If we are ever
together down the Kenepuru Sounds come off with me for a whole day will you?
Katherine Mansfield in a letter written to
her sister Jeanne in October 1921.
Tuesday 2
July: Cloudy, overcast start to the day, sunny in the afternoon with a
northerly wind.
Last
week’s storm in Wellington damaged the house at Downes Point, Days Bay on the
eastern side of Wellington Harbour that inspired me to write my book Katherine Mansfield in Picton (Cape
Catley, 2000). For a number of years in
the 1980s I owned a property across the road from this house and remember how
fierce the storms could be with waves crashing across the road leaving debris
behind and once the road to Eastbourne was closed because police considered it
unsafe for driving.
Occasionally my father would ring from the quiet seclusion of the inner
Marlborough Sounds and ask what the conditions were like when he heard of a
storm forecast for Wellington. I had a sun room with concertina windows that
opened out to give a panoramic view of the bay and harbour - lovely in the
summer and on a sparkling June day in winter but worrying in a storm. However
the house always seemed to withstand the onslaught and the seaweed deposited on
the beach during such weather was good for the garden.So it was a shock to hear about the destruction of the house which began as a little holiday cottage bought by Harold Beauchamp for his family holidays. From about 1898 the family holidayed on the eastern side of the harbour which had access mainly by steamer. They rented houses at Muritai and by 1906 the family owned the cottage at Days Bay. In 1907 and 1908 Katherine Mansfield spent time at this cottage sometimes with a friend like Edith Bendall (June 1907) or with one of her sisters (March1908) as noted in her letters. She records that she and her sister were bored with life in Wellington:
O the
tedium vitae of 19 years! So have
come here, where we bathe and row and walk in the bush or by the sea.
Katherine Mansfield left New Zealand for
England in July 1908 travelling by herself and determined to become a writer.
She did not return.
During the storm massive waves crashed over the
front of the house and over the roof. Inside the water was ‘waist high’ and
storm damage to the interior has revealed some of the original wall paper from
1906. The original cottage had been extended over the years. I recall visiting
with a friend and seeing the slipway inside the house for launching a dinghy
and the largest toilet I have ever seen.
The book Katherine Mansfield’s New
Zealand by Vincent O’Sullivan (Steele Roberts, 2013) has an image of the
cottage as it looked when Katherine Mansfield stayed there (on page 51). The
design is similar to the Beauchamp house at Anakiwa in the Marlborough Sounds
in the same publication (image on page 54). This house fell into disrepair over
the years.One of her longer stories, ‘At the Bay’, is set at Days Bay and at Muritai. It was one of the last stories she wrote in the period 1921-1922.
It begins:
Very
early morning. The sun was not yet risen and the whole of Crescent Bay was
hidden under a white sea-mist.
Wow. My computer spell check does not like
the above sentence fragment! While I
concur that the setting for ‘At the Bay’ is mainly Days Bay and Muritai I
suggested in my book (see page 32), that all sorts of memories went into the
writing of her stories. It is not easy to distinguish fact from fiction much as
readers would like to be able to. In a letter to Dorothy Brett Katherine
Mansfield said while writing the story she had ‘wandered about all sorts of
places – in and out’. In October 1921 she wrote to her sister Jeanne, thanking
her for a birthday present and sent her a copy of the London Mercury which contained the story ‘At the Bay’. In the
letter she reminisced and asked her sister if she remembered certain incidents
from their childhood:
If we
are ever together down the Kenepuru Sounds come off with me for a whole day
will you? And let’s just remember. How Chummie [her brother Leslie] loved it
too. Can’t you hear his soft boyish laugh and the way he said “oh –
absolutely!” I’m sending you a copy of the Mercury in case you didn’t see this
story. Tell me if you like it. Just for once – will you?
The story ‘At the Bay’ was re-published in
1922 as part of a collection titled: The
Garden Party and other Stories.
Here is some
further information about the storm and some links provided by the Katherine
Mansfield Society:
Video
recording showing the inside of the cottage following the storm:
Recommended
film:
Lincoln (great acting)
Books:
The Childhood of Jesus by J M Coetzee (unusual plot)Mad Girl's Love Song: Sylvia Plath and life Before Ted by Andrew Wilson [life before she meets and marries poet, Ted Hughes]
