If
her words were set before us unknown and unplaced I think that we would lift
our noses like dogs to the wind and smell our country. I think we would know
the Picton boat and morning at the bay.
Eileen Duggan writing on Katherine Mansfield, Selected Poems, Victoria University Press,
1994, p.128.
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My thoughts go to all those people in Boston in the
United States who have been part of an horrific and terrifying event. A day which
should have been a celebration of life turned to tragedy, three people dead and
over 100 wounded, some seriously. It seems so senseless.
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Coming
literary events:
15-19 May: Auckland Writers and Readers Festival www.writersfestival.co.nz
17/18 May: author and poet James Norcliffe is taking
a weekend poetry workshop in Blenheim. 16 participants are needed for it to go
ahead. See flyers in the Blenheim and
Picton Libraries for registration contact details.14 October: 125th anniversary of Katherine Mansfield’s birth. Wellington author and tour guide, Kevin Boon, is organising a weekend of activities in Wellington including a day trip to Picton. More on this closer to the time.
Last month
I talked about attending the Katherine Mansfield Conference in Wellington and a new pictorial book Katherine Mansfield's New Zealand at the Bookchat
session that I usually attend monthly at the library. March was New Zealand
Book Month and the librarian (and Council service centre manager), Eleanor Bensemann, thought this could be a good
topic. Some people missed the talk so I will outline it in this blog post.
Katherine
Mansfield:
Born 14 October 1888, visits Picton and the
Marlborough Sounds a number of times with members of her family, left New
Zealand never to return on 6 July 1908, died in France, 9 January 1923, aged
34.
Katherine
Mansfield was born Kathleen
Mansfield Beauchamp in Wellington on 14 October 1888. Mansfield was her
mother’s maiden name and she took the name Katherine Mansfield in 1907. Until she left New Zealand (never to return), in 1908 Katherine
Mansfield came many times to Picton and the Marlborough Sounds with her family to
holiday and visit relatives. The first
time she came to Picton was in 1889 when she was only six months old. In a letter to John
Middleton Murry, who became her husband, she refers to: ‘premier voyage age de
six mois’.
Her
maternal grandmother, Grannie Dyer, brought the children to Picton for Easter
to visit their grandparents. Arthur and Mary Beauchamp arrived in Picton in
1861. He set up business in Wellington Street. You can see the store in an
early Tyree photograph of Picton. In 1889 Thomas Philpotts purchased the
business. The building has since been demolished and it woiuld be good to have a marker plaque near the alleyway between shops where the business was sited. Katherine Mansfield’s father, Harold Beauchamp, went to Picton School
before the family relocated to Beatrix Bay in the Sounds. This would have been
quite an isolated existence.
The boat
the Beauchamps often travelled on to Picton was the SS Penguin. It hit Thoms
Rock (or floating wreckage), near Karori Rock and was wrecked in Cook Strait on
12 February 1909 and 75 people died. When the boat left Picton it was a lovely
sunny day but the weather deteriorated and visibility was limited by the time the
boat reached Cook Strait. Katherine Mansfield would have been upset by this
event hearing about it when she was in England.
Also in
1909 Katherine Mansfield’s brother Leslie (Chummie), and her two sisters visit
their grandparents and stay at Oxley’s Hotel on the waterfront in Picton.
Leslie is not impressed with the hotel and feels they have eaten rather too many
scones during the visit. They keep an illustrated journal during the trip which
includes Nelson and send this to Katherine Mansfield in England. Arthur
Beauchamp, their grandfather, is in bed when they visit and this may have
provided the idea for the ending of the story, ‘The Voyage’ written in 1921.
In 1921 Katherine
Mansfield goes to Switzerland and writes many of her best known stories
including ‘The Voyage’, published in 1922
in a collection The Garden Party and
other stories’ (includes ‘The Garden Party’, ‘At the Bay’ and ‘The
Voyage’). There is a lovely illustration of the ferry done by artist Susan Wilson
in the Folio Society’s Collected Short
Stories of Katherine Mansfield (just inside cover):
Lying
beside the dark wharf, all strung, all beaded with round golden lights, the
Picton boat looked as if she was more ready to sail among stars than out into
the cold sea.
In my talk I focussed on
the book Katherine Mansfield’s New
Zealand extensively revised by Richard Patterson of Steele Roberts. This is
a great publication with excellent design work. The only sad thing is the loss
of the original cover which was a reproduction of a Frances Hodgkin’s painting,
The Picnic, but it may be more
relevant to today’s readers. The book now includes more information about
Picton than the first edition and two more large photographs. I couldn’t find a
publication date for the original edition I own published by Viking, however
inside the revised edition it says: ‘the first edition of Katherine Mansfield’s New Zealand appeared in 1974’. I provided
details to Steele Roberts about the location of Waitohi House which is
mentioned in a newspaper clipping they wanted to include in the Picton section
of the book. Mrs Beauchamp and two children stayed there while visiting Picton.
The heading on the newspaper column where the notice appears is: ‘More or less
personal’.
Thanks to
Mike Taylor at the Picton Museum for his assistance. Several images of Waitohi
House can be ordered from the museum’s website at $8.50 for a digital image. The
image used in the book shows Devon Street near Picton School with Picton Harbour
in the background.
I mentioned
a book by Kathleen Jones which I think is the most definitive account of Katherine
Mansfield’s life to date. She does suggest that the boat in the story fragment ‘The
New Baby’ is visiting small isolated bays round Wellington whereas I believe the
boat was in the Sounds on an excursion and possibly also doing a mail run which Beachcomber Cruises based in Picton still continue.
Tuberculosis (TB)
How did Katherine
Mansfield contract Tuberculosis (TB)? She came from a wealthy background and it
is thought to be a disease associated with poverty though it is highly contagious.
If left untreated it kills more than 50% of those affected. We did discuss the
question of tuberculosis and many of the audience had personal family stories
to relate about those in their own families who had passed away from this
disease.
Some
thoughts: After Katherine Mansfield had a miscarriage in Bavaria, her close
friend Ida Baker arranged for a young boy recovering from pleurisy to come out
from England to keep Katherine Mansfield company for a while. He arrived with a
placard around his neck like a parcel. Some think he might have had TB and
passed it on to her. The Murry’s were very friendly with David and Frieda
Lawrence for a time. In 1914 at the time of his marriage to Frieda, Lawrence
was coughing blood into a handkerchief but telling no-one. By the time of Katherine Mansfield’s death in
1923 D H Lawrence himself was seriously ill with tuberculosis. Some think she
might have contracted TB from him. There was some discussion as to why her
husband wasn’t affected by TB.
Why didn’t Katherine Mansfield go into a Sanatorium?
I had always
assumed that if she had gone into a sanatorium when first diagnosed then she
might have lived longer. However listening to some of the personal stories told
by people in the Bookchat group people didn’t always survive even if they were admitted
to a sanatorium.
In December
1917 Katherine Mansfield is diagnosed with TB and has her first tubercular
haemorrhage. She writes in her Journal: ‘Bright red blood’. In 1918 on her
birthday her father Harold Beauchamp arranged for a family relation who was a
doctor to examine her. He advised a sanatorium.
There wasn’t time to discuss the well known painting
by Katherine Mansfield’s artist friend, Anne Drey (painting under the name of Anne Estelle Rice). Anne painted the portrait
of Katherine Mansfield but held onto it herself. It is now part of the national
collection at Te Papa in Wellington. The Director of the Tauranga Art Gallery
suggested that the brick red colour of the dress could be a symbol suggesting
the disease that was to kill her.
At the end of January
1922 Katherine Mansfield goes to Paris with Ida Baker to receive radiation
therapy from Dr Manoukhin. In early October she goes to Paris again with Ida
seeking a cure for TB. She writes in her Journal ‘Risk Risk anything’. This
quote of hers is one of the quotations on the circular brick pathway at Anakiwa
where the Outward Bound School is. Her great uncle Cradock and his wife Harriet
farmed at Anakiwa in the 1860s and the Outward Bound School is on the site of the earlier
Anakiwa Guesthouse run by Ethel Beauchamp Hazelwood, a cousin and contemporary of Katherine
Mansfield.
Katherine
Mansfield goes to Gurdjieff’s Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man
on 16 October 1922 seeking spiritual peace if not a miracle. She thought of him
as a guru, someone who could possibly save her life, possibly he was a
charlatan. For the first two weeks she was in luxurious accommodation then she
was moved to a simpler room. She was so cold she wore her fur coat all the
time. She helped in the kitchen and took part in the dancing but did not dig
the gardens. She was also advised to sit in the hayloft over the cows as part
of the cure.
On 9
January 1923 in the evening Katherine Mansfield dies at Fontainebleau (approx
60 kms from Paris), aged 34 after another haemorrhage. She had run up the
stairs to her bedroom ahead of Murry on the first evening of his visit. Among
her family and friends at the funeral were her husband John Middleton Murry,
her two sisters Charlotte (Chaddie), and Jeanne, lifetime companion Ida Baker
and close friend Dorothy Brett. She is buried in the cemetery at Avon. The
inscription on her headstone reads:
Katherine Mansfield, wife of John Middleton
Murry, 1888-1923. Born at Wellington, New Zealand. Died at Avon.
The
epitaph on the grave, chosen by John Middleton Murry, is one of Katherine
Mansfield’s favourite lines from Shakespeare: Henry IV, Act II, Scene III
But I tell you my Lord fool, out of this nettle, danger we pluck this
flower, safety.
