Mansfield image ‘completely false’

Press, 15 January 1979, Page 18

Mansfield image ‘completely false’

NZPA l.ondon The image of Katherine Mansfield given to the world after her death was a completely false one created by her husband, John Middleton Murry, to ease his guilt about the way he treated her, according to the American biographer, Jeffrey Meyers, in a recently published book, “Katherine Mansfield — A Biography” “In writing far more about Katherine than any other literary critic and maintaining exclusive control of her manuscripts until his death in 1957 he created a false legend which eased his guilt and filled his pockets,” says Meyers in his concluding chapter. “When Murry’s critical debris is cleared away, the Katherine that emerges from the ruins is a darker and more earthly, a crueller and more capable figure than in the legend.” Although many biographies have been written about the New Zea-land-born writer, Meyers’ is significant in that it is the first to be published since Murry’s death. He has had use of much material that was previously unavailable to biographers. Katherine Mansfield Beauchamp was born into a wealthy Wellington family in 1888, was sent to London for her secondaryschool education, but was brought home immediately afterwards. She showed literary promise and a ke -n interest in writing from her early youth. But while she found in New Zealand the characters, locations, and inspiration for many of her best works, she also found ’ife'in the then small and solated colony impossible to tolerate after her experiences m London. “If I had to live here I’d go and die under a manuka tree,” she wrote to a friend. She also described her family as “absolute bores” and disliked her domineering and aggressive father. The two persons who wielded the greatest influence' in her life, Murry

and her rather, Sir Harold Beauchamp, chairman of the Bank of New Zealand, caused her great unhappiness and emotional trauma throughout her brief life and failed to ever really understand her needs or desires. Meyers is strongly critical of both men for this. “In February, 1923, just after Harold was knighted for financial services to New Zealand, he gave $6003, over twice the total amount he had given to Katherine, to help establish a national gallery of art in Wellington,” he says. “If Harold had been a true patron of the arts and shown the same generosity to his daughter as he had to his city, he could have easily eliminated her constant anxiety about money, improved her health, and even prolonged her life.” As well as the tuberculosis which plagued her for most of her adult life and finally caused her death in 1923, Katherine was constantly troubled by financial problems. She led an impoverished and unsettled life in London, constantly moving house as her financial position dictated. She received little monetary reward for her writing during her lifetime and the often damp and draughty dwellings in which she was forced to live further damaged her fragile health. Her father sent her a moderate allowance but tended to stop it whenever he disapproved of her activities or heard that she had received some payment for her work. Her husband did little to ease her financial worries and this also angered her father. She was even forced to bear most of her substantial medical costs alone. “Harold enjoyed the power of money and could not give up his last vestige of control over Katherine. who was fiercely independent and deeply resentful of her subjugation.” writes Meyers. Katherine and Murry frequently lived apart

throughout their stormy relationship, often at times when his help and support were most needed by Katherine. “Murry’s weakness, insecurity, dependence, and naivety aroused Katherine’s maternal feelings. She was attracted to Murry partly because of her revulsion against her aggressive and domineering father. But she did not realise that when she rejected masculine authority she also gave up the emotional support she rightly felt was essential for the development of her artistic gifts.” Meyers says that Katherine needed emotional protection and support. But although Murn' was a charming and attractive man he was also insensitive and remarkably stupid. Katherine seemed both to love and loathe him. Meyers reveals Katherine’s deep longing to have the child she never did and the profound effect on her emotional stability of a miscarriage and the abortion he claims she had shortly afterwards. The inevitability of her death was apparent to her for several years before she actually died, but she understandably had great difficulty coming to terms with it. ' ‘‘l’m sick,” she wrote to a friend, “of people dying who promise well. One doesn’t want to join that crowd at all.” But in spite of the increasing severity of her illness it was in the last months of her life, when she lived in the Swiss mountains, that she wrote the best of her stories, including “The Garden Party” and “At the Bay,” both set in the familiar surroundings of her New Zealand childhood. Meyers shows a great appreciation of Katherine Mansfield’s work, and also of the strength and bravery it must have taken a young woman of her time to break with her family and cross the world to fight her way through what was often a very difficult and discouraging lift in London.