ISSN 2040- 2597

Issue 31 December 2018 Published by the Society, Bath, England

Photo credit: Christian Kleinhempl Issue 31 December 2018 2

Contents

KMS News and Prizes p. 3 ‘Unveiling of Katherine Mansfield statue in Bad Wörishofen’ by Christian Kleinhempl p. 4 ‘Celebrating Katherine’s 130th Birthday in Bad Wörishofen’ by Monika Sobotta and Janet Wilson p.9 Conference Announcement: Inspirations and Influences, Krakow, Poland July 2019 p. 12 ‘Commemorative Weekend in Gray, France: 24-25 November 2018’ by Gerri Kimber p. 15 KMS Annual Birthday Lecture ‘Nearer than anyone else’: Katherine Mansfield, D. H. Lawrence, and the ‘Modern’ , by Lesley Sharpe p. 18 ‘Two Anzacs meet in ’ by Cynthia Crosse p. 20 Review: Gurdjieff Reconsidered: The Life, the Teachings, the Legacy by Gerri Kimber p. 24 ‘Katherine Mansfield and Michael Arlen: a footnote (or two)’ by Philip Ward p.26 Call for submissions: Heron magazine issue 2 p. 30 ‘Thoughts about Katherine Mansfield’ by Judith Hendra p.31 ‘Friends of the Hamilton Gardens Report’ by Virginia Graham p .34 ‘Inspired Story, Inspired Garden’ by Bernard Breen p. 35 ‘Curator Talk and Mansfield Garden Walk’ by Martin Griffiths p. 36

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With multiple events on the calendar in England and Europe this (northern) summer it is likely that some of us missed out: a statue unveiling in Germany was on the same weekend as the Annual Birthday Lecture. Thanks to Monika Sobotta, Lesley Sharpe, Christian Kleinhempl and Janet Wilson we have extensive reportage in this edition of the newsletter. I was lucky to visit the KM Portrait Exhibition, as well as the WTF (Women’s Theatre Festival), events which were held simultaneously in Wellington in September. Incidentally, Penelope Jackson, who curated the former, used her influence to borrow the 1918 Anne Estelle Rice portrait for Waikato Museum two months later (I will explain why shortly). This was somewhat of a coup for Hamilton! On all counts these events were enhanced by entertaining and expert presentation from Jackson and others. Commemorations abounded this year worldwide, mainly concerning the 130th anniversary of the birth of KM. If you were in France you may have been able to attend the unveiling of a new plaque in Gray: for details refer to Gerri Kimber’s report (avec photos!). While on the topic of France, it was interesting to read that Paula Morris has been chosen as the 2018 Katherine Mansfield Fellow by the Arts Foundation of New Zealand and will take up residency in Menton next year. She will be writing a play based on the life of Jean Rhys. Further in this issue, the research updates from Cynthia Crosse, Judith Hendra and Philip Ward let us explore the lives of Leila Waddell, Beatrice Hastings and Michael Arlen, respectively. After all, these are the wild people and places we expect to encounter within KM scholarship. For further reading check out Gerri Kimber’s review of Roger Lipsey’s new book on Gurdjieff (page 24 of this issue). Yes, the Hamilton Gardens new ‘’ garden finally opened. It has been a long time coming and to support this occasion the Waikato Museum presented not a KM exhibition of its own [there are many other fascinating ones including The Topp Twins (1958-) and Giuseppe Castiglioni (1688-1766)]. Also don't forget Cheryl Paget’s presentation ‘Arthur Ransome and Katherine Mansfield: Parallel Lives’ on Saturday 19 January 2019 6pm at the Majestic Centre, Willis St in Wellington. Finally, have a safe and pleasant festive season and New Year! Martin Griffiths, Editor

We are delighted to announce that Kym Brindle is the winner of our competition and the recipient of Wayne Drew’s signed novel Uneasy Dreamers. Many congratulations to Kym who correctly identified Heron as Leslie Beauchamp’s middle name. To enter our next competition answer the following: In which city is the next KMS conference Inspirations and Influences being held in? The winner will receive a copy of Katherine Mansfield: A Portrait (the colour catalogue of the recent exhibition at the New Zealand Portrait Gallery, Te Pükenga Whakaata). Entries to [email protected]

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Unveiling of Katherine Mansfield statue in Bad Wörishofen by Christian Kleinhempl

Bad Wörishofen marked Katherine Mansfield’s 130th birthday with a series of festivities during the five days preceding the anniversary, culminating in the unveiling of a memorial statue on Sunday 14th of October in the spa town’s beautiful Kurpark (spa gardens) next to one of the garden’s ponds, the ‘Eisbergweiher’. The statue had been erected only 3 days prior to that Sunday’s ceremony, however - as it was hidden under a white blanket - none of the more than fifty people who had gathered to attend the ceremony had yet had the opportunity to get a glimpse of the work, apart of course from the creator Rolf Bauer who was also among the audience. All were waiting with great anticipation in a grove of oak trees on this exceptionally beautiful late autumn day enjoying the view of the fountain in the middle of the Eisbergweiher spraying high into the cloudless October sky. Meanwhile, under a white tent especially set up for the occasion the string quartet of the ‘Musica Hungarica’ Kurorchester (in the accompanying flyer the orchestra was even named ‘Katherine Mansfield-Kammerorchester’) was preparing for their opening piece. Shortly after two o’clock - slightly behind schedule - the ceremony was officially opened as Bad Wörishofen’s mayor Paul Gruschka strode up to the lectern and in a dignified voice commenced the opening speech. He gave a very special welcome to the distinguished guests, among them notably New Zealand’s ambassador Rupert Thomas Holborow and his charming wife Pauline Nesdale, Prof. Dr. Janet Wilson of Northampton University, vice president of the Katherine Mansfield Society (KMS) and the society’s member Ms Monika Sobotta. A special mention was made of Mr Henning Hoffmann from the nearby town of Memmingen. The mayor credited him not only for giving birth to the initiative that finally led to the statue’s erection but also for his valuable support to the undertaking by sharing his impressive knowledge regarding Katherine Mansfield’s life and works. The mayor continued to explain that the purpose of the statue created by (in the mayor’s words) ‘unserem Kunstschmied’ (our - the town’s - artist blacksmith) Rolf Bauer was to establish a

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permanent memory of Katherine Mansfield in Bad Wörishofen where Katherine Mansfield not only spent some months during 1909 but which she also chose as the setting for her short story collection ‘In a German pension’. Very much impressed that by her urge to write Katherine Mansfield was able to overcome her fears and her health problems, he furthermore highlighted Katherine Mansfield’s talent for satiric characterization of Bad Wörishofen’s illustrious guests as well as her interest in the role of ‘the German woman’ at that time. He went on to explain that the contemplative location close to the pond had been chosen by Bad Wörishofen’s Verschönerungsverein (the town’s ‘beautification society’) which had also provided financing to the project. Here, so he wished, pointing at the pond’s bank, the author Katherine Mansfield should invite park strollers to linger while finding relaxation in a book. He closed his speech by welcoming representatives of town council, church, convent and press. His Excellency the New Zealand ambassador to Germany Rupert Thomas Holborow began his speech by expanding upon some of his personal connections that he felt to Katherine Mansfield as an author. One was the warm memory that he had kept of his late mother who, he remembered, simply had loved Katherine Mansfield’s books. Then there was a geographic connection, he said, as he and his wife owned a house in Karori, the Wellington suburb where Katherine Mansfield had been partially raised in. Ranking her along with scientist Ernest Rutherford and adventurer Edmund Hillary among the national icons he emphasized that Katherine Mansfield was one of those who had given New Zealand some sense of itself. The literary figures and writers Katherine Mansfield mingled amongst and with, like Virginia Woolf, D.H. Lawrence and others of the Bloomsbury group, he added, were distinguished characters and creative writers who for us had left a legacy to savour and to enjoy and who were still capable to provide an exotic edge and allure in literary circles. Quoting from her notebooks the famous ‘The mind I love must have wild places’, he felt those extraordinary talents typified by such restless spirit and bohemian dimension. He continued by portraying Katherine Mansfield as an early pioneer for a better New Zealand, a country with its own sophistications and a liberal spirit where diversity is tolerated and a bit of wildness encouraged, reminding the audience how uncomfortable Katherine Mansfield had felt at the time in New Zealand with the treatment of the indigenous people for which she herself had developed a strong affection and respect. Suffering from the constrained provincialism in New Zealand, he acknowledged that in Europe Katherine Mansfield’s free spirit was able to roam more freely, sometimes in a troubled sense. He ended his speech by expressing his thanks for being hosted in such a charming town, suggesting that Katherine Mansfield would be honored by the continuing affection Bad Wörishofen had for her and her writing.

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After the ‘Musica Hungarica’ Kurorchester had ended their interlude, Prof. Janet Wilson, vice chair of the Katherine Mansfield Society, expressed her pleasure at what she called a fitting and deserving tribute to Katherine Mansfield, greatly appreciating the meaning of the civic occasion that memorialized Katherine Mansfield and her stories over 100 years later. For Prof. Wilson the celebrations gave due recognition to the enormous and inspirational role that this town had played in Katherine Mansfield’s early work and in turn to the cultural riches Kathetown had become immortalized in the ‘German pension stories’, it was also that the pension (boardinghouse) had become a leitmotif in many subsequent stories, usually about a young single woman who took a room in a pension in order to see a new town and meet its residents, Prof. Wilson added. The KMS, Prof. Wilson said, was thrilled and very pleased that Katherine Mansfield’s reputation as a writer was growing in the very places where Katherine Mansfield lived and wrote her best work. These were the places where the KMS would hold their annual conferences. Calling Katherine Mansfield the probable premier short story writer in English language of the 20th century Prof. Wilson highlighted Katherine Mansfield’s growing reputation as a writer by the fact that in New Zealand only a few years ago a new statue of Katherine Mansfield, called ‘Woman of Words,’ had been commissioned by the Wellington sculpture trust and now stands on Lambton Quay. Prof. Wilson expressed her hope that Bad Wörishofen’s new sculpture would encourage more people to read her stories and other Mansfield scholars and readers to visit Bad Wörishofen. She also indicated that the celebrations might even inspire a future conference held by the KMS in Bad Wörishofen. She ended her speech by acknowledging that due to the KMS’s annual lecture held that same weekend in London Dr. Gerri Kimber as well as other KMS members were unable to attend. Bad Wörishofen’s mayor Paul Gruschka then proceeded to the official unveiling of the statue.

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The closing words were delivered by the president of the Verschönerungsverein of Bad Wörishofen, Michael Scharpf. He took the audience on a journey through time back to 1909, when - as he put it - Bad Wörishofen was a most unconventional spa town, a peculiar mixture of rural simplicity and urban modernity whose diffident charm was not easily accessible to strangers: unpaved roads, covered in dust or mud - depending on the weather, sprinkled with cow and horse dung and leading alongside fuming heaps of manure piled up in front of farm houses. Also, parts of the local population still felt hostile towards the spa treatments and the guests that kept arriving from around the globe, and this to such an extent that the term ‘Kurgast’ (spa guest) had even become a swearword among the town’s youth. On the other hand there were elegant pensions and hotels with all modern comforts. Since 1896 Bad Wörishofen had a railway connection and could benefit from electrical power supply and a telephone network (1903). In 1909 the local post office workers were in command of the English and French language. Water treading, a part of the Kneipp treatment, which required the ladies to lift their skirts and show their bare ankles and legs, gained the town a shady reputation. Then there were the visitors of public baths, almost naked, though strictly gender segregated. Mr. Scharpf went on to express his happiness that the statue had been placed in the oldest part of the spa park, a locality, he felt sure, where Katherine Mansfield had most probably spent some of her time during her stay in Bad Wörishofen. He ended his contemplations by speculating on how the life-size metal cut-out Katherine Mansfield in this idyllic place would not only be immersed in her book but would even be looking beyond its edge observing her fellow human beings and transforming them into a piece of literature. His wish would be that some of the park’s visitors take a seat next to her and enjoy the statue. As part of the festivities the Kurhaus-Galerie of Bad Wörishofen was hosting a small exhibition on the life of Katherine Mansfield and her work including a few impressions of Bad Wörishofen at or around the time of her stay. The 15 posters with many historic photographs gave to visitors an informative overview of the history of Bad Wörishofen as a spa town, where the rural life with farms, horse-drawn carts

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and children herding cattle provided a striking contrast to the everyday life of spa guests, their taverns, hotels and tennis clubs. The largest part of the exhibition was dedicated to the divers spa activities of the aristocratic guests, like air bathing, and to the elegant historic hotel facades and interiors. Also exhibited was the town’s visitors book dated 4-10 June 1909 with the double entry Beauchamp Miss, London and Bowden Miss, London for the Bad Hotel Kreuzer. Also on display was the commemorative plaque once marking the building where formerly the Kurpension Müller had its rooms. The building has meanwhile made way for a block of new residential flats. The two other events of the festivities, the special evening concert by the ‘Musica Hungarica’ Kurorchester as well as an evening lecture by Ms. G.M. Eggerking on the life of Katherine Mansfield, the author of this article was unfortunately not able to attend.

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Celebrating Katherine’s 130th Birthday in Bad Wörishofen by Monika Sobotta and Janet Wilson

German characters such as 'Herr Rat, Herr Hoffmann from Berlin and Fräulein Stiegelauer' as depicted in 'Germans at Meat' have linked Katherine Mansfield forever with the town of Bad Wörishofen. When the idea was born to celebrate the 130th anniversary of Katherine’s birthday, a number of enthusiastic people in Bad Wörishofen, namely the Mayor Paul Gruschka, the Spa director Petra Nocker and her team, and Michael Scharpf, representing the local beautification society, among others, laid plans and developed ideas. Finally, a series of marvellous events in honour of Katherine Mansfield were offered by the town of Bad Wörishofen from 10 October to 14 October 2018. Everybody was invited, no entrance fees were charged. Our Vice-Chair, Professor Janet Wilson, and I, Monika Sobotta from Heidelberg/Germany travelled to Bavaria to celebrate Katherine’s birthday. To start with, on Wednesday 10 October, we had a wonderful concert with music by Katherine’s favourite composers such as Mozart, Beethoven and Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, given by the Musica Hungarica orchestra at the Spa theatre. The audience was fascinated by both the music and the welcome speech in memory of Katherine given by the former deputy Spa director Werner Büchele. Listening to Beethoven’s Sonatina für Violoncello or Mendelssohn’s Lied ohne Worte (Song without Words) and at the same time visualising Katherine’s state of mind during her stay in Wörishofen was really touching. Incidentally, Wörishofen was officially entitled to call itself 'Bad Wörishofen' from 6 March 1920 onwards. On Thursday, 11 October, Gunda Maria Eggerking, an expert in education, gave a talk on Katherine’s life, focussing on her stay in Wörishofen and her love affair with Florian Sobienowski. On the same evening I was offered the opportunity to introduce the Katherine Mansfield Society to a wider audience and to distribute the materials kindly provided by our Chair Dr. Gerri Kimber. The next day, Friday, 12 October, saw the opening of an exhibition entitled 'Katherine Mansfield & Bad Wörishofen' at the Casino. A collection of photos of the town of Wörishofen in about 1909, collected and kindly loaned

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by Michael Scharpf, illustrated an environment Katherine must have experienced at that time. The Mayor Paul Gruschka, Michael Scharpf and I gave talks which linked the historical photos and Katherine’s stay in the spa town. It was a wonderful opportunity for me to remind the audience of Katherine’s 1921 notebook entry, visualising Wörishofen: 'I suddenly found myself outside the library in Worishofen. Spring – lilac – rain – books in black bindings.' [Janet Continues] Sunday 14th October, Left to right: Michael Scharpf, his Exellency Rupert Thomas the very day of her Holborow, his wife Pauline Vesdale, the metalsmith Rolf 130th birthday, was the Bauer, Professor Janet Wilson, Monika Sobotta, the Mayor climax of the week’s Paul Gruschka, the Spa director Petra Nocker. celebrations of Katherine Mansfield’s association with the town of Wörishofen, almost 110 years ago. The occasion was marked by the unveiling of a new sculpture of the writer specially commissioned and forged by the metalsmith of this Spa resort, Rolf Bauer. Having caught an early morning train from Erlangen where I had been at a conference, I had time to catch up on the week’s festivities with Monika Sobotta and to catch sight of the charming centre of Wörishofen. The build-up to the unveiling began with our visit to the mayor Mr Gruschka’s municipal office to meet the New Zealand ambassador to Germany, his Excellency Rupert Holborow and his wife Pauline Vesdale, and for the official signing of the town’s visitors’ book on a page beautifully illustrated with an inscription and drawing of the Muller Pension where Mansfield stayed after her mother returned to New Zealand. The day was perfect for the unveiling ceremony hosted by the Spa and Tourist Bureau of Bad Wörishofen, held just out of

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town at a lakeside - late autumn with the trees just turning, gilded sunlight, a gentle breeze, and not a cloud in the sky. A crowd of about 100 assembled, some in the colours and attire of the local beautification society which sponsored the financing of the new sculpture, and a string quartet played a welcome from its canopied shelter. Just behind the tent a fountain, reminiscent of the one described by Mansfield in “Epilogue II” in Rue St Leger, Geneva, was a balancing fulcrum for the audience’s gaze. There were speeches: Rubert Holborow passionately acclaimed the importance of Mansfield to New Zealand, and his personal discovery in coming to her work; I spoke on behalf of the Katherine Mansfield Society of her six month stay in Wörishofen, the setting of her first collection Professor Janet Wilson of stories In a German Pension, at a critical moment in her young life; of the recent surge of enthusiasm for Mansfield in those parts of Europe which she visited or where she lived -- Menton, Cranz Montana, Bandol, Fontainebleu, Gray -- and the Katherine Mansfield Society’s part in inspiring this new feeling and aspiration in these European towns to reclaim a place in her literary heritage; of how the KMS hoped to hold a conference in Wörishofen in 2020 to help seal this new rapport. The veils were flung back and then raised to reveal a new image of Mansfield, a slender silhouette in profile positioned on a park bench, looking out pensively at the lake and its spiralling fountain, her book open before her, her name inscribed on its pages. The band played, the sun continued to shine, champagne was handed round, photos were taken, and all agreed it was a matchless occasion.

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Katherine Mansfield: Inspirations and Influences

Jagiellonian University, Krakow, Poland 5–7 July 2019

An international conference organised by the Katherine Mansfield Society

Hosted by the Institute of English Studies, Jagiellonian University, Krakow

Supported by Catholic University in Ružomberok, Slovakia Trnava University, Slovakia The New Zealand Embassy, Warsaw and the University of Northampton, UK

KEYNOTE SPEAKER:

Professor Kirsty Gunn University of Dundee, UK

Further keynote speakers to follow

CALL FOR ABSTRACTS This international conference celebrates the diversity of influences which inspired acclaimed New Zealand modernist short story writer, Katherine Mansfield (1888-1923). From her upbringing in Wellington, New Zealand, her schooling in London, and her return to Europe at the age of nineteen to begin her career as a writer, Mansfield’s short life was inevitably influenced by the people she met, the many places she visited or lived in, paintings she saw, music she played or listened to, trends in literature and the books she read, and the burgeoning film industry which she experienced both as an actor and an eager spectator. For example, the French Decadent and Symbolist movements would both have a lasting influence on Mansfield’s fiction. Indeed, echoes of, for example, the French symbolists, Walter Pater, and the Decadents, are to be found in much of her prose writing. As Janet Kaplan argues,

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Pater and Symons provided techniques that Mansfield would use later to uncover, at its deepest level, the culturally determined condition of women. By importing symbolist devices into realistic fiction, Mansfield exemplifies how the malebonded nineteenth-century aesthetes became absorbed into the twentieth-century feminist consciousness.

Most modern critics agree that Mansfield’s own unique form of was not so much derivative of other contemporary writers but was rather a product of her symbiosis of late-nineteenth-century techniques and themes, as outlined above, for the most part introduced through her reading of Symons when her tastes and preferences started to take shape and she began, with the Symbolists and the Decadents as her dominant influences, to write the sort of fiction which was committed to the possibilities of narrative experimentation. In the years following her death, Mansfield herself would become an inspiration for – and influence on – other writers, including Elizabeth Bowen, Dame Jacqueline Wilson, as well as the Patron of the Katherine Mansfield Society, author Professor Kirsty Gunn. Indeed, one of Mansfield’s early biographers, Ian Gordon, writes, ‘She had the same kind of direct influence on the art of the short story as Joyce had on the novel. After Joyce and Katherine Mansfield neither the novel nor the short story can ever be quite the same again’. Suggested topics for papers might include (but are not limited to):

• KM and New Zealand • KM and Russia • KM and France • KM and Poland • KM and Bavaria • KM and Switzerland • KM and Symbolism • KM and the fin-de-siècle • KM and A. R. Orage • KM and her contemporaries • KM and World War 1 • KM and modernity/the modern • KM and her literary legacy • KM and music • KM and film • KM and fine arts

Abstracts of 200 words, together with a bio-sketch, should be sent to the conference organisers:

Dr Janka Kascakova, Catholic University in Ružomberok, Slovakia Dr Gerri Kimber, University of Northampton, UK Dr Władysław Witalisz, Institute of English Studies, Jagiellonian University, Krakow

at [email protected]

Submission deadline: 1 February 2019.

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Commemorative Weekend in Gray, France: 24-25 November 2018 by Gerri Kimber

It was an immense privilege to represent the Katherine Mansfield Society at the recent unveiling of a magnificent plaque commemorating Mansfield’s visit to Gray, a small town in north-east France, in February 1915, for a brief liaison with French writer Francis Carco. By late 1914, Mansfield had become disillusioned with her life and more specifically with her relationship with Murry, which began to go sour as he disappeared into his work and his own circle of male friends, leaving her feeling isolated and alone. In this disaffected state, when a letter arrived from their friend Francis Carco, addressed to Murry, Mansfield, receptive and emotionally in need, turned to Carco and wrote back herself. According to Carco’s own memoirs, her feelings were more than reciprocated. In early February 1915, Mansfield’s younger brother Leslie Beauchamp, who had enlisted as a soldier and who had arrived in England from New Zealand for military training, met with his sister in London. On 19 February 1915, with money obtained from Leslie, Mansfield was at last able to visit Carco, now stationed in the war zone working as a military postman in Gray (Haute-Saône) in north-east France. She hoodwinked the French Army Officials by falling back on the old tale of visiting a sick relative, using a postcard concocted specifically for the occasion by Carco. After four nights with her new lover, she suddenly returned to London and Murry on 25 February, disillusioned, but with plenty of copy. Though Mansfield may have been disenchanted with Carco as a lover, nevertheless she clung onto the relationship for a few more months – long enough to make use of his apartment in , on the Quai aux Fleurs, overlooking the Seine and the Ile de la Cité. This was where she began writing ‘The Aloe’ (which would eventually become ‘Prelude’). In mid-May she finally returned to England and Murry. Her experiences in Gray and her relationship with Carco would feed into two stories: ‘An Indiscreet Journey’

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and ‘Je ne parle pas français’. Gray itself is a wonderful town, with winding medieval streets and ancient buildings, many of which are listed as being of national importance. The organisers of the weekend – Musical Story of Gray, Claudine from the Gray tourist office, and Bernard Bosque – had arranged for me to be taken on a personal guided tour of the town on Saturday afternoon by Ria from the tourist office. First stop was the theatre, built in 1847, pretty much in its original condition, and classified as a precious national monument of France. I got to go backstage, below stage, and above stage! Some of the old changing room walls still have posters on them dating from the nineteenth century. Second stop on my tour of Gray was the Notre-Dame Basilica, one of the major stop-off points on the pilgrimage route to Santiago Di Compostela because of its two holy relics: firstly a tiny pietà, allegedly carved from the oak tree near where the Angel Gabriel appeared to Mary, and secondly the heart of Saint Pierre Fourier. Third stop was the tower of Saint Pierre Fourier, with its magical wooden turning staircase, concealing a little room – very Harry Potter, and another precious national French monument. Fourth stop was the Hotel-Dieu, built by Louis XIVth, now a home for the elderly, but some of the original interiors exist, including the chapel. Within the Hotel- Dieu is one of the great secret treasures of Gray – a fully equipped pharmacy, dating from the early 1700s, when it was built to help the poor living in the Hotel- Dieu. It’s kept locked up and only on view by special

arrangement. How it has survived so perfectly intact is nothing short of a miracle. One of the bottles was labelled ‘Dragon’s Blood’ (Sang du dragon). In the evening, with all the Mansfield delegates gathered together, we were taken to the theatre to see a music and dance extravaganza, put on by local singers and dancers of all ages: Musical Story. It was the most fantastic production and a wonderful climax to the day.

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The culmination of the weekend came on Sunday morning at 11am with the unveiling of a magnificent plaque by Philippe Paris of Musical Story, Bernard Bosque and myself, at the old station in Gray, commemorating Mansfield’s visit in 1915, About 100 people turned up in the freezing cold weather to see the unveiling, followed by an aperitif and nibbles. There were many notable local dignitaries, including two mayors. A special play was performed highlighting the events of Mansfield’s visit to Carco in Gray. It’s wonderful to know that even in a small town such as Gray, enthusiasm for Mansfield is as strong as ever with a determination to make sure her visit will never be forgotten.

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‘Nearer than anyone else’: Katherine Mansfield, D.H. Lawrence, and the ‘Modern’ Short Story Steven Matthews, Annual Birthday Lecture Number 9, London, 13 October 2018 by Lesley Sharpe

Professor Steven Matthews, continuing the now well-established tradition of annual Birthday Lectures, explored Katherine Mansfield’s complex, and in many ways intriguing, relationship with D.H. Lawrence. Focussed initially through the image of the wedding ring given to Mansfield by Frieda Lawrence, and developed through the imaginative significance for both Mansfield and Lawrence of rings in their fiction – Lawrence’s early draft of what was later to become The Rainbow and Women in Love was called ‘The Wedding Ring’ – Matthews reflected on the intimate link between the two couples, noting that Mansfield ‘kept Frieda’s first wedding ring safe, wore it across her life, and was buried with it on’. Its significance was clearly greater than the bourgeois respectability it gave to her relationship with Murry, particularly given that it was this binding element of convention which both Mansfield and Lawrence resisted: ‘a shared centre for their writing […] was a questioning as to what a true loving relationship and marriage might be’. In this regard Matthews’ choice of image for his lecture was striking: in the Lawrences’ wedding photograph we could see Murry, volume tucked under his arm, expressing a bookishness at odds with the virile and energetic masculinity proposed by Lawrence, that powerful connection to the life force so celebrated by Mansfield herself. It is perhaps not surprising that she declared herself ‘nearer’ to Lawrence than anyone else.

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And yet Murry was the man Mansfield had chosen as her companion, an influential part in those tensions that would resurface again and again between the couples. There was also Mansfield’s own difficulty in reconciling herself to Lawrence’s attitude to sex and relationships, and of his 1920 novel The Lost Girl, she lamented that ‘his hero and heroine are not human. They are animals on the prowl’. But opening up to us their letters and conversation, Matthews skilfully revealed aspects of their shared vision, and showed how the two writers enjoyed a bond ‘best emblematized through their exchanges around books each thought the other would like, and also through their exchange of particular gifts’. He explored the parallels and tensions between them, the energy of the creative impulses which bound them in spite of differences of opinion, each striving for ‘a way to unlock the human possibility […] in a world and time [… that] worked against that possibility’. And when Mansfield died, she left Lawrence the distinctive yellow fluorspar bowl which he had given her some years before – it had intrigued him with its vibrant colour dug deep out of the underground world of the Derbyshire mines, a world so familiar to him from his childhood. Matthews’ photograph of a similar bowl made concrete Lawrence’s own description of its source as a ‘golden underworld, with rivers and clearings’, expressing for him perhaps something of Mansfield’s definitive sensitivity to nuance, and the subconscious. Matthews mapped the intricate journey to this moment, showing how what she called ‘the little golden bowl’, with its Jamesian innuendo, might be seen to represent the luminous but hidden undercurrent which developed between Mansfield and Lawrence, ‘co-workers in an ambition to re-create story-telling as something flexible, pliable, undefinable’, alive to the pulse of life as it is lived. Expressed ultimately in the powerful symbol of shimmering bowl or binding ring, theirs was ‘a molton secret shared ambition’. No one came closer to its secret meaning than they themselves.

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Two Anzacs Meet in London by Cynthia Crosse

Upon Katherine Mansfield’s death in 1923, Australian violinist Leila Waddell remembered her friend in an article written for New York’s Shadowland magazine, entitled ‘Two Anzacs Meet in London.’

A gifted violinist, Leila Waddell had arrived in London in 1908, the same year Katherine Mansfield returned there. She met with immediate success and toured the British provinces on engagement with cinematographer, T. J. West. She became known regionally as the ‘Queen Australian Violiniste.’1 A New Zealand girl she met while touring invited Waddell to the 1909 concert of pianist, Vladimer de Pachmann, at the Queen’s Hall. It was there that she met Mansfield. Waddell recalls the encounter: Her eyes were dark brown and very penetrating, with depths. They seemed to look thru one rather than at one, and when her gaze was directed towards me, I felt that, altho we were sitting in the Queen’s Hall awaiting the appearance of a famous European artist, she could see me from under the Southern Cross and read my innermost secrets, tho with kindly interest.2

Waddell simply could not keep her attention on the concert: I, as an artist, was enraptured by her beauty. My interest was distinctly divided between the great De Pachmann, who was playing Chopin so exquisitely, and this girl’s baffling personality, which attracted and fascinated me like some strange exotic bird. De Pachmann’s playing affected her deeply, and she continually exclaimed: ‘Quel délice, quelle joie, quel plaisir, quelle peine, c’est trop, c’est beaucoup plus qu’on ne peut supporter!’3

Pachmann was certainly the most eccentric personality to have graced the Queen’s Hall platform. Historian Robert Elkin, wrote: To begin with, his recitals never started punctually. At last, when the audience were beginning to get impatient, the queer little figure, with its shock of rather dirty-looking grey hair would amble gently onto the platform. He would survey the piano with the delight of a child

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presented with an expensive new toy, and then followed a good deal of by-play with the music-stool, whose height and distance from the piano had to be most minutely adjusted; next the keyboard had to be carefully dusted with a silk handkerchief, and after all this had been completed to his satisfaction Pachmann might begin to play. In the middle of playing he would emit loud chuckles of satisfaction and would address sundry remarks to the audience, mostly of a self-congratulatory character. In spite of such eccentricities (some of them strongly suggestive of Grock and other great clowns of the music-hall), Pachmann’s playing, especially of Chopin, was supremely beautiful, and my own view is that his odd behavior at the piano was not to be attributed to conceit or to a conscious desire to ‘play to the gallery,’ but rather to a childlike and perfectly genuine delight in what he was doing. 4

After the recital Waddell’s entourage visited the artist’s room. ‘He was in his most characteristic, frolicsome mood,’ wrote Leila. ‘From among the crowd of his many admirers he singled out Katherine Mansfield, saying capriciously, as he tenderly embraced her: “Tell me, my dear child, it is not true that I look fifty-eight. Ah, please tell me I look but twenty-eight.” Without raising her voice, she replied, “Ah, Monsieur de Pachmann, you have no age. You have only art.” “It is true,” he cried joyously. “How you understand!” And he danced around the room like a jolly boy. Katherine Mansfield observed him with an intense calm, and her face betrayed no emotion.’5

The two women were immediate friends. They had a love of music in common, of course, with Mansfield playing cello and her sisters also musical. Despite their friendship, Waddell recalled that it was difficult to know Mansfield deeply. She was ‘difficult – even a little uncanny, with her level, unblinking, unsmiling glance and monotonous, inflectionless voice.’6 Later the same year, Mansfield’s mother dispatched her to the seclusion of the spa town of Bad Wörishofen in Germany, where she would sadly miscarry her baby. However, she was conveniently close to Bayreuth where Waddell would attend the annual Wagner concert in July. Perhaps she caught up with her friend while there. Mansfield returned to London in January 1910. This same year, Waddell met and became engaged to the now notorious occultist, .

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Cambridge-educated and wealthy, Crowley had a mind for enquiry that had led him to become a world traveller, skillful mountain climber, accomplished chess player, prolific writer and – as he was wont to boast – a rather good poet. He also had a sharp wit and splendid gift of repartee. However, Crowley’s defining characteristic, as Waddell would discover, was his religious ardour which led him to study the occult practices of mysticism, the hermetic arts, and ceremonial . Whether through a genuine interest of her own, or a desire to appease her beloved, Waddell would spend the next few years supporting Crowley in this work. Crowley and Mansfield both wrote for The New Age magazine, known for its progressive socialist content, and both became friends with its editor, Alfred Orage.7 Mansfield credits Orage as being the person who ‘taught her how to write.’8 All three were habitués of the Café Royal – Bohemian London’s place to ‘see and be seen.’ Open night and day, the Café Royal attracted a collective of free-thinkers – authors, poets, actors, artists, models, publicists, musicians and politi-cians – who lingered for hours exchan-ging ideas, eating fine food and getting drunk. Another significant figure for Mansfield at this time was Elizabeth Gwendolen Otter, a prominent London socialite. British novelist and travel writer, Ethel Mannin, describes Gwen in 1930 as ‘the most interesting Chelsea hostess of the last thirty years.’9 Holding Sunday salons at her home at 1 Ralston Street, Chelsea, Gwen’s elaborate and generous parties were legendary. ‘The younger generation were susceptible to her inexhaustible hospitality,’ says Mannin, ‘and happily attended her salons, where they would be sure to meet some lesser celebrity of the art world or, on a good day, some acclaimed star of the Chelsea or Bloomsbury firmament.’10 Mansfield co-wrote a play with Gwen called Mimi and the Major, and it was performed in 1913 at the Passmore Settlement. In his biography of Aleister Crowley, Perdurabo, author suggests it was after this performance that Gwen threw a party to which Crowley introduced either marijuana or peyote – presumably the latter as Waddell said it was described as a ‘curious by perfectly harmless Mexican drug.’11 Waddell and Mansfield were both present and Mansfield’s quaint denial of its influence is written about in numerous places. Of Otter, Mansfield wrote, ‘I have a warm corner in my heart for that woman always. There's something very fine in her and yet she has missed Life.’ 12

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For whatever reason, Mansfield developed a disdain for Crowley, describing him in a letter to Murry as ‘a sniggering, long- nailed, pretentious and very dirty fellow.’13 To what extent her friendship remained with Waddell is unknown. For Waddell, at least, the impression Mansfield left on her was sufficient for her to recall their friendship some fifteen years later, stating fondly: ‘Quite apart from all her great admirers in every corner of the literary globe, we who were born under the Southern Cross thank god for Katherine Mansfield. Proud indeed are we that she first shone forth in our constellation.’14

Notes 1 A Bathurst Native (1909 April 24) National Advocate, p. 2. 2 Waddell, Leila, ‘Two Anzacs Meet in London’ (1923 October) The Shadowland Magazine, p. 51. 3 Ibid. French translates as ‘What delight, what joy, what pleasure, what pain, it is too much, it is more than one can bear.’ 4 Elkin, Robert (1923) Queen’s Hall 1893-1941, Rider & Co: London, p. 109. 5 Waddell, Leila Two Anzacs Meet in London (1923 October) The Shadowland Magazine, p. 51. 6 Ibid. 7 Kaczynski, Richard (2002) Perdurabo: The Life of Aleister Crowley. California, North Atlantic Books, p. 178. 8 Retrieved from http://www.katherinemansfieldsociety.org/timeline/ 9 Mannin, Ethel (1930) Confessions and Impressions. London: Hutchinson, p. 195. 10 Mannin, Ethel (1930) Confessions and Impressions. London: Hutchinson, p. 195. Quite possibly to the 11 Waddell, ‘Leila Two Anzacs Meet in London’ (1923 October) detriment of her The Shadowland Magazine, p. 51. professional reputation, Leila played a lead role in 12 Mansfield, Katherine. Letter to Anne Drey in Collected Crowley’s infamous Letters, January 1921. Retrieved from production of The Rites of http://www.katherinemansfieldsociety.org/21-january- Eleusis 1921/ 13 Mansfield, Katherine (1951) Letters to John Middleton Murry, 1913-1922. London: Constable & Co, p. 451. 14 Waddell, Leila, ‘Two Anzacs Meet in London’ (1923 October) The Shadowland Magazine, p. 51.

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Book Review

Roger Lipsey, Gurdjieff Reconsidered: The Life, the Teachings, the Legacy (Boulder, CO: Shambala, 2019), 384pp., US$24.95. ISBN: 9781611804515.

by Gerri Kimber

In amongst my Katherine Mansfield book collection, I have, for obvious reasons, a number of volumes on George Gurdjieff. Some of them are better than others at explaining Gurdjieff’s philosophy, which persuaded so many individuals – from all walks of life – to follow his teachings. None of them, however, are as clear-sighted or downright fascinating as Roger Lipsey’s new book, to be published in Spring 2019, commemorating the seventieth anniversary of Gurdjieff’s death in 1949. Lipsey makes a compelling case for the man and his philosophy, all the while writing in a non-judgemental, dispassionate way. The basic facts of Gurdjieff’s life, and his connection to Mansfield are well-known to KMS members. Gurdjieff was fifty-six when Mansfield arrived at his ‘Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man’ at the Prieuré in Fontainebleau-Avon in October 1922. He had been born in 1866 in Alexandropol, on the Russian- Turkish border. Gurdjieff believed that civilisation had thrown men and women out of balance, so that the physical, the emotional and the intellectual parts had ceased to work in accord. Twenty years of his life, from 1887–1911, were spent in Central Asia, dedicated to a search for traditional knowledge. He started teaching in Moscow in 1912, but this work was disrupted by the First World War and the Russian Revolution. Together with the followers he had gathered over these years who had somehow managed to leave Bolshevik Russia, he arrived eventually in Paris on 1 October 1922, having leased the Prieuré at Fontainebleau sight unseen. After several years in Fontainebleau, Gurdjieff moved his teaching to Paris, and then America. But Paris remained his main base, and indeed that is where he died, on 29 October 1949, his body returned to Fontainebleau-Avon for burial alongside his family, and just a few feet from Mansfield’s own grave. A whole chapter of Lipsey’s volume is devoted to Mansfield and her ‘enduringly vivid and touching encounter’ (6) with Gurdjieff at the Prieuré – ‘the paradigmatic place and time […] in which the developments of Gurdjieff’s teaching in the West has its roots’ (30). As Lipsey informs us:

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In the teaching cycle Gurdjieff had offered in Russia before the Revolution, he had introduced the idea of ‘magnetic center’, an innate capacity in some people to detect and move toward liberating truth, to look past the familiar […] Katherine Mansfield possessed such an inner compass. Guided by Orage, who also became a resident at the Institute in its very first weeks of existence, October 1922, Mansfield left behind physical therapies that had done her no good and wished to rework her life in some new way that she understood the Institute to offer. (7)

Lipsey conjures up image after image of what daily life was like for those early residents of the Institute: ‘Katherine Mansfield sits in a corner of the kitchen watching, and moved by, the relaxed intensity of life there’ (57). He reminds us of Mansfield’s own words, written in a notebook just before she entered the Institute: ‘Let me take the case of K.M. She has led, ever since she can remember, a very typically false life, Yet, through it all, there have been moments, instants, gleams, when she has felt the possibility of something quite other’ (59). Mansfield’s mentor and former editor of the New Age, A. R. Orage, explained Gurdjeiff’s philosophy – what the Institute stood for – thus:

The institute is just a ‘Stop!’ exercise for all one’s former habits and preoccupations of oneself […] it enables us to see ourselves in a new light. The shock may be alarming or depressing, or it may be immediately stimulating […] I feel centuries older, years younger and infinitely stronger; and I do not despair of one day being real and really human. (59)

As Lipsey explains, Mansfield’s early death at the Prieuré in January 1923 did untold damage to Gurdjieff’s reputation for decades afterwards, aided and abetted by writers in both France and elsewhere, ‘eager to exclude both him and his teaching from the known world’ (10). The volume is beautifully illustrated, including several previously unknown photos. One of my favourites depicts a group of child residents standing in the snow in front of the Prieuré. We know Mansfield was particularly fond of these children and would spend time with them whenever she could. Lipsey’s book offers a moving – and occasionally humorous – portrait of Gurdjieff and is a tour de force in the art of biography writing. It will undoubtedly stand for decades to come as the definitive volume for anyone wishing to understand Gurdjieff’s complicated teachings, as well as appreciate this most complex and enigmatic of men.

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Katherine Mansfield and Michael Arlen: a footnote (or two) by Philip Ward

Michael Arlen (1895-1956) was a literary shooting-star. One of the most commercially successful writers of the 1920s, especially after the appearance of his novel The Green Hat in 1924, he swiftly fell from favour in the decade that followed and his books are little read nowadays except as time-capsules of a long-vanished era. 1 While researching his biography, I became absorbed by his connections to a range of contemporary writers whose reputations have held up better than his own. Some of these are well- documented and of some significance on both sides — those with Noël Coward, Scott Fitzgerald, , for example; others merit little more than a footnote (or two). His encounters, if such they were, with Katherine Mansfield fall into the second category. Arlen, born to Armenian parents in Bulgaria, emigrated with his family to England around 1900. He enters literary history in 1915 when, having dropped out of Edinburgh University, he moved to London, determined to become a writer. At that time he still used his birth name of Dikran Kouyoumdjian, and it was by this name that DH Lawrence knew him when the two met, probably in Hampstead, in the autumn of 1915. Lawrence had great hopes of the young author (though Arlen seems to have written little at the time to justify this faith) and instantly recruited him for ‘Rananim’, the utopian colony Lawrence planned to found in Florida. Thus he was one of the group of ‘Lawrence’s Bing Boys’ that Mansfield refers to in a letter of 12 September 1916, confessing herself ‘a little hazy’ about another member of the group, Hassan Shahid Suhrawardy.2 On 18 December 1915 John Middleton Murry wrote to Mansfield describing an awkward lunch date he’d endured in London that day with Frieda Lawrence (D. H was in bed with a bad cold). Frieda arrived with Monica Saleeby, Anna Wickham and

an Armenian called Kewyewmjun (that’s how it was pronounced) — a vile experience. The Armenian was another Willie Macqueen — at present he is the L’s darling — but that will only last a day or two — he is just a low swindler of a peculiarly hateful kind. Hair brushed back, semi-Oxford manner, probably makes his living in Leicester Square.

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‘I think your lunch sounded quite too horrid,’ Mansfield responded from Bandol on 23 December. By January 1916 the Lawrences had decamped to Cornwall and Lawrence invited two of his young protégés — Arlen and the composer Philip Heseltine (aka ‘Peter Warlock’) — to stay at the rented cottage. The hosts quickly grew tired of their boisterous guests; Arlen, in particular, was encouraged to leave after a week. Mansfield, who was receiving gossip about these events from her friends, wrote to Ottoline Morrell on 26 February: ‘Thank you for letting us see Frieda’s letter… I am thankful that the Armenian is gone but I wish he had taken Haseltine [sic] with him.’ Later in 1916 there was an incident in the Café Royal, which occasioned even more exchanges of letters among those who were there — and those who weren’t. In fictionalised form, it even found its way into Women in Love.3 Briefly, Mansfield was dining with SS Koteliansky and the painter Mark Gertler. The café was packed and they had had to share a table with an ‘Indian’, who was soon joined by another man of colour and ‘a long thin white herring of a woman with a terrific high bunch of crimson hair’. In Gertler’s embarrassingly racist account, the ‘red headed piece of dried dung produced a volume of Lawrence’s poems [the recently published Amores] and commenced to discuss Lawrence with the other, in this perfect English and carefully picked, long words.’ Their ensuing banter was too much for Mansfield, who asked to see the book, and still holding onto it, rose from the table and marched out of the café, followed ‘most calmly’ by Koteliansky and Gertler. In his biography of Mansfield, Antony Alpers assumes that the red-headed woman was a prostitute, although given the café’s bohemian clientele, I wonder if she could have been one of the many exotics of artistic bent who floated through London society at the time. By his own admission, the ‘Indian’ was Suhrawardy; the identity of the other ‘University Black’ (in Gertler’s ugly phrase) is unknown. In the game of Chinese whispers that followed, the impression arose that the other mockers at the table were Heseltine and/or Arlen. Murry, in his Reminiscences of DH Lawrence (1933), claimed sniffily that one of the culprits ‘has since become an immensely popular writer’. When Richard Aldington was researching his biography of Lawrence in the late 1940s, he approached

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survivors for help with identification. Frieda Lawrence supplied a garbled version of the incident which placed Heseltine at the scene, despite all evidence to the contrary. He then asked Murry, who told him to contact Arlen for the details. Arlen, reluctant for once to place himself at the centre of a story, replied to Aldington:

It was Heseltine, most mockingly, but alas with malice more than mockery, who read from D.H’s Amores. In 1915-16 Lawrence thought — I was too young to know for certain — very highly of Heseltine. But Philip later, despising himself, decided to goad Lawrence into despising him, Heseltine, too. You must remember Heseltine’s background — son of fairly rich parents, misunderstood chap.4

Like Mansfield, Arlen enjoyed the patronage of A. R. Orage, and some of Arlen’s earliest publications were in the pages of the New Age. On a couple of occasions in 1917, work by the two writers appeared in the same issue: 3 May (‘Two Tuppenny Ones, Please’) alongside Arlen’s ‘A Defence of Tailors’, and 14 June (‘Mr Reginald Peacock’s Day’) alongside Arlen’s ‘Tigranes the Slave’. Interestingly, in the story ‘Michael Arlen: Fragment of a Novel’, which appeared in the issue of 9 August 1917 and is the site where Arlen first tried out what would later become his nom de plume, the hero is described as ‘a monk without a monastery’ — the same phrase that Mansfield applied to Murry.5 None of these coincidences and concatenations tell us whether Mansfield and Arlen ever ‘met’ or whether she joined up the dots between ‘hazy’ references to ‘Armenians’ to surmise that they pointed to one and the same person. As Gerri Kimber commented to me, ‘some of KM's notebooks have a lot of pages physically cut out of them. Who knows what she was writing on those pages, or about whom?’ Mansfield’s failure to use Arlen’s given name, if indeed she recognised it, is no surprise. English-speakers struggled to remember it or to pronounce it correctly. When in 1920 he adopted the easier byline ‘Michael Arlen’ in print, he explained that ‘in changing my name I have, I hope, robbed my readers of their last excuse for my obscurity.’6 Three final footnotes to these footnotes… Arlen’s first known address in London was 46 Redcliffe Road, South Kensington, where he lived from November 1915 to August 1916. Arlen took rooms on the top floor under the roof; the historical novelist Margaret Irwin lived on the first floor. Murry lodged on the same street — at number 47 — from February 1917 and Mansfield joined him there for a few weeks before and after their marriage in 1918. By then, however, Arlen had moved on: to new lodgings in Shepherd Market, the decidedly more louche milieu he was to celebrate in The Green Hat. In August 1923 the American writer Sinclair Lewis and his first wife took a lease on Le Val-Changis, a country house at Avon, Seine-et-Marne. Although

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Lewis was suspicious of Gurdjieff as a man who ‘runs the latest thing in phoney High Thought colonies’, the couple couldn’t resist checking out the nearby Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man; so when Arlen arrived for a ten-day stay with the Lewises, his host squired him on a visit. (Arlen was perhaps intrigued by the involvement of his old mentor Orage in this venture, or by Gurdjieff’s Armenian ancestry?) Grace Lewis takes up the story in a letter to a friend:

[Sinclair] and Michael Arlen have gone to the soirée of the Russian colony almost next door, the colony where the writer Katherine Mansfield died. I have been to two of these vaudeville shows and never again. There you work with your hands for twenty hours, sleep four hours, eat little, or fast, dance à la Jacques Dalcroze, think, think, think, but speak little, regard your soul at all hours, and try to burst from your caterpillar state into that of a butterfly like — Well, perhaps like Gudjieff [sic] the head, a shaven-headed Tartar monster who cracks the whip every time he speaks. All rather interesting, but I wonder! All sorts of well-known people have stayed there, but I have not seen any of them since their passing through the fire.7

In early 1926 the literary journalist John Shand offered a satirical piece on Arlen to TS Eliot, editor of the Criterion. Eliot loftily rejected it on the grounds that the subject matter was ‘not of sufficient importance to justify the Criterion in recognising the existence of Mr Michael Arlen.’ Murry had already offered to publish it in the Adelphi and Eliot advised Shand to go with his offer, since no other quarterly would rush to print it ‘owing to the unimportance of Mr Arlen’.8 It duly appeared in the March issue of the Adelphi. Did Murry realise that the subject of the article was that same ‘low swindler’ he had met on a London street ten years before and described in such unforgiving terms to Mansfield? I think he must have done.

Notes 1 Kirsty Gunn, KMS Patron, is an exception to this generalisation. She wrote an enthusiastic foreword to The Green Hat when it was reissued in paperback in 2008 and tells me that her graduate students respond positively to the novel. 2 Not to be confused (although he frequently is in the literature) with his brother Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy, the future Prime Minister of Pakistan. The Bing Boys Are Here was a popular musical running in London at the time. 3 The fullest discussion of this incident I’ve found is: Sandra Jobson, ‘An Incident at the Café Royal’, Rananim 2(1), February 1994 (online at https://www.dhlawrencesocietyaustralia.com.au/j2a3.htm). 4 Quoted in Aldington, Portrait of A Genius, But… (1950). 5 As reported in Murry, Between Two Worlds (1935). 6 The London Venture, ‘Apologia Pro Nomine Meo’. 7 Grace Lewis to Stella Wood, 12 August 1923. Unpublished (Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas). 8 18 January 1926 (Letters of TS Eliot, ed. Eliot/Haffenden, vol 3).

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‘The mind I love must have wild places…’

Heron, the open-access creative online journal of the Katherine Mansfield Society is now calling for submissions for issue no. 2. ISSN 2514-6092

We welcome all creative responses to Katherine Mansfield;s life and writing: poetry, fiction, memoir. Please submit contributions to the Editor, Lesley Sharpe, at [email protected] By 15 January 2019 for publication In March 2019.

All submissions will be double peer- reviewed prior to acceptance.

Issue One can be read on our website: http://www.katherinemansfieldsociety .org/heron Please share widely!

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Thoughts about Katherine Mansfield’s “Poison” by Judith Hendra

While researching the life of Beatrice Hastings I reread one of my favorite Mansfield stories, ‘Poison’ and came to a fresh appreciation of Mansfield’s clever handling of the subject of arsenic poisoning (using arsenic happened to be the Victorian and Edwardian middle-class murderer’s favorite method for dispatching his or her victims). The writer had read about criminals Frederick Seddon and Herbert Armstrong and gained devastatingly precise knowledge about how quantities of arsenic work on the human body. Mansfield’s character ‘Beatrice’ speaks metaphorically when she describes her husband poisoning her, though her impressionable twenty-four-year- old lover is hardly reassured by her declaration that so-called ‘poisonings’ commonly happen among married people and lovers. The story describes ‘a huge dose,’ possibly a last resort given the risk of detection. Her second husband used the slow method, inexorably feeding his victim undetectable doses until she expired: ‘Just a tiny pinch, now and again, cleverly disguised—Oh, so cleverly! —until one morning I woke up and in every single particle of me, to the ends of my fingers and toes, there was a tiny grain.’ Toxicologists tell us that arsenic was a ubiquitous substance in the nineteenth-century household. Not only was it commonly used to poison rats, it was present in semi-lethal quantities around the house in the form of arsenic laced pigments present in candles, soap, fly paper, and the paste used to hang wallpaper. Similarly, powdered arsenic, purchased from a pharmacist, was used as a weed killer. The would-be-suicide had only to ingest rat poison or drink arsenic-contaminated water. For the poisoner, arsenic had many advantages including its lack of a discernable taste and its bodily presence (coroners normally expected to find small quantities any time they did an autopsy). In 1912 Frederick Seddon denied poisoning his lodger with a three-penny packet of flypaper causing terrible stomach pains and death. However the accused’s execution of the will led a suspicious cousin to the police and the exhumation of the body. After a sensational trial Seddon was found guilty and was hanged. Mansfield’s then close friend Beatrice Hastings protested that it was another case of a man condemned on circumstantial evidence. Using a favorite pseudonym Hastings pleaded for someone to reason with the appeals judge: for I really am beginning to wonder how long I shall be safe. To-day my wife and children gambol at my feet; to-morrow-where may I not be?

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Some person may die, be drowned, shot, or poisoned in my neighbourhood. I shall be the only person unable to prove an alibi to the police. I shall be hanged for it. [“The Trust in Crime,” New Age, 11 April 1912]

Earlier, Hastings protested the conviction of the notorious Hawley Harvey Crippen who was supposed to have killed his wife using the drug scopolamine. Backed by Hastings, Mansfield wrote an ironic letter to the New Age protesting the public’s jubilation over Crippen’s arrest:

A rabbit nibbling a lettuce leaf one moment before it becomes a python’s dinner is hardly a spectacle for universal and ironic laughter-whatever crimes the rabbit may have committed, whatever just hunger the python may feel. [Katherine Mansfield: Correspondence ‘A Paper Chase,’ New Age , 11 August 1910]

While Mansfield was writing “Poison,” a heavily publicized murder case was in the offing. Herbert Armstrong, solicitor of Hay-on-Wye, used small, repeated quantities of arsenic to try to kill his wife. When Mrs. Armstrong finally died in February 1921 the death certificate stated the cause of death was gastritis. The not-so-grieving widower then attempted to murder a professional rival by hosting a tea party where one of the scones was lavishly laced with powdered arsenic (the victim became violently ill). It turned out that an anonymous box of chocolates had been sent to the victim’s house a few weeks earlier and that a member of the household ate some of them (she too survived). Armstrong’s trial was avidly followed by Mansfield who fictionalized events through her character Beatrice: ‘There's only some poison trial’ she says, tossing aside the newspaper. ‘Either some man did or didn't murder his wife, and twenty thousand people have sat in court every day and two million words have been wired all over the world after each proceeding.’ Beatrice’s lover finds himself excluded from the ranks of marital poisoners: ’You!’ said she. ‘You wouldn't hurt a fly!’ Strange. That hurt, though. Most horribly.’ Her young lover nervously sipping his aperitif indulges his imagination. “Good God! Was it fancy? No, it wasn't fancy. The drink tasted chill, bitter, queer.” In a letter to her husband J.M. Murry, Mansfield describes her narrator looking back years later from the vantage point of cynical middle age, amused by how absurdly young he was. She dismisses her ‘Beatrice’ with the pejorative ‘common’:

—the newspaper touch of such a woman. She can’t disguise her chagrin.

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She gives herself away… But I mean it to be light—tossed off—and yet through it— [Mansfield to Murry, November 1920].

At the time Mansfield was writing she had several profoundly disturbing arm’s-length encounters with her friend-turned-enemy Beatrice Hastings. The women last communicated in 1915 when Mansfield walked out of an ill-fated party at Hastings’ Paris apartment pursued verbally by Hastings. In March 1920 Murry mentioned fairly casually that he had recently heard from Hastings who had asked him for an assignment at his current paper the Athenaeum. Mansfield blew up and, in an impassioned return letter, charged Murry with never employing Hastings:

I remember very, very well telling you I had done with her, explaining why & recounting to you how she had insulted and abused me, I should have thought you could not have forgotten those things. [Murry to Mansfield, 20 March 1920: Mansfield to Murry 25 March 1920]

In September Mansfield told Murry that she had been receiving letters from Hastings, including: ‘A hateful sniggering letter—a hiccup of a thing.’ [Mansfield to Murry; 23 September 1920]. A few weeks later Mansfield experienced a terrifying dream that mixed childhood memories with the final, awful confrontation in Paris:

Vile people came into my room. They were drunk. B. [Beatrice] led them. ‘You don't take me in, old dear,’ said she. ‘You've played the Lady once too often, Miss—coming it over me.’ And she shouted, screamed Femme marquee and banged the table. I rushed away. [Mansfield to Murry, dated October 1920]

Mansfield knew that Hastings had been married twice and was well aware of Hastings’ many affairs. One of her letters from Paris acknowledged how attractive she was with her ‘fairy air’ and ‘pretty little head,’ only to add that Beatrice had ruined herself by drinking [Mansfield to Murry, 21 March 1915]. Murry advised his wife against publishing ‘Poison’ for reasons he did not make clear at the time. After his wife’s death he famously changed his mind saying he that he considered it a “’little masterpiece’ [J.M. Murry, Preface, Something Childish and Other Stories, published 1924]. Hastings was very much alive when the story appeared. I have no idea if she read it or not. She liked to say she read the work of people she used to know only if it was put in front of her, which happened to be her way of dismissing any claims they had to authorship.

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Friends of the Hamilton Gardens report by Virginia Graham (photos by Martin Griffiths)

After a long wait the Mansfield Garden was officially opened on Monday 12 November by Mayor Andrew King and special guest Kerry Prendergast, chair of the Tourism Board. The rain stopped just in time, three veteran cars graced the Fern Court and guests in Edwardian attire graced the garden. Dainty morsels were offered on wooden tennis rackets by smiling tennis players of the era and a quartet of celli made music on the verandah. Well done to everyone involved – Peter Sergel and Gardens’ staff, the Friends (who raised $180,000 to sponsor the Lily Pond, tennis court and the Model T Ford), the construction workers, Waikato Veteran and Vintage Car Club, volunteers and donors and sponsors. A delightful 16 page A4 size souvenir booklet full of lovely photos and information about the Mansfield Garden is available from the shop for $2. Impress visiting friends and family at Christmas time with your knowledge! Furthermore you might like to go to the Waikato Museum where there is the exhibition, arranged to coincide with the opening of the Mansfield Garden, entitled ‘The Garden Party', one of Katherine Mansfield’s most revered short stories. This exhibition includes botanical studies specific to the story’s flora, the now iconic 'Portrait of Katherine Mansfield' by Anne Estelle Rice, and a selection of editions of 'The Garden Party' book. The exhibition is on from 1 December until 3 March.

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Inspired Story, Inspired Garden by Bernard Breen (photos by Martin Griffiths)

In the Mansfield Garden, we will be endeavoring to use plants mentioned in both these stories [‘Prelude’ and ‘The Garden Party’] and others. In The Garden Party, there were only a few plants: roses, daisies, calla lilies, arum lilies, lavender and karaka. ‘Prelude’, out of all her short stories, contains the most varieties of plants: arum lilies, camellias, syringa, roses, fairy bells, geraniums, pelargoniums, mignonette, red hot pokers, Japanese sunflowers (maybe Japanese wildflowers), violets, picotees, aloe, daisies, fuchsia, box hedging and verbena. The majority of these plants grew at Chesney Wold, Karori and are included in our garden in Hamilton. Through her story-telling, Katherine manages to blend a real event with real settings to create a famous short story which comments on social issues and attitudes of her time. At the Hamilton Gardens, all we have to do is to try and capture the setting of her story within the spirit of the garden. No pressure then!

Gardens with Roses, Fuschia, Cosmo and Lilies

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Curator Talk and Mansfield Garden Walk by Martin Griffiths

KM’s story ‘The Garden Party’ was chosen to be the latest fantasy garden at the Hamilton Gardens by accident, at least as far as director Dr Peter Sergel, who has been heading the design team since the early 1980s, is concerned. The literary theme was selected from several initial ideas that included Lewis Carroll’s Alice Through the Looking Glass and Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden. ‘The Garden Party’, which is based on a real event, does not exactly fit the brief as a fantasy story, a discrepancy that Sergel only noticed once there was no turning back from the plan. A happy accident I think. Three aspects determined the design of the garden: the specifications of 75 Geraniums alongside the walkway Tinakori Road where the original party took place; the social function of the garden of the Victorian age and the emergence of a driveway for motorized vehicles of the Edwardian era (for specifics of the driveway plantings the designs of Gertrude Jekyll were consulted). While the selection of plants is covered by Bernard Breen’s description above, it is worth noting that the images from November and December represent the late spring or early summer period rather than the late summer fruition of the real Wellington scene. In reality flowering would occur later in Wellington than the Waikato, so the difference would in fact be minimal. Sergel informed us that some of the roses, which were donated by the Katherine Mansfield Birthplace Society (25 Tinakori Pond with tennis court and Karaka road), were refugees from the collapse of trees in the background

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Issue 31 December 2018 37

the brick retaining wall after the 2016 earthquake. He pointed out the difficulty of determining whether these varieties were original to Tinakori road, and that the only real guarantee was that all the roses were pre -1910. These details were considered when planting all the species currently on display. Similarly considered decisions were made regarding the placement of the orchard with Damson Music students from Waikato University plumb, quince, pear and hazelnut trees, and the pink seat that KM is purported to have sat on with her brother Leslie. After the talk it was fascinating to speak directly with Bernard Breen. As the head gardener her chose the specific plants and has been entrusted with maintaining the future plantings. It was interesting to hear that Bernard’s great grandparents were neighbors of KM in Tinakori road. Earlier in the day we enjoyed a presentation by Penny Jackson at the Waikato Museum in Hamilton, which centered on the Waikato Garden Party Exhibition and the 1918 portrait of KM by Anne Estelle Rice. I was fortunate to see this work in the context of the contemporary painting and sculpture at the national portrait gallery in Wellington in September but somehow it was even more commanding to see the original oil in the intimacy of the smaller regional Curator and presenter Penelope Jackson at Waikato Museum space.