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ISSN 2040-2597 (Online)
Issue 23
April 2016
Published by the Katherine Mansfield Society, Bath, England
Katherine Mansfield in her house in Hampstead by Vivian Manthel-French
Inside:
KMS News and competition results, page 2
Nokhrin, p 10
Elizabeth Von Arnim by Jennifer Walker, p 12
Kirsty Gunn’s Katherine Mansfield Project by
Kathleen Jones, p 3
Kirsty Gunn at Edge Hill University by Alisa
Cox, p 5
Katherine Mansfield’s Birthplace Notes by Kevin
Boon, p 17
Katherine Mansfield : l’errante pensive par
Patrick Estève, p 19
A Belief in Mankind by Richard Cappuccio, p 8
Announcement : KMS Society online by Illya
Mythologie Apathe by Sophie Lee and Francesca
Haddon, p 23
Issue 23
April 2016
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The start of 2016 has maintained an exciting momentum in the world of Katherine Mansfield
appreciation despite the fact that most of us in the Southern Hemisphere have been in holiday
mode for the last few months. Firstly, events include the publication of the final volume of The
Edinburgh Edition of the Collected Works of Katherine Mansfield. This important milestone
will be reported on in the next newsletter. Contributions in this edition include Patrick
Estève’s report on the launch of the Silver Fern award in Menton and Kathleen Jones’ review of
Kirsty Gunn’s new publication, My Katherine Mansfield Project. We also features
Jennifer Walker’s fascinating biography of Elizabeth Von Arnim, and Illya Nokhrin’s
report on the launch of a new online series which concentrates on works inspired by Mansfield
from a variety of creative genres. Finally we have a short story Mythologie Apathe by Sophie
Lee and Francesca Haddon and news from the Katherine Mansfield Birthplace in Wellington
by Kevin Boon.
In our last newsletter we asked the question : What road in Eastwood, Nottinghamshire, is the
D.H. Lawrence Heritage Centre situated? For correctly giving Mansfield Road as the answer,
Aimee Gaston receives a copy of David Game’s new book D. H. Lawrence’s Australia. Well
done Aimee.**
To be in the draw for the next competition answer the following question: In ‘Prelude’, what
colours are the two little panes of glass that Kezia looks through, in the empty dining room?
The entrant with the winning answer will receive a copy of Kirsty Gunn’s My Katherine
Mansfield Project published by Notting Hill Editions. For more information see Kathleen
Jones’ report on the next page of this newsletter.
Send answers to: [email protected]
**Please note that although the D.H. Lawrence centre will no longer be open to the public
from April 2016. However visitors are still welcome to visit the D.H. Lawrence Birthplace
Museum in Victoria Street.
To purchase further copies of Kirsty Gunn’s My Katherine Mansfield Project, at the
discounted price of £11.99, follow the link below and then enter the code MKMP01 at the
checkout.
http://www.nottinghilleditions.com/basket
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Issue 23
April 2016
Kirsty Gunn: My Katherine Mansfield Project, Words by the Water, Keswick,
March 2016
by
Kathleen Jones
At the beginning of March, on International Women’s Day, I was asked to chair Kirsty
Gunn’s event at the Keswick ‘Words by the Water’ festival. Kirsty was to talk about her
new publication, My Katherine Mansfield Project, published by Notting Hill Editions - an
innovative publisher specialising in the (almost) lost art of the essay.
I had first read this book in its New Zealand
incarnation - Thorndon: Wellington and
Home [published by Bridget Williams
Books]. I read it in a café in Thorndon, on
Tinakori Road, Katherine Mansfield’s home
territory and close to where Kirsty Gunn
wrote the book during a Randall Cottage
Fellowship, which gave it a very special
resonance. It is a patchwork of fiction,
memoir and reflection, written over the
several months she spent in Wellington, New
Zealand - the city where both she and
Katherine were born and brought up - the
city they both left as young women to come
to England to become writers.
The resulting book is completely
unclassifiable, in terms of genre, and is
beautiful to read. The reflective sections are
perhaps closest to the essay format - journeys
of exploration through Kirsty's thoughts and
feelings as she confronts both her past and Katherine Mansfield's, as well as her
responses, in fiction, to some of Mansfield's most seminal stories. It explores the
dichotomy at the heart of Mansfield’s work; that Home is ‘a place of safety, of the familiar,
of all that is remembered and beloved,’ but which can also be ‘the trap, the danger, and the
end’.
Kirsty opted for an informal discussion, interspersed with readings from her own work as
well as Mansfield’s, and the audience loved it. She read an excerpt from ‘The Voyage’,
with its account of the Picton ferry leaving the harbour at night with all its freight of
Katherine Mansfield’s memories of departure, and then the account of Kirsty’s own
departure from England for Wellington and her misgivings about returning to the city of
her birth.
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Kirsty
knows,
as
Mansfield did, just what
it means to be a writer in
exile, to go back home
and find that you are a
stranger in your own
land.
My Katherine
Mansfield
Project
explores the idea of
belonging. Kirsty talked
about Katherine’s sense
of exile and how she
began to recreate New
Zealand
in
fiction.
Edward Said, the exiled
Palestinian
author,
thought that all writers are simply ‘creating a house of words to dwell in’. Kirsty says she
has always been fascinated by this ‘notion of creative process as a making, a willed brickby-brick, word-by-word building of a place on the page that might let a story inhabit it - to
create a home of words where I, the writer, may also live’.
There was some lively discussion on the essay form - the consensus being that it is a
journey of exploration, taking an idea for a walk. Afterwards, one of the audience
members told me that Kirsty Gunn’s talk was one of the most interesting, and moving,
events of the week.
Issue 23
April 2016
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Kirsty Gunn at Edge Hill University
by
Alisa Cox
Kirsty Gunn visited Edge Hill University for the first time this March, arriving just as dusk was
settling on the fields of West Lancashire. She was there as last year’s recipient of the Edge Hill
Prize, still unique as the only prize in the UK dedicated to published short story collections. She read
from her winning collection, Infidelities, in our Arts Centre, alongside Carys Bray, whose own
collection, Sweet Home, is based on stories she wrote for our MA in Creative Writing. Carys stayed
with us for her doctoral thesis, completing her novel, A Song for Issy Bradley which was
subsequently shortlisted for a Costa Prize.
It was a very special evening, and one which was presided over by the spirit of Katherine Mansfield.
Before the public event, Kirsty met with our current MA students, reading from her book, My
Katherine Mansfield Project, and talking about the sense of communion we feel, as writers, with our
predecessors. She also spoke about the process of writing – using the music and textures of words to
establish a territory that may not correspond exactly with places in the real world, but is your own
imaginative landscape. It was really inspiring for our students – and for me – to hear such a
passionate advocacy of literary values. Fiction doesn’t have to be freighted by heavyweight themes
and dogged research.
In the Arts Centre, both writers shared their latest work. Kirsty read from an unpublished story,
while Carys gave us a preview of her second novel, The Museum of You, due out later this year.
Despite differences in style, there were uncanny resonances between the two extracts. Both were
haunting evocations of adolescence, their female protagonists physically vulnerable yet strong and
self-aware. The spirit of KM was with us again in that sense of risk and in the use viewpoint. We
ended the evening talking about what the short story form meant to all of three of us, especially in its
ability to evoke absence, the sense of another figure watching from the wings, somewhere beyond the
page.
Photo Tim Power http://www.flickr.com/photos/gonzopix/
Issue 23
April 2016
The Musical World of !
Katherine Mansfield
Katherine Mansfield Society
Annual
Birthday Lecture 2016
Claire Davison (Speaker) and
Joseph Spooner (Cello)
Saturday, 15 October 2016
Court Room, Institute of English Studies,
University of London, Senate House, London WC1E 7HU
This year’s Katherine Mansfield Society Annual Birthday Lecture will be in the form
of a dialogue between words and music, as cellist Joseph Spooner and Professor
Claire Davison explore the musical setting and musical imagination of Katherine
Mansfield during the years of her literary apprenticeship.
£20 Non-members Standard
£15 KM Society & IES Members / Concessions / Students
to include wine, birthday cake and a lecture booklet
Please book through the IES: http://www.ies.sas.ac.uk/Katherine-Mansfield
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Issue 23
April 2016
As so many of Mansfield’s biographers are keen to point out, KM was an impassioned
student of the cello before she moved towards literary creation, notably studying with
the New Zealand composer Thomas Trowell. His sons, Arnold – a cellist acknowledged
as a prodigy from childhood – and Garnet, a violinist, were two of KM’s first
passionately romantic attachments. Her family’s social circles brought her into close
contact with a number of prestigious concert performers from New Zealand, Europe and
the United States, making her musical environment during her formative years rich
indeed. But what music did she enjoy, and what impact might this have had on her
literary apprenticeship? Could the exciting new pulse and rhythms of the music around
her have worked their way into her early prose poems as well as providing the themes
and setting for many of her later stories? What are we to make of the decidedly fin-desiècle musical tastes reflected in her early diaries and notebooks? Can we trace
interactions of modern music and symbolist literature in her works in the way that we
can identify influences of impressionism and post-impressionism, or early
cinematography? These are the questions the 2016 Birthday Talk will be setting out to
address. The focus will be mainly on the close connection between Mansfield’s early
poetics and the experimental brevity of preludes, nocturnes and rhapsodies, many of
which were being heard in London for the first time on or about the year 1910. Musical
sketches and pictures by composers such as Chopin, Macdowell and Trowell provide a
rich soundscape within which to explore Mansfield’s rhapsodic tone-poems, revealing
her almost uncanny ability to sound the note of her times, as symbolism and decadence
gave way to more resolutely modern resonances.
Claire Davison is Professor of Modernist Literature at the Université Sorbonne Nouvelle
– Paris 3 and Chair of the French Virginia Woolf Society since 2008. She is a founding
member of the Centre for European Modernist Studies based at the University of
Perrugia. Claire’s research interests are in the byways and mediations of Modernism –
translators and translating networks; the reception and adaptation of European, and
particularly Russian, literatures; the interweaving of sound technologies and novelistic
experimentalism; broadcasting and the propagation of avant-garde aesthetics; and the
interlinks between literary creation and musical expressivity. Her most recent
monograph is Translation as Collaboration: Virginia Woolf, Katherine Mansfield and S. S.
Koteliansky (2015), and recent co-edited volumes include: Katherine Mansfield and
Translation (2015), and Outlanding Woolf – Etudes Britanniques Contemporaines (2015). With
Gerri Kimber she has co-edited The Diaries of Katherine Mansfield (2016), and The Collected
Poetry of Katherine Mansfield (2016). http://www.univ-paris3.fr/mme-davisonpegonclaire192762.kjsp?RH=1247239932896
Joseph Spooner’s diverse career has taken him across the UK, from the Baltic to the
Atlantic, and from the recording studio to Continental Europe, Russia, New York and
Mexico, with numerous appearances at festivals, broadcasts and premieres. Joseph’s
investigations into the cello repertoire have led to the rediscovery of unjustly neglected
works; audiences have appreciated hearing this music, and critics have offered high
praise for Joseph’s recordings of Bush, Krein, Balfe, Coleridge-Taylor, Bainton, Copland,
Dyson and Sherwood: ‘Other cellists, please copy!’ (International Record Review); ‘all the
expressive power needed’ (Gramophone); ‘superb … arresting in his commitment, his
technical facility and in the rich tone he produces from his cello ... could not be better’
(International Record Review). 2016 will see Joseph touring in Grand Cayman and New
Zealand, and making recordings of English and New Zealand repertoire for cello and
piano, and of the Sherwood Double Concerto, with the BBC Concert Orchestra. Joseph
was elected an Associate of the Royal Academy of Music in 2012 and is proud to be the
dedicatee of works by Alwynne Pritchard, Errollyn Wallen and Martin Read. His
instrument was made by Nicholas Vuillaume in c.1865.
http://josephspooner.net/
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Issue 23
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A Belief in Mankind:
Sharing a Katherine Mansfield Letter
at the Wordsworth Winter School, 2016
by
Richard Cappuccio
Attendees at the Wordsworth Winter School celebrate the end of their weeklong residence with
recitations of poetry, prose, and some even raise their voices in song on the final night of the
conference. While some like to read something by Mr. Wordsworth, everyone is encouraged to
simply share something. For the last few years, I've listened to others, in part, because during the
course of the week I usually feel like the outsider among the Wordsworthians. Yes, I read
Wordsworth, but others are fluent in the language of the Romantics. This year however, I decided
to share an excerpt from one of Katherine Mansfield's letters to John Middleton Murry about
Wordsworth.
I had with me the small Penguin edition of The Journals and Letters of Katherine Mansfield. From
that, I selected the following excerpt to read to the assembled gathering, many of whom had
listened to me carefully during conversations over tea about my interest in Katherine Mansfield.
Most participants know her name but if they had read any of her stories had only done so in school
years earlier.
I introduced an excerpt of a letter Mansfield wrote to Murry in which Mansfield mentions her
interest in the works both of William and his sister Dorothy. Returning a copy of Dorothy's
Journal to Murry, Mansfield observes that William and Dorothy 'did have a good life.'
Reading from Mansfield's letter to Murry on 16 June 1918, I enlisted the assistance of Doreen
Reynolds, a long time participant who, it was pointed out to me by several other veterans of the
Winter School, had also only been an observer in the evening of readings before. She voiced the
words of Mrs. Honey who, Mansfield observes in her letter, 'was particularly honeycomb that day':
'You've not slept,' she tells Mansfield; 'Thäat's bad. I'll see to it that you haäve your coffee right
hot.' Mrs. Honey's concern for Mansfield includes an offer to share what Mrs. Honey sees as a
mutual interest--poetry: 'Shall I recite you some verses I learned when I was a girl? Will eë haäve
The Death of Moses or A Mother's Memories?' Mansfield in her own voice adds her observations: 'I
said I'd have both. Down she sat. Each had, I should think, about 40 verses to it. She never
hesitated for a word. She folded her hands and on and on went her soft old voice tell of the "crested
waves" --telling of "the lion the King of Beasts" who sat under the mountain where Moses was
buried and "forgot to roar".
"Yea, from the monster's golden eyes
The golden tears dropped down . . . " '
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Mansfield concludes the account as she would one of her own stories, with a revelation that is
both simple and profound: 'I listened and suddenly I thought of Wordsworth and his "faith"
in these people -- and again Bogey, in spite of everything, I believed in England. Not only in
England --in mankind.'
The audience reacted to the piece with enthusiasm. Pamela Woof, who has edited Dorothy
Wordsworth's journals for Oxford University Press, afterwards told me she knew that
Mansfield had read Dorothy but was surprised to hear that Mansfield had prodded Murry to
'refresh' himself and reread them. Another participant asked to see the book the following
day so she could read the text. I handed her the paperback with its broken spine and loose
pages that at this point in the trip was bound with a rubber band. This reader held the book
with reverence, made sure she could put it back into my hands without disturbing its
condition, then added an apt evaluation: 'Lovely.'
The Wordsworth Winter School meets for five days every February at Rydal Hall, just across
from Wordsworth's home at Rydal Mount.
Kotuku Publishing
The Doll’s House
Order your copy for just £10 or $19.99
Including p&p from [email protected]
Issue 23
April 2016
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Announcement : KMS Society online
I am very excited to be writing as the society’s new Online Publications Editor. My main
responsibilities in this role will be to manage the society’s two online series: the online essay
series and the online creative works series. Thanks to the efforts of Paul Capewell, the two
series now have a new home on the KMS website, which you can access at the following URL:
http://www.katherinemansfieldsociety.org/online-series/ or by clicking on ‘Online Series’ on
the menu at the top of the society website. I am also very happy to announce that, thanks to the
help of Gerri Kimber and Paul Capewell, each of the series is now recognized as an official
online series and has its own ISSN number.
For those who might not be familiar with the society’s online series, the online creative works
series publishes works inspired by Mansfield from a variety of creative genres (long and short
poetry as well as short stories and other fiction). The online essay series publishes critical essays
on Katherine Mansfield’s work and/or life. Submissions to both series are double peerreviewed prior to publication. We plan to send out specific requests for submissions in the near
future. In the meantime, however, if you have an essay or creative piece that you would like to
have considered for publication through the online series, please contact me by e-mail at
[email protected] with the subject line “KMS Online Series”.
To tell you a little bit about myself and my work, my name is Illya Nokhrin and I am a PhD
candidate at the University of Toronto. My dissertation focuses on conceptions of voice in
British society and fiction at the turn of the twentieth century. In particular, I am investigating
what I posit as an increasingly tense relationship between appeals to England’s ostensibly
uniform ‘national voice’ and celebrations of authors as progenitors of ‘new voices’.
I look forward to being in touch with all of you about the online series in the near future!
Illya Nokhrin 2015
Issue 23
April 2016
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Brief biography of Katherine Mansfield’s cousin:
‘ELIZABETH’ (VON ARNIM), 1866 – 1941
by Jennifer Walker, November 2015
[This article first appeared on the Elizabeth von Arnim Society website:
http://elizabethvonarnimsociety.org and reproduced with kind permission. Jennifer’s
biography, Elizabeth of the German Garden – A Literary Journey (Hove, The Book Guild,
2013), is available to purchase in our online shop.]
Mary Annette Beauchamp, known to us today as the writer ‘Elizabeth’ von Arnim, was born
in Sydney, Australia on 31 August 1866. The exact location of her birth is uncertain, but
we can safely assume that at the time her family was living in a prestigious home on Kirribilli
Point, Sydney. Her father, Henry
Heron Beauchamp, had been born in
London into an artistic and cultured
family. He was the first of his
surviving brothers to migrate to
Australia, where he made his fortune
in Sydney as a shipping merchant.
Two of his younger brothers,
Craddock and Arthur, having begun
their adventures in Melbourne,
moved on to New Zealand. Unlike
Henry, they did not make their
fortunes; this was left to Arthur’s son
Harold Beauchamp (later Sir Harold)
whose daughter Kathleen (born
1888) later became well known as the
writer Katherine Mansfield.
In 1855, Henry Heron Beauchamp
married the beautiful young Elizabeth
Weiss (Louey) Lassetter. Louey was
also of British extraction but was born
in Australia. In 1870, Henry Heron
and Louey decided to follow Louey’s
Mary 1905
wealthy brother Frederick Lassetter
to
live
in
London
where
opportunities for culture and education would benefit the growing family. Their youngest
child Mary Annette, later to be known as ‘Elizabeth’, was only three years old when she, her
four older brothers and sister, left Sydney and sailed to London with their parents. She was
never to return to the place of her birth.
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The Lassetter and Beauchamp families were keen to spend time looking round Europe; it was not
long before they left London to take up residence for a couple of years on the shores of Lake
Geneva in Lausanne, Switzerland. The beauty of the place, and especially its mountain meadows in
springtime, made a lasting impression on their youngest daughter. However, once back in London
her schooling began in earnest. An intelligent and musically gifted child, she was able to develop
her talents by studying at the Royal College of Music, where her principal study was the organ. Her
famous teacher, Sir Walter Parratt, had a lasting influence on her intellectual and musical
development; soon she was considering a career as a professional musician.
However, her parents were concerned that, at the age of twenty-two, their petite and beautiful
daughter’s marital chances were rapidly diminishing. A tour of Europe was therefore organised,
with the aim of finding her a suitable husband. This was to have consequences far exceeding their
expectations. While staying in Rome, she
met the newly widowed Graf Henning von
Arnim-Schlagenthin, a member of the
Prussian aristocracy and a friend of the
Wagner family. He was captivated by the
talented, charming and vivacious young
woman, and so impressed by her organ
playing that he whisked her off, in the
company of her parents, to Bayreuth to be
introduced to the heart of Prussian society,
and to perform Bach and Liszt on the organ
before Liszt’s daughter, Cosima Wagner.
Two years later, in February 1891, the
couple were married in London. Thus Mary
Annette Beauchamp became Mary, the
Gräfin von Arnim. By now fluent in German
as well as French, she began life as a member
of the Prussian aristocracy in Berlin. Three
daughters were born in quick succession.
Mary c.1910
However, her future was changed for ever
during a visit to the Count von Arnim’s
country estate at Nassenheide in the spring of 1896. She decided immediately that she would live
there with her growing family. She had arrived in her German Garden; ‘Elizabeth’ beckoned.
It was in this guise that she wrote her first novel, Elizabeth and Her German Garden. This was
published by Macmillan in 1898 and became an instant best-seller, making her a fortune. Over the
years, she developed her literary career, going on to complete twenty further highly successful
novels. As ‘Elizabeth’, she established an international literary reputation.
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Her works were usually published with the phrase ‘by the author of Elizabeth and her German
Garden’ as the only a guide to their authorship. The pseudonym Alice Cholmondeley was used
for the novel Christine. Thus ‘Elizabeth’ became the name by which she was known to the
reading public, her friends and even most of her family. Her best-loved novel today is perhaps
The Enchanted April (1922), which was filmed first by Harry Beaumont in 1935 and more
recently by Mike Newell in 1992. Other novels have also been dramatized; all deserve our
attention, notably Vera (1921) and Mr Skeffington (1940).
On the death of the Count von Arnim in 1910, she and her five children (including the Count’s
longed-for son) left Prussia. She divided her time between various London addresses and her
main base, her Chalet Soleil (built in 1911/12) in Montana (now Crans Montana), Switzerland.
Her friends included many literary and intellectual figures of the day; two of these were former
tutors at Nassenheide, E M Forster and Hugh Walpole. H G Wells stayed with her at the chalet
before WW1; their relationship, turbulent at first, turned into a lifelong friendship. Her chalet
was also the home to which she transferred her valuable property, including a vast library of
books, from Nassenheide.
As soon as possible after the outbreak of war in 1914, Mary Annette (Elizabeth) von Arnim
became naturalized as a British citizen. In 1916, she married Earl Francis Russell, older brother
of Bertrand Russell, becoming the Countess Russell. The marriage was a disaster and the couple
separated three years later. However, they never divorced and she was known as Elizabeth, the
Countess Russell, for the rest of her life. The war years saw the deaths of several close friends
and family members, including her youngest daughter Felicitas, who died in Germany aged 16.
In the early 1920s, ‘Elizabeth’ was able to return to her chalet where she found pleasure in the
company of her younger cousin, Katherine Mansfield (1888 – 1923), who was staying in
Montana for health reasons. The Chalet Soleil also became the background for Elizabeth’s
romantic relationship with the young Alexander Stuart Frere-Reeves (later president of
Heinemann), who went there initially to catalogue her vast and growing book collection.
In 1930, seeking a warmer climate, she made her home at the Mas des Roses in Mougins,
France, where she lived for nine years. There, she created a wonderful garden, took delight in
her many dogs and entertained friends and family. Her collection of books was transferred from
her chalet to the Mas des Roses, where she added to it on a regular basis. The threat of war in the
1939 forced her to flee to the United States of America, where two of her daughters and son
were living. It was a cause of some anguish that her third daughter, Beatrix von Hirschberg, had
to remain in Germany.
While she was in the United States, the publication of her acclaimed last novel, Mr Skeffington,
made her enormously popular with the American public. However, although supported by her
devoted second daughter Liebet (Elizabeth von Arnim) and her close friends, the publisher
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Nelson Doubleday and his wife, Elizabeth’s fragile health suffered during her itinerant life
in the United States.
She died in South Carolina, early in 1941. After the end of the Second World War, her
ashes, in accordance with her wishes, were taken by Liebet to be interred with those of her
brother, Sir Sydney Beauchamp, in the small churchyard of St Margaret’s Church, Tyler’s
Green, Buckinghamshire, England.
Post-script
While in Europe after the war, Liebet was able to arrange for some of the contents of the
Mas des Roses, including hundreds of books, to be distributed among Elizabeth’s heirs in
the United States, England and elsewhere. Some books were eventually sold, but many are
now housed in the Huntington Library (San Marino, California), where their catalogue
can be viewed online. Other books from Elizabeth’s collection remained in France. They
are now housed in the library collections of the University of Toulon whose catalogue can
also be viewed online.
The first biography of Elizabeth, Elizabeth of the German Garden, by Leslie de Charms
(Liebet’s pseudonym), was published in 1958.
Mary with Nelson Doubleday at Bonnie Hall 1940
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!
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Katherine Mansfield and
the Art of the Short Story
Bandol, France, 10-12 June 2016
An international conference, celebrating the centenary of
Katherine Mansfield’s visit to Bandol, where the first draft of
‘Prelude’ was written, Jan-March 1916.
Organised by the Katherine Mansfield Society
Hosted by the town of Bandol, France
Supported by the New Zealand Embassy, Paris
and the University of Northampton, UK
KEYNOTE SPEAKERS
Professor Enda Duffy
Professor Ailsa Cox
University of California, Santa Barbara, USA
Edge Hill University, UK
For!further!information,!please!visit:!
http://www.katherinemansfieldsociety.org/bandol=conference=2016/!!
[email protected]!!
Issue 23
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Katherine Mansfield’s Birthplace Notes
by
Kevin Boon
In addition to Katherine Mansfield and the Beauchamp family, who lived in the house known as
‘Katherine Mansfield’s Birthplace’ at 11 (now 25) Tinakori Road, from early 1888 to 1893 the
family of another well-known New Zealander lived in the house from 1920 to 1925. He was Dr
Truby King, best-known for his work as a paediatrician and as the founder of the Plunket Society. In
1962 his daughter, Mary King wrote a letter to the author Pat Lawlor describing her memories of
living in the house as a young girl during that period.
“I lived for five years in the house K.M. was born in and know each room well. Yes, the downstairs
three windows on the left was our drawing-room. We never ‘drew’ anything in it! A ‘sitting-room’ if
you like. I had my pram in it, and when visitors came I sat up primly at afternoon-tea. I would be
asked to sing such things as Lo! Hear the Gentle Lark or ‘Down in the forest something stirred – it
was only the note of a bird’ – very tender! I learnt it from a nun called Mother Ligouri.
Unfortunately, she could never decide if I was a soprano or a mezzo, or more probably, nothing.
“The three windows on the right of the picture in your book were Truby Kings library-study. This
room had a very large table in the centre, and musty-smelling plush chairs. He gave orders that
nothing must be disturbed, nothing dusted, it was, to me, an austere room, crammed with technical
books, and always in need of having the papers on the table tidied – ‘urgent’, ‘important’, ‘vital’
documents.
“I don’t know which room K.M. was born in. My bedroom was the one on the left upstairs, where the
tree was leaning over, and Dr and Mrs King’s bedroom was the one on the right. The bathroom was
at the back upstairs, and also a small room, facing the harbour, in which our servant slept. I think
there must also have been another small bedroom upstairs, because we often have a visitor to stay
with us, and this bedroom must have been opposite the maid’s room. I lived there from 1920 to
1925. Downstairs, in addition to the two front rooms, there was a small hall with a telephone in it.
This hall led to the stairs, a door, or arch on the left of the hall led to (1) the kitchen to the left and (2)
the small dining-room to the right, overlooking the back garden. The garden at the back was a bit
tangled when we arrived there, with its toes sliding down the ravine, where ‘the wild trees lashed
together’ on the Sunday when K.M. was born. There were brambles there and tree lucerne, if I
remember rightly.
“And the suspension bridge was definitely there, and a great friend of mine, also a writer (Alison
Grant) lived at the corner of Hobson Street and Tinakori Road, very near No. 25, and together
Alison and I many times walked over the narrow bridge on our way to the city. The gully at the time
gave Hobson Street quite an air – a personality – at that end. Alison wrote poetry. So, to, did I. We
would set each other subjects and compare notes, and marvel how different two poems could be on
the same subject. She is in London now – still writing poetry. Like K.M., Wellington stifled her.”
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Katherine Mansfield in her house in Hampstead
by Vivian Manthel-French
[See KMS Newsletter cover illustration]
This painting was made from a visit I made to the house where Katherine Mansfield and John
Middleton Murry lived for a short while, and where she found happiness and contentment. 2 Portland
Villas, Hampstead, London. Nicknamed by them, the Elephant, Maybe after the Elephant Vine, a
large leafed vine growing over the back wall of the house, only recently cut down. Here are the words
that inspired the painting. From Katherine's journals:
& that tall back of the house with the windows open & coloured curtains flying - is her house.
She is a stranger - an alien. She is nothing but a little girl sitting on the Tinakori hills & dreaming: 'I
went to London and married an Englishman & we lived in a tall grave house with red geraniums &
white daisies in the garden at the back.'
(this quote was taken from 'Katherine Mansfield the woman and the writer.' By Gillian Boddy.)
My connection to and affection for KM goes back to my childhood living in Days Bay. My house and
garden and the beach where I swam became the setting in my mind for At the Bay, and being a
Wellingtonian I identified with all the Wellington stories. For the centenary of her birth it was my
great pleasure to put the words from her stories and my painted interpretations together in a solo
exhibition at Millwood Gallery Tinakori Road Wellington, where books and paintings are sold. From
this exhibition my portrait of her in the Tinakori Road house was purchased by External Affairs and
placed in the NZ Embassy in Paris.
In 2013 I painted Katherine Mansfield sitting in her garden in Hampstead for Millwood Gallery's
group exhibition commemorating 125 years of her life. I was living in Highgate, also having married
an Englishman, so I was well placed to record her time living in "the Elephant".
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Katherine Mansfield : l’errante pensive
par
Patrick Estève
[This article in French by Patrick Estève replicates an address originally given
on 21 March 1939 by Mr. J.-L. Françoisprimo, at the unveiling of the
commemorative plaque on the Villa Isola Bella in Menton.]
A 77 ans d’intervalle du discours de M. J.-L. Françoisprimo lors de l’apposition de la plaque
commémorative sur le mémorial Katherine Mansfield de Menton, j’ai l’honneur de vous
présenter la transcription de son discours à l’occasion de la création du Prix littéraire de la «
Fougère d’argent Katherine Mansfield » 2016.
Ce Prix récompense une nouvelle jugée originale par son caractère nomade et fantastique par le
jury du concours de la nouvelle pour lycéens "Blasco Ibañez", créé en 2014 et doté de trois
autres Prix.
La remise de la « Fougère d’Argent Katherine Mansfield» 2016 aura lieu au jardin Fontana
Rosa (Avenue Blasco Ibañez à Menton) le samedi 4 juin 2016 à 11H00.
Belle découverte à vous de la vie de Katherine Mansfield, cette grande auteure du court, et de
ses impressions livrées à la villa "Isola Bella" à Menton.
Patrick Estève – Président du Cercle Blasco Ibañez
Fondateur du Prix "Fougère d'argent Katherine Mansfield" de la nouvelle pour lycéens
*
*
*
« Il faut entrer dans ce jardin et visiter cette maison, avec une tendre ferveur. Elle s’est ouverte
jadis à Katherine Mansfield, comme une calanque de paix, comme un refuge sans rumeurs,
comme une oasis de sérénité. Ici, à l’ombre des Bigarradiers, l’errante pensive, a cueilli le fruit
des Hespérides, le fruit rare et fragile du bonheur.
Ce n’est pas une sympathie toute faite qu’il faut lui apporter – cette « sympathie de confiserie »,
qu’elle eut dédaignée – mais des regrets harmonieux. Donnons aussi notre admiration à l’être
qui sut voir clairement sa propre souffrance, l’analyser, la subir, la transmuer en frémissements
contenus ou sont devenus des mots à peine plus lourds qu’une guirlande de mimosas ou qu’un
soupir de colombe, enfin l’accepter comme l’explication et le couronnement mystérieux de sa
vie.
En songeant à sa mort prématurée, nous n’osons pas cependant pour complaire à l’horreur
qu’elle avait des poncifs, même les plus respectables, jusqu’à nos refuser la tristesse qu’on
éprouve quand après les orages du printemps, on trouve au détour de la route un arbuste brisé,
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encore paré des fleurs dont nous ne verrons pas les fruits.
Pareille à cet arbuste, Katherine Mansfield tenait à la nature et repoussait l’artificiel.
En dehors de la lointaine Nouvelle-Zélande, où elle était née le 14 octobre 1888, et dont elle
aimait – dira-t-elle – à retrouver, sur les collines de Menton, certains paysages, et du petit
cimetière d’Avon, où elle dort depuis 1923, en dehors de ces deux bornes, qui marquent le
départ et la fin de sa course, trois endroits semblent pour toujours fleuris de son invisible
présence.
L’un, c’est l’enclos de Leceister-Square à Londres, où elle avait coutume d’aller s’asseoir pour
pleurer. L’autre, c’est à Paris la maison du Quai aux Fleurs, qui fut son refuge un jour de
tourmente à une heure d’inquiétude sentimentale et d’où elle nous a décrit le paysage lent et
plein de rumeurs des péniches descendant la Seine. Le troisième, c’est l’endroit où nous
sommes.
Quand elle y arriva en mars 1920, déjà atteinte de la double affection cardiaque et pulmonaire
qui devait l’emporter peu d’années plus tard, Katherine Mansfield avait quitté le 21 janvier les
environs d’Ospedaletti. A Menton, elle habita d’abord la clinique de l’Hermitage, puis la Villa
Flora alors un hôtel, pour s’installer dans cette maison où elle devait demeurer.
Après avoir passé mai, juin, juillet, août en Angleterre, elle revint en septembre à Isola Bella,
qu’elle ne devait quitter qu’à la fin d’avril 1921.
Mais l’importance d’Isola Bella dans l’existence de Katherine Mansfield, n’est pas en rapport
avec la durée de son séjour.
Elle y a écrit cinq de ses meilleurs récits : « Les filles du Colonel », « La jeune fille », « l’Etranger
», « La femme de chambre », qui ont été recueillis dans le volume : « La garden party », et enfin :
« Poison » qu’on trouvera dans le livre intitulé : « Quelque chose d’enfantin » (« The daughters
of the late Colonel », « The young girl », « The stranger », « The lady’s maid », « Something
Childish »).
Enfin et surtout, c’est ici que Katherine Mansfield a éprouvé dans sa plénitude paisible la
sensation du bonheur. Écoutez sur quel ton chaleureux, rare sous sa plume, s’exprime cette
nature enthousiaste, mais révérée, sensible, mais secrète.
« Que vous dirai-je tout d’abord – écrit-elle à son mari, quelque temps après son retour en
septembre 1920 – combien j’ai pensé à vous et me suis demandé si le beau temps est aussi chez
vous, maintenant que je n’y suis plus. Quelle joie de me trouver en petite voiture parcourant les
rues que je connaissais si bien, de monter apr un petit chemin, et d’arriver devant une grille
cachée derrière par sa verdure… Devant la porte de la maison, il y a un mimosa magnifique. Le
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jardin est deux fois plus grand que je ne l’imaginais. L’entrée a des dalles de marbre noires et
blanches. Il y a un vrai petit salon, avec des meubles recouverts de velours, une grande horloge qui
ne marche pas, un grand miroir avec cadre doré, et deux vases d’albâtre qui me font penser à deux
fleuves de sang. La salle à manger est bien aussi avec son buffet, avec théière, cafetière et pot au
lait qui brille. Tout est charmant… La cuisine reluit de cuivres. Au-dessus, quatre chambres,
celles des maîtres somptueuses à la façon d’une maison de poupées ont des balcons. Il y a un
grand palmier sous la fenêtre de ma chambre et un grand magnolia au bout de la terrasse. Je me
contenterai de rester ici toute ma vie, la vie y est tellement facile.
« Cette chère petite maison jaune pâle avec le mimosa, jaune aussi mais plus foncé, le jardin
rempli de plantes, la terrasse avec sa vieille balustrade entourée de verdure, quelle demeure
idéale, tout semble faire partie d’un tableau de roman. La maison a vue sur la mer, mais à droite il
y a la vieille ville avec son petit port bordé de poivriers et de platanes.
« Cette vieille ville avec ses maisons de différentes formes et couleurs est une des plus belle chose
que j’ai jamais vues…
« Il est 6 heures trente – ajoute-t-elle – l’heure irrésistible. La mer est d’un bleu jacinthe ; des
nuages argentés comme des voiles , passent ; il flotte un parfum de sapin, de laurier, et de charbon
de bois. Soirée divine, endroit divin... »
Près de vingt ans ce sont passés depuis que Katherine Mansfield écrivait ces lignes1. Un moment
dans l’éternité de la nature, une longue période dans la vie des hommes. Mais si, soudain
réveillée, Katherine Mansfield poussait aujourd’hui la grille que nous venons de franchir, elle
retrouverait les choses presque dans l’état où elles les a laissées.
Voici toujours, au coin de la terrasse, le grand figuier qui laissait tomber ses figues – disait-elle –
avec une odeur lourde de vin répandu. Voici le magnolia. Seul, le palmier, dont les branches
montaient jusqu’à son balcon, et où – dit-elle encore – deux lézards un jour se poursuivaient
d’une chasse incessante, a disparu. Si nous demeurions ici jusqu’à l’heure qu’elle appelle
irrésistible, nous reverrions refleurir les jacinthes de la mer, et glisser au fond du ciel les nuages
d’argent qu’elle caressait du regard.
Les chambres de poupées sont toujours là, les meubles ont changé, mais les vases d’albatre
conservés par les soins de Mrs Honey, gracieuse admiratrice de Katherine Mansfield roulent
toujours leurs vagues de flammes.
Dans un de ses livres, Katherine Mansfield – écrit à 19 ans – qui s’appelle « Dans une pension
allemande », il y a un récit intitulé « L’enfant qui n’en pouvait plus ».
C’est l’histoire d’une petite bâtarde de 12 à 14 ans qui sert de bonne à un couple d’Allemands,
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dont la femme attend un quatrième enfant. Elle fait la lessive, soigne les trois gamins, sert le café.
Elle est si fatiguée, si fatiguée…
Dans cette nouvelle, une phrase revient en leit-motiv : « she was just beginning to walk along a little
road with tall black trees on either side a little while road that led to now here and where nobody
walked at all. » (« Elle commençait à marcher au long d’une petite route blanche bordée de grands
arbres noirs, une petite route qui ne va nulle part et où personne ne se promène »)….
C’est un peu de cette façon que je me représente Katherine Mansfield, errante de maison en
maison, d’Angleterre en Italie, d’Italie en Suisse, de Suisse en France, avant son arrivée à la Villa
Isola Bella. Ici s’est arrêtée la vagabonde pleine de songes. Ici pour un instant elle a imposé silence
à ces interrogations intérieures, refusé d’écouter son propre secret. C’est le carrefour de sa vie. Là,
pour la dernière fois, elle va se rattacher à son enfance.
Écoutez ce qu’elle écrit :
Cette petite maison est et sera toujours pour moi, je le sens, le seul endroit du monde. Mon cœur
bat pour elle comme il bat pour Karori (le hameau de Nouvelle-Zélande où elle était née). »
Elle est si enthousiaste de la maison, qu’elle désire violemment la louer pour l’année suivante :
« Vous ignorez peut-être – dit-elle à son mari – que mes sentiments pour cette villa sont si intenses,
qu’il faudra m’en arracher de force, si on ne me la donne pas… Suis-je folle ?… Vous trouverez Isola
Bella ainsi inscrit à la pyrogravure sur mon coeur. »
Cette jeune femme qui écrit avec l’élégance et l’ironie d’un Mérimée, et dont la sensibilité a souvent
subi l’influence de Tchékov, est d’abord une romantique. Le modernisme de ses robes, celui de son
style sont des masques de dentelle. La moindre brise les soulève. Nous avons rencontré, chez des
filles spirituelles de Rousseau, ce même désir éperdu de vivre, cette même recherche ardente du
bonheur. Elle fait penser à la « Mouette » de Tchékov, autre romantique masqué qui, après le départ
vers la tempête, retourne en vain au rivage.
Ce rivage, un soir de janvier 1933, Katherine Mansfield l’a atteint, sans doute. Dans les derniers
temps de sa vie, elle s’était plu à rechercher sur les plus hauts sommets de l’esprit la paix intérieure.
Dépouillée de la robe pourpre du désir, elle avait revêtu la tunique blanche du néophite.
« Je n’ai jamais vu et ne verrai jamais, - écrit son mari John Middleton Murry – un plus beau visage
que celui qu’elle avait ce jour-là ; on eut dit que l’expression, l’exquise perfection qui avait toujours
été la sienne, avait pris possession d’elle complètement… Mais elle avait perdu sa vie pour la sauver.
»
Un matin, assise devant cette fenêtre, par une journée bleue et or comme celle-ci, Katherine
Mansfield entendit deux ouvriers qui chantaient dans la vallée.
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« Je crois – écrit-elle – qu’ils bâtissent une maison. Je suis sûre que les murs garderont leurs chants
à jamais.
Ce vœu charmant qu’elle formait pour les voix inconnues montées vers elle, faisons-le nôtre. Que
les murs de cette maison, longtemps, gardent la trace de son nom ; qu’ils conservent, comme un
chant, le murmure des mots qu’elle écrivit à l’ombre sonore et parfumée du palmier et du magnolia.
»
M. J.-L. Françoisprimo
Délégué des Amitiés Méditerranéennes
Allocution prononcée le 21 mars 1939 lors de l’apposition de la plaque sur le mémorial de la villa «
Isola Bella » à Menton.
Ce texte a été rédigé par M. J.-L. Françoisprimo en mars 1939.
Patrick Estève a créé le site Internet http://katherinemansfieldmenton.blogspot.fr/ Katherine
Mansfield Menton (FR) pour mieux connaître Katherine Mansfield, qui a vécu à la villa Isola Bella à
Menton, dont le Prix de la Fougère d'Argent au concours de la nouvelle pour lycéens porte le nom.
Mythologie Apathe
by
Sophie Lee and Francesca Haddon
Il faisait très sombre. Where is He? — What time is it? The clock chimed — it was midnight. The
furniture seemed to breathe and bulge in his absence. Marguerite stumbled over to the fireplace
and lighted the fire. As the lit flame licked the grainy coals, Marguerite shivered and stared deep
into nothing, her cherry earrings dangling. What is Life? Is this truly our wretched fortune? The
gold-plated ring around the face of the clock seemed to gleam menacingly at her. Tick-tock. Ticktock. She rocked back and forth in her wooden chair. Creak. Crackle. Cackle. A smile spread
across her lips but soon broke into soft sobs as a pale child’s face rose from the ashes. “Aimée, ma
chérie”, she whispered to herself.
“Aidez-moi maman. Aidez-moi.” The voice was barely audible but Marguerite heard every word.
She frantically looked around the room which was adorned with his possessions: Watteau’s
“Nymph and Satyr” painting — the one He had brought home and so delicately hung above the
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doorway, and the opalescent lamp that so harshly illuminated his collection of Matryoshka dolls.
“Qu’est-ce que je peux faire?”
“Je veux que tu sois libre! Tu ne dois plus rester avec Lui.”
But how? But how? The door rattled, and the girl disintegrated into nothingness. Marguerite
thought it was Him, but it was not. Just the wind — the wind. And now she was gone again…
She felt like a parched donkey that had been dragged into the desert and left to fend for itself.
Where is He? Where is He? She could almost feel the loneliness engulf her entire being — oh how
she loved to be in his presence, yet breathed a deep sigh of relief every time He left her. She
anxiously rolled her swollen red hands in her grey pinafore, pulling back a loose strand of hair in an
attempt to retain the doll image that He so craved. Her cheeks glowed red and she breathed heavily,
in fear or excitement — she did not know.
She was running. She knew not where. Rebelliously tearing off her pinafore, she spread her wings
and soared to unprecedented heights. The buildings shrunk in size as she sprang into the sky;
everything seemed minute and she was free…until she awoke with a burning sensation in her
bosom, just in time for his sudden return. Monsieur Boucher’s keys rattled in the lock and she
bolted upright. “Woman, I’m hungry!” He shouted, his voice booming through the house. He took
off his boots and hurled them into the corner. His wife immediately retrieved them, and ran to kiss
Him on the cheek, but He shrugged her off, motioning towards the kitchen. She prepared his food
as He ominously lit the candle in the centre of the room, assuming his usual seat at the head of the
table, waiting to be served. He looked irritated.
“Is anything wrong?” he inquired; she sighed and shook her head. Her husband did not appear
satisfied.
“I saw her again,” Marguerite whispered, folding her hands anxiously in her apron. Mr Boucher
banged his fist on the wooden table, causing his plate to clatter against the wood. “I told you never
to talk about her again…”
Marguerite walked around the garden with Aimée who looked up at her adoringly. “Where do we
go when we die?”
“Darling, we go to Heaven of course.”
“Where is Heaven?”
“Heaven is…wherever you want it to be,” Marguerite answered, smiling.
“What about Hell?”
“Who told you about Hell?”
“Father did,” Aimée replied. “He said it is where I will go when I die.”
Flash. Marguerite was sitting across from her husband again as he broke and ate his bread with
ferocity, hesitating only to chug his water. His lips smacked together as he chewed, and when
supper was ended he took the chalice and devoured the wine, proceeding to push his plate towards
his wife. Marguerite stood and cleared away as she did every night. The phone trilled.
“That’s mine,” Mr Boucher shouted, scurrying towards the receiver.
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Frozen, Marguerite’s worst fears were confirmed within one phone call.
Her husband’s sly, seductive whispers into the telephone were magnified and she closed her eyes.
That night, Mr Boucher stole the covers from his wife and wrapped himself tightly inside them.
Marguerite developed a cough and started shivering furiously, but her husband slept through her
suffering. A light outside the window flickered on and off before ultimately fading. She could not
sleep. Her symptoms were becoming worse but finally she found peace. Marguerite headed through
the darkness towards the light — she ran — she leaped forward — she launched herself — but nothing
worked. The light grew smaller and smaller and eventually turned to pitch — hope was gone. “Aidezmoi!” she cried. But no one heard.
Introducing Sophie Lee and Francesca Haddon
We went to school together near London and after having been friends for the first round of A-Level
exams we decided to embark on our final year of school as a team. Our interest in Katherine
Mansfield’s short stories started in our final year of A-Level when we were introduced to her writing
by our teacher who was equally fascinated. We used to be called “The Machine” by our classmates
because we knew the stories so well that we would finish each other’s sentences of analysis. Looking
back, the nickname makes us laugh but it really was quite fitting because when our exams were over
we were not quite ready to say goodbye and so we decided to create a story of our own, inspired by
Mansfield’s techniques and rhetorical devices. Initially we were not entirely sure what to write about
but then ideas just started flowing. We decided on our title (Mythologia Apathe) and then used the
themes it suggested to come up with our plot. The first two letters (MA) refer to Mansfield's name
subliminally suggesting that the narrative is somewhat biographical and elements of the story reflect
possible events in her life, such as the darkness at the beginning and the end of the story alluding to
Mansfield's actual fear of darkness. However the title is also representative of the plot as there is a
blurring of reality and dream (as indicated in "mythologia"). Apathe is somewhat a Latinate
neologism evocative of "apathy" which suggests the detachment and unconcern of Mr Boucher who
is the metaphorical (and perhaps literal - towards his daughter) "butcher" of his family. Currently we
are both at universities in the UK and the US, but despite being 5,000 miles apart, we continued the
process of writing and sent each other drafts over the five months that we were apart. Since we were
both back for Christmas, we decided to meet and finalise the story together. Our parents used to say
that “education is the one thing that no one can ever take from you” and we have recently found this
to be true. This whole experience has taught us that sometimes you really do learn for life and not
just for school and in the words of Katherine Mansfield, “[we] want to be all that [we are] capable of
becoming”.