Katherine Mansfield, The Woman Behind The Books (Including Letters, Journals, Essays & Articles)
from Anikiwa, even though it was on the same Sound and only ten miles away. And Picton in the ‘nineties was quite other than Picton in the ‘sixties. Grass was growing in the narrow streets, and cows grazed in them, and strolled lazily among the shabby houses and old wooden shops. The lovely little seaport had gone to sleep for ever.
The “General Merchant Store,” built for grandfather Beauchamp on Wellington Street, was only 150 yards or so from the boat jetties and wharf. From that water-front, Kathleen might have imagined herself on the shores of a lovely lake. In the sunlight it was blue and sparkling; but the town faces north, and sudden grey squalls rise quickly in the small harbour enclosed by the steep bush-clad mountains that throw their arms about Picton. Then it is dark and terrifying,”like living at the bottom of a well.” Towards evening the sense of being closed in, cut off from all the world, grows rapidly with the twilight. The western hillside looks dark and threatening in its own shadow. To the child it was like a great crouching lion, as if the bulk of shadow gathered its dark force ready to spring. Yet if she looked north, where it falls into the sea, that was the lion’s tail; and, since tails have a levity which make one laugh, the fantasy would pass.
CHAPTER IV
KARORI
“I think the only way to live as a writer is to draw upon one’s real, familiar life — to find the treasure…. And the curious thing is that if we describe this which seems to us so intensely personal, other people take it to themselves and understand it as if it were their own.” — K. M. (Letter to S. M., Cape Town.)
1
KARORI is a secluded valley 800 feet above the sea, closed in by rugged hills covered by gorse. In the ‘nineties, before the gorse had been planted for a thorn-hedge and had spread beyond control, these hills were still bush-covered. The very valley had once been a forest. Wakefield wrote in 1842:”The floor of the valley was a tract of the very finest totare timber.” But by that year the pioneers had already begun to clear and settle, finding their way in by an old Maori trail. Generations before the Maoris, who always chose the best locations for their pahs, had settled in Karori. By 1843, the road had crossed the steep part of Kaiwharawhara, and Karori was the first rural settlement connected with Lambton Harbour. The very name,”Devious,” indicated the tortuous, difficult mountain road which wound for three and a half miles S.W. from Wellington.
This was the road which the “store-man” followed on that windy night in 1893, when he collected Kezia and Lottie from their old home at 11 Tinakori Road and delivered them at “Chesney Wold.” The road began at Hawkstone Street, in Wellington; ran up Tinakori Road past the red fire-house to the Botanical Gardens, where it turned to the right (not the left as the newer tram-road does), around the horseshoe bend (where Lambton Harbour disappeared from view); to the “Shepherds’ Arms”; across the Kaiwharawhara Valley and its broad stream; up the rocky gully, and down the hill where the wild bush nearly met on either side; to St. Mary’s, the old Karori Church, and the white cemetery; on to the “Karori General Store”; then along the flat and out into the Karori valley.
There a little village of white houses clustered, almost like the ring of tombstones on the flat. The first settlers had gathered together around the house of Chief Justice Chapman, whose stockade would serve as refuge and rallying place. It never had been necessary to use this for safety, but it had drawn the early homesteads together.
The Beauchamps’ home was beyond, on the further side of the valley, not far from the South Karori Road. There was only one other homestead near. Mr. Beauchamp had bought “Chesney Wold,” a house built by Stephen Lancaster, an early pioneer. It was one of the first houses built in Karori — in the style of Colonel Wakefield’s, with low, sloping roof (which had been raised before the Beauchamps’ time), a broad verandah banked with periwinkle, and wide paddocks. The Karori stream wound below the house, down to the sea beyond the far hills at Tongue Point. There were orchards of damsons and old apple trees below the garden. It was an historic place and an old landmark; the first church service in Karori had been held in this house in 1852.
It was most unusual, in the ‘nineties, for a family to move out to Karori from Wellington, especially when the father had his business in town. Those who were children then still remember their delighted astonishment when the doll’s house arrived on the dray with the Beauchamps’ goods. Karori was an old settlement. Most of the residents had lived there for two generations.
The move to Karori meant that Mr. Beauchamp must be driven twice every day by the new gardener, Pat Sheehan, over the mountain road; or he must walk the distance. It took an hour to walk down to the Government Buildings on Lambton Quay; but the land would be valuable one day. And Karori — with its seclusion and its freedom, its fresh sea and mountain air — was a most healthful and desirable place in which small children could grow up.
2
Whether or not Karori had people who were “her people,” it certainly had many “characters” of the kind which Katherine Mansfield was to understand and illuminate later in The Aloe, and Prelude, and The Doll’s House.
About a mile up the Karori Road beyond “Chesney Wold” was “the monkey tree cottage” where Barry and Eric Waters, the two boy cousins, lived. Eric was a thin, almost effeminate child.”His shoulder blades stuck out like two little wings.” But Barry, like his pioneer namesake, was “all boy”; and “Spot,” the beautiful silky cocker spaniel, was his shadow.
Their father, Frederick Valentine Waters, was a man more at home in the child’s world than in the world of adults. His wife, who had been a Dyer, an older sister of Kathleen’s mother, was exactly as “Doady” was described: a beautiful, distinguished-looking woman with a patrician bearing, the heavy-lidded eyes and long, narrow face of the wife of Andrea del Sarto. Frederic Waters was drawn more out of line — more, as Katherine Mansfield thought later, like a Cezanne:
“One of his men gave me quite a shock. He’s the spit of a man I’ve just written about, one Jonathan Trout. To the life. I wish I could cut him out and put him in my book.”
The children’s earliest recollection of their aunt was in a darkened room, lying on a sofa with crossed hands and a general air of resignation. The room was sweet with eau-de-Cologne from a handkerchief over her eyes, and their mother was saying:”You poor dear! You always have such headaches!”
Her husband was as different from her in temperament as he was in appearance. The house simply rang with his gaiety when he was at home; and it seemed an empty shell — without even an echo — in his absence. The story is told that his marriage to her was unexpected. She was to have married another man. She was even at the church, with bridesmaids, flowers, guests all assembled.
And the bridegroom didn’t appear. Shortly afterward she was married to Frederick Waters. He never had much respect for men. He was too chivalrous. When he saw soldiers walking with their arms about girls’ waists, he was infuriated.”Men are always taking advantage of poor girls,” he said. He forever took the girl’s part and believed it was the man’s fault. If a tram in the town went a minute or two early, he champed up and down:”Some poor old lady might have wanted to get on it”; or “some one might be sick and would be too late.” He was a man of charm and kindness, yet he never got ahead. For years he was Assistant Secretary to the Post and Telegraphs, when he should have been head of a Government department. Opportunities came for him to advance; his charm advanced him, but his kindness held him back. There was always someone who, he thought, was entitled to promotion before him, or someone who, he thought, needed it more. So his real life was lived in his hobbies. He had two. One was music. He was baritone soloist with the Wellington Musical Union (under Mr. Parker); and organist at St. Mark’s Church; and he led the choir at Karori. His other hobby was gardening — or perhaps it was his excuse for playing with the children — for his results were as varied and unexpected as his