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.... Today 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 I am a good writer; I realise my faults better than any one 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 preening 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 practice 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 write. 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?