DOMINION WRITER

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXVI, Issue 23401, 18 July 1939, Page 3

DOMINION WRITER

KATIIERINE MANSFIELD FRENCH PEOPLE'S TRIBUTE CEREMONY AT FONTAINBLEAU [from our own correspondent] LONDON, Juno 2(3 A tribute to Katherine Mansfield was paid by Mr. Hugh Sellon, representing the British Ambassador in Paris and L'lnstitut Britanuique, 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. Her name was also given to an important junction of five cross-roads, and a road is to be named after her. Tho occasion was organised by La Societe des Amis do la Foret do Fontainbleau and by the Syndicat

d'lnitiative. 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 Januarly 9, 1923, at the early age of 31. Her Last Home Mr. Hugh Sellon, representing Sir Eric Phipps, said it was a great honour to take part in the commemoration of a writer who, British by birth and traditon, found in Franc© strength and inspiration as well as her last home. "Katherine Mansfield indeed personifies by her life and her death that close 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 political evolution of our time brought our countries into their present and inseparable unity—that if any European nations can trace back their civilisations to 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. Loved New Zealand. "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 re-read her books, and still more her letters, we wonder sometimes whether some profound heredity did not strengthen the Celtic and Anglo-Saxon elements of her culture."