The Journal of Katherine Mansfield/Auld Author

(published posthumously, 1927)

The list of writers nabbed or injured by tuberculosis is staggering. Even Charles Bukowski, at the time living well in Los Angeles, circa 1990 got a dose, and it appears to have opened the door to his death a couple of years down the road.

Kafka, Foster, Robert Louis Stevenson, Orwell, two Brontes–the list of creative minds lost to that disease is staggering. TB, and small pox were very easy to transmit; therefore we should never forget the hardworking people smart enough to do something about them. Now, I do have sympathy for some of the ant-vaccination opinions. A friend who is nearing eighty, a well educated, fair-minded and creative man who has had his left leg in a brace since the 1950s, is no fan of vaccinations. But he broke form and took his vax when his wife (another fine person) had open heart surgery. Personally, I cannot help but feel that the shots prevented far more deaths. I apologize for this little divergent remark, but since it was said and I believe it, let’s let it stand and get on with it.

Katherine Mansfield was one of TB’s victims. She died in 1923 at age thirty-five. She kept a diary, and there was a lot of juicy stuff in it for people scandalized by lesbians and free thinking. I do not know why some people are like that, but since it too has been said, let’s let it be and move onward.

Last year I wrote a piece touting the worthiness of Mansfield’s short story collection. She was born and raised in New Zealand and much like Emily Dickenson and the Brontes, isolation helped her form her own singular mindset. She had several high thinking people in her life, but she also had enough privacy that prevented the entry of an excess of prejudices from affecting her point of view.

I imagine that it would have been difficult for a child growing up in Berlin not to become antisemetic because that was preached like the gospel. Toss in a little want and set the Chosen Ones in the dark light of the villain and, well, you can figure out the rest. And throughout Twain’s work, those featuring Tom and Huck, you clearly understood that they had no reservations about slavery because it too was not only the law but was also taught as righteous from the pulpit. And yet, there are people who can learn, who are able to see past the run of their society. Twain proved it with Huckleberry Finn famously refusing to turn Jim in. This was no small crisis of faith. He had been taught that to do otherwise meant hell. “All right then, I’ll go to hell.” And he meant it.

Katherine Mansfield’s journals convey her integrity of spirit. She confessed her love for a Maori woman, which went against both race and sexuality. And despite it all she made it clear that she wanted her journals up for publication soon after her death. Unlike Twain she had no future generations to provide for (not that she made much money), so she had no problem whatsoever getting her word out immediately after her death.

Her journal (actually a collection of journals) span roughly seven years, beginning in 1915 and closing shortly before her death. They were not focused on sexuality or disease, although both were frequent topics. She mainly made short statements, but she was not one to write petty vacuities. Moreover, Mansfield knew many well known people, such as Virginai Woolf, with whom she had a somewhat catty relationship. I hate the word “frenemy” because one should stop speaking like a thirteen-year-old schoolgirl sooner than what I see happening in this mild hellworld we have called social media. But you can safely say that as a description it has moments of accuracy.

Perhaps the best of it involved the great many pages dedicated to the construction of her work. She had a tremendously witty, facile mind. One wonders how far she would have gone if given the chance.

Dorothy Parker gave Mansfield a fitting tribute in her “Constant Reader” column, which she did for The New Yorker from 1927 to ‘28. Every week Mrs. Parker had a blast eviscerating things that needed it and was one of the rare souls who admitted that she hated A.A. Milne. I do not feel there has ever been anyone funnier in print than Twain and Parker. But in her 26 October 1927 article, Dorothy, obviously moved by the book, apologized to the spirit of Katherine Mansfield for intruding on the private beauty of her thoughts–I quote Mrs. Parker:

“Here, set down in exquisite fragments, is the record of six lonely and tormented years, the life’s-end of a desperately ill woman. So private is it that one feels forever guilty of prying for having read it.”

Yes, this is a tremendous work of art that its creator gave the last of her will and energy to to. Now pushing over a hundred years along, it still haunts and lives at once.

Leila