The Complete Works of Katherine Mansfield. Katherine Mansfield
the Veil
INTRODUCTORY NOTE
KATHERINE MANSFIELD died at Fontainebleau on January 9th, 1923, at the age of thirty-four.
This volume contains all the complete stories, and several fragments of stories, which she wrote at the same time as, or after, those published in "The Garden Party and Other Stories." Her earlier work, belonging to the period between her first book, "In a German Pension," and her second, "Bliss and Other Stories," will be published in one or two separate volumes in a collected edition of her work. Thus the continuity of her writing will be preserved, and an opportunity given to those who care for such things to follow the development of a talent now generally recognised as among the rarest of her generation.
The title of this volume, "The Doves' Nest and Other Stories," is the title which Katherine Mansfield intended to give to it. Whether the stories which compose it are those she would finally have included in it, I cannot say. Her standard of self-criticism was continually changing, and changing always in the direction of a greater rigour. In writings which I thought perfect she, with her keener insight, discerned unworthy elements. Now that I am forced to depend upon my own sole judgment, it has seemed to me that there is not a scrap of her writing—not even the tiniest fragment—during this final period which does not bear the visible impress of her exquisite individuality and her creative power.
On October 27, 1921, soon after she had finished and sent to her publisher the stories which compose "The Garden Party," she wrote the following plan of her new book in her journal. (The letters L. and N.Z. mean that the stories were to have London or New Zealand for their setting.)
STORIES FOR MY NEW BOOK
N.Z.Honesty: The Doctor, Arnold Cullen and his wife Lydia, and Archie the friend.
L.Second Violin : Alexander and his friend in the train. Spring... wet lilac... spouting rain.
N.Z.Six Years After : A wife and husband on board a steamer. They see someone who reminds them. The cold buttons.
L.Lives Like Logs of Driftwood: This wants to be a long, very well written story. The men are important, especially the lesser man. It wants a great deal of working... newspaper office.
N.Z.A Weak Heart: Roddie on his bike in the evening, with his hands in his pockets, doing marvels by that dark tree at the corner of May Street.
L.Widowed: Geraldine and Jimmie, a house overlooking Sloane Street and Square. Wearing those buds at her breast. " Married or not married " . . . From autumn to spring.
N.Z.Our Maude: Husband and wife play duets : And a one a two a three a one a two three one ! His white waistcoats. Wifeling and Mahub ! What a girl you are !
N.Z.At Karori : The little lamp. I seen it. And then they were silent.
N.Z.Aunt Anne: Her life with the Tannhauser overture.
Of these stories only the one called At Karori and subsequently entitled The Doll's House was finished, three days later, on October 30. Of some of the remaining stories there are considerable fragments, of three of them I have so far discovered no trace at all. All the fragments I have found which indubitably belong to any of these stories I have included in this volume. I have also included other fragments which seemed to possess a separate existence, but I have reserved most of the shorter pieces for publication with her Journal.
Between October 1921, when the original plan of this volume was sketched, and the end of January 1922, she finished other stories which she had not foreseen. These were A Cup of Tea, Honeymoon, Taking the Veil, and the long, unfinished, yet somehow complete piece, A Married Man's Story. In January she also began The Doves' Nest, a story which was particularly important to her, and with the writing of which —at least at the beginning—she was satisfied. She wrote in her journal on New Year's Day, 1922 :
Wrote The Doves' Nest this afternoon. I was in no mood to write ; it seemed impossible. Yet, when I had finished three pages, they 'were all right!' This is a proof (never to be too often proved) that when one has thought out a story nothing remains but the labour.
She worked on and off at the The Doves' Nest during the following summer also. Unfortunately I can find no trace of her own manuscript. There is a fair, clean copy, typewritten by herself, of the portion printed in this book, but nothing more.
In February 1922 began three months of an exacting medical treatment in Paris, during which work became more and more a physical impossibility. Nevertheless, at the beginning of this time, on February 20th, she wrote The Fly. On her return to Switzerland in June she tried to resume work on The Doves' Nest and she wrote the scenario of a play ; but again physical weakness made work in the mountains impossible. To ease the strain on her heart she descended in to the valley in June. At Sierre she wrote more of The Doves' Nest, much more, alas, than remains; she also began the unfinished piece called Father and the Girls and finished the short story called The Canary. These were the last of the stories written by her which can be exactly dated. There is reason, however, to believe that the passage of the story called Six Years After which ends with the words: "Can one do nothing for the dead ? And for a long time the answer had been—Nothing !" was actually the last piece written by her. It seems to belong to the autumn of 1922, when she had, for a time, practically abandoned writing.
It was not, however, because of her physical weakness that she stopped writing in the late summer of 1922. The power of her spirit to triumph over the frailty of her body had been proved over and over again. She stopped writing deliberately, not under compulsion. She felt that her whole attitude to life needed to be renewed, and she determined that she would write no more until it had been renewed.
Perhaps an idea of the way of her mind—or rather her whole being—was moving, may be gleaned from some extracts from her journal. At first, her dissatisfaction with her work took shape in a feeling that she was not exerting the whole of her powers or expressing the whole of her knowledge in her writings. As early as July 1921, when she was still engaged on the last of the stories for "The Garden Party," she wrote :
July 1921. I finished Mr and Mrs Dove yesterday. I am not altogether pleased with it. It's a little bit made up. It's not inevitable. I meant to imply that those two may not be happy together—that that is the kind of reason for which a young girl marries. But have I done so ? I don't think so. Besides it's not strong enough. I want to be nearer—far nearer than that. I want to use all my force, even when I am taking a fine line. And I have a sneaking notion that I have, at the end, used the doves unwarrantably. Tu sais ce que je veux dire. I used them to round off something—didn't I ? Is that quite my game ? No, it's not. It's not quite the kind of truth I'm after. Now for Susannah. All must be deeply felt.
And a few days later she wrote :
July 23. Finished An Ideal Family yesterday. It seems to me better than the Doves, but still it's not good enough. I worked at it hard enough, God knows, and yet I didn't get the deepest truth out of the idea, even once. What is this feeling ? I feel again that this kind of knowledge is too easy for me; it's even a kind of trickery. I know so much more. It looks and smells like a story, but I wouldn't buy it. I don't want to possess it—to live with it. No. Once I have written two more, I shall tackle something different—a long story— At the Bay, with more difficult relationships. That's the whole problem.
Yet a little later her vision of the cause of her own dissatisfaction deepened, and she began to