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Issue 12 August 2012

Inside:

KMS News and Competition Results Page 2

‘From the Archives: Trowell Family Photos’ by Chris Mourant Page 3

Announcement: The Edinburgh Edition of the Collected Fiction of and Katherine Mansfield Studies Page 6

‘The Real Alice’ by Margaret Tait Page 8

Announcement: Registration details for the Crans-Montana Symposium Page 11

‘For my mother…’ by Jane McCready Page 12

Report: Katherine Mansfield Menton Lecture, Wellington, May 2012 by Sue J Jamieson Page 15

Announcement: KMS Birthday Lecture Page 16

Conference Report: Katherine Mansfield and Continental Europe, Slovakia, June 2012 by Louise Edensor Page 17

CFP: Katherine Mansfield: Masked and Un- masked Page 19

Images from Leslie Beauchamp’s grave by Martin O’Connor Page 20 A photograph of a young Garnet Trowell Books Page 21 Reproduced with kind permission of the King’s College London Archives Announcement: KMS Essay Prize Page 23

Issue 12 August 2012 Page 2 KMS News Welcome to the latest issue of the Katherine Mansfield Society Newsletter, which is so chock-full of goodies that there’s barely enough space to introduce them all! It’s been a hugely exciting few months in KM-world, not least because of the dramatic discovery of new KM material just before a new edition of the stories was due to go to press. We lead with this news, so turn to page 3 to read Chris Mourant’s discussion of some of the material unearthed in the King’s College London Archive (including a collection of Trowell family photographs, kindly reproduced here with the permission of the King’s College Lon- don Archives); you’ll also find more information on how to order the forthcoming Edinburgh Edition of the Collect- ed Fiction of Katherine Mansfield on page 6. There’s more from the archives elsewhere in this issue, which includes two KM-related genealogies—on page 8, Margaret Tait writes about her grandmother Alice Platt, the real-life model for Alice the maid in stories such as ʻPrelude’ and ʻAt the Bay’, while Jane McCready writes about her mother Gill Ageros, who was related to KM on her grandmother’s side (page 12); continuing on the theme of KM’s relatives, on page 20 you’ll find Martin O’Connor’s images from Leslie Beauchamp’s grave in Belgium. What’s more, the KMS recently held another hugely successful conference in Slovakia in June, so turn to page 17 for Louise Edensor’s con- ference report, as well as a selection of images from the event. Congratulations to Janka Kaščáková and her team for putting together such a wonderful few days! KM scholars and fans also gathered in Wellington in May for the Kathe- rine Mansfield Menton Lecture—you can read Sue J Jamieson’s report on page 15. There’ll be more chances to come together and discuss KM’s work in the coming months, and you’ll find information on upcoming conferences in Wellington (page 19) and Crans-Montana (page 11), as well as October’s Birthday Lecture in London (page 16); rounding the issue out, we also have details about the KMS Essay Prize (page 23) and our Books page (page 21), which includes a review of Mansfield with Monsters. As ever, please get in touch with feedback and submissions for the next issue of the KMS Newsletter, which will be published in December—just email the editor at: [email protected]

Jenny McDonnell Newsletter Editor

COMPETITION

Thanks to all who entered our previous competition, which proved to be a real head-scratcher! The question posed by author Linda Lappin was as follows:

While at the Prieure, KM was befriended by an eminent Jungian who was to become a pioneer in holistic medicine. Who was that person?

The answer we were looking for was Dr James Carruthers Young (or just Dr James Young). Well done to all of the correct entrants, and special congratulations go to our winner Simone Oettli. A copy of the new edition of Linda’s novel Katherine’s Wish will be with you shortly.

This issue’s competition ties in with the publication of Mansfield with Monsters by Steam Press, a recently established New Zealand publisher that specialises in speculative fiction. A collaboration between writers Matt and Debbie Cowen and one Katherine Mansfield, this collection rewrites several of Mansfield’s stories to in- clude a range of monstrous transformations and macabre events. The publisher Stephen Minchin has kindly offered a copy of the book as this issue’s competition prize, as well as posing the following question:

Which Katherine Mansfield line is most open to monstrous misinterpretation?

To get the ball rolling, here’s one of my choices, from ‘Je ne parle pas français’: ‘I’d rather like to dine with her. Even to sleep with her afterwards. Would she be pale like that all over? But no. She’d have large moles. They go with that kind of skin. And I can’t bear them. They remind me somehow, disgustingly, of mush- rooms.’

To be in with a chance of winning, please send your suggestions for monstrous Mansfield lines to the editor: [email protected] The winning entry will be announced in the next issue of the KMS Newsletter.

Published by the Katherine Mansfield Society, Bath, England

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From the Archives: Trowell Family Photos

Photographs reproduced with kind permission of the King’s College London Archives

The following photographs of Arnold and Garnet Trowell were found in the King’s College Lon- don Archives in the collection for ADAM International Review, a literary magazine edited by Miron Grindea. The photographs were given to Grindea in August 1973 by Oliver Trowell (son of Arnold) along with photocopied manuscripts of four song-poems by Katherine Mansfield dat- ed 1908. This material was acquired in preparation for a special issue of ADAM commemorating fifty years since Mansfield’s death. Grindea was particularly interested in Mansfield’s relation to music; in a let ter to Ida Baker also sent in August 1973, he notes that ‘most K.M. enthusiasts would like to know more about the role music played during her formative years […] I very much doubt whether even Alpers’ enlarged version of his biography will deal satisfactorily with this vital as- pect.’ Grindea sought to learn more about the Trowell twins in order to fill this per- ceived gap in Mansfield’s biography and he collected various documents such as newspaper articles and concert pro- grammes to support this research. The photographs of the Trowell twins map neatly on to their biographies. Born in 1887, Tom (who became known as Arnold only after moving away from New Zealand) and Garnet were the sons of Thomas Trowell. At their Wellington home on Buller Street, the twins were trained by their father for the professions he had chosen for them: Arnold as cellist and Garnet as violinist. In the family por- trait we can see the twins sat either side of their father. On the right stands Lindley Trowell, the older brother of the twins Trowell family portrait (left to right): who died at the age of 10. Tom (Arnold), Thomas, Garnet, Lindley When the Belgian cellist Jean Gér- ardy toured New Zealand in 1901, he was so struck with Arnold’s talent that he gave him some lessons and strongly urged that he be sent to Europe to continue his studies. In 1903 the Trowell twins travelled to Frankfurt-am-Main in Germany, Garnet to study under Hugo Heermann and Arnold under Hugo Becker. In the group photograph of musicians (overleaf), taken at Frankfurt- am-Main and dated 1903, Heermann can be seen on the far left, Garnet Trowell second from the left and Becker on the far right.

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Frankfurt-am-Main, 1903 (left to right): Hugo Heermann (first), Garnet Trowell (second), Hugo Becker (fourth)

After studying in Frankfurt, the twins proceeded to Brussels to study for three years at the Conservatoire. The portrait of a young Arnold Trowell is dated July 1905 and shows him as a student in Brussels. By 1907, Arnold had won the first prize for cello at the Conservatoire and had made his public début in Brussels to great critical acclaim. A newspaper article in New Zea- land reported how Arnold had ‘acquired honours in the musical world such as no native of the colony has previously touched, and has been hailed as “the magician of the ‘cello” by the Bel- gium press, which augurs a triumphal musical career wherever he and his ‘cello may wander.’ In 1907, the twins moved to England to join their family, who had relocated to St. John’s Wood in London. Mansfield fell in love with Arnold Trowell in 1902. She dreamed of becoming a musician and learned to play the cello. After the twins left New Zealand, Mansfield continued to visit the Trowell household in order to play compositions for piano trio sent by Arnold back home to his father. In a supplement to the New Zealand Herald (Saturday February 3, 1923), A. Parker recalled how she would play piano, Mans- field cello and Thomas Trowell violin in weekly sessions that con- tinued between her and Mansfield even when the Trowell family relocated to England: ‘I think of her dressed in brown, for she had a fancy to play in a frock that “toned” with the ‘cello, as though with a de- sire to merge herself with the instrument and that indeed was an understanding characteristic of her clever playing.’ Parker also recalled how Mansfield would bring flowers to their practice sessions every week and how they would spend time nam- ing each: a ‘great rich brown satin’ tulip and ‘a smart little scarlet bud, thin and perky’ were named ‘Dignity and Impudence’. This Arnold Trowell as a student, marked flower-naming game prompted them to spend a day in the Welling- ‘With best love, from Tom. Brussels, ton Botanical Gardens for the purpose of writing down what they July 14th 1905’

Issue 12 August 2012 Page 5 saw. Coming to a new fence with upright posts at even intervals apart and five rails across, with a bed of young cabbage trees in front rearing their round heads at varying heights, Mansfield ‘in a flash’ saw it ‘as a line of music, the fence the stave, the heads of the cabbage trees the notes, on the line and in the spaces.’ Together the two girls ‘hummed the melody through first as treble, then as bass but found no tune either way, so it was put down as “a strange native pattering melody”.’ Clearly, Mansfield’s perception of the world and her first attempts at writing were often mediated through music and through melody. In 1908, Mansfield wrote the four song-poems (‘The Lilac Tree’, ‘In The Church’, ‘A Song With a Moral’ and ‘By the Sea Shore’) given to Grindea by Oliver Trowell. The songs make reference to a secret love which withers in the ‘winter air’ like a lilac tree reduced to a ‘skeleton’ of branches, to a marriage ceremony in a church which forces the memory of a ‘husband’ that ‘lies buried’, and to the ‘scream’ of a sea gull which is ‘the soul of [her] lover / Who lies drowned far out at sea’. Most likely written to be accompanied, these songs were clearly composed with the A photograph of an older Arnold Trowell Trowell twins in mind and signify Mansfield’s emotional turn away from Arnold as well as their physical separation. In the summer of 1908, Mansfield left New Zealand for England; reconnecting with the Trowell family, she transferred her feelings from Arnold to Garnet and became pregnant by him. However much Grindea tried to push Oliver Trowell and others into talking about Garnet’s disastrous love affair with Mansfield, he met with much resistance. For instance, writing of ‘the supposed pregnancy for which Garnet is said to have been responsible’ (my italics), Oliver Trowell told Grindea that ‘this kind of behaviour just does not fit in with my picture of the fami- ly into which I was born’: ‘While my father and grandfather were kindness and geniality person- ified, hard work and high standards in all spheres of life were unquestioned.’ Likewise, Andrew B.M. Bell, eldest grandchild of Harold Beauchamp and nephew of Mansfield, wrote to Grindea that ‘Garnet Trowell, who was a very gentle person and I believe also a most truthful one, told me in the presence of his wife, and [with] even greater fervour pri- vately, he was certainly not the father.’ Given the significant evidence to the contrary, however, these expressions of innocence were most likely designed to save face; it must be remembered, for example, that Oliver Trowell only met his uncle once in 1931 before Garnet sailed for Cana- da. Also in the King’s College London Archives is a short story written in 1909 by Mansfield entitled ‘A Little Episode’. This story fictionalises Mansfield’s relationship with and subsequent abandonment by Garnet Trowell; set at a concert performance, the affair between the young Yvonne and the pianist Jacques Saint Pierre reflects Mansfield’s perception of the discontinuity between the male and female experience of love. Also in the King’s College London Archives is a collection of fifty aphorisms by Mansfield entitled ‘Bites from the Apple’. These aphorisms date from 1911 and reflect the same thematic concerns as ‘A Little Episode’. This archival material therefore provides a clear picture of the role music played during Mansfield’s formative years and demonstrates the importance of music in the development of her writing practice.

Chris Mourant King’s College London

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The Real Alice

Photos from author’s collection, unless otherwise stated Shortly after joining the Katherine Mansfield Society around two years ago I decided to investigate the story of my grandmother Alice Hansen (nee Platt). It was general family knowledge that she had worked for the ‘Beauchamp family in Karori’ prior to her marriage and I was aware of the references to ‘Alice the maid’ in several of KM’s stories but didn’t really know much about my grandmother’s background. It took around eighteen months to gather up the information and photos which I put to- gether as a little article to give to family members at a small reunion held early this year. Some of it is unproven and reference is made to this where necessary, but on the whole I’m confident that this is a fair account of Alice’s life.

ALICE PLATT b. Lerwick, Shetland 1871 d. Lower Hutt New Zealand 1944

Parents James Platt b. Bristol, England 1840 d. Edinburgh 1895 Isabella Platt (nee Bannerman), b. Chester, England 1842 d. Stirling 1879

Married Jorgen Georg Hansen in Wellington 27th March 1901

Children Marjorie b.1903 Dulcie b. 1904 Jennet b. 1908 Alan b. 1910

+ 10 grandchildren Alice Platt

Alice was born in 1871 in Lerwick, Shetland, but some mystery remains about her parent- age. According to family history she was adopted by James and Isabella Platt of 10 Irvine Place, Stirling, Scotland, both of whom had moved to Scotland some time prior to the 1871 census (probably because of the cotton famine—they had both been mill workers in Manchester prior to the famine, and had married in Manchester on May 27 1860). No official record remains of the adoption details, and there is no way of determining the identities of her birth parents for certain. Nevertheless, I believe that it is highly probable that James Platt was her biological father, for the following reasons: • James is likely to have been in Lerwick in the course of his job as a traveller in the wool industry. • According to a source at Scotland’s General Register, it is highly unlikely that people from Stirling would have adopted a child from Lerwick during the 1800s unless there was a family connection. She suggests that Alice’s adoption would probably have been private and probably unregistered. • Alice bore a reasonable family likeness to her half-sister Isabella (born 1883). James, his wife Isabella, and also baby Alice are all missing from the Scottish 1871 (April) census. There are several theories as to the reason for this absence. It is possible that James and Isabella were in the process of travelling to Lerwick to collect Alice from her birth mother (whose identity remains unknown) or returning home at this time. Alternatively, as has been put

Issue 12 August 2012 Page 9 forward by a Scottish history source, they may have been travelling to Lerwick for Isabella to give birth amongst family members. This was common practice at the time but we don’t know of any family members living in Lerwick. Isabella and James had no other children together, and it remains my strong belief that Isabella was unlikely to have been Alice’s birth mother.

Above left: James Platt; probably taken at Crianlarich Viaduct. Identified by Ewan Crawford (trainspotter). Photo from Nick Winstanley Above centre: Memorial Headstone erected by James Platt to father Ottawell and first wife Isabella at Logie Kirk near Stirling Above right: Jane (Mercer) Platt, stepmother of Alice with her daughter Isabella (probable half sister to Alice). Photo from Nick Winstan- ley In 1879 Isabella Platt died of cancer at 10 Irvine Place, Stirling. She was 36 years old and Alice was 8. A memorial headstone to Isabella and also Ottawell Platt, father of James, is at Lo- gie Kirk, on the outskirts of Stirling. Ottawell Platt died on December 28 1876 ‘by being struck by the engine of a railway goods train on the Stirling and Dunfermline railway’, as was noted on the death certificate. In 1880 James Platt (age 38) married Jane Beattie Mercer (age 25) from Stow Mill, Edinburgh. The marriage produced one child—Alice’s stepsister Isabella, born in 1883 at 10 Irvine Place, Stirling—and lasted until James’ death at the age of 53 (from cirrhosis of the liver) in 1895, after which Jane married Jonathon Hawkins, a 49-year-old bachelor, at Murrayfield, Edinburgh in 1896. James Platt was buried at Corstorphine Old Parish Church, near to the house on Clemiston Road, Corstorphine, Edinburgh, to which the family of four (James, Jane, Alice and Isabella) had moved prior to the 1891 census. According to family history ‘Alice attended school in the High Street’. I presume this to be the Corstorphine School which is in Corstorphine High St and near to Clemiston Road where they lived, and which first opened in 1646. While there, she must have received a sound formal education, as family oral history (via two of Alice’s descendants) says that ‘Alice was well read, could speak French and brought several of her books with her’ when she was ‘sent to NZ’ by her stepmother in 1892 (according to family sources). Indeed, on her marriage certificate Alice later gave her occupation as ‘governess’. Alice would have been around 20 years old when she left Edinburgh for New Zealand. There is an Alice Platt on the shipping list for the Ruahine which left London on June 23 1892. It travelled via Plymouth, Tenerife, Capetown, and Hobart, arriving in Auckland on August 15 1892, before carrying on to Wellington. In that era (prior to Suez and Panama Canals) most boats travelled via Cape Horn. Apparently Alice was destined for Christchurch but she disembarked at Wellington. It is likely this was because she had been offered an attractive job/position in Wel- lington by another passenger or crew member—perhaps with the Beauchamp family. I don’t have exact dates but it is known that Alice was employed in Wellington by the Beauchamp family as a nanny or maid. The following dates help contextualise where she worked at various times: 1888: the Beauchamp family lived at 11 Tinakori Road, Wellington (later no. 25) 1893: the family moved to Chesney Wold, Karori 1898: the family moved to 75 Tinakori Road, Wellington (no longer there) 1903: KM and her sisters left for London

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So far as I’m aware Alice worked for the Beauchamp family from her arrival around 1892 until her marriage in 1901. If so, the young Katherine Mansfield would have known her from the age of about 4 till 13, and it is likely that she provided the inspiration for the character of ‘Alice the maid’ who is referred to in several of KM’s NZ-based stories, just as ‘Pat the handyman’ is likely based on the family’s own employee, Patrick Sheehan. According to notes by Ian Gordon in his edited Victorian Voyage: the shipboard diary of Katherine Mansfield’s Mother, Alice Platt the maid and Pat the handyman assisted in the running of the household during the time in which Annie and Harold Beauchamp travelled to England for around eight months in 1898. By the time the Beauchamps returned the entire extended family had been moved and re-settled into 75 Tinakori Road, a move that was managed by Katherine Mansfield’s grandmother (‘Granny Katherine Mansfield Birthplace Dyer’), Alice Platt and Pat the handyman. Photo: Gerri Kimber In 1901 Alice left the family’s service and married Georg Hansen (born in Praesto, Den- mark) at St Peter’s Church in Willis St, Wellington. There were two announcements of this wedding, one in the Dominion Post and one in the NZ Free Lance Social Gossip paper. According to Ian Gordon, Alice was given a sewing machine by Harold and Annie Beauchamp ‘complete with an inscribed brass plate’ so we can presume that the family thought well of her. The children of Alice and Georg were born in Carterton so presumably Alice and Alice Platt and Georg Hansen Georg lived there during the early years of their marriage. Georg’s job prior to marriage had been the fitting out of railway carriage timber interiors in Wellington but I don’t know what he worked at during his time in the Wairarapa. During the 1930s he worked on bridge construction. In April 1930, 77 Wyndrum Avenue was purchased in the name of Alice Hansen. It is not known why Georg’s name wasn’t on the title for this property. The house was furnished to a high quality standard for that era—maybe Alice received a bequest of some form from Scotland? We know she received at least one letter from her stepmother in Scotland apologising for past incidents. Alice’s children: Left to right: Dulcie, Jennet, Alice died at Lower Hutt in 1944 from heart failure and the owner- Alan, Marjorie ship of the property passed to her husband. Following her death, son Alan and his wife Kathleen moved into 77 Wyndrum Ave and took care of Georg until his death from lung cancer in 1948. The house is currently owned by the Hansen family. So this is my grandmother Alice Platt’s story as we now know it. Probably fairly typical of so many immigrants of that era but she was partic- ularly fortunate in securing her position with the Beauchamp family—many of us now wish we had had the opportunity to talk to her about these years and her relationship with the young Katherine Mansfield. I learned to sew on the sewing machine with the brass plate—I won- der where it is now?

Margaret Tait Alice Hansen, 1941 KMS Member, Auckland

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For my mother...

Photos from author’s collection My mother, Gill Ageros, shared two things with her Beauchamp relative Katherine Mansfield: they both left New Zealand and made their homes in England, never really to return, and they were both writers to their very core. I can never remember a time when Mum wasn’t writing, or reading her beloved Henry James or Charles Dickens. She was a wonderful mother, but writing was at the heart of her being. As an impressionable teenager, I was delighted when Mum told me of our family connection to KM, particularly since I was at the time studying The Garden Party short stories collection at school in London. Here my mum describes the advice she was given on departing New Zealand by ship for England in 1959, to pursue a nursing career: ‘What my great-aunt Eva wished to say to me was more a stern admonition than an item of family history. It concerned a second cousin of my grandmother’s, a girl who had left New Zealand to go to England earlier in the century, and who, according to my aunt, had brought the family reputa- tion into wilful disrepute. “Whatever you do, don’t do as she did!” I was warned. “Kathleen was a wicked girl—she spent all her father’s money and she broke her mother’s heart!”’ ‘The “Kathleen” in question was in fact the writer Katherine Mansfield—and it has always seemed to me that if I wished for proof of the validity of the biblical quotation “A prophet is not with- out honour, save in his own country and in his own house”, I had only to remember my great aunt’s brusque dismissal of the achievements of my unfortunate cousin twice removed, Kathleen.’

Clockwise from top: Grandma Croll (Sarah Elliot Beauchamp) and Marga- ret, mum’s older sister, c. 1934; Gill, after my birth, 1964; Gill, 1970

Mum was born Gillian Croll in Palmerston North, New Zea- land in 1936. Her paternal grandmother was Sarah Elliott Croll (nee Beauchamp), who shared a Great-Grandfather with Katherine Mansfield and was therefore her second cousin. Over the years, I always thought there was even a family like- ness between Gill and Katherine. Dark, with soulful eyes, both. Mum was also very proud of her other relative via a different Beauchamp line—connected to KM via a cousin by marriage, I believe*—Thomas Waghorn. Wag- horn charted the route of what became the Suez Canal, linking East and West, and there is a statue of

Issue 12 August 2012 Page 13 him in his English birthplace, Chatham in Kent. William Thackeray, who travelled the route, paid fulsome tribute to Thomas Waghorn, whose la- bours however went largely unrecognised by the British government and who died penniless (From Cornhill to Grand Cairo, William Thackeray, 1844). But that’s another story. In all her genealogical searches to estab- lish the Beauchamp and Waghorn family trees, Mum was helped by her oldest friend from child- hood in Palmerston North, Beth Whineray. Gill married my father George Ageros and Keith W. Croll, mum’s dear father (standing); Arthur Croll (in car) settled in England, just outside London in a beauti- and Sarah E. Croll (nee Beauchamp). Palmerston North, c. 1926 ful spot called Kingston—beside the River Thames and close by Richmond Park and Hampton Court. Over the years, Mum would write daily in her pretty summerhouse at the bottom of the garden—a room of her own amidst the chaos of family life. (Above her chair are of KM and of Wellington. I think that when you emigrate, you are always somehow away from home, whichever country you are in.) I can remember all Mum’s stories of her happy childhood, running free on Waiterere beach (which was always spelled ‘whiterary’ in my English head, until I travelled with Mum to NZ and saw the exotic real spelling on a sign!) Although she had been writing since she was a child, Mum was a perfectionist and therefore always too nervous and self-effacing to show her novel to anyone. And raising three rumbustious children meant she had limited time to devote to writing. But in the year 2007, at the age of 70, she had a “A room of one’s own”, Kingston, 2012 burst of courage: she reworked then published the novel as a blog on the Internet—in what might be thought of as a modern-day version of Dickens’ publication by weekly magazine instalment. Her novel was called I Beatrice. The Novel as Blog; an Online Experiment (IBeatrice.blogspot.co.uk) and it quickly gained a tight-knit, loyal readership. It also attracted the attention of the British Library, which chose I Beatrice as one of a handful of blogs to hold in their archive in perpetuity, as excellent examples of this century’s move of the written word from printed page to online. After the excitement of the blog, Mum returned to the job of crafting the novel itself. A week after she died, I found hundreds of printed out pages in an out-tray in her summerhouse, but it was only half a novel. Mum had run out of time. She was diagnosed with cancer on February 3 this year, and died only three weeks later. Reading both the blog and the half-finished novel, I think that Mum had inherited the family literary talent. Although I guess I am not exactly an impartial judge, being a fond and now bereaved daughter. But for me, I Beatrice has something of the flavour of a present-day Mapp and Lucia, or per- haps her characters inhabit Cranford as much as Riseholme. As an Englishwoman, but also an outsid- er, mum had an acerbic yet affectionate way of observing the absurdities and nuances of the British class system. Her characters spring to life and her prose is beautifully crafted, with not one word or clause poorly-wrought. Gosh she would be embarrassed by my writing all this. I also particularly like the way that Mum’s love story revolves around that most unfashiona- ble and under-represented of romantic groups—the middle-aged!

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I will finish with an excerpt from I Beatrice, the novel. Here we meet my favourite character, David Porteous—the rather awful former clergyman, whose grey-eyed gaze has alighted on one of the wealthier single ladies of his new acquaintance. I hope you like it as much as I do. I look forward to seeing some of you at this October’s Birthday Lecture in London, now that I am a fully-fledged member of the KMS.

Note: *KM’s father Harold Beauchamp’s cousin—John Beauchamp—married Sarah Ransom. Sarah Ransom was the daughter of Thomas Waghorn’s sister, Sarah Waghorn.

Jane McCready KMS Member, Kingston-on-Thames

Excerpt from I Beatrice, the novel

‘.... The signs of wealth and ease were all around him, but he was pleased to see that they were under- stated, and didn't shout at him of recent expenditure or conscious show. “Her chairs and her cabinets and her pictures are old and good” he thought; “But they are not ostentatious. And she evidently hasn’t had to go out and buy them herself!". He was glad of that: he was fond of the high tone and the dismissive attitude. He could easily suppose that such a lady as Miss Fanshawe would wave all these splendid ob- jects aside with a surprised “What – these old things?”. It would be the tone of wealth and privilege, worn lightly. And it was the one, too, which Mr Porteous believed he might have been intended by Na- ture to adopt himself – had Nature only seen fit to put him down in the kinds of circumstances in which it would have been appropriate. Here then, he thought, was a lady to whom one could take an honest liking – provided of course that she shouldn’t turn out to be quite the kind of impossible spinster whom one half expected, or feared... He had a momentary vision, awful to him, of a kind of resurrected Aunt Floss, come back to try him again in the person of the lady of the manor. He quickly brushed it aside however; since for all her opinions, Aunt Floss would have been hopelessly out of her depth in conditions such as these. No, Miss Fanshawe must be a very different kind of lady, he decided. He was resolved to like her if he could. He thought she would have to be unlikeable indeed, if she failed to satisfy at least some of the expectations that her furniture seemed to raise. He was not so vulgar, of course, as to say to himself that here was perhaps the kind of solitary maiden lady who would turn out to represent his best chance yet of being swept away into more propi- tious circumstances. He declined absolutely to entertain the idea that there was anything in his medita- tions that could be called venal – or worse still, carnal! Heaven forbid that he should have sunk so low! He was just a little disconcerted, for all that, by that propensity of his (it had arisen only lately) for view- ing all reasonably presentable unattached ladies as potential wives or lovers. It wouldn’t do, he told him- self; it was in the worst possible taste. He did allow himself a charmed moment or two just the same, in which to wonder how it might feel to have the freedom of such a house? Wives or lovers aside, he thought he would know how to adapt to it. And he did hope – oh, devoutly: it was a kind of prayer! – that Miss Fanshawe wouldn’t turn out to be the kind of lady whose aspect and character would put her quite out of the question in both respects. The personage who did finally emerge from out of the house’s deepest recesses to cross the wide expanse of the hall and come to greet him, was neither daunting nor large, however. She was in fact the mildest, and smallest of fluttered-looking English maiden ladies. She wore a paisley skirt, and a cardigan that could only be described as drooping; her grey hair was not in any sense what David would have called ‘arranged’, and in her rather large, pale face were only the merest vestigial hints of what might once have been girlish prettiness. Her pearls were probably real, he thought; but she wore them without distinction, and though she held out her hand to him and smiled a greeting, the smile was tremulous, and he saw that for all her ten bedchambers and her rooms of state, she was very much more nervous of meeting him, than he was of her.’

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Report on the Katherine Mansfield Menton Lecture, Wellington, May 2012

The inaugural Katherine Mansfield Menton Lecture was given by Chris Price, the KM Menton Fel- low for 2011, on May 17 at City Art Gallery, Wellington. What a beautiful way to end a day—to enter a quiet auditorium, hear a poet read her work, and listen to the ringing harmonics of guitar music, with all the light and colour of Menton and the Cote d’Azur projected on the screen before you. This event was hosted by the Winn-Manson Menton Trust (the KM Fellowship trust) on Thursday May 17 2012 and a gathering of maybe 50 attended—some writers, some musicians and KM followers, all interested to hear what a ‘fellow’ in France gets up to. Chris Price is a Wellington-based poet, writer and teacher of Creative Writing at Victoria University. Her partner Robbie Duncan is a talented guitarist and, judging by the images on screen, a great photographer as well. It was Robbie who opened the evening’s event and drew us in with his beautiful guitar composition, projecting a series of photos of Menton and the art they saw in the streets there. Chris was introduced by the Chair of the trust, Richard Cathie, who gave a brief outline of the forty years of the Fellowship award and the Trust’s work. The evening was divided into two parts. For the first half, Chris read from her Creative Jour- nal ‘Isola Bella’, written during the six months she spent in Menton between April and September 2011, interweaving external world events with her own writing process and reading a few poems written in that time. Then she and the chairman sat to discuss her time as the Fellow and opened the floor to questions about her work. In the second half of her talk, Chris outlined her research on the nineteenth-century English poet Thomas L. Beddoes, a man who seems to have had certain obsessions for skulls and anatomy, and who ended his own life in 1849. This forms part of her next work-in-progress, and she followed the Beddoes trail to Paris and Basel. She also referred to a beautiful recent book produced as a col- laborative effort by musician/composer Jonathan Besser, artist Max Gimblett and herself as poet. The title is The Green Bicycle (only 50 copies of which have been printed, published by the Holloway Press)—one lay on the table in the auditorium and attracted keen interest at the end of the session. Chris spoke lyrically, with insight and humour, and described ‘the benign benefits of exile’, in which, as the Fellow, you get to ‘live in a palace’ (Palais Lutetia) and for a time are feted like a princess. It is also a ‘beautiful and temporary isolation’ as a writer to be able to work unencumbered and it was as if a ‘lid had been lifted’. The writer lifts her head to see and finds that all is expansive and enlivening—‘it wakes you up’. The Creative Journal was her ‘preserving jar’ of images and ex- periences in a time of great international turmoil, which included the Eurozone financial crisis, the Arab Spring, and the 2011 Norway attacks. While there in the ‘paradise’ of Garavan and Isola Bella, Chris became devoted truly to looking—seeing all that was around her. She ended with the wonder- ful quote from Chagall: ‘You can never have too much yellow’. One interesting insight (at the end of question time) was in reply to an enquiry whether Chris now felt differently about KM, having been there in Isola Bella in Menton for that precious summer. She replied that like many of us, made to read the stories as a young teen, she had spent her recent months in Menton savouring KM’s journals, letters and notebooks, and came away with a much deeper interest in KM as a person, and the beauty of that writing. With thanks to the Fellowship Trust and to Chris and Robbie for a generous, engaging hour.

Sue J Jamieson KMS Member, Wellington

Issue 12 August 2012 Page 16

Issue 12 August 2012 Page 17

Conference report: Katherine Mansfield and Continental Europe Slovakia, June 2012

Photos from author’s collection Someone once said that you shouldn’t meet your heroes; that it is unaccountably disappointing. I beg to differ. No, really, I do. In June I met some of my heroes: important scholars in the world of Kathe- rine Mansfield, and I can assure you that it was far from disappointing. The first thing to say, really, was how well planned the entire event was in Slovakia. The hosts of the conference (Janka Kaščáková and her team) were friendly and very welcoming, and went out of their way to help anyone who needed assistance. For the first two nights I am not sure Janka slept at all—ferrying people to and from airports! Ruzumberok might have been a bit difficult to get to, but by goodness was it worth it! I did wonder, after seeing the photos on the KMS website, whether it was going to be like one of those holiday adverts, where they get you hooked with the one good picturesque view only for you to end up staying in a building site when you actually get there! But I needn’t have worried. Here’s the view 50 yards from the hotel (below): Stunning! And the conference itself was a fair match for the beautiful surroundings. The papers were engaging and I learned so much. On day one, Gerri Kimber delivered a fascinating dis- cussion of KM’s relationship with Floryan Sobieniowski. It cer- tainly got us all thinking! There followed papers on the relation- ship between Mansfield and other artists (Dostoyevsky, Elizabeth Von Arnim and Wyspianski); Mansfield, childhood and France; and women on the move in Mansfield’s life and work. With two sessions back to back it was certainly difficult to choose which ones to attend! After a delicious lunch (which included local aperitifs!) the afternoon session opened with a keynote speech from Angela Smith discussing KM and Jean Rhys as colonial modernists. The keynote was followed by a choice of sessions that fea- tured papers on a series of engaging topics including issues of identity and nationality; Mansfield and Wagner; terragraphica in Mansfield’s writing; Mansfield’s treatment of travelling and transitory plac es; and literatures of expatriation and the colonial Mansfield. On Thursday, after some stimulating papers exploring issues of translation of Mansfield’s writings, we visited Orava castle (where F.W. Murnau’s Nosferatu was filmed). Here’s a pic (right): Looks gothic and eerie doesn’t it? What I remember mostly is STEPS! The climb was worth it though—the views were spectacu- lar. That evening, dinner at a local restaurant was followed by a film screening of A Cup of Tea and some lovely poetry from Kath MacLean. A sound sleep was had by all after such an entertaining evening! The final day opened with a wonderful presentation by Claire Davison-Pegon looking at Mans- field’s collaborative translations of Chekhov. This was swiftly followed by papers exploring a variety of aspects of ‘Je ne parle pas français’ and a profound reading of ‘A Cup of Tea’. Vincent O’Sullivan closed the proceedings with a gratifying discussion of the new editions of Mansfield’s stories to be published later this year. After making our goodbyes and thank-yous, the journey to Krakow on Saturday was punctuat- ed with much discussion of how suitcases seemed so much heavier, despite there being no time for shopping! Is it all that knowledge we now carry that weighs so much? I’ll leave you to decide. Louise Edensor Middlesex University, Dubai

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Katherine Mansfield and Continental Europe Slovakia, June 2012

Photos by Gerri Kimber, pending the release of the official photos which will be featured in the December issue

Above left: Gerri Kimber, Janet Wilson and Delia da Sousa Correa outside the conference hotel Above centre: View from Orava Castle, where scenes from Nosferatu were filmed in 1922 Above right: Kevin Ireland, Janet Wilson and Delia da Sousa Correa outside the conference hotel

Above and below: Views from Orava Castle Right: Orava Castle

Below: Students from the Catholic Uni- versity in Ružomberok dressed as char- acters from Nosferatu, prior to the film screening.

Above: Last dinner in Krakow: Maurizio Ascari, Claire Davison-Pegon, Karl Stead, Hee-Whan Yun, Patricia Moran, Donna McPherson, Gerri Kimber, Delia da Sousa Correa

Issue 12 August 2012 Page 19

Issue 12 August 2012 Page 20

Images of Leslie Beauchamp’s grave by Martin O’Connor

Katherine Mansfield, New Zealand’s best-known author of short stories, lost her brother Leslie Beauchamp in October 1915. Aged just 21 ‘Chummie’, as she called him, had stayed with Mansfield and John Murry in their Acacia Road, St John’s Wood, London, home just two weeks before his death. He had been in London doing a ‘bombing’ course—he returned to Bel- gium and was instructing men on throwing grenades when one malfunctioned, killing both himself and his sergeant. His death affected Katherine Mansfield deeply. Accord- ing to her biographer Antony Alpers, the loss of Leslie altered her life and the impact of the grief she felt ‘released her main creative stream’. Another writer has spoken of ‘the amazing flowering of her writing’ from that moment on. Katherine survived Leslie by only seven years. She died of TB at the young age of 34 in January 1923 at Fontainebleau in France. Leslie was killed in Ploegsteert Wood, just a short dis- tance from Messines, and his grave is in the small Ploegsteert Wood Cemetery, about a 10-minute walk into the woods from the gates.

Martin O’Connor http://messines1917.blogspot.ie/

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Mansfield with Monsters: The untold stories of a New Zealand icon

Katherine Mansfield, with Matt and Debbie Cowens

(Steam Press, 2012)

ISBN , 234 pages

Price: $25 NZD (+ P&P)

Website: www.steampress.co.nz Given the recent discovery of previously unknown KM stories in the Kings’ College London archives, the release of Mansfield with Monsters now feels oddly serendipitous. This collec- tion rewrites a selection of Mansfield’s stories to include a monstrous and fantastic worldview, presenting them as the original, untold versions that have long been suppressed, and ‘authenticating’ them in ways that will be familiar to readers of the Gothic; these are af ter all, ‘found’ manuscripts, supported by testimonials from authoritative, academic sources, and even illustrative photographs. What emerges is not quite as extreme a vision of the ma- cabre as we might be led to expect from the opening ‘endorsement’ from arch-fantasist H.P. Lovecraft; despite their frequent forays into body horror, I suspect that these tales would ac tually be a bit too subtle for Lovecraft’s taste. Nevertheless, there’s a lot of fun to be had in observing the ways in which Matt and Debbie Cowens repopulate Mansfield’s world with shape-shifting lizard people, evil children, alien parasites, and a healthy dose of familiar bo- geymen from the vampire to the werewolf. Mansfield is given the main credit in this publication, and it’s worth noting just how much of her prose remains intact, even when ’s fox-fur is replaced with the reani- mated corpse of her deceased husband; or when undertaken by Fenella and her grandmother is carried out under the shadow of potential kraken attacks. In fact, the stories often show a rather nuanced engagement with Mansfield’s prose—and crucially her hu- mour—even as they rework them quite drastically. Perhaps my favourite passing instance comes in ‘’, where Bertha Young’s dinner party and its ensuing revelations now take place against the backdrop of a zombie infestation; the same cast of characters gather togeth er and remain largely dismissive of the devastation that lies beyond their safe world. ‘I have- n’t seen such a hideous assortment of red, green and mauvey-grey splattered together since poor old Margaret Duckwell showed me her curtains’ (p. 54), says Face of one of the unfor- tunate living dead encountered en route to the dinner party, neatly translating the essence of the character into a new framework where zombies and shoddy interior design are equally distasteful. Not all of these rewrites succeed on their own terms, it must be said. For example, ‘The Garden Party’ may add killer insects and protective clockwork armour into the mix, but these seem largely incidental to the story, which unfolds exactly as we have come to expect, while ‘The Young Girl’ never adequately fleshes out its central concept of parasitic aliens that attach themselves to the story’s characters. Perhaps surprisingly, the opening take on

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‘’ disappoints the most by taking Mansfield’s original slice of New Zealand Gothic and ramping it up with the inclusion of some black magic and tales of the living dead, largely dispelling the original’s sense of dread in the process. There are far bet- ter stories in the collection than these, and they are usually found when the authors allow themselves to distort Mansfield’s originals more fully. The best examples weave the mon- strous theme into the very fabric of the stories and then bring the reader somewhere quite different. ‘The Unlife of Ma Parker’, for instance, transforms the titular character into a ver- sion of Frankenstein’s Monster in her efforts to save her grandson, while ‘The Doll’s House’ is rewritten here as an effective little Village of the Damned-style chiller in which the chil- dren of the story, under the influence of the ‘little lamp’, strategically eliminate the town’s adult population. Perhaps purists will feel that Mansfield’s prose should be left well enough alone, but it’s worth remembering that Matt and Debbie Cowens’ new monstrous vision is actually part of a long tradition of posthumous re-appropriations of Mansfield’s writing and image. More- over, while the obvious differences jump off the page, the seams between the Cowens’ vi- sion and Mansfield’s original prose are not always as easy to spot as one might think, and there is much enjoyment to be derived in detecting the inventive ways in which these stories merge with Mansfield’s writing. But what really struck me as I read Mansfield with Mon- sters was just how much they compelled me to go back and re-read Mansfield’s own writing with fresh eyes again, and, ultimately, this is to the credit of all of the authors involved in this monstrous rebirth!

Jenny McDonnell Institute of Art, Design & Technology, Dun Laoghaire Ireland

Spaces of Desire—Spaces of Transition: Space and Emotion in Modern Literature

Gertrud Lehnert and Stephanie Siewert (eds.) (Peter Lang, 2011)

ISBN 978-3-631-60617-9, 108 pages

Price € 23.20 / £ 20.90 / US$ 34.95

Website: http://www.peterlang.com

KMS members may be interested in this new publication, which includes an essay by KMS member Ana Belen Lopez Perez (Santiago de Compostela University) entitled ‘Holiday/ Health Resorts and Female Identity in Early 20th Century Short Stories’. Ana writes ‘I ana- lyse ‘Bains Turcs’ and ‘The Luft Bad’ to show a theory related to what I call “occasional spaces”, a term that approaches Michel Foucault’s “heterotopias” or espaces autres and Marc Auge’s non-lieux.’

Issue 12 August 2012 Page 23