KATHERINE MANSFIELD’S AT THE BAY

Turnbull Library Record, Volume I, Issue 4, 1 November 1968, Page 19

KATHERINE MANSFIELD’S AT THE BAY

Maude E. Morris

Editorial note During a recent most pleasant visit to Mrs Morris in Auckland we were pleased to have been able to encourage her to complete this paper and grace the Record by its publication. Mrs Morris with the help of her family has maintained the distinguished Katherine Mansfield collection of her late husband, Mr Guy Morris. As many members will recall it was while talking in the Alexander Turnbull Library on his favourite subject of Katherine Mansfield during the evening of 18 May 1949 that he collapsed and died three days later. of- ; 5 u. ?

Comparing the work of the New Zealand short story writer, Katherine Mansfield, with that of the Russian, Anton Chekhov, Mr V. S. Pritchett, in a talk in the BBC’s service, 1 says: ‘Chekhov knows that the mystery of life and death is not something just floating about freely in the air, but has the indispensable connotations of time and place . . . Chekhov always conveys the sense of a country, a place, the sense of unseen characters, the anonymous people who surround even our most private moments. Now, Katherine Mansfield rarely does this ... If you look again at At the Bay, which I think is one of the minor masterpieces of our language, you find yourself asking: “Who are these people? Where do they live? What world do they belong to? They seem to have dropped from the sky ... Too often we feel that there is nothing behind Katherine Mansfield’s stories, and that is a reflection of her own rootlessness”.’

In New Zealand most Wellingtonians know a great deal about Katherine Mansfield - her maiden name; the house where she was born; the houses in Karori, Tinakori Road (though that has recently been demolished) and Fitzherbert Terrace where she lived; the ProCathedral of Saint Paul where she attended services. They can point out the schools where she was educated: Karori, Wellington Girls’ High School (now College) and The Fitzherbert Terrace School. All know that THE BAY means Eastbourne or Day’s Bay, and most think of it as Day’s Bay, where, in 1907, Mr Harold Beauchamp owned a house. 2

They know also that several of Katherine Mansfield’s characters are members of her own family, which is certainly the case in At the Bay. Mr and Mrs Stanley Burnell and their family are Mr and Mrs Beauchamp, their son and three of their daughters. Even the names Stanley and Burnell are family names. Pip and Rags are Kathleen Beauchamp’s cousins Barrie and Eric Waters. Their father, Jonathan Trout is her uncle, Val Waters, drawn so truly to life that one can almost see him in the flesh and hear his resonant ‘velvety’ voice. It is interesting to note that Mrs Beauchamp’s great-aunt was Mrs Trout. The woman with whom Beryl bathed, and her handsome husband

were well known figures in Muritai. Beryl was Kathleen’s aunt Belle, whose real Christian name, Isabel, was transferred to the eldest Burnell daughter; while Charlotte’s name was given to Lottie, and Kathleen of course became Kezia. Mrs Stubbs, who kept the store, was Mrs Jones, wife of Captain H. W. Jones who was on the payroll of the Bank of New Zealand. Mrs Beauchamp had two girls called Alice in her service. The Samuel Josephs were neighbours of the Stanley Burnells in the city. My husband and I knew and talked with several of these people. Thus I have tried to answer Mr Pritchett’s question, ‘Who are these people?’

Where do they live?’ We know the addresses of the Beauchamp residences in Wellington. Where was the cottage At the Bay? Here there has been some difference of opinion. It has been asserted that it is the house that Mr Beauchamp owned in 1907 in Day’s Bay, which he afterwards sold to Mr David W. Anderson 3 - but that is not so. The geographical descriptions in the story could not have been written about that locality or that house, since the house is built very near to, and practically level with the road, and opposite a cliff; and actually the back of it rests on the sea rocks, where a wall has been erected to protect the property from the sea.

There are no streams here, no stiles, no paddocks to cross to reach the sea, no sandhills to climb over, no path running down from the house to the gate; and, the house being the next building to the wharf in those days, there was no need for a bus to take Stanley Burnell to the ferry - and - there was no bus on that road north of the wharf. In a letter to my husband, the late Guy N. Morris, dated 8 February, 1937, Sir Harold Beauchamp wrote: *. . . 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 - wife of an officer in the Bank of New Zealand - who lived only a short distance from the seafront. She was quite an original character, and I fancy my daughter made some use of her in one or two of her sketches.’

Later, in an interview in October, 1937, Sir Harold said that the cottage was rented, on the landward side of the road about a quarter of a mile south of the Rona Bay wharf; but that he himself had never stayed a night in it. The store was on the other side of the road and about opposite the cottage. Mrs Jones kept the store. My husband identified the property as the one then owned by Mr Treadgold and formerly by Mr Allan of Veitch and Allan. 4 On being pressed, Sir Harold said he was not sure that Mrs Jones kept the store. I have checked with the Eastbourne Borough Council that The Glen, built at the northern corner of what was Puriri Street Extension was

Mr Allan’s property; and I have to thank Mr H. G. Lawrence of Muritai for information about it. He noted that the name The Glen was painted on the gate, the bungalows on the front part of the section not then having been built; but the store had disappeared. He also sent me a sketch of the area, taken from a plan made in 1902. Writing in 1952, he said that the address of the house was then number 293, Main Road, Muritai.

I myself remember the Muritai store, having dealt there when, in 1905,1 spent a holiday in a cottage on the point of the coast near where the Rona Bay wharf was later built. There were very few beach cottages built then - there were only sandhills and meadows between the sea and the store, which we reached by going through a turnstile on to the Main Road. In 1942, there was a turnstile between 322 and 324, Main Road, Muritai. The store was demolished in 1938 or 1939.

A great deal of information, including the fact that a gum tree grew beside the store, was given to me by Mrs Willie Jones, daughter-in-law of Mrs H. W. Jones. She also gave me, very generously, a photograph of the store with her mother-in-law standing on the verandah, and another of her having tea in the garden near the gum tree. In the 1908 and 1909 directories of Wellington, mention is made of Mrs Willie Jones and Mr Herbert Martin, storekeepers. In 1929 Mrs Ellen Jones is listed as living at number 244 Main Road, Muritai; but no one else is listed as living on the west side of the Main Road between Puriri Street and Hinau Streets, so she may have held the frontage between. Mazzol Vs store, number 246 Muritai Road, is built between Hinau and Kauri Streets. This store could be mistaken for Mrs Stubbs’s; but it was not Mrs Jones’s Muritai store, since the buildings differed from each other in many respects.

In 1964, I asked a photographer to go with me to The Glen to take pictures of the house, and we saw, resting against the hedge on the street, an old tin panel with Wood Glen printed on it. Was this the actual name of the house? I asked the photographer to get permission from the Borough Council for me to have this panel; but when he went back for it, it had disappeared. Two new houses have been built on the property, and the entrance to The Glen has been altered. The number of The Glen was then 281 a. With this cottage in Muritai, all the details of At the Bay agree - even the washhouse where the children played the animal game was there - and they all point to the fact that Crescent Bay was Muritai. I seem to remember, also, Katherine Mansfield’s very light camouflage when the sheep were headed ‘out of Crescent Bay and towards Daylight Cove’, which surely must be Day’s Bay. Notice that she does

not write ‘into’ but ‘and towards’ Daylight Cove; for Rona Bay lies between Muritai and Day’s Bay. In order to try to identify Crescent Bay with Muritai, let us examine some of the relevant parts of Katherine Mansfield’s descriptions in At the Bay. I heartily agree with Mr Pritchett that this story is a minor masterpiece of English literature - but - only if taken as a whole. In analysis, the first paragraph would hardly pass without severe criticism from a junior form teacher because of its bad grammar, poor construction and contradictory information; as in: ‘. . . the whole of Crescent Bay was hidden under a white sea-mist. The big bush-covered hills at the back were smothered. You could not see where they ended and the paddocks and bungalows began. The sandy road was gone and the paddocks and bungalows the other side of it; there were no white dunes covered with reddish grass beyond them; there was nothing to mark which was beach and where was the sea. ... all the pinks and marigolds in the bungalow gardens were bowed to the earth with wetness.’ (But how could they be seen through the mist?)

Yet this paragraph gives us a very vivid and wonderful description of a seaside village under sea-mist, and also gives us a genuine clue about the house in Crescent Bay. We are told that the house was in front of the hills; that the paddocks and bungalows were on the other side of the road; the white dunes were beyond them; and we can presume that the sea was on the other side of the dunes. ‘Little streams flowing’ - There was a stream flowing along the southern boundary of The Glen. ‘lt was the big gum tree outside Mrs Stubbs’s shop’ - the gum tree beside Mrs Jones’s store? 5

‘a figure... flung down the paddock, cleared the stile, rushed through the tussock grass into the hollow, staggered up the sandy hillock, and raced for dear life over the big porous stones, over the cold, wet pebbles, on to the hard sand that gleamed like oil.’ - This could have happened at Muritai when Kathleen Beauchamp was in Wellington, before so many houses were built between The Glen, and the sea. ‘He ~. . dashed out of the house, and swung down the garden path. Yes, the coach was there waiting,’ - There was a bus that plied between the southern end of Muritai and the wharf at Day’s Bay. In the early years of the century, the only public conveyances between the eastern bays and Wellington were the Muritai bus and the ferry steamer from Day’s Bay to Wellington. Now there is an excellent bus service between Wellington and South Muritai by way of the Hutt Road. ‘Kelly trailed his whip across the horses.’ - The driver of the Muritai bus was Mr Dinny Kelly. ‘... whole parties appeared over the sand-hills and came down on the beach to bathe.’ - There are still some sandhills at Muritai between

The Glen and the water. At Day’s Bay there are no sandhills; the main road skirts the beach. ‘. . . a very gay figure walked down the path to the gate. It was Alice .. .’ DOWN the path. . ‘the washhouse’. - One might be forgiven, if, on seeing that very prominent washhouse at The Glen, one had cried ‘Eureka! I have found the bungalow At the Bay ‘Stanley was half-way up the path . . .’ - Up the path. The house was built on a hill. y

‘... out of Crescent Bay and towards Daylight Cove’. -1 have already mentioned this paragraph; I consider this to be one of the strongest pieces of evidence in favour of the choice of Muritai as Crescent Bay and of Day’s Bay as Daylight Cove. In every case these quotations could apply to the house at Muritai, The Glen. In no case could they apply to the house owned by Mr Harold Beauchamp at Day’s Bay in 1907. So my answer to the question, ‘Where do they live?’, would be: At The Glen, built at the corner of the main Muritai Road and Puriri Street Extension, Muritai, Eastbourne, Wellington, New Zealand. ‘What world do they belong to?’ Stanley Burnell to the world of commerce; Jonathan Trout to the world of music and his dreams; Linda Burnell to her home; Grandma to the children; Beryl to her hopes of marriage; Alice to her kitchen and her afternoon out; the children to their fun on the beach and to their games in the washhouse; Mrs Stubbs to her store.

But Stanley will become a rich merchant, a patron of the arts, a benefactor to his city and a Knight Bachelor. Jonathan will be successfully devoted to music, but his dreams will die in the ‘flu’ epidemic. Pip will belong to the theatre. Rags will choose music as his world, which he will share with a charming and gracious hostess, his cousin Lottie. Beryl will achieve her ambition and become a successful wife. ‘The boy’ will give his life for his country in Europe. Kezia will become Katherine Mansfield, world famous in literature. But, in 1968, of them all, only Isabel will be with us in our world to

remember them.

NOTES 1 New Zealand Listener, 20 September 1946. 2 Beauchamp bought in March 1906 (C/T 149/187) from Hugh Downes on what was then known as ‘Downes’s Point’ a section on which he apparently immediately erected a cottage. It is described twice by Katherine Mansfield. Firstly in a notebook (acc. no. A.T.L. 97273) ‘And another change. I sit in the small poverty stricken sitting room - the one and only room which the cottage contains with the exception of a cabin like bedroom fitted with bunks, and an outhouse with a bath, and wood cellar, coal cellar, complete. On one hand is the sea stretching right up [to?] the

yard, on the other the bush growing close down almost to my front door.’ Journal i June 1907. ! < -Hi .!! '■' o~ And later in a letter to Sylvia Payne, 4 March 1908: ‘Chaddie and I with our maid are living alone at this little cottage built on the rocks. It has only three rooms - two bedrooms fitted with bunks, and a wide living room. We had both been feeling wretchedly ill - and bored with Wellington. Oh, the tedium vitae of 19 years! so have come here, where we bathe and row and walk in the bush or by the sea ...’ It was the publication of the first reference in the Journal, (in a slightly different form) (Journal . . . 1954, p 12) which gave rise to the inference that Days Bay if not the Beauchamp House was the setting for At the Bay. 3 Beauchamp sold the property to Anderson in 1912. 4 According to Deeds records (C/T 121/74) Mrs Eliza Ann Allan, the wife of William Allan, draper, did not purchase the house until February 1913. From March 1903 until the sale to Allan it was in the name of Mrs Ann C. Barraud the wife of Sidney Clark Barraud, bank manager of Lower Hutt. S. C. Barraud (1853-1912) as an officer of the Bank of New Zealand (E. M. Barraud: Barraud, the story of a family, 1967, p 171) would have been a close business associate of Beauchamp’s and hence could have rented the house] to him although Beauchamp had in fact forgotten the name of the owner. p mtmhunoU fcfcnsH 5 See plate showing tree in front of store on Muritai Road. . . p