NEGLECTED GRAVE.

Star (Christchurch), Volume LXVI, Issue 20340, 25 June 1934, Page 5

NEGLECTED GRAVE.

Katherine Mansfield’s Resting Place. FONTAINEBLEAU PILGRIMAGE. (Special to the “ Star.”) AUCKLAND, June 26. The parish cemetery at Avon, close to Fontainebleau, is visited almost every day by American admirers of the work of New Zealand’s greatest writer, Katherine Mansfield, according to a statement made by tlie cemetery custodian to Mr. P. L. Soljak, late of the “Auckland Star,” who saw the grave while visiting Paris last Christmas. It seems that after her deatli at the Gxirdgieif Institute—a T.B. sanatorium —in 1923, Katherine Mansfield was given a temporary grave in the pauper cemetery nearby. Her relatives, learning tliis, had her body removed to the graveyard at Avon. A stone bearing an inscription which includes a quotation from Shakespeare’s Henry IV.: “But I tell you, my Lord Fool, out of this nettle danger we pluck this flower safety,” was set up, and a sum of five pounds a year set aside by her father, Sir Harold Beauchamp, to be spent by the cemetery authorities on the upkeep of the grave. That this duty is neglected is apparent, for the grave shows no sign of attention. In May bust it was visited by Mr. Clive Yockney—a New Zealand scholar—who noted its neglected appearance. Evidently nothing had been done to remedy this up to the end of last year, for when Mr. Soljak saw the grave in December last it was in the same state of neglect, the stone being discoloured, with grass sprouting through, and weeds from an old grave nearby spreading over it. The memory of this daughter of New Zealand is honoured by Americans,, who journey from Paris to place offerings of flowers in homage of her who is named ae one of the world’s uhiee greatest writers of short storjes. On the occasion of Mr. Soljak’s visit there was a vase filled with artificial flowers placed there a week previously by an American lady.