KATHERINE MANSFIELD’S AT THE BAY

Turnbull Library Record, Volume 2, Issue 2, 1 October 1969, Page 80

KATHERINE MANSFIELD’S AT THE BAY

Maude E. Morris

Mrs Morris has written an article refuting several arguments of Mr Newlove in the April issue; but as this is too long for publication in the Record, she has, at our request, submitted this abridged version.

I have to thank Mr Barry Newlove for his detailed research into the situation of the house At the Bay, and welcome him to the growing number of Katherine Mansfield enthusiasts in New Zealand.

I would repeat that my theory is based on my knowledge of the landscape, the legacy of Sir Harold Beauchamp's letters and the notes about his conversation with my husband. A pioneer must expect his thesis to be altered by subsequently found truths. The main point on which Mr Newlove joins issue with me is whether the house At the Bay is on the eastern hill side or on the western flat side of Muritai Road. Mr Newlove and I differ in our interpretations of the meaning of the words 'up' and 'down'. I maintain that Katherine Mansfield used them in the ordinary sense of different levels; he that they are used on one level, as 'up to the house', 'down to the gate', which meaning cannot be applied in a general sense, eg to a house built below road level.

There were, strictly according to the dictionary definition, no bungalows at the Bays. The Glen has as much right as any other cottage in the Bays to be called a bungalow, a word more generally understood by the English, for whom the story was written, than our colloquial words. Before 1902 there was a paddock in front of The Glen, 2 roods 8.7 perches of land having been added to the property in that year, after the house was built, and after Katherine Mansfield was at the Bay. In Muritai, as Mr Newlove states, the hills are at the back of the bay; they are also at the back of The Glen. His house would be built on the flat land, facing the main road, without much view except of the hills and the bush. Katherine Mansfield wrote 'And from the bush there came the sound of little streams flowing, quickly, lightly, slipping between the smooth stones . . .' One would need to be near the bush to hear the little streams, but there was a stream flowing beside the Glen. And her phrase: 'gushing into ferny basins and out again'. There used to be a small waterfall on the opposite side of the valley from the Glen which exactly fits this description. And again: 'a faint stirring and shaking, the snapping of a twig'. The bush almost touched the north-east corner of the house, but such gentle bush sounds would not be heard in a bungalow across the road.

The important question in this discussion is whether Mr Harold Beauchamp leased more than one house at the Bays. It has been established that he leased The Glen.

In a letter to my husband on 8 February 1937, Sir Harold wrote: ‘Dear Sir, This morning I am in receipt of your letter dated sth instant in which you seek further information concerning my daughter, Katherine Mansfield. Before I purchased the property - already referred to - in Day’s Bay, I took a furnished cottage for my family at Muritai, and she made the acquaintance of a Mrs Jones - I fancy my daughter made use of her in one or two of her sketches.’ In all their correspondence, Sir Harold did not mention any other house; and until there is evidence that the Beauchamp family lived in any other Bay house, I still maintain that The Glen, to which every piece of descriptive writing in Katherine Mansfield’s At the Bay can be applied, is the Burnell House.