Mansfield-Murry letters

Press, 17 December 1988, Page 23

Mansfield-Murry letters

Dr Cherry Hankin, reader in English at tne university of Canterbury, responds to a review of her new boo “> Letters between Katherine Mansfield and John Middleton Murry.

Most authors accept philosophically the fact that reviewers sometimes express ill-judged or biased opinions about their work. Downright misrepresentation of a book’s contents is, however, a far more serious matter that requires correction.

man she chose as her partner. There are no intrusive footnote numbers, although short explanatory notes can be found at the back of the book. The only other obvious signs of the editor’s hand in the 400-odd pages of text are brief linking passages between the thirteen chronological sections into which the book is divided. These passages, totalling fewer than eight pages, provide factual, background information which is necessary if the reader is to follow the course of the relationship.

Elaine Whelen concludes her review (“The Press,” December 10) of my recently published “Letters Between Katherine Mansfield and John Middleton Murry,” with the strange statement that “to read Katherine Mansfield’s stories, journals and letters is to hear ‘the mermaids singing.’ It is made more difficult in this collection due to the editor’s intrusive commentary directing the reader towards a sympathetic interpretation of Murry's actions.”

John Middleton Murry has always suffered bad press because he was merely Katherine Mansfield’s lover and husband. Although I allocated far more space to Mansfield’s letters than to Murry’s, I committed the crime (in the reviewer's eyes) of reminding readers in my introduction that there are two sides to any story.

Leaving aside the questionable connection between Katherine Mansfield’s writing and the singing of mermaids, the reviewer’s accusation of editorial intrusion is demonstrably, untrue. My “intrusion” as editor in this correspondence between Mansfield and Murry (here juxtaposed for the first time) consists principally of a seven-page introduction which, among other things, explains that the letters focus upon the troubled relationship between Katherine Mansfield and the

Even worse, it seems, I asked for “a fair-minded estimation of the man to whom (Mansfield) wrote: ’I feel no other lovers have walked the earth more joyfully — in spite of all.’ ” If I have intruded anywhere, it is possibly on the prejudices of those not prepared to grant Murry the fair hearing that is long overdue.