"ALL'S WELL!"

Evening Post, Volume CVI, Issue 46, 1 September 1928, Page 27

"ALL'S WELL!"

KATHERINE MANSFIELD'S ■ ;JOURNAL ' (Written'for "The Post" by Una Currie.) "The Journal of Katherino Mansfield" is interesting reading. Most diaries are by., virtue of the eonstitu■tibjii=-- -U'hcy .are Hhccxpucssipn. of the..; bidden workings of the inner mind, an expose of secret thoughts • and faiths, 'secret bright enthusiasms, of all the queer growings and twistings of the mind. Any diary on this account alone has a very real chance of waking in us a responso and an excitement. When it : comes from one whose passion for truth and sincerity amounted almost to an ob-. sossion, and., who so fiercely burned, with I desire "For ono moment to make our undiscovered country leap into tho oyes of'the' Old World," it has a doublo claim oil our attention. "The Journal of Katherino Mansfield" is the journal of our Kathorine Mansfield. We ar. tho people, the people sho loved —"of them, too, I want to write. Another 'debt of love. 5 " Poor ill-fated Kathcrine! New Zealand was her birth-place, but at Foiitainoblou she died. Between the two what years of mingled Buffering and happiness lay! There is a good deal of the suffering in the Journal. With her life-blood spurting out between tho entries in spasms of consumptive coughing, one can hardly wonder at it. It was well that, sho could find delight in such small things., ..things such as. the view from her window, which..*as ."so tremendously exciting, 'with '..a' high" wind blowing and tho glass dashed with rain." Some people live their three score years arid" ten without dreaming that such a thing cau be "tremendously exciting." But Katherme was wise. She knew the loveliness of simplicity in all things, and the beauty of "A red ar)ple among oranges adding fire to tho flame." There are sentences in her. Journal that fly across the page in glints of colour like brilliant swift-winged birds. Sentences like this:. The ring of the coast is violet. In the lilac sky thera are dark banners, and little black boats manned by black' shadows put out on tho purple water. Or like this: In the sky there is a flying yellow light like the wings of canaries. Then there is her genius for imagery; the description of an old man who chopped, chopped, "as if it were a heart.beating out there." The sjiadow of a roso tree lying on the grass "like a tiny bouquet." A sea which was "a real sea," that fell with a loud noise and had "a long silky roll in it as though it purred." And, best of all, this about sleep and little children : They simply must have one more little sleep —tho best sleep of all —the warm, soft, darling little rabbit of a sleep. . . . Just let me luig it ono minute more before it bounds away. ' . ■ . ■Evon'-.a strictly adult mind can appreciate the poignancy of this, particularly on a morning when the fog sirens are sounding or the pane is blurred with racing rain!! Every now and again, largely before the end of the-record, when intolerable pain racked her to the point of exhaution, come flashes of delightful fun.and quick philosophy. There is her vastly entertaining letter to her close friend, Frederick Gopdyear, killed at the .war in 1917. Goodyear had written to her to say that "If Lovo were only Love when it was resistless," thou ho did not love her. But if it were "a relative emotion," then ho did. She concludes her reply by farcwclling him, with her tongue in her cheek, "With strictly relative love. . ..." In the .same letter sho also expresses most can-, didly her. weariness with the thriftincss of the poor French during that lean and trying time. She hungers for "English food, decent English waste!" and puts on record her consuming desire to buy "a pound of the best butter and put it on the. window sill and watch it melt to spite 'em." Later sho writes, irreverently but delightfully: •' ' ' ■■' ; • • '.•■■ - : Whenever 1 sco babies in arms T am struck again by their resemblance to tho dear old Queen. ... If only Her Majesty had deigned to be photographed in a. white woollen bonuet with a little frill of eiderdown round it, there'd bo no tolling tho difference. Especially if sho could havo been persuaded to sit on Grandpa Gladstone's knee for the occasion. . . . As an illustration of the superiority of mind over matter there is the following, written at a time when Katheriuo was suffering that attack of pleurisy which later turned to tho disease that, killed her: , Verses Writ in a Foreign Bed. Almighty Father of AU, and Most Celestial Giver, Who has granted to us Thy children a heart and lungs and a liver. If upon me should descend Thy' beautiful gift of tongues, Incline uot Tliino omnipotent car to my remarks on lungs. She wishes (with many .others of us) that ono could toll truo love from false as one tells mushrooms from . toadstools. . . . "It takes a dreadful number of toadstools to make you realise that life is not one long mushroom," and would "always rather bo with people who loved me too little rather than with people who loved me too much." There speaks the wisdom of the ages, and in this also: How immensely easier it is to attack an insect that is running away from you rather than ono that Is running towards you. Not everyone will agree with this pungent little criticism of E. M. Forster (who wrote "A Passage to India"): . . . B. 51. Forster never gets any.further than warming the teapot. He's a rare fine hand at that. Peel this teapot. Is it not beautifully warm? Yes, but there ain't going to bo no.tea. It may be controversial, but it is clever. Perhaps it was written after that "very bad lunch" during which the unfortunate Eatherine: had to eat "a small tough rissole' which was no use to the functions." Here is an apt thumb nail sketch of that bovine type that is always so mad-i deningly, so superbly unerithusiastic, so stolidly immovable, so. . . . Oh, here it is! She was the same through and through. You could go on cutting slice after slice and you linew you would never light on a plum or a chorry or even a pjece of peel. Ko, no surprises. No nothin'. As a piece of cheerful philosophy, K.M. might well have dedicated this on "Living Alone" to all self-support-ing women: Kveri if I should, by some awful chance, flnfl n hair in my bread and honey—at any rato.it is my own hair. ... ... Fitfully enough, the journal ends with the words, "All's well." Neurotic it undoubtedly is to an extent, but under similar circumstances whose would not havo been? Recollect that, added to all else —her intenso bodily sickness and her mental and spiritual restlessness, this burden, to one who loved intensely, was also imposed on her: Not a single one of Katherine Mansfield's friends who went to tho war returned alive from it. Not one. And, towering above all elso, was the death, also through ' tho ' war, of her brother "Chummie," whom -she worshipped with an almost terrifying worship. Is it any wonder that tho war a}ono made a profound and ineradicable impression, as Middleton Hurry says, on so sensitive a mind? Perhaps by now "our own K.M." has found that pink garden seat of her childhood days that she always hoped to. sit on iv Heaven with Chummie. Howover that may be, sho at least found the world "excessively lovely," and the world for that must have given her much loveliness in spite of :ill bodily pain.