KATHERINE MANSFIELD

Greymouth Evening Star, 22 August 1939, Page 10

KATHERINE MANSFIELD

FRENCH PEOPLE ERECT PLAQUES LONDON, June 19. A tribute to Katherine Mansfield was paid by Mr. Hugh Sellon, representing the British Ambassador in Paris and LTnstitut Britannique. at a ceremony at Fontainbleau, honouring her memory following the unveiling of a plaque at Prieure, where she lived, and another at her grave at Avon. Hqj* name was also given to an important junction of five cross roads and a road is to be named after her. The occasion was organised by La Societe des Amis de la Foret de Fontainbleau and by the Sydnicat d’lnitiative. There were over 100 people present, the High Commissioner of New Zealand, Mr. W. J. Jordan, was unable to be present, and he was represented by Baron Soren. The occasion was described at Fontainbleau as "a very important manifestation in connection with French and English literature.” Katherine Mansfield went to Prieure d’Avon for her health, and died there on January 9. 1923, at the early age of 34. She had suffered for some time from tuberculosis. Mr. Hugh Sellon, representing Sir Eric Phipps, said that it was a great honour to take part in the commemoration of a writer who, British by birth and tradition found in France strength and inspiration as well as her last home.

“Katherine Mansfield indeed, personifies by her life and her death that elope affinity which has not for generations merely, but for centuries, closely bound up the cultures of France and England,” said Mr. Sellon. “It has been too often forgotten before the evolution of our time brought our countries into their present and inseparable unity—that if any European nations can trace back their civilisations lo a common source, those nations are France and England. By their common Celtic ancestry, by their inheritance of the tradition of Rome, by their destinies closely' bound up in the Middle Ages, tho two great nations of the west have a common view of the nature of man and the part he is to play in the world.

“Katherine Mansfield was born in the remotest part of the British Empire. She was a daughter of that southern island which, in many of her novels, she describes with such precision and such charm. She always loved New Zealand, sometimes so far as to be homesick., and with that deeprooted affection which is known only to exiles. “Nevertheless, from her first visit to- London she became essentially a European, and when we read and reread her books and still more her letters. we wonder sometimes whether seme profound heredity did not strengthen the Celtic and Anglo-Saxon elements of her culture. "Her name was French and perhaps her family, like many British families, was of French origin. However, the case may be, there are in the thoughts and writings of Katherine Mansfield many aspects which are both typically English and French a' the same time. “For example, her humour. How spontaneous it is' Dow natural il is. an English humour of the people which has so long been a safeguard of that people, both against public, dangers and also against, the more frequent evile of daily life. “ ‘The. frantic desire for a new hat is to bo heard in the spring.’ wrote Katherine Mansfield. with her profound understanding of feminine psychology. She seizes the capricious ■ weaknesses of the human heart, just as she plumbs its most tragic abysses, and. like her favourite Dickens, her

own saddness in face of the tragedies of life does not prevent her from enjoying its absurdities. ESSENTIALLY ENGLISH “In like manner she is essentially English by her sense of tradition and her way of understanding its value. •People must have roots,’ she writes. ‘Those who have none fade at the setting of the sun.’ Iler own wandering and restless life, in search of health and peace, so rarely _ successful —and never tor long—in their pursuit, this life clearly demonstrated to her this truth, and her sufferings and disillusions thus became the inspiration of her work. “And in this traditionalism, as evident in her judgment of life as in her style, she is the true daughter of the nation, which perhaps more than any other, has prized the stability of tradition provided that it proceeds side by side with a critical and curious spirit such as the displayed bv Katherine Mansfield. ‘“Katherine Mansfield has been called a realist .She would be the first to glory in that term. Bat man is a. spiritual being, and all the studies of Katherine Mansfield on the actions and reactions of man bring home tnis fact. Where so many other realistic authors of the last 50 years show the actions of man in the impossible «.w. unreal void of naturalist philosoiw Katherine Mansfield shows actions as they are, in all then mad ness—and also far too often in all i their baseness. . , “But it is a real and living picture which she draws, because she is always conscious of the spiritual and eternal element which alone gives significance and interest to the actions and events depicted with so m fidelity . And this clarity ot vision which’is not afraid of truth, precise y because she knows that truth has with in it an element which cannot be coirupted. is essentially French; I’rencn in her logic and her absence of sentimentality; French in her sense 01. spiritual values. “Here we can put Katherine Mansfield in the place to which she is entitled in the history of literature ot the twentieth century. This lies, 1 think, at the intersection of the roads of the painfully honest and essentially sad philosophy of the oldest, naturalist writers and that of the new realism, which does not need to be sad because it knows that truth, when contemplated in its entirety, can only be a source of 1 “The true crisis of her life is a crisis of belief. She was too honest to, derive any consolation from reliance, on the authority of others. She was too honest to close her eyes to the apparent pain and futility of the world which surrounded her. “She never obtained in this world the peace to which she aspired; but the combination of her absolute sincerity and her desire for faith which fills all her works is her legacy to the literature of the future. It was necessary lor her to suffer and to be frustrated in order that her writings should be the sources of inspiration, which lie within the domain of thought as well as that of style. “‘I, too, am athirst!” she cried one Good’ Friday. ‘I am attached to the Cross. Oh. let. them hasten to crucify mo so that I may in my turn cry out that all is consummated!' We find in her the terrors and the struggles which there are always in the hearts and minds of the elect during the,revolutionary periods of human thought. i “It must always be so and that is, the ransom for all who have charge] of souls. Posterity is the beneficiary and it hardly appreciates what it owes to those solitary souls in whom there] have been fought those fights which bring peace to those who come after. “On her tomb they have engraved, ;

i‘Among (he nettles we pluck this fjower—safety.’ From the battle which her life was she has passed into the safetv which knows no trouble. Beneath the shady foliage of Fontainebleau which she loved so much during the last months of her life, her ever restless soul had found eternal peace, and her compatriot, with emotion.

joins with you. her friends, and th £ friends of her country, in paying thifc tribute of homage to her memory.”