Well, I must confess I have had an idle day—God knows why. All was to be written, but I just didn't write it. I thought I would, but I felt tired after tea, and rested instead. Is it good or bad in me to behave so ? I have a sense of guilt, but at the same time I know that to rest is the very best thing I can do. And for some reason there is a kind of booming in my head—which is horrid. But marks of earthly degradation still pursue me. I am not crystal clear. Above all else, I do still lack application. It's not right. There is so much to do, and I do so little. Look at the stories that wait and wait, just at the threshold., Why don't I let them in ? And their place would be taken by others who are lurking beyond, just out there—waiting for the chance.
Next day. Yet take this morning, for instance. I don't want to write anything. It's grey ; it's heavy and dull. And short stories seem unreal, and not worth doing. I don't want to write ? I want to live. What does one mean by that ? It's not too easy to say. But there you are !
Aug. 21. All this that I write, all that I am, is on the border of the sea. It's a kind of playing. I want to put all my force behind it, but somehow I cannot.
And again in the autumn of the year her incessant effort towards an inward purity—who but she would have dreamed that she lacked it ? —as a condition of soul essential to writing as she purposed to write, becomes still more manifest.
Oct. 16. Another radiant day. J. is typing my last story, The Garden Party, which I finished on my birthday. It took me nearly a month to ' recover ' from At the Bay. I made at least four false starts. But I could not get away from the sound of the sea and Beryl fanning her hair at the window. These things would not die down. But now I am not at all sure about that story. It seems to me it is a little 'wispy' —not what it might have been. The G.P. is better. But that is not good enough, either... The last few days, what one notices more than anything is the blue. Blue sky, blue mountains—all is a heavenly blueness! And clouds of all kinds—wings, soft white clouds, almost hard little golden islands, great mock-mountains. The gold deepens on the slopes. In fact, in sober fact, it is perfection. But the late evening is the time of times. Then, with that unearthly beauty before one, it is not hard to realise how far one has to go. To write something that will be worthy of that rising moon, that pale light. To be 'simple' enough as one would be simple before God.
Nov. 21. Since then I have only written The Doll's House. A bad spell has been on me. I have begun two stories, but then told them and they felt betrayed. It is absolutely fatal to give way to this temptation ... To-day I begin to write, seriously, The Weak Heart—a story which fascinates me deeply. What I feel it needs so peculiarly is a very subtle variation of tense from the present to the past and back again—and softness, lightness, and the feeling that all is in bud, with a play of humour over the character of Roddie. And the feeling of the Thorndon Baths, the wet, moist, oozy ... no, I know how it must be done.
May I be found worthy to do it! Lord, make me crystal clear for thy light to shine through.
The two stories which she told and then was forced to abandon "because they felt betrayed" were Honesty and All Serene. Of Weak Heart, as she subsequently called it, only fragments remain. There is the opening copied in careful writing, a few hurriedly written sentences from the middle—themes, as it were, hastily noted— and then, obviously written at top speed and decipherable only with great difficulty, the end.
The two following passages from her journal belong to the same months, October and November 1921. But they were written in another book, and one of them should be placed in point of time between the two previous entries. Katherine Mansfield's attempts at keeping a regular journal were intermittent. Nearly all the passages quoted here as from her "journal" were written on random pages of the little copy-books in which she composed her stories. In order to appreciate the first of the following passages fully it should be remembered that it was written immediately after she had finished At the Bay.
Oct. 1921. I wonder why it should be so difficult to be humble. I do not think that I am a good writer; I realise my faults better than anyone else could realise them. I know exactly when I fail. And yet, when I have finished a story and before I have begun another, I catch myself greening my feathers. It is disheartening. There seems to be some bad old pride in my heart; a root of it that puts out a thick shoot on the slightest provocation ... This interferes very much with work. One can't be calm, clear, good as one must be, while it goes on. I look at the mountains, I try to pray—and I think of something clever. It's a kind of excitement within one which shouldn't be there. Calm yourself. Clear yourself. And anything that I write in this mood will be no good ; it will be full of sediment. If I were well, I would go off by myself somewhere and sit under a tree. One must learn, one must practise to forget oneself. I can't tell the truth about Aunt Anne unless I am free to enter into her life without self-consciousness. Oh, God! I am divided still, I am bad, I fail in my personal life. I lapse into impatience, temper, vanity, and so I fail as thy priest. Perhaps poetry will help.
I have just thoroughly cleaned and attended to my fountain pen. If after this it leaks, then it is no gentleman!
Nov. 13, 1921. It is time I started a new journal. Come my unseen, my unknown, let us talk together. Yes, for the last two weeks I have written scarcely anything. I have been idle ; I have failed. Why ? Many reasons. There has been a kind of confusion in my consciousness. It has seemed as though there was no time to work. The mornings, if they are sunny, are taken up with sun-treatment; the post eats away the afternoon. And at night I am tired. But it goes deeper. Yes, you are right. I haven't felt able to yield to the kind of contemplation that is necessary. I haven't felt pure in heart, not humble, not good. There's been a stirring up of sediment. I look at the mountains and I see nothing but mountains. Be frank ! I read rubbish ... Out of hand ? Yes, that describes it. Dissipated, vague, not positive, and above all, above everything, not working as I should be working— wasting time.
Wasting time ! The old cry—the first and last cry. Why do ye tarry ? Ah, why indeed ? My deepest desire is to be a writer, to have 'a body of work' done— and there the work is, there the stories wait for me, grow tired, wilt, fade, because I will not come. When first they knock, how eager and fresh they are ! And I hear and I acknowledge them, and still I go on sitting at the window, playing with the ball of wool. What is to be done ?
I must make another effort at once. I must begin all over again. I must try and write simply, fully, freely, from my heart. Quietly, caring nothing for success or failure, but just going on...
But now to resolve ! And especially to keep in touch with life. With the sky, this moon, these stars, these cold candid peaks.
During the following summer at Sierre in Switzerland one could have believed that Katherine Mansfield had finally accomplished the task of inward purification she had set herself, and to me it seems that there is a halcyon clarity and calm diffused through the unfinished stories written there. But she was still secretly dissatisfied with herself and her work, and in the autumn, after a brief return to London, she deliberately decided to risk everything, to abandon the writing that was dearer than all else to her, in order to achieve that newness of heart without which her work and her life seemed to her unprofitable. At the end of October she retired, by herself, to a settlement at Fontaine-bleau, where she found what she sought. A few days after she had taken this final step, she wrote in a letter :
"No treatment on earth is any good to me really. It's all pretence. M. did make me heavier and a trifle stronger. But that was all, if I really face the facts. The miracle never came near happening. It couldn't. And as for my spirit—well as a result of that life at the Victoria-Palace I stopped being a writer. I have only written long or short scraps since The Fly. If I had gone on with my old life, I never would have written again, for I was dying of poverty of life.
I wish, when one writes about things, one didn't dramatise them so. I feel awfully happy about all this—And it's all as simple as can be ...
But in any case I shan't write any stories for three