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: 125^th 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.