Katherine Mansfield, The Woman Behind The Books (Including Letters, Journals, Essays & Articles)
Then it was only at rare intervals that something flashed through all this busyness, something about Spenser’s Faery Queen or Keats’s Isabella and the Pot of Basil, and those flashes were always when I disagreed flatly with H.G. and wrote in my notes : ‘This man is a fool.’ And Cramb, wonderful Cramb! The figure of Cramb was enough, he was ‘history’ to me. Ageless and fiery, eating himself up again and again, very fierce at what he had seen, but going a bit blind because he had looked so long. Cramb striding up and down, filled me up to the brim. I couldn’t write down Cramb’s thunder. I simply wanted to sit and hear him. Every gesture, every stopping of his walk, all his tones and looks are as vivid to me as though it were yesterday — but of all he said I only remember phrases—’ He sat there and his wig fell off’—’ Anne Bullen, a lovely pure creature stepping out of her quiet door into the light and clamour,’ and looking back and seeing the familiar door shut upon her, with a little click as it were, — final.
“But what coherent account could I give of the history of English Literature? And what of English History? None. When I think in dates and times the wrong people come in — the right people are missing. … But why didn’t I listen to the old Principal who lectured on Bible History twice a week instead of staring at his face that was very round, a dark red colour with a kind of bloom on it and covered all over with little red veins with endless tiny tributaries that ran even up his forehead and were lost in his bushy white hair. He had tiny hands, too, puffed up, purplish, shining under the stained flesh. I used to think, looking at his hands — he will have a stroke and die of paralysis…. They told us he was a very learned man, but I could not help seeing him in a double-breasted frock-coat, a large pseudo-clerical pith helmet, a large white handkerchief falling over the back of his neck, standing and pointing out with an umbrella a probable site of a probable encampment of some wandering tribe, to his wife, an elderly lady with a threatening heart who had to go everywhere in a basket-chair arranged on the back of a donkey, and his two daughters, in thread gloves and sand shoes — smelling faintly of some anti-mosquito mixture.
“As he lectured I used to sit, building his house, peopling it — filling it with Americans, ebony and heavy furniture — cupboards like tiny domes and tables with elephants’ legs presented to him by grateful missionary friends…. I never came into contact with him but once, when he asked any young lady in the room to hold up her hand if she had been chased by a wild bull, and as nobody else did, I held up mine (though of course I hadn’t). ‘Ah,’ he said, ‘I am afraid you do not count. You are a little savage from New Zealand’ — which was a trifle exacting, for it must be the rarest thing to be chased by a wild bull up and down Harley Street, Wimpole Street, Welbeck Street, Queen Anne, round and round Cavendish Square….
“And why didn’t I learn French with M. Hugue-net? What an opportunity missed! What has it not cost me! He lectured in a big narrow room that was painted all over — the walls, door, and window-frames, a grey shade of mignonette green. The ceiling was white, and just below it there was a frieze of long looped chains of white flowers. On either side of the marble mantlepiece a naked small boy staggered under a big platter of grapes that he held above his head. Below the windows, far below there was a stable court paved in cobble stones, and one could hear the faint clatter of carriages coming out or in, the noise of water gushing out of a pump into a big pail — some youth, clumping about and whistling. The room was never very light, and in summer M.H. liked the blinds to be drawn half-way down the window…. He was a little fat man.”
That is a perfect picture of Cramb, the disinterested and unregarded scholar, upon whom a sudden blaze of national repute descended in the early years of the Great War; and then he died. But the rapt attention which Kathleen gave him — though not his lectures — was peculiar to herself.”Nobody saw it, as she did.” And in fact the effect of Cramb’s lectures upon his class was, occasionally at least, not wholly different from the effect of M. Hugenet’s lectures upon his, as described in Carnation :
“He began, and most of the girls fell forward, over the desks, their heads on their arms, dead at the first shot.”
On one such occasion, it is remembered, the beautiful Isobel Creelman attracted the notice of the shortsighted Cramb; and to his question what she thought she was doing, replied with calm impertinence :”I’m closing the ink-well to keep the ink from evaporating.”
A characteristic story of Cramb is told by one of Kathleen’s contemporaries. He was describing to a very dull girl the impression made upon him when he read The Arabian Nights for the first time.”Didn’t you,” he said in his fierce Scottish accent,”when you first read The Arabian Nights imagine you saw a genie coming out of every jar or bottle?” “No,” said the hapless creature. Cramb made a desperate pause : then gathered himself together and, with one of his rare, exquisite smiles, said :”Do you mind supposing that you did?”
By her own confession Kathleen learnt little under Cramb; and the records bear it out. She was fourth or fifth from the end in a class of forty in her first year. It was no better with Hall Griffin — another distinguished scholar. In the English language examination she was among the last five; and even in an English composition examination in Easter, 1904, she was only seventh among fifteen. Her deep personal interest in Walter Rippmann, though he singled her out as a girl with a destiny, did no more than make her progress in German erratic.
In her journal for July, 1904 — when she was fifteen — is a careful list of her recent reading. It serves to remind us that she was a schoolgirl still.
Books I have read. June, 1904.
All books which I have enjoyed are marked thus
Life And Letters Of Byron, I. Thomas Moore. B., J. 17; F., J. 17.
Aftermath. J. Lane Allen. B., J. 17; F., J. 17.
Dolly Dialogues. Anthony Hope. B., J. 17; F., J. 18.
Poems. Jean Ingelow. B., J. 13; F., J. 14.
Life And Letters Of Byron, Ii. Thomas Moore. B., J. 17; F., J. 18.
How Music Developed. Henderson. July 16.
The Choir Invisible. J. Lane Allen. July 18.
The Captain’S Daughter. Swen Ovedor.(?) July 20.
Life Of Romney. Rowley Cleve.(?) July 15–20.
A Kentucky Cardinal. J. Lane Allen. July 23.
Life And Letters Of Byron, Iii. Thomas Moore.
Rupert Of Hentzau. Anthony Hope. July 24.
My Japanese Wife. Clive Holland.
A Japanese Marriage. Douglas Sladen.
Captain Pamphile. Alexander Dumas.
Vilette. Charlotte Bronte.
The Heart Of Rome. F. Marion·Crawford.
Poe’S Poems.
Music I have studied.
Caprice. Noel Johnson. July 13–14.
Warum. David Popper. Begun J. 13.
Le Desir. Servais. Begun J. 14.
Variat. Symphon. Boellmann. Begun J. 15.
Writing I have done.
Franz (Prose). 13–17.
Poem. 16th.
Alone (Poetry). 14th.
Schoolgirlish, too, were her arguments in the College debating club, of which the proceedings are amusingly and candidly described by a critic in the College Magazine.
“The Proposer gave a speech proposing; the Opposer gave a speech opposing. Two more speeches were made — one for each side, usually by the dearest friend. After this, fell an awful silence finally broken by some courageous individual, venturing to remark — more silence. Then a few opinions uttered in hesitating or questioning accents. Another terrible silence, broken by the announcement that voting would be taken. Voters voted according to whether they