Katherine Mansfield: A Secret Life | Claire Tomalin

_{Katherine Mansfield was born a century ago and died in 1923, but there is still something tantalizing about the ‘faint ghost with the steady eyes, the mocking lips and, at the end, the wreath set on her hair.’*}

*quote from The Diary of Virginia Woolf: 1925-30 (1980)

I read, but did not particularly enjoy Claire Tomalin’s biography about Thomas Hardy: The Time-Worn Man a number of years ago. The fault was not Tomalin’s though, it was Hardy himself. I found him to be a rather disagreeable man and Tomalin was unable to convince me otherwise. Maybe it’s something to do with being a creative genius, but many literary biographies depict their subjects as being rather unpleasant people – often selfish, arrogant, demanding and false – they often treat those who love them poorly. The flip side being their charming, entertaining, passionate side that draws people to them. In Hardy’s case, I could find little of this side to make up for the other. I suspect Tomalin had the same problem.

In Katherine Mansfield’s case, she presents her honestly, warts and all. The warts are pretty warty, but the all is delightfully wonderful. When Katherine Mansfield sparkled she truly sparkled, even her many flaws glittered bright. She was hard to ignore or forget. She got under people’s skin and crept into their hearts. She annoyed them and angered them, but they always came back for more. Others loathed her with an equal passion, but came to admire her work, or at least her dedication to writing and modernism and experiencing life on her terms.

Katherine Mansfield: A Secret Life has been languishing on my TBR for many years, but 2023 marks one hundred years since she died of tuberculosis at age 34. To commemorate this event another Clare (Harman) published All Sorts of Lives: Katherine Mansfield and the Art of Risking Everything which I began reading a couple of months ago. Her approach is to reveal biographical details via ten of KM’s short stories. I’m really enjoying it, but the difficulty with this approach means that the biographical information comes out in a non-chronological fashion. It wasn’t necessarily a problem until I was about halfway through. I was getting a little confused and felt like I needed a detailed chronological overview to appreciate this approach all the more.

So I picked up Tomalin’s book to fill in the gaps.

I’m so glad I did. She writes such engaging, interesting biographies. She gives you plenty of detail, such as quotes from letters and early stories without overwhelming you with every single thing KM ever wrote from age eight (I’m looking at you Heather Clark, author of Sylvia Plath’s bio, Red Comet)! I also trust the interpretations that Tomalin draws – they come from her deep research as well as her personal awareness of issues that women face who try to break into areas traditionally dominated by men.

I was fascinated to learn that Tomalin had started researching a biography about Mansfield in the mid 1970s, but put it aside after Jeffrey Meyers publilshed his biography on KM in 1978, then Antony Alpers with another one in 1980 that revised his earlier work from 1953.

It took her a number of years to feel that she might be able to bring something new to KM’s story, “a different perspective“. She admired Alpers approach but felt he was “inclined to accept (J. M. Murry’s) version of those events in which he was involved.” Meyers she found more cynical with his focus on Mansfield’s darker side without “fully exploring the nature of this darkness.”

Tomalin’s aim, then, was to explore KM’s medical history more carefully to reinterpret “certain key questions in her life” as well as the blackmail episode in 1920. She also felt that KM’s friendship with D. H. Lawrence had been “underplayed“. Furthermore Tomalin had access to the OUP Collected Letters of Katherine Mansfield Vol I & II and the Cambridge University Press Letters of D. H. Lawrence Vols I, II, II & IV which were not available to Alpers or Meyers. She concluded her Foreword with,

_{Hers was a painful life, and it has been a painful task to write about it; but I am glad to have done it, and to have had the chance to salute a character in whom recklessness and scrupulousness combined in so extraordinary a fashion.}

I hope this shows you why I instantly felt in very safe hands. I was confident I was about to read a thorough, sympathetic and thoughtful exploration of KM’s life. And that is exactly what I got.

The book contains an extensive notes section as well as a comprehensive bibliography. The appendix includes KM’s very first short story, ‘Leves Amore‘ plus the 1951 correspondence from The Times Literary Supplement discussing the issue of plagarism or adaptation of Chekhov’s story, Spat khochetsia, by KM into The Child Who Was Tired.

Tomalin believes that this was a “minor and forgivable action: she had not copied the story so much as used it.” Naturally there is a fine line between “mimicry and plagarism“. Tomalin sensitively discussed how this tension affected KM – her fear of being “caught at any sort of disadvantage, exposed to mockery, vulnerable to gossip” – and her concern about what Murry would think of her. “The fear of exposure must have nagged and tormented her like a sharp pebble in her shoe.“

One can never know for sure, of course. KM’s actions and reactions towards this story and to the blackmail attempt suggest a guilty conscience (you can read both stories by clicking on the links above) or at least embarrassment. Tomalin’s timeline of events suggest a mix of youthful carelessness and creative homage that got away from her. Once she made the error of judgement to publish the story without proper acknowledgement KM was caught in a web of her own design. Every time she tried to wriggle away from it, she found herself even more entangled. A messy, uncomfortable quandary that couldn’t be wished away or ignored, no matter how hard she tried.

This post is now long enough. There will be lots of overlap with Clare Harman’s book. So I will leave us with Tomalin’s opinion on why Mansfield’s stories still resonate one hundred years later.

_{Her voice was the voice of modernity, bright, short-winded, sometimes whimsical, often ambiguous, with no claim to wisdom and no time for the scene-setting of the classical novelists. Her territory was that of the fragile emotions, half-understood feelings, the fine edge between the ridiculous and the pathetic; she could render the vulnerability of the young, the sad stirrings of the sick, the jealous, the powerless, those who make animals or inanimate objects the focus of their feelings.}

Title: Katherine Mansfield: A Secret Life
Author: Claire Tomalin
ISBN: 9780241963302
Imprint: Penguin
Published: 21 June 2012 (originally published 29 October 1987)
Format: Paperback
Pages: 292
Dates Read: 10 March 2023 - 30 April 2023
Origin: TBR

This post was written on the traditional land of the Wangal clan, one of the 29 clans of the Eora Nation within the Sydney basin. This Reading Life recognises the continuous connection to Country, community and culture of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. They are the traditional custodians of the lands, seas, and skies on which we live and they are this nations first storytellers.