Monetary Equivalents Selected amounts of money (referred to in the text by *) and their value in 2005. In pre-decimal British currency one shilling = 5p, therefore the 15 July 1918 entry of £6 6s. should be understood as £6.30. Date Amount UK US Australian New Sterling Dollars Dollars Zealand 2005 2005 2005 Dollars 2005 1 October 1907 £2 140.95 275.98 344.29 391.85 24 August 1908 £100 6,798.26 13,310.90 16,605.40 18,899.60 June 1912 £10 659.36 1,291.02 1,610.55 1,833.06 6 March 1916 £156 7,046.34 13,796.70 17,211.40 19,589.30 1 February 1917 £35 1,306.32 2,557.77 3,190.82 3,631.65 February 1918 £208 6,748.67 13,213.90 16,484.30 18,761.70 15 July 1918 £6 6s. 204.41 400.23 499.29 568.27 January 1919 £800 24,489.49 47,950.40 59,818.10 68,082.40 August 1919 £300 9,183.56 17,981.40 22,431.80 25,530.90 September 1920 £40 1,070.48 2,096.00 2,614.76 2,976.00 c. 22 May 1921 FR2,000 1,144.44 2,239.95 2,794.34 3,180.39 7 September 1921 £10 295.49 578.60 721.77 821.48 7 September 1921 £12 354.59 694.29 866.12 985.78 1 November 1921 £300 8,864.74 17,357.10 21,653.00 24,644.50 31 January 1922 FR4,500 3,030.41 5,933.54 7,402.09 8,424.74 92 A Who’s Who in the Mansfield Chronology There is no set pattern in the entries which follow and the length of an entry does not necessarily reflect the importance of that person in Katherine Mansfield’s life. Rather they are designed to give sub- stance to the lives of those people who figure in Mansfield’s life, and indeed to say more about her own life, in a way that the format of the preceding narrative does not permit. Where it is deemed par- ticularly helpful, there are references to the Chronology and works cited in the Bibliography. Baker, Ida Constance (LM) (1888–1978) was born in Stuston, Suffolk, the daughter of a colonel. (‘Constance’, ‘daughter’ and ‘colonel’ inevitably call to mind Constantia and ‘The Daughters of the Late Colonel’. As Ida Baker herself said in her book, she is gently caricatured in that story.) When she was still a baby the family went to Burma, not returning until she was seven. They then settled in Welbeck Street, London, and Ida and her sister entered Queen’s College School (the junior part of Queen’s College) as day girls. They moved to Queen’s College itself in 1901. Ida’s mother died early in 1903 so she became a boarder at the college like KM (nine months her junior) and her sisters who entered the college during the same year. The two girls met immediately and, some months later, KM, rather oddly, proposed friendship. When Ida was study- ing to become a professional violinist she wanted to take her mother’s name, Katherine Moore. But KM wanted ‘Katherine’ for herself and proposed she take her brother’s name, Lesley. Thus ‘Lesley Moore’, so often shortened to ‘L.M.’, was born. 93 94 A Katherine Mansfield Chronology From the time they met until KM’s death 20 years later, Ida Baker is far and away the most important woman in KM’s life. Servant, companion, friend, confidante, wife, she selflessly played whatever role KM wanted her to. During those 20 years there were only three periods of time when she was not either living with her or avail- able at her beck and call: (1) when KM returned to New Zealand, October 1906 to August 1908; (2) when Ida was in Rhodesia for a few months in 1911, her father and brother having settled there the year before and (3) when she was again in Rhodesia, travelling there in late March 1914 and returning in the autumn of 1916. Of course Ida experienced the totality of KM’s emotional range during those 20 years, from deep venomous hatred to utter dependence on her. After KM entered Gurdjieff’s Institute (Ida’s contemporary diary fixes the exact date) she took a job on a farm at Lisieux, near Caen. All too soon she was called to attend KM’s funeral. After KM’s death Murry employed Ida to type her manuscripts for £10 a month, a good choice as she was used to KM’s execrable handwriting. Ida also worked as a housekeeper for Elizabeth Russell (Beauchamp) in her London home and at a bungalow in Wood- green, a village in the New Forest. There in 1942, with a woman friend she had made, Helen Harvey, she moved into a small cottage. Her companion died the following year but she stayed on and in 1971 finally published Katherine Mansfield, the Memories of LM, with a linking commentary by Georgina Joysmith and a foreword by the pioneering American Mansfield scholar, Sylvia Berkman. This book she intended as a vindication of KM who had been, as she saw it, done down, sold short by a wide circle of people both in her life and after her death in memoirs, reminiscences and biographies. She thought KM’s father mean towards her and could not forgive Murry for publishing so much of her writing posthumously when she (KM) had expressly ordered the opposite. She also thought that Antony Alpers had got things wrong in his first biography of KM (1953) despite her assisting him in preparing it. Of KM’s friends only Koteliansky comes out well in her book. Beauchamp, Annie Burnell (AB) (1864–1918) was born in Sydney, Australia, to Joseph and Margaret Isabella Dyer (née Mansfield). Shortly after her marriage to Harold Beauchamp in 1884 her mother and two of her sisters, Kitty and Belle, came to live with them. Thus A Who’s Who in the Mansfield Chronology 95 it was that Granny Dyer rather than Annie Beauchamp became the most important adult in the early lives of the children (and the affection she lavished on them is returned in the portrayal of the grandmother figures in the stories). Against Annie Beauchamp’s action in cutting KM from her will on her return from Europe in 1909 (Chronology, 13 August 1909) may be balanced KM’s tribute to her on hearing of her death (Chronology, 8 August 1918). Beauchamp, Harold (HB) (1858–1938) was born in Ararat in the State of Victoria, Australia, in November 1858, the eldest surviving child of Arthur and Mary Elizabeth Beauchamp née Stanley (Eliza- beth Stanley was a pseudonym KM occasionally used). His father, something of a rolling stone, moved his growing family to Picton on the north-eastern tip of South Island, New Zealand, in 1861 and Harold went to school there. After some years in Wanganui, on North Island, the family moved in 1876 to Wellington and the fol- lowing year Harold joined the importing firm of W.M. Bannatyne and Co. It is probably not too much to say that he turned the for- tunes of the company round, becoming a partner in 1889 and sole partner five years later. In 1884 he had married Annie Burnell Dyer whom he had been courting since she was 14 and who, like him, had been born in Australia. They were years of great success for Harold. In the 1890s he began to gather company directorships such as the Gear Meat Company and the Equitable Building and Invest- ment Company. As detailed in the Chronology, he regularly moved his family to bigger and better properties. In 1898 he became a director of the Bank of New Zealand and its chairman in 1907. That same year he arranged for a local reporter, Tom Mills, to evaluate KM’s work. This led to her publication in the Melbourne periodical, the Native Companion, later in the year. Having thus helped to launch her career (and also paying for his three eldest daughters to finish their education in London, 1903–6), he now proceeded to grant her an allowance of £100 p.a. on her return to England in 1908. Over the years this was regularly increased: in 1916 it was £156, in 1919 £260 and by November 1921 £300 p.a. (see the table of Monetary Equivalents). Despite her fears that he might stop her allowance he never did. Nor did he take the (surely reason- able) attitude that once she was married to Middleton Murry, the latter should assume sole responsibility for providing for her. He was 96 A Katherine Mansfield Chronology similarly generous to his other daughters all of whom, like KM, eventually left for the northern hemisphere. Meanwhile his wife Annie had died in 1918, leaving him a lonely man. In January 1920 he married Laura Bright, a family friend. After KM’s death three years later, he arranged that 47 Fitzherbert Terrace, Wellington, her last address in New Zealand, be donated to the nation and the proceeds used towards the establishment of a National Art Gallery. He was also persuaded to donate £200 to the Alexander Turnbull Library for the purchase of her first editions. In 1929 he was dismayed to learn that her body was not in a proper grave but in the ‘fosse commune’ at Avon which could be re-used. With- out bothering to contact Middleton Murry, for whom he seems to have had little time, he sent Jeanne’s husband, Captain Renshaw, to France to sort the matter out.