Katherine Mansfield, The Woman Behind The Books (Including Letters, Journals, Essays & Articles)
I loved my life. My greatest delight was to find fresh flowers to love, and my greatest sorrow was if they should die. I remember the year the spring was late in coming. I had stolen out into the garden in the dead of night to cover by a blanket a snowdrop that had flowered the day before.
“In the summer when the trees in our wood were in full leaf, and the bracken was high and dainty and green, I used to linger for hours. One day, how well I remember it, I brought with me a tall lily I had found lying across the garden path, and I began to talk to it in a low, dreamy voice. Suddenly I paused. Someone was coming toward me, singing a strange little French song. It was a woman dressed all in a white, soft gown open at the throat, and long, loose-hanging sleeves. In her hands she held roses — red, red roses. I was so hidden in my little bracken nest that she could not see me. My heart beat fast and I felt the colour rush to my face. I had dreamed of her — no ordinary, living woman, but a fairy, or a Goddess of the Wood. Nearer and nearer she came, with her head held high, and a strange, sweet light in her eyes. Then I stretched out my arm and plucked at her sleeve. She looked down at me, startled. ‘Only a little child,’ she said. ‘Is this your wood? Why are you here all alone?’ But I hid my face in her dress and sobbed. In a minute she was down beside me. She took me on her lap and pushed my thick, heavy hair back from my hot face, and kissed me, and begged me to tell her what was the matter. ‘Nothing, nothing,’ I sobbed, ‘but they don’t understand me at home.’ …”
To the family she was “the difficult child,” and “hard to understand.” When her father saw the plump little figure sitting hunched over, idly dreaming, wastefully doing nothing, he called to her sharply:”Sit up straight, Kass! You’ll never grow that way!”
And as she grew older she rebelled outright, at times, and became the outlaw:
“She stood at the scullery door and called, ‘Pat, Pat.’ The sun streamed over the courtyard. The pincushion flowers stood limply and thirstily against the wall of the feedroom….
“… ‘Pat, make it all right with the family if they kick up a shindy. I am so dead sick of them all — I must go off.’ She laid her hand caressingly against the arm of his old blue shirt. ‘Done, Miss,’ said Pat. And he stood in the paddock and watched her mount and ride out of sight. Riding was as natural as walking to her. She held herself very loosely and far back from the waist like a native riding — and fear had never entered into her thoughts.
“‘I like riding down this road with the sun hurting me,’ she mused. ‘I love everything that really comes fiercely — It makes me feel so fighting, and that’s what I like.
“‘I wish I hadn’t quarrelled with Father and Mother again. That’s a distinct bore — especially since it’s only a week to my birthday’.”
The family doubtless had no idea of the quick perception of this fat little girl who could be jolly and play with the other children in the usual fashion. In fact, those who were grown-ups then — teachers, aunts, friends — say that Kass Beauchamp was “the last child in the world they ever expected to become a writer.” To them, she was “careless,” “lazy,” “impatient,” “indifferent,” “dull,” “slow and fat.” They felt she needed prodding to quicken her perception and to make her more alert, and sweeter— “like her sisters.” That she should be hypersensitive enough to remember for years a chance look between the grown-ups — passed over her head — would certainly have seemed to them incredible. As it would have seemed had they been told she bore it hard that her sisters seemed preferred before her, since everyone responded to their soft sweetness.
There were occasions such as this:
“On the way home from school” (after Kass had won the green-plush-bracket-and-frog “poetry prize,” and had given it up to Chaddie, instead — because Chaddie never won anything)”we passed the Karori bus going home from town full of business men. The driver gave us a lift, and we bundled in. We knew all the people.
“‘I’ve won a prize for po’try!’ cried Mary in a high, excited voice.
“Good old Mary!’ they chorused.
“Again she was the centre of admiring popularity.
“‘Well, Kass, you needn’t look so doleful,’ said Mr. England, laughing at me; ‘you aren’t clever enough to win everything.’
“‘I know,’ I answered, wishing I were dead and buried. I did not go into the house when we reached home, but wandered down to the loft and watched Pat mixing the chicken food.
“But the bell rang at last, and with slow steps I crept up to the nursery.
“Mother and grandmother were there with two callers. Alice had come up from the kitchen; Vera was sitting with her arm around Mary’s neck.
“‘Well, that’s wonderful, Mary,’ Mother was saying, ‘such a lovely prize, too. Now you see what you really can do, darling.’
“‘That will be nice for you to show your little girls when you grow up,’ said grandmother.
“Slowly I slipped into my chair.
“‘Well, Kass, you don’t look very pleased,’ cried one of the tactful callers.
“Mother looked at me severely.
“‘Don’t say you are going to be a sulky child about your sister,’ she said.
“Even Mary’s bright, little face clouded.
“‘You are glad, aren’t you, dear?’ she questioned.
“‘I’m frightfully glad,’ I said, holding on to the handle of my mug (‘A silver mug — the handle of mine being silver, was always red hot, so that I had to lap up what was inside, like a kitten!’), and seeing all too plainly the glance of understanding that passed between the grownups…. Mary’s bed was in the opposite corner of the room. I lay with my head pressed into the pillow. Then the tears came. I pulled the clothes over my head. The sacrifice was too great. I stuffed a corner of the sheet into my mouth to keep me from shouting out the truth. Nobody loved me, nobody understood me, and they loved Mary without the frog, and now that she had it I decided that they loved me less….”
Yet it would be as inexact to say she always felt left out of the family, as it would be to say she felt completely one of them. But, apart from her temperament, the very time of her birth made her “the odd one” : Vera and Marie, being the oldest and more alike, paired off; the two babies played together. This inevitable division among the children certainly accentuated Kathleen’s natural consciousness of isolation and aloofness. In a New Zealand family,”the oldest” has great preference. The third child is of comparatively little importance — except while she is “the baby.” There had been a new baby when Kathleen was four and a half; and soon after the family moved to Karori, the long-hoped-for “Boy” was born.
Leslie Heron Beauchamp was not merely the only boy; he was an adorable, laughing, fair-and-curly-haired baby, besides. When he was christened at the Karori Church, he was given the best names the family could provide. He was named Leslie after C. R. Leslie, who had painted great-grandmother Stone, and Heron after great-uncle Henry Herron Beauchamp of Australia (the father of his second cousin Elizabeth). It was only after the baptism that his father discovered a mistake made in the spelling of one name: the “Boy” had been christened Leslie Heron.
He and Vera were the chosen children of the five in the subtle ways of living. But in the ordinary sense — in the visible ways — they all played together and had a great deal of fun, as on the day of the great Appollinaris adventure:
“‘Now let’s go and play shipwrecks,’ suggested Beggles. There’s a huge Appollinaris case in the back yard. We’ll drag it round to the Dead Sea.’
“They found the case in the coal house, and pushed and pulled and groaned till they reached … a strip of waste ground where docks and long straggling grass grew in profusion.
“‘Now for provision,’