Katherine Mansfield, The Woman Behind The Books (Including Letters, Journals, Essays & Articles). Katherine Mansfield
she pulled up the blind next morning the trees outside were being tossed to and fro … and the sea lashed into fury by a wild south-easterly gale. Juliet shuddered. The wind always hurt her — unsettled her. It was a Saturday, so there was no thought of school. She wandered about all the morning, and in the afternoon put on her reefer coat and went for a walk up the hills that spread like a great wall behind the little town. The wind blew fiercer than ever. She held on to bushes and strong tufts of grass, and climbed rapidly, rejoicing in the strength that it required. Down in a hollow, where the gorse stirred like a thick green mantle, she paused to recover breath. The utter loneliness of it filled her with pleasure. She stood perfectly still, letting the wind blow cold and strong in her face, and toss her hair. The sky was dull and grey, and vague thoughts swept through her … of all the Future … of her leaving this little island and going so far away — of all that she knew and loved — all that she wished to be. ‘O I wish I was a poet,’ she cried…. She walked home more slowly. Now that the excitement of climbing had left her, she felt tired and depressed. Clouds of dust whirled up the road. Dry particles of dust stung her face. She longed for the evening to come, yet almost dreaded it.
“When tea was over, Juliet went back to her room — tried to read and failed, and walked up and down — nine steps one way, nine steps another. The feeling soothed her.
“She heard the front door bell ring, and knew that the guests had come, but stayed there until Margaret brought her down with great indignation. The room seemed full of people, but Juliet was not shy. She held her head a little higher than usual, and an expression of absolute indifference came into her face. David stood by the piano, unfastening his music case. She shook hands with him, and threw him a quick, keen glance of recognition. Then she curled herself up in a corner of the sofa and watched the people with amusement and interest. She liked to listen to little pieces of conversation, and create her idea of them. There was the usual amount of very second rate singing concerning ‘Swallows’ and ‘Had I Known’; Margaret played several nondescript pieces on the piano. At last David, himself, came…. She became utterly absorbed in the music. The room faded — the people faded. She saw only his sensitive, inspired face — felt only the rapture that held her fast…. Suddenly the music ceased. The tears poured down her face and she came back to reality. She put her handkerchief to her eyes, and when she looked around, became aware of the amused glances of the company, and heard the steady, almost prophetic-sounding voice of David’s Father—’ That child is a born musician.’ … Mr. Wilberforce praised the boy and said, ‘You might come and give my little daughter a few lessons and see if she has any talent.’ She never forgot their leave-taking. The wind was furious, and she stood on the verandah and saw David turn and smile at her before he passed out of sight.”
It must be remembered that this account of the meeting between Kathleen and Arnold Trowell was written in 1906, four years after the event. The event in the life of the girl of thirteen is transformed into the experience of the young woman of seventeen. The Kathleen Beauchamp who was enraptured by the boy’cellist was still a child. There is a contemporary record of her feelings in a little manuscript book of verses, called Little Fronds, which she composed on the voyage to England. They are quite naive; nor do they show any particular promise. The gulf between the author of Little Fronds and the author of Juliet was immense; so was the gulf between the girl-admirer of the boy musician on the voyage to England in 1903 and the distinctly sophisticated young lady on the voyage back in 1906.
Meanwhile, before the family left New Zealand, she persuaded her father to let her take’cello lessons from old Mr. Trowell. Mr. Beauchamp, too, was musical; his wife and Vera were pianists; Kathleen of course, had taken desultory piano lessons from Mr. Parker. Her father was very proud of this new enthusiasm of hers, and bought her the expensive instrument and paid for her tuition. She threw all her suppressed ardour into learning to play; it became her passion. She even dressed in brown, when she could, to “tone” with her’cello. For the first time in her life she surrendered herself completely : she felt that she was a violoncello.
In January, 1903, the Beauchamp family sailed for England in the s.s. Niwaru, going the long route round the Horn. At the first port Kathleen wrote back to Arnold Trowell in Wellington — a letter so glowing, so gay, so vividly casting the picture of Mexicans against the gorgeous tapestry of their country — that he awoke to her existence as he never had awakened to it when she lived in Tinakori Road. He himself had never been further than the South Island of New Zealand. All his imaginative dreams were thrown out toward this new world that he was to discover; she was already a part of it — who was already there. He identified her, as he read her descriptions, with this gorgeous Unknown. He thought all the outer world must be like that; and she belonged to that world. Their correspondence continued, almost uninterrupted, for the next six years. Kathleen felt that “he was the first person with whom she could really be herself.” Arnold felt that “she really understood him.” They “told each other everything.”
On the Niwaru the Beauchamps and the officers made a family party, of which record remains in a photograph. In the little budget of immature verses which she wrote on the voyage, we hear of a tiger-cub which the Chief kept during the day in No. 2 hold and exercised at night upon deck, to the alarm of the women-passengers. But of that incident apparently no memory remained nearly twenty years after, when she wrote to her father:
“I envy you your voyage in the ‘Aquitania.’ I must be a most interesting experience to travel in one of those huge liners — very different to the good old ‘Star of New Zealand.’ Still I have a very soft corner in my heart for the ‘Niwaru,’ for example. Do you remember how Mother used to enjoy the triangular-shaped pieces of toast for tea? Awfully good they were, too, on a cold afternoon in the vicinity of the Horn. How I should love to make a long sea voyage again one of these days! But I always connect such experiences with a vision of Mother in her little sealskin jacket with the collar turned up. I can see her as I write.”
About six months after the Beauchamp girls, the Trowell boys sailed for Europe. They gave two farewell concerts in Wellington at the end of June, 1903,”before their departure from Wellington to prosecute their studies in Leipsic,” as the enthusiastic press notice put it. But it was not to Leipsic that they went, but to Brussels.
CHAPTER VIII
LONDON
“No indeed, for you are called sweet Kate, gentle Kate.” — Taming of the Shrew (K. M.’s Album).
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WHEN they arrived in England, after a month spent in visiting various relations, the Beauchamp girls entered Queen’s College in Harley Street in April, 1903. It was the natural place for them. Cousins of theirs were at the College. Probably it was regarded by Miss Swainson as the ideal of all that a “ladies’ college” at home should be. Certainly it represented the first great effort of Victorian England to meet with due decorum the new demand for the adequate education of women. It had been advanced; but advanced within the bounds of the Victorian tradition, to which the Beauchamp family adhered — the more loyally because they had to cling to it across a hemisphere.
The College had been founded in 1848. It owed its existence in part to the Governesses’ Benevolent Institution, and in part to the exertions of Frederick Denison Maurice, that pioneer of education. In the’forties it was advanced indeed; but now, in 1903, by remaining faithful to itself, it had become a conservative academy, in need of drastic reorganisation, which was to overtake it some years after- wards. But when the Beauchamp girls entered it, the heads — the old Principal, and the Lady Resident, Miss Croudace — were elderly, and the methods a survival from a past generation.
It had about forty boarders,”Compounders” they called themselves. They lived under the care of Miss Clara Phenessa Wood, in an old Harley Street house, No. 41, adjoining the College at No. 45. Long stone stairs and dark cold passages led to odd cubicle bedrooms tucked away in every available corner. From the top of No. 41 a