‘The Man Without a Temperament’

Abstract

Between June 1918 and October 1919 there are only a handful of published letters from Katherine to Murry. It is Murry himself who best sums up the situation that existed between them during those unhappy months when Katherine was attempting her ‘cure’ at home in Hampstead. ‘Whatever shelter I tried to build for us both came tumbling down’, he writes in his autobiography.

Our marriage was to have been the miracle; it was not. Then the capture of the Elephant, as we called the final taking of the grey Hampstead house (which we entered on July 29th) would be the miracle; it was not. Then the end of the War — Peace — would be the miracle; it was not. And what was not the miracle, was nothing.