—a solid wall, as it were, of shapes and colours—is the finest thing I’ve seen. Every time I drive towards it it is different.

And then, there’s no doubt that the people here—I mean the working people—make no end of a difference. My servant Marie is a masterpiece in her way. She’s the widow of a coachman—just a woman of the people, as we say, but her feeling for life is a constant surprise to me. The kitchen is a series of Still Lives; the copper pans wink on the walls. When she produces a fish for lunch it lies in a whole, tufted green seascape with a large tragic mouthful of ‘persil’ still in its jaws. And last night, talking of her desire to buy bananas she explained it wasn’t so much that they should be eaten but they gave ‘effect’ to the fruit dish. “A fine bunch of grapes, deux poires rouges, une on deux belles pommes avec des bananas et des feuilles” she thought worth looking at.

You know to live with such people is an awful help. Yesterday, par example, I had a sack of charcoal and some pine cones delivered. And passing the kitchen I saw the woodman, in a blue overall and yellow trousers, sitting at the table with Marie taking a glass of wine. The wine bottle was one of those wicker affairs. One doesn’t (God forbid) want to make a song about these things, but I didn’t realise they went on naturally and simply until I came here. In England one gets the feeling that all is over. Do you know what I mean? And there’s never time for more than a rough sketch of what one wants to do, and what one feels. I hope you don’t think I’m running down your country. It’s not that. It’s life in any city.

[]

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