KATHERINE MANSFIELD, New Zealand born author, born; Considered to be the British Chekhov and her quiet stories are painful commentaries on the inadequacy of human relationships. Although she had many affairs with men and was married to John Middleton Murry, her diaries and letters reveal her to have been a Lesbian, and a troubled one at that, with a “slave” by the name of Ida Baker.

She moved to London in 1903, where she attended Queen’s College with her sisters. Mansfield recommenced playing the cello, an occupation that she believed she would take up professionally, but she began contributing to the college newspaper with such dedication that she eventually became its editor. She was particularly interested in the works of the French Symbolists and Oscar Wilde, and she was appreciated among her peers for her vivacious, charismatic approach to life and work.

Mansfield met fellow student Ida Baker at the college, and they became lifelong friends. They both adopted their mother’s maiden names for professional purposes, and Baker became known as LM or Lesley Moore, adopting the name of Lesley in honour of Mansfield’s younger brother Leslie.

Mansfield travelled in Continental Europe between 1903 and 1906, staying mainly in Belgium and Germany. After finishing her schooling in England she returned to New Zealand, and only then began in earnest to write short stories. She had several works published in the Native Companion (Australia), her first paid writing work, and by this time she had her heart set on becoming a professional writer. This was also the first occasion on which she used the pseudonym K. Mansfield. 

She rapidly grew weary of the provincial New Zealand lifestyle and of her family, and two years later, headed back to London. Her father sent her an annual allowance of 100 pounds for the rest of her life. In later years, she expressed both admiration and disdain for New Zealand in her journals, but she never was able to return there because of her tuberculosis.

Mansfield had two romantic relationships with women that are notable for their prominence in her journal entries. She continued to have male lovers and attempted to repress her feelings at certain times. Her first same-sex romantic relationship was with Maata Mahupuku (sometimes known as Martha Grace), a wealthy young Māori woman whom she had first met at Miss Swainson’s school in Wellington and again in London in 1906. In June 1907, she wrote: “I want Maata — I want her as I have had her — terribly. This is unclean I know, but true.”

She often referred to Maata as Carlotta. She wrote about Maata in several short stories. Maata married in 1907, but it is claimed that she sent money to Mansfield in London. The second relationship, with Edith Kathleen Bendall, took place from 1906 to 1908. Mansfield professed her adoration for her in her journals.

Mansfield spent her last years seeking increasingly unorthodox cures for her tuberculosis. In February 1922, she went to Paris to have a controversial X-ray treatment from the Russian physician Ivan Manoukhin. The treatment was expensive and caused unpleasant side effects without improving her condition.

From June to August 1922 Mansfield and Murry returned to Switzerland, living in a hotel in Randogne. Mansfield finished “The Canary”, the last short story she completed, in July 1922. She wrote her will at the hotel in August 1922. They went to London for six weeks before Mansfield, along with Ida Baker, moved to Fontainebleau, France, in October 1922.

At Fontainebleau, Mansfield lived at G. I. Gurdjieff’s Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man, where she was put under the care of Olgivanna Lazovitch Hinzenburg (who later married Frank Lloyd Wright). As a guest rather than a pupil of Gurdjieff, Mansfield was not required to take part in the rigorous routine of the institute, but she spent much of her time there with her mentor Alfred Richard Orage, and her last letters inform Murry of her attempts to apply some of Gurdjieff’s teachings to her own life.

She suffered a fatal pulmonary haemorrhage January 9, 1923, after running up a flight of stairs. She died within the hour, and was buried at Cimetiere d’Avon, Avon, near Fontainebleau. Because Murry forgot to pay for her funeral expenses, she initially was buried in a pauper’s grave; when matters were rectified, her casket was moved to its current resting place.