Letters

Portrait of Katherine Mansfield

by Anne Estelle Rice, 1918

Lately, I have been curiously enamored with letters and

correspondence. I just finished reading through a stack of letters

written in the late 1960's by my dear grandmother to her two

youngest sons, my uncles, while they were away at school. It was her

last few years and I love her thoughts on life and her charming

descriptions of her day to day events. They are such a treasure. I

adore the touching letters between Helene Hanff and Frank Doel in

84 Charing Cross Road. And I just picked up a charming little copy

of Love Letters, selected and edited by Peter Washington, filled with

oodles of wonderful correspondence by notable historical figures,

everyone from Virginia Woolf to Napoleon Bonapart. Here is a

delightful excerpt from a letter from Katherine Mansfield to John

Middleton Murray, May 18, 1917.

When you came to tea this afternoon you took a brioche broke it
in half & padded the inside doughy bit with two fingers. You always
to that with a bun or a roll or a piece of bread -- It is you way -- your
head a little on one side the while ... When you opened your
suitcase I saw your old feltie and a French book and a comb all
higgledy piggledy -- 'Tig. I've only got three handkerchiefs' --
Why should that memory be so sweet to me...

I must read Katherine Mansfield's Journal. It was published
posthumously by her husband, John Middleton Murray in 1927 to
wide acclaim.