Katherine Mansfield
Page 31
Katherine was outstandingly gifted, original and ambitious to develop her gifts. She needed time, freedom and tolerable living conditions in which to work; the pity was that she never found all at once. Had she done so, it is not unreasonable to think she could have grown into a major writer. As it was, she spent the best part of her energy battling against her family and its expectations of her; against her ruined health; against her resentment of Murry's inadequacies and still more, perhaps, against his vision of her and her role as an artist in his romantic pantheon; against her fears and hugely exaggerated feelings of guilt.
The iconized, sanitized, flawless Katherine insisted on by Murry must have increased the panic anxiety she felt at any threat to expose the secrets of her youth. Today, ironically, we have ceased to want our artists to be virtuous, and rather favour a history of dubious deeds as a basis for the creative life. Katherine, alive to irony, might laugh at the change in attitude; but she would probably hate to have our sympathy. Yet she deserves it, for it was largely through her adventurous spirit, her eagerness to grasp at experience and to succeed in her work, that she became ensnared in disaster. Her short life, so modern and busy, has the shape of a classic tragedy.
At her least likeable, she adopted sentimental postures, and used them as a shield for treacherous malice. Yet how much there is that is admirable about her. She was always more interested in the external world than in her own suffering. She was a worker to her bones, and prized the effort required by craft. She fought, bravely, stubbornly, tenaciously, against two terrifying and incurable diseases that finally destroyed her. If she was never a saint, she was certainly a martyr, and a heroine in her recklessness, her dedication and her courage.
Kathleen Mansfield Beauchamp, aged about nine: the third, difficult, least loved daughter, already with a rebellious and inquisitive glimmer behind the glasses
Mrs Harold Beauchamp, possessor of a weak heart and a steely will; her children were taught that self-control was the prime virtue
Sir Harold Beauchamp, the hugely successful colonial banker and businessman, who wanted his daughters to be perfect ladies, and sent them to school in London, with unexpected results
The Beauchamp clan in full splendour, photographed at Las Palmas on the way to England in 1903 (see description on p.19). (standing, left to right) K.M., Harold Beauchamp, Ship's Officer Crow, Uncle Dyer, Vera Beauchamp. (sitting, left to right) ‘Chaddie’ Beauchamp, Mrs Beauchamp, Leslie Beauchamp, Captain Fishwick, Jeanne Beauchamp and Belle Dyer
Queen's College, Harley Street: something between a boarding school and a college
Ida Constance Baker, Katherine's faithful ‘wife’ (in about 1908)
Katherine in 1906, before her reluctant return to New Zealand: ‘the idea of sitting and waiting for a husband is absolutely revolting’
‘She enthrals me, enslaves me… her body absolute – is my worship’: the artist Edith Kathleen Bendall, nine years older than Katherine, who fell passionately and guiltily in love with her in Wellington in 1907
Garnet Carrington Trowell, Katherine's first lover and the father of her lost child: a gentle, dreamy, bookish young musician, and, like her, transplanted from New Zealand to study in Europe
Another of Katherine's lovers, the translator Floryan Sobieniowski, who became her evil genius, here with famous friend Bernard Shaw
Floryan as Polish correspondent to Rhythm
George Bowden, King's College Cambridge music scholar, whom Katherine decided to marry in 1909
A. R. Orage, Katherine's mentor in 1910 and 1911, editor of the radical New Age, in which her early stories appeared
Beatrice Hastings, Orage's editorial adviser and mistress and, like Katherine, a writer and colonial separated from her husband
The budding author: Katherine in 1910
John Middleton Murry with his little boy's look, in 1912, at the time Katherine invited him to become her lodger
Katherine presiding at the Chaucer Mansions flat in 1913: the last days of the Blue Review, and the first meetings with Lawrence and Frieda
Lady Ottoline Morrell at home at Garsington
Francis Carco at the time of his friendship with Murry and Katherine
D. H. Lawrence and Frieda on their wedding day in 1914, with Katherine and Murry in the Campbells' garden at Selwood Terrace
1910: Convalescent at Rottingdean
1911: The New Age contributor
1913: The successful young author
1915: Returning from the front in France
1916: In her St. John's Wood garden
1917: A dramatic studio portrait THE CHANGING FACE OF K.M.
August 1919: Leaving for San Remo
‘A brother one loves’: Lawrence in 1913
‘You are the only woman with whom I long to talk work’: Virginia Woolf in the early 1920s
Murry on the terrace at the Villa Isola Bella: ‘I do lament that he is not warm, ardent, eager, full of quick response, careless, spendthrift of himself, vividly alive, high-spirited. But it makes no difference to my love.’
Ida's photograph of Isola Bella
The Chalet des Sapins at Sierre
Katherine standing in the garden at Isola Bella: ‘I get up at about 11. Go downstairs until 12. Come up and lie on my bed until 5, when I get back into it again.’
1921
Notes
1 ‘THE FAVOURITE OF THE GODS’
1. The Diary of Virginia Woolf: 1925–30, 7 December 1925, ed. Anne Olivier Bell (Hogarth Press, London, 1980), vol. III, p. 50.
2. J. M. Murry, Between Two Worlds (Jonathan Cape, London, 1935), p. 194.
3. A letter from Frieda Lawrence to Murry written in the 1950s says ‘Lawrence said Katherine had a lot in common with Dickens, you know when the kettle is so alive on the fire and things seem to take on such significance.’
4. K.M. to Sarah Gertrude Millin, [March 1922], unpublished letter in Millin papers, University of Witwatersrand, South Africa.
5. Anthony Trollope, Australia and New Zealand (Chapman & Hall, London, 1873), vol. 11.
6. R. R. Beauchamp, ‘A Family Affair or What Became of Fred?’, article held in Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand (MS 1458).
7. Notes taken in private conversation with Mrs Jeanne Renshaw, 1977.
8. The Journal of Katherine Mansfield, November 1906, ed. J.M.M. (Constable, London, 1954), p. 7.
9. ibid., December 1920, p. 234.
10. K.M. to J.M.M., November 1920, Katherine Mansfield's Letters to John Middleton Murry: 1913–22, ed. J.M.M. (Constable, London, 1951), p. 605.
11. Journal, 12 March 1916, p. 106.
12. ibid.
13. Marion C. Ruddick, ‘Incidents in the Childhood of Katherine Mansfield’, unpublished TS in the Alexander Turnbull Library.
14. K.M.’s M S notes in the Alexander Turnbull Library.
15. Ruddick, op. cit.
16. ibid.
17. ibid.
18. Notes taken in private conversation with Mrs Jeanne Renshaw, 1977.
19. Antony Alpers, The Life of Katherine Mansfield (Jonathan Cape, London, 1980), p. 13.
20. K.M.'s MS notes, transcribed by Margaret Scott and published in the Turnbull Library Record, March 1970, p. 8.
21. Ruth Elvish Mantz and J.M.M., The Life of Katherine Mansfield (Constable, London, 1933), p. 152.
22. K.M.'s MS notes in Alexander Turnbull Library.
23. Mantz and J.M.M., op. cit., p. 152.
24. Journal, March 1916, p. 107.
25. Burney Trapp to his son Joseph Trapp, 4 March 1947, unpublished letter.
26. Mantz and J.M.M., op. cit., p. 152.
27. Burney Trapp to his son Joseph Trapp, 4 March 1947, unpublished letter.
28. Harold Beauchamp, Reminiscences and Recollections (Thomas Avery, New Plymouth, New Zealand, 1937), p. 86.
2 QUEEN'S: ‘MY WASTED, WASTED EARLY GIRLHOOD’
1. K.M. to Harold Beauchamp, 26 June 1922, The Letters of Katherine Mansfield
, ed. J.M.M. (Constable, London, 1928), vol. II, p. 222.
2. K.M. to Sylvia Payne, 26 December 1904, The Collected Letters of Katherine Mansfield, eds. Margaret Scott and Vincent O'Sullivan (Oxford University Press, 1984), vol. I, p. 14.
3. K.M. to Marion Tweed, 16 April 1903, Collected Letters, Scott and O'Sullivan, vol. I, p. 5.
4. K.M.'s MS notes, transcribed by Margaret Scott and published in the Turnbull Library Record, March 1970, p. 24.
5. K.M. to Sylvia Payne, 10 July 1904, Collected Letters, Scott and O'Sullivan, vol. I, p. 14.
6. Journal, February 1916, p. 103.
7. Cited in Jeffrey Meyers, Katherine Mansfield: A Biography (Hamish Hamilton, London, 1978), p. 15.
8. Elaine Kaye, A History of Queen's College (Chatto & Windus, London, 1972), p. 134.
9. K.M. to Sylvia Payne, 24 January 1904, Collected Letters, Scott and O'Sullivan, vol. I, p. 10.
10. Mantz and J.M.M., op. cit., p. 198.
11. K.M. ‘s MS notes, transcribed by Margaret Scott and published in the Turnbull Library Record, March 1970, p. 17.
12. ibid., p. 16.
13. ibid., p. 13.
14. J.M.M. to Vere Bartrick-Baker, 2 June 1933, unpublished letter (appears by permission of Navin Sullivan).
15. K.M. to Sylvia Payne, 24 April 1906, Collected Letters, Scott and O'Sullivan, vol. I, p. 18.
16. ibid.
17. K.M.'s MS notes, transcribed by Margaret Scott and published in the Turnbull Library Record, March 1970, p. 16.
18. ibid., p. 20.
19. Burney Trapp to his son Joseph Trapp, 4 March 1947, unpublished letter.
20. Journal, November 1906, p. 6.
21. K.M.'s MS notes, transcribed by Margaret Scott and published in the Turnbull Library Record, March 1970, p. 17.
22. Journal, November 1906, p. 7.
23. K.M.'s MS notes, transcribed by Margaret Scott and published in the Turnbull Library Record, March 1970, p. 25.
3 NEW ZEALAND 1907: ‘THE SUITABLE APPROPRIATE EXISTENCE’
1. K.M. to Sylvia Payne, 8 January 1907, Collected Letters, Scott and O'Sullivan, vol. I, p. 21.
2. ibid.
3. K.M. to Vera Beauchamp, March 1908, Collected Letters, Scott and O'Sullivan, vol. I, p. 42.
4. Burney Trapp to his son Joseph Trapp, 4 March 1947, unpublished letter (appears by permission of Professor Joseph Trapp).
5. Alpers, op. cit., p. 48.
6. K.M. to Sylvia Payne, 4 March 1908, Collected Letters, Scott and O'Sullivan, vol. I, p. 41.
7. Cited in Vincent O'Sullivan, Katherine Mansfield's New Zealand (Golden Press, Auckland, 1974), p. 6.
8. K.M. to Vera Beauchamp, 19 June 1908, Collected Letters, Scott and O'Sullivan, vol. I, p.45.
9. Burney Trapp to his son Joseph Trapp, 4 March 1947, unpublished letter.
10. Conversation with Mrs Edith Robison, recorded for the author by Bruce Mason in New Zealand, 1977.
11. ibid.
12. Journal, June 1907, pp. 12–13.
13. ibid., p. 14.
14. ibid.
15. Conversation with Mrs Edith Robison, recorded for the author by Bruce Mason, 1977.
16. Frieda Lawrence, Not I, But the Wind (Heinemann, London, 1935), p. 79.
17. K.M. to Martha Putnam, 22 July 1907, Collected Letters, Scott and O'Sullivan, vol. I, p. 23.
18. K.M. to E.J. Brady, 23 September 1907, Collected Letters, Scott and O'Sullivan, vol. I, p. 26.
19. The Stories of Katherine Mansfield, ed. Antony Alpers (Oxford University Press, 1984), p. 9.
20. K.M. to the Trowell family, 14 November 1907, Collected Letters, Scott and O'Sullivan, vol. I, p. 29.
21. Journal, 17 December 1907, p.33.
22. K.M. to Martha Putnam, December 1907, Collected Letters, Scott and O'Sullivan, vol. I, p. 35.
23. Cited in Beltane Book Bureau (Wellington, 1944), p. 11.
24. K.M. to Martha Putnam, December 1907, Collected Letters, Scott and O'Sullivan, vol. I, p. 36.
25. ibid., January 1908, p. 36.
26. K.M. to Vera Beauchamp, spring 1908, Collected Letters, Scott and O'Sullivan, vol. I, p. 35.
27. ibid., 17 January 1908, p. 37.
28. ibid., 12 June 1908, p. 47.
29. Beauchamp, op. cit., p. 90.
30. Information from Alison Waley.
31. O'Sullivan, op. cit., p.78.
32. Journal, May 1908, p. 37.
4 LONDON 1908: NEW WOMEN
1. Ronald Clark, The Life of Bertrand Russell (Cape/Weidenfeld, London, 1975), p. 122.
2. Helen Corke, In Our Infancy (Cambridge University Press, 1975), p. 168.
3. Virginia Woolf to Lady Robert Cecil, May 1909, The Letters of Virginia Woolf: 1882–1912, ed. Nigel Nicolson (Hogarth Press, London, 1975), vol. I, p. 296.
4. Quentin Bell, Virginia Woolf: A Biography (Hogarth Press, London, 1972), vol. I, p. 124.
5. New Age, 17 March 1910.
6. Virginia Woolf to Madge Vaughan, May 1909, The Letters of Virginia Woolf: 1882-1912, Nicolson, vol. I, p. 395.
7. Ottoline at Garsington, ed. Robert Gathorne-Hardy (Faber, London, 1974), p. 281.
5 ‘MY WONDERFUL, SPLENDID HUSBAND’
1. Ida Baker, Katherine Mansfield: The Memories of L.M. (Michael Joseph, London, 1971), p. 31.
2. K.M.'s M S of ‘Maata’, transcribed by Margaret Scott and published in the Turnbull Library Record, May 1979, p. 22.
3. K.M. to Garnet Trowell, 3 October 1908, Collected Letters, Scott and O'Sullivan, vol. I, p. 64.
4. Information from Ida Baker to the author, 1977.
5. Karen Usborne, ‘Elizabeth’ (Bodley Head, London, 1986), p. 20.
6. K.M. to Garnet Trowell, 21 October 1908, Collected Letters, Scott and O'Sullivan, vol. I, p. 75.
7. ibid., 17 September 1908, p. 60.
8. ibid., 12 October 1908, p. 68.
9. ibid., 2 November 1908, p. 84.
10. ibid.
11. ibid., 12 October 1908, p. 69.
12. K.M.'s MS of ‘Maata’, transcribed by Margaret Scott and published in the Turnbull Library Record, May 1979, p. 18.
13. Information from Mrs Dorothy Richards (née Trowell) to the author, 1977.
14. George Bowden, ‘Memoir’, unpublished TS in Alexander Turnbull Library.
15. K.M., Poems, ed. J.M.M. (Constable, London, 1923), p. 28.
16. K.M.'s MS of ‘Maata’, transcribed by Margaret Scott and published in the Turnbull Library Record, May 1979, p. 19.
17. Baker, op. cit., p. 47.
18. K.M.'s draft letter to Garnet Trowell, April 1909, Collected Letters, Scott and O'Sullivan, vol. I, p. 90.
19. ibid.
20. ibid.
6 BAVARIA 1909: ‘KATHE BEAUCHAMP-BOWDEN, SCHRIFTSTELLERIN’
1. Vera French to K.M., 12 December 1909, unpublished letter in private collection.
2. Floryan Sobieniowski to K.M., 12 December 1909, unpublished letter in private collection.
3. ibid., 9 January 1910.
4. Beatrice, Lady Glenavy, Today We Will Only Gossip (Constable, London, 1964), p. 70.
5. K.M. to S. S. Koteliansky, 10 March 1915, Collected Letters, Scott and O'Sullivan, vol. I, p. 154.
The chief sources for this chapter are: C. C. Norris, Gonorrhea in Women (W.B. Saunders, Philadelphia and London, 1913); Palmer Findley, Gonorrhea in Women (St Louis, 1908); Alfred Keogh, A Manual of Venereal Disease (Oxford University Press, 1913); and the British Medical Journal between 1890 and 1920, containing a great deal of information about gonorrhoea and with especial reference to a report by Dr Frances Ivens to the Association of Medical Women in 1909.
7 THE NEW AGE: ‘YOU TAUGHT ME TO WRITE, YOU TAUGHT ME TO THINK’
1. Cited in Philip Mairet, A.R. Orage: A Memoir (Dent, London, 1936), p. 59.
2. Mary Gawthorpe, Up Hill to Holloway (Traversity Press, Penobscot, Maine, 1962), pp.191–203.
3. William Orton, The Last Romantic (Cassell, London, 1937), p. 269.
4. Co
llected Letters, Scott and O'Sullivan, vol. I, footnote to p. 108.
5. K.M. to William Orton, autumn 1910, Collected Letters, Scott and O'Sullivan, vol. I, p. 100.
6. ibid., summer 1910, p. 100.
7. K.M. to Brett, December 1921, The Letters of K.M., J.M.M., vol. II, p. 160.
8. David Arkell, ‘The Tigers’ Lair in Gray's Inn Road’, Camden History Review, November 1980.
9. Journal, 6 September 1911, p. 46. (Orton printed this passage independently in The Last Romantic, p. 281.)
10. J.M.M. to Ida Baker, 29 May 1933, unpublished letter. Murry places the reading and burning of the letters at Runcton Cottage, in the late summer of 1912.
11. K.M. to Anne Drey, probably January 1921, from Isola Bella, cited in Adam (no. 300, 1965), p. 93. Murry's letter of 29 May 1933 also asks about K.M.'s friendship with Gwen Otter.
12. Sil-Vara fought in the war of 1914 (against the English, of course) and in the 1920s had some success as a playwright; an English translation of his comedy of sexual manners, Caprice, was performed by the Lunts in New York and at the St James's Theatre in London in 1929, and published by Gollancz.
13. K.M. to Edna Smith, September 1911, Collected Letters, Scott and O'Sullivan, vol. I, p. 107.
14. End-page of In a German Pension (Stephen Swift, London, 1911).