Museum Notebook: The lasting legacy of Katherine Mansfield

A photograph of Katherine Mansfield reading outside taken by Lady Ottoline Morrell, c1916-1917. Image / Creative Commons CC-BY

January 9, 2023, marks 100 years since the passing of New Zealand-born author Katherine Mansfield.

Kathleen Mansfield Beauchamp was born in Wellington on October 14, 1888, the third of six children born to Harold and Annie. Australian-born Harold was 2 when his family moved to Aotearoa, eventually settling in Whanganui in 1869. He attended Collegiate School from age 11 to 14 then worked in his father’s business before moving to Wellington in 1876.

In Wellington, Kathleen attended Karori School and Wellington Girls’ High School before enrolling in Mary Anne Swainson’s Private School. One teacher described her as “a surly sort of girl … imaginative to the point of untruth”. She developed a love of writing early and had some pieces published in school magazines.

The Beauchamps travelled to London in 1903 and Kathleen and her older sisters stayed to attend Queen’s College for three years. Back in Wellington, Kathleen hated the rigid society and became rebellious, alternating social calls, cello lessons and typing classes with tramping in Te Urewera and intimate relationships with men and women. She had some success with her writing and adopted the pen name Katherine Mansfield.

She yearned to return to London and Harold agreed, providing an allowance of £100 per year. She returned in 1908 and socialised with modernist authors, artists and philosophers but her career was slow with few pieces published.

In 1909 she fell in love with the twin brother of her long-term pen-pal and became pregnant to him but married another man. She left her new husband on their wedding night to live with her long-term girlfriend known as LM. Hearing this, Katherine’s mother travelled to London to take her to Germany before returning home and removing her from her will. Katherine miscarried before returning to London.

With work inspired by her time in Germany, Katherine’s reputation as a writer was growing but her health began to fail; she was prone to pleurisy and suffered a long-term venereal infection.

In 1917 Katherine was receiving treatment for pleurisy when doctors found a spot on her lung and diagnosed tuberculosis, advising her to move to France for the better climate. In 1918 she suffered a tubercular haemorrhage. She returned to London briefly to finalise her divorce and marry editor John Middleton Murry, then returned to Europe.

Her health continued to decline but Katherine wrote several well-received pieces and planned more. However, she suffered a fatal haemorrhage on January 9, 1923, and after a small service was buried at Avon-Fontainebleau.

Only 34 years old, Katherine changed modern literature. Her work created a new form of fiction which focused on making fleeting moments of ordinary lives significant and beautiful, in a short story format that required a mastery of language. She veered away from straightforward narration, instead telling the story through memories, thoughts and sensations. Cleverly written, her work is based on real-life experience that makes it relatable to a wide audience. At the time it received mixed reactions; Virginia Woolf claimed jealousy of her ability, while TS Eliot described her as thick-skinned, toady and “a dangerous woman”.

Katherine only published five volumes of work (three while living and two posthumously) but her work has been translated into more than 25 languages. Her life and work have been turned into books, plays, television shows and movies, and the house she was born in is now a popular museum.

* Sandi Black is the archivist at Whanganui Regional Museum.