KATHERINE MANSFIELD

Taranaki Daily News, 18 October 1927, Page 7

KATHERINE MANSFIELD

LEAVES FROM HER JOURNAL. I.’oilffiin, Aug. 13. Not all the admirers of the late Katherine Mansfield's exquisite writings will welcome the publication of her journal (Constable)', which has been edited by Mr. J. Middleton Murry. No one can deny the extreme interest attaching to these fragments set down in diaries from 1914 to 1922, but one feels that some of the substance is too intimate for publication. During a number of these years the authoress was struggling with ill-health, rid a tragic note runs through her personal jottings which, perhaps, were not intended for the eyes of the general public. However that may be, we have in the Journal such a work as might be considered justifiable twenty or thirty years after the death of a writer who lias been proved to be among the immortals. Whether such a work has been presented too soon in the present case or not is a matter open to discussion.

“I really only asked for time to write it —lime, to write my books. Then I don’t mind dying. I live to write. The lovely world (God, how lovely the external world is!) is there, and I bathe in it and am refreshed. But I feci as though I had a duty, someone has set me a task which I am bound to finish. Let me finish it; let me finish it without hurrying—leaving all as fair as I can.” This is the desire that is oft repeated in her private writings during the latter years of her life.' Even as early as February of 1918 Katherine Mansfield wrote: “Hoiv linbearal le it would be to die—leave ‘scraps,’ ‘bits'— nothing real finished.” Even two years before she developed that pulmonary trouble which caused her death Katherine Mansfield was suffering from a rheumatic pain which had a pernicious effect on the action of her heart. In. December of 1915 she wrote: “I’ve touched bbltom. Even my heart, doesn’t bear any longer. I only keep alive by a kind of buzz of blood in my veins. Now the dark is coming back again'; only at tht windows there is a white glare. My watch ticks loudly and strongly on the bed table, as though it were rich with a minute life, while I faint —I die." SPLENDID FRAG?' I'NTS. These are melancholy reflections, and they are only a few of many that recur again and again throughout the book. L<t it not Lie supposed, howeve*, that there is not other matter which concerns the lighter side of life. There are many fragments, some of which formed the basis of her published stories; there are still more that were doubtless intended tv be used in due course. For these we have to thank the editor for bringing them to light. They are just “scraps,” “bits,” certainly,’ but they are scraps one would not care to lose. In Qie last entry of the last journal Katherine Mansfield catechises herself. Her answer to one of her own questions is: “By health. I mean the power to live a full, adult, living, breathing life in close contact with what I love —the earth and Hie wonders thereof— Hie sea —the sun. All that we mean when we speak of Hie external world. I want to enter into It, to be a part of it, to live in it. to learn from it, to lose all that is superficial and acquired in me and to become a conscious direct human being. I want by understanding myself to understand others. I want to be all that I am capable of becoming so that it may be (ard here I have stopped and waited ami waited, ami it’s no good—ther.’s only one phrase that will do) —a child 'of the sun.” “ALL IS WELL.” And so, down to the final words of Hie entry; “And this ali sound-, very strenuous and serious. But now that I have wrestled with it, it’s no longer so. I feel happy—deep down. All is well.” With these words.’’ says the editor, Katherine Mansfield s Journal comes to a fitting close. Thenceforward Hie conviction that ‘All is well’ never left her. She entered a kind of spiritual brotherhood at Fontainebleau. The obj'ct of this brotherhood, at least as she understood it, was. to help) its members to achieve spiritual regeneration. ‘•After some three months, at Hie beginning of 1923, she invited me to stay with her for a week. I arrived early in the afternoon of the 9th January. I have never seen, nor shall I ever see, anyone so beautiful as she was on that day; it was as though tho exquisite perfection which was always hers had taken possession of her completely. To use her own words. the last grain of ‘sediment,’ (he last ‘traces of earthly degradation.’ were departed for ever. But she bad lost her life to save it.”

That nigh' Katherine Mansfield died. Katherine Mansfield was born in Wellington. She was the daughter of Sir Harold Beauchamp.