Читать книгу Katherine Mansfield, The Woman Behind The Books (Including Letters, Journals, Essays & Articles) - Katherine Mansfield - Страница 17

In later years, Katherine Mansfield was laughingly disappointed over her early appearance. When her sister “Marie” sent her a photograph of herself as a baby, it was a “dreadful shock” :

“I had always imagined it — a sweet little laughing thing, rather French, with wistful eyes under a fringe, firmly gripping a spade, showing even then a longing to dig for treasure with her own hands. But this little solemn monster with a wisp of hair, looked as though she were just about to fall over backwards head overheels! On her feet she wears, as far as I can make out, a pair of ordinary workman’s boots which the photographer, from astonishment or malice, has photographed so close up that each tootsie is the size of her head. The only feature about her is her ears which are neatly buttonholed on to the sides of her head and not just safty-pinned on as most babies’ are. Even the spade she clasps with the greatest reluctance.”

But it was hardly a fair picture, for she had jaundice at three months old, and was sent to Anikiwa, in the Sounds, where her cousins remember her as “a yellow, ill-looking baby” who took an inexplicable fancy to a certain stone in the garden, and refused to be quiet unless they sat on the uncomfortable seat and nursed her.

Knowing (as did The Thoughtful Child) that “the right sort of people must expect children to sit on them,” she fortunately had a lap undisputedly her own for her first two years. She had been her grandmother’s child from the moment the old woman so unceremoniously shook her before the streaming window on the night she was born in the “Southerly Buster.” Her father was ordered “home” to England for a cure soon after her birth. Since he could never think of going far without his wife, Kathleen Mansfield was left in her grand-mother’s care. She was always to be more Mansfield than she was Kathleen. Margaret Mansfield Dyer was spiritual godmother to her, as well as grandmother.

Most children pass in the accepted manner through the hands of the angel who (in the Garden Behind the Moon where they shine the stars) wipes each child’s mind clean with a sponge when he reaches the age of three. But there was one corner in the mind of Kathleen Beauchamp which never was erased. It was the memory of a morning two days before her second birthday:

“Things happened so simply then, without preparation and without any shock. They let me go into my mother’s room. (I remember standing on tiptoe and using both hands to turn the big white china door-handle) and there lay my mother in bed with her arms along the sheet, and there sat my grandmother before the fire with a baby in a flannel across her knees. My mother paid no attention to me at all. Perhaps she was asleep, for my grandmother nodded and said in a voice scarcely above a whisper, ‘Come and see your little sister.’ I tiptoed to her voice across the room, and she parted the flannel, and I saw a little round head with a tuft of goldy hair on it and a big face with eyes shut — white as snow. ‘Is it alive?’ I asked. ‘Of course,’ said grandmother. ‘Look at her holding my finger.’ And — yes, a hand, scarcely bigger than my doll’s, in a frilled sleeve, was wound round her finger. ‘Do you like her?’ said my grandmother. ‘Yes. Is she going to play with the doll’s house?’ ‘By-and-by,’ said the grandmother, and I felt very pleased. Mrs. Heywood had just given us the doll’s house. It was a beautiful one with a verandah and a balcony and a door that opened and shut and two chimneys. I wanted badly to show it to someone else.

“‘Her name is Gwen,’ said the grandmother. ‘Kiss her.’

“I bent down and kissed the little goldy tuft. But she took no notice. She lay quite still with her eyes shut.

“‘Now go and kiss mother,’ said the grandmother.

“But mother did not want to kiss me. Very languid, leaning against the pillows, she was eating some sago. The sun shone through the windows and winked on the brass knobs of the big bed.

“After that grandmother came into the nursery with Gwen and sat in front of the nursery fire in the rocking chair with her. Meg and Tadpole were away staying with Aunt Harriet, and they had gone before the new doll’s house arrived, so that was why I so longed to have somebody to show it to. I had gone all through it myself, from the kitchen to the dining-room, up into the bedrooms with the doll’s lamp on the table, heaps and heaps of times.

“‘When will she play with it?’ I asked grandmother. ‘By-and-by, darling.’

“It was spring. Our garden was full of big white lilies. I used to run out and sniff them and come in again with my nose all yellow.

"Can’t she go out?’

“At last, one very fine day, she was wrapped in the warm shawl and grandmother carried her into the cherry orchard, and walked up and down under the falling cherry flowers. Grandmother wore a grey dress with white pansies on it. The doctor’s carriage was waiting at the door, and the doctor’s little dog, Jackie, rushed at me and snapped at my bare legs. When we went back to the nursery and the shawl was taken away, little petals like feathers fell out of the folds. But Gwen did not look, even then. She lay in grandmother’s arms, her eyes just open to show a line of blue, her face very white, and the one tuft of goldy hair standing up on her head.

“All day, all night grandmother’s arms were full. I had no lap to climb into, no pillow to rest against. All belonged to Gwen. But Gwen did not notice this; she never put up her hand to play with the silver brooch that was a half-moon with five little owls sitting on it; she never pulled grandmother’s watch from her bodice and opened the back by herself to see grandfather’s hair; she never buried her head close to smell the lavender water, or took up grandmother’s spectacle case and wondered at its being really silver. She just lay still and let herself be rocked.

“Down in the kitchen one day old Mrs. MacKelvie came to the door and asked Bridget about the poor little mite, and Bridget said, ‘Kep’ alive on bullock’s blood hotted in a saucer over a candle.’ After that I felt frightened of Gwen, and I decided that even when she did play with the doll’s house I would not let her go upstairs into the bedroom — only downstairs, and then only when I saw she could look.

“Late one evening I sat by the fire on my little carpet hassock and grandmother rocked, singing the song she used to sing to me, but more gently. Suddenly she stopped and I looked up. Gwen opened her eyes and turned her little round head to the fire and looked and looked at, and then — turned her eyes up to the face bending over her. I saw her tiny body stretch out and her hands flew up, and ‘Ah! Ah! Ah!’ called the grandmother.

“Bridget dressed me next morning. When I went into the nursery I sniffed. A big vase of the white lilies was standing on the table. Grandmother sat in her chair to one side with Gwen in her lap, and a funny little man with his head in a black bag was standing behind a box of china eggs.

“‘Now!’ he said, and I saw my grandmother’s face change as she bent over little Gwen.

“‘Thank you,’ said the man, coming out of the bag. The picture was hung over the nursery fire. I thought it looked very nice. The doll’s house was in it — verandah and balcony and all. Gran held me up to kiss my little sister.”

Of course, the picture over the fireplace would have helped to keep the recollection real; though, as a matter of fact, it did become a bit confused, for the cherry trees belonged to Karori, several years later — not to Wellington; and old Mrs. MacKelvie belonged to Karori, too. But the birth of the little sister, that spring, was really true, and that first sense of threatened security was poignant enough — the child’s first realisation of aloneness — of standing outside looking in upon the one loved and secure who had taken her place — was keen and sharp enough, to be remembered always. The Grandmother was her security, and was still to be, as she looked back, twelve years later, from illness and loneliness in Bavaria:

“The only adorable thing I can imagine is for my grandmother to put me to bed and bring me a bowl of hot bread and milk, and standing with her hand folded, the left over the right, say in her adorable voice, ‘There, darling, isn’t that nice?’ To wake later and find her turning down the bedclothes to see if my feet were cold, and wrapping them in a little pink singlet, softer than cat’s fur…. Alas!”

While she was still too little to “have taken to pothooks,” and so hadn’t yet folded herself away into books (though she was not too young to have heard The Child’s Garden of Verses), what did this aloof, rather silent and dreamy child find to charm her into her own world?

Let her tell it herself as she remembered, in flying fragments, and as she wrote it — before ever she had left New Zealand — for a friend who kept it until this day. In her memory, no doubt, it was idealised, sentimentalised even, but beneath it is the real movement of a child’s mind, and the movement of the mind of a real child.

“The Child, standing on a chair by the window calls: ‘Father, Mother, the garden’s on fire.’ She is right. Over the white house a Virginia creeper has run like a thin sheet of flame and when she saw the sumac tree in the avenue: ‘I would like to warm my hands there; it would nearly make toast.’

“Her white furs have come out of the hat box—’ a little smelly, but such a comfy smell.’ She wears a small red jacket over her white frocks and—’ Look at my new woollen legs. Now I can walk twice as far as you because I’ve four.’ …

“Beyond the garden gate the road walks over a hill away from people and houses.

“‘It’s running away from the shops,’ and we know, could we but walk far enough, it would run right into the sea. ‘Does it go on then?’

“‘Why, of course, right through a coral forest, pink and white where the Sea King’s daughters play “Here we go gathering sea weed grapes,” and blow the loveliest tunes through little silver shells. And, if you do not stop to comb your curls or eat a little anemone jelly you would come right out on the other side. There you would find ladies sitting under big umbrellas, reading “Little Black Sambo” to children with brown cotton gloves and veils over their faces — and that would be England.’ …

“Now from the top of the hill there is a whole valley full of trees; below us — pine trees — with their brown rug tucked round their big toes — a little bunch of oak trees — with an air of crisp daintiness about them which makes us shudder at the thought of the next wind storm. But the poplars are stiff and straight and naked already — like giant broom sticks for giant witches. ‘Oh, do not walk through a poplar grove at night in Autumn. Who knows but that you might see their huge, hag-like forms rooting terribly at the trees — tearing them out of the dull earth — riding up over the face of the world and snatching at the stars with their claw-like fingers.’

“‘Oh, look, a sparrow — a little boy sparrow. Whistling on the top of that willow tree. Look at his fur blowing about…. He looks as though he was waving a hanky at me. I wish I could hold him inside my jacket here, and take him home — he’d be so warm.’

“She walks all the way back, ‘because it’s down.’ …

“So she finds the world a kind place. She is not haunted by the decay of Autumn, not chilled by the paralysis of Winter. To her it is firelight, then the softest, gentlest sleep — and the white shroud is only a night gown; the bare earth — a bed for a little girl.”

“The Child returned home from a visit to Aunt Emily’s.

“‘It was so nice. She has three kittens with trousers and a lady cat with a music and they all waggle themselves and sing a song.’

“‘And one kitten has a blue necktie and a face like Mummy.’

“Then Aunt Emily sent the whole party in a box half as big as the Child’s nursery….

“In the afternoon … she sat very still a big tattered book on her knees.

“‘What are you reading?’

“‘Oh, just things.’

“‘Here, show me the book.’ The pages were turned, slowly, and little pieces read here and there:

“‘Yes, that was a monkey with a hat on, feeding a baby with porridge in a spoon…. I should think it would be frightened. Stolen the baby’s hat? I’m afraid you’re right. And that was an old man with a bird’s nest in his beard…. No, Mummy would have been disgusted…. But they certainly couldn’t help having plenty of crumbs…. There was Jenny Wren at her wedding, with Cock Robin…. Why a hanky over her face? Oh, it was a veil that ladies always wear then…. How did she keep it on when she flew? She must have kept her head tucked under Cock Robin’s wing…. And that was the old woman flying up to the moon in a basket…. Yes, our clothes basket.’

“This was a very old book. It belonged to her mother when she was a little girl.

“What is the fascination and charm of all these old old rhymes?

“‘Comb hair, comb,

Daddy’s gone to plough

If you want your hair combed

Have it combed now.’

“‘Oh, such a beautiful hymn.’ … the little child, standing on a chair by the window, looking out over the garden to the fields, and Daddy, ploughing even at that early hour, would see a light at the windows and say, ‘Oh, that’s my little daughter having her hair combed.’

“Even the delicious adventures of Little Black Sambo and the irresponsible, intoxicated holiday glamour of Sam and Selina could not surpass these old verses:

“‘Little girl, little girl, where have you been?

Gathering roses to give to the Queen.

Little girl, little girl, what gave she you?

She gave me a diamond as big as my shoe.’

“‘But what does she do with the diamond — and it has no smell…. I would rather have the roses.’

“But here was another picture … the little girl courtseying low, half hidden behind the great bunch of roses, and the Queen, on her golden throne stretching out her hands for the flowers — her white hands — but she is used to thorns — and beside her, the diamond in a neat parcel tied with a ribbon….

“The Child fell asleep … and took her way along the little white road hedged with blossoming briar roses — past the green meadows where children played with white lambs and led them by a blue ribbon beside the buttercup fringed pools — past the wayside cottage where Mrs. Punch was pinning Toby’s clean neck frill on to the clothes line and Mr. Punch was reading ‘Ernie at the Seaside’ to the baby in long clothes.

“Far away up in the air an old woman in a basket. She was descending rapidly. ‘Frightful lot of extra work these balloons are making,’ said she frowning and muttering. ‘They send the currents all wrong.’

“‘The currents,’ said the Child. ‘Is that where currants come from?’

“‘Oh,’ the old woman muttered, ‘there are currents and currants, which of course tells you I have a sister in the currant business— “Hot Cross buns the old woman runs.” …

“From a minute house came the sound of a great many babies laughing and crooning. Inside, a row of the prettiest babies imaginable. And at the end of the room the teacher, a demure little person with great horn spectacles and a birch rod in her hand.

“‘I just wanted to say How do you do,’ said the Child, ‘and ask if the babies might sing the school song.’

“‘They’re all too young,’ said the Schoolmistress, ‘but perhaps you would sing it for them?’

“The Child put her hands together, shook her back hair, and sang in a clear high voice:

“‘Little Nellie Nipkin, brisk and clean and neat

Keeps a little baby school in the village street

Teaches little pupils all that she can find

And keeps a little birch that teaches them to mind.’

“‘Thank you,’ said Miss Nipkin, ‘but the birch is only a matter of form.’

“From the street came the sound of music … and there was the lady cat playing the violin, and the three little kittens with trousers. The Child clapped her hands.

“‘Hallo, hallo,’ she said. ‘I knew I would find you here.’ The lady cat nodded brightly.

“‘What sweet little knickers your children have.’

“‘They are quite blithesome,’ said the lady cat, and as we walk down the street into the market place we hear her violin, now faint, now clear….”