Homepage
Login
Profile
BookClubs
dmBox
Read Ebook: The Doves' Nest and Other Stories by Mansfield Katherine Murry John Middleton Author Of Introduction Etc
Font size:
Background color:
Text color:
Add to tbrJar First Page Next Page
Ebook has 662 lines and 50653 words, and 14 pages
INTRODUCTORY NOTE 9
THE DOLL'S HOUSE 25
HONEYMOON 39
A CUP OF TEA 50
TAKING THE VEIL 65
THE FLY 74
THE CANARY 85
A MARRIED MAN'S STORY 92
THE DOVES' NEST 117
DAPHNE 156
FATHER AND THE GIRLS 166
ALL SERENE! 177
A BAD IDEA 186
A MAN AND HIS DOG 191
SUCH A SWEET OLD LADY 197
HONESTY 202
SUSANNAH 209
SECOND VIOLIN 214
MR. AND MRS. WILLIAMS 220
WEAK HEART 227
WIDOWED 234
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 it. Whether the stories which compose it are those which 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.
STORIES FOR MY NEW BOOK
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 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:
And a few days later she wrote:
Yet a little later her vision of the cause of her own dissatisfaction deepened, and she began to define it in terms--of the insufficient clarity of her own spirit, and of the incompleteness of her inward life--which were to become more and more familiar.
Well, I must confess I have had an idle day--God knows why. All was to be written, but I just didn't write it. I thought I would, but I felt tired after tea, and rested instead. Is it good or bad in me to behave so? I have a sense of guilt, but at the same time I know that to rest is the very best thing I can do. And for some reason there is a kind of booming in my head--which is horrid. But marks of earthly degradation still pursue me. I am not crystal clear. Above all else, I do still lack application. It's not right. There is so much to do, and I do so little. Look at the stories that wait and wait, just at the threshold. Why don't I let them in? And their place would be taken by others who are lurking beyond, just out there--waiting for the chance.
And again in the autumn of the year her incessant effort towards an inward purity--who but she would have dreamed that she lacked it?--as a condition of soul essential to writing as she purposed to write, becomes still more manifest.
May I be found worthy to do it! Lord, make me crystal clear for thy light to shine through.
But now to resolve! And especially to keep in touch with life. With the sky, this moon, these stars, these cold candid peaks.
During the following summer at Sierre in Switzerland one could have believed that Katherine Mansfield had finally accomplished the task of inward purification she had set herself, and to me it seems that there is a halcyon clarity and calm diffused through the unfinished stories written there. But she was still secretly dissatisfied with herself and her work, and in the autumn, after a brief return to London, she deliberately decided to risk everything, to abandon the writing that was dearer than all else to her, in order to achieve that newness of heart without which her work and her life seemed to her unprofitable. At the end of October she retired, by herself, to a settlement at Fontainebleau, where she found what she sought. A few days after she had taken this final step, she wrote in a letter:--
I wish, when one writes about things, one didn't dramatize them so. I feel awfully happy about all this--And it's all as simple as can be....
But in any case I shan't write any stories for three months, and I'll not have a book ready before the spring. It doesn't matter...."
And again, in reply to a friend who pleaded with her not to abandon writing, she wrote, on October 26:--
She believed that she could not express the change that had taken place in her even in letters, though indeed her letters were radiant with happiness:
"And yet I realize as I write, all this is no use. An old personality is trying to get back to the outside and observe, and it's not true to the facts at all. What I write seems so petty. In fact I cannot express myself in writing just now. The old mechanism isn't mine any longer and I can't control the new. I just have to talk this baby talk."
"I am not in the mood for books at present," she wrote finally, shortly before Christmas, "though I know that in future I shall want to write them more than anything else. But different books."
What those "different books" would have been we shall never know. She was seized by a sudden and fatal haemorrhage on the evening of January 9th. She is buried in the communal cemetery of Avon near Fontainebleau. On her gravestone are inscribed the words of Shakespeare she chose for the title-page of "Bliss," words which had long been cherished by her and were to prove prophetic:
"But I tell you, my lord fool, out of this nettle, danger, we pluck this flower, safety."
THE DOLL'S HOUSE
When dear old Mrs. Hay went back to town after staying with the Burnells she sent the children a doll's house. It was so big that the carter and Pat carried it into the courtyard, and there it stayed, propped up on two wooden boxes beside the feed-room door. No harm could come to it; it was summer. And perhaps the smell of paint would have gone off by the time it had to be taken in. For, really, the smell of paint coming from that doll's house --but the smell of paint was quite enough to make any one seriously ill, in Aunt Beryl's opinion. Even before the sacking was taken off. And when it was....
There stood the doll's house, a dark, oily, spinach green, picked out with bright yellow. Its two solid little chimneys, glued on to the roof, were painted red and white, and the door, gleaming with yellow varnish, was like a little slab of toffee. Four windows, real windows, were divided into panes by a broad streak of green. There was actually a tiny porch, too, painted yellow, with big lumps of congealed paint hanging along the edge.
But perfect, perfect little house! Who could possibly mind the smell? It was part of the joy, part of the newness.
"Open it quickly, some one!"
The hook at the side was stuck fast. Pat pried it open with his penknife, and the whole house-front swung back, and--there you were, gazing at one and the same moment into the drawing-room and dining-room, the kitchen and two bedrooms. That is the way for a house to open! Why don't all houses open like that? How much more exciting than peering through the slit of a door into a mean little hall with a hatstand and two umbrellas! That is--isn't it?--what you long to know about a house when you put your hand on the knocker. Perhaps it is the way God opens houses at dead of night when He is taking a quiet turn with an angel....
"O-oh!" The Burnell children sounded as though they were in despair. It was too marvellous; it was too much for them. They had never seen anything like it in their lives. All the rooms were papered. There were pictures on the walls, painted on the paper, with gold frames complete. Red carpet covered all the floors except the kitchen; red plush chairs in the drawing-room, green in the dining-room; tables, beds with real bedclothes, a cradle, a stove, a dresser with tiny plates and one big jug. But what Kezia liked more than anything, what she liked frightfully, was the lamp. It stood in the middle of the dining-room table, an exquisite little amber lamp with a white globe. It was even filled all ready for lighting, though, of course, you couldn't light it. But there was something inside that looked like oil, and that moved when you shook it.
Add to tbrJar First Page Next Page