748 Katherine Mansfield (with Gerri Kimber) | The Poet and the Sex Worker Who Burgled Him | My Last Book with Emerson Expert Kenneth Sacks

Summary

---

The History of Literature Podcast | Episode 748

Main Theme:
A triple-featured literary episode with: (1) Gerri Kimber discussing her new full biography of New Zealand short story pioneer Katherine Mansfield, (2) an intriguing tale from recent W.H. Auden scholarship involving love and scandal, and (3) Emerson expert Kenneth Sacks revealing his dream “last book.”
Host: Jacke Wilson
Airdate: November 10, 2025

---

Segment 1: W.H. Auden, the Sex Worker, and the Burgled Poet

[03:00-10:15]

Overview:

Jacke offers breaking news from recently unearthed letters that reveal a lesser-known, dramatic episode in poet W.H. Auden's life: his friendship with Viennese sex worker Hugo Kirka, who once robbed him but later received his support.

Key Points & Insights:

• Uncovering New Letters:

  • A cache of about 100 letters from Auden to Kirka surfaced, written in casual, ungrammatical German.
  • Auden met Hugo Kirka, a Viennese car mechanic and sex worker, in his mid-50s.

• Nature of Their Relationship:

  • Their meeting was transactional:

    “Our life paths crossed at a moment when you were in need of money and I wanted sex.” (Auden, letter to Kirka)

    • Jacke sardonically notes the bluntness:

      “Sounds like a receipt.” ([06:27] Jacke Wilson)

• The Burgling Incident:

  • After their encounter, Auden lent his Volkswagen Beetle to Kirka, who used it to commit multiple burglaries, including a break-in at Auden's own home.
  • Kirka and his accomplices were caught, risking a scandal for Auden in 1962, an era when same-sex acts were criminalized.

• Aftermath and Loyalty:

  • Auden avoided public exposure; the press protected him, referring to him vaguely as “one of those Americans who got stuck in old Europe with its different, much freer way to live and let live.”
  • Auden did not testify against Kirka; instead, he helped arrange legal aid and continued financial support for Kirka and his wife.
  • Their correspondence and friendship endured, hinting at trust and affection beyond the incident.

Notable Quotes:

• On the nature of Auden’s poetic candor:

  “Posterity, AKA Jacke Wilson, expected something similar from your love poems… Maybe a little more than explaining.” ([06:27] Jacke Wilson)

• On the criminalization and sadness of hidden relationships:

  “It makes me sad that the whole relationship was criminalized… decriminalizing same sex acts would probably have let Auden avoid this by taking some legitimate boyfriends.” ([09:54] Jacke Wilson)

---

Segment 2: Gerri Kimber on Katherine Mansfield—Life, Art, and Lost Loves

[10:18-49:47]

Overview:

Jacke speaks with Visiting Professor Gerri Kimber, author of Katherine Mansfield: A Hidden Life, offering a deep dive into Mansfield's personal history, innovative art, and complex romantic life.

Key Discussion Points:

Mansfield and the Bloomsbury Group

• Initial Perceptions:
  • Mansfield appeared on the radar of the Bloomsbury Group in 1916, first visiting Garsington Manor.
  • Lytton Strachey's infamous judgment:

    “Among the rout was ‘Katherine Mansfield,’ if that's her real name, I could never quite make sure…” ([12:11] Gerri Kimber reading Strachey)

  • Virginia Woolf both criticized and revered her, noting,

    “Her writing was the only writing I was ever jealous of.” ([13:27] Jacke Wilson)

Early Life and Family

• Privileged yet Restrictive Upbringing:

  • Born into a wealthy, ambitious Wellington family (“her father was chairman of the Bank of New Zealand”).
  • Educated at London's avant-garde Queen's College, which she loved; resisted returning to New Zealand.

• Rebelliousness and Pursuit of Art:

  • Made herself “objectionable” to escape New Zealand:

    “She was rude, arrogant, she locked herself in her room...went to parties...and started to have unsuitable relationships with other women.” ([16:48] Gerri Kimber)

• First Forays into Writing:

  • Published her first story at age 10; found encouragement through publications in Australian journals.

Unique Qualities as a Short Story Writer

• Why She Stands Out:

  • Master of brevity and implication—“It's almost more important what you leave out than what you say.” ([21:27] Gerri Kimber)
  • Modernist experimentation: Stories often start in medias res, cinematic vividness, and use of free indirect discourse.
  • Example: The start of “The Garden Party”—

    “And after all, the weather was ideal.”
    —conveys mood and context with minimal words.

• Influence on Modernism:

  • “Anyone who's attempted to write a short story will tell you that it's actually easier to write a novel... Mansfield was a genius at it...” ([24:11] Gerri Kimber)

Turbulent Romantic and Personal Life

• Recurring Restlessness:

  • Multiple overlapping relationships with men and women, unintended pregnancies, abortions, and health problems (gonorrhea and likely tuberculosis).
  • Pursued intense, often short-lived romances ("With every relationship...she wanted to cement it immediately...until she got bored or the situation changed." [34:22] Gerri Kimber)
  • Her bold, exploratory lifestyle prefigured the sexual revolution but without the protections of her era.

• Key Partnerships:

  • Marriages and partnerships with George Bowden (married and left after one day), and John Middleton Murry—

    “No man was less suited to being Mansfield's long-term partner than Murray. He couldn't give her the emotional support she needed...” ([36:06] Gerri Kimber)

• Lasting Love with A.R. Orage:

  • Orage, editor of The New Age, was the true intellectual and emotional partner of her life, as Kimber’s biography shows.
  • After her death, Murry erased Orage from records and publications of her life and work.

• Murry’s Rewrite of Her Legacy:

  • Murry published doctored versions of Mansfield’s journals and letters, crafting a posthumous persona and diminishing her actual relationships and writing process.
  • “[Murry] Baudelarized so much and changed so much... The so-called journal that Mansfield apparently wrote... She never wrote a journal. He created it from a mass of loose pieces of paper, jottings in notebooks.” ([45:47] Gerri Kimber)

Recommendations for New Readers

• Best Entry Points:
  • “Either Bliss and Other Stories or The Garden Party and Other Stories. ‘The Garden Party’ was the last collection she personally chose.” ([48:00] Gerri Kimber)
  • Favorite story: “The Daughters of the Late Colonel” for humor, emotion, and character.

Notable Quotes:

• On writing and omission:

  "It's almost more important what you leave out than what you say because you have such a small word count..." ([21:27] Gerri Kimber)

• On her innovative narrative style:

  “You are just presented with a family... You live that moment with those characters, and then it's gone. But in that short moment, you know everything.” ([24:50] Gerri Kimber)

• On her vital energy:

  “By nature, she was gay, cynical, amoral, ribald, witty... extraordinarily amusing.” ([35:16] Jacke Wilson reading Leonard Woolf)

---

Segment 3: My Last Book – Ken Sacks on Emerson and the Lost Wisdom of Antiquity

[50:49-55:41]

Overview:

Emerson scholar Ken Sacks discusses his research on Emerson's evolving antislavery position and answers a listener's philosophical question about what his “last book” would be.

Key Discussion Points:

• Emerson and Antislavery:

  • Emerson was “always against slavery,” but deliberated deeply over “the best way” to oppose it as an intellectual.
  • Struggled with engagement versus philosophical detachment.

• The Dream “Last Book”:

  • Sacks wishes for the lost Pinakes of Callimachus—a colossal catalog of all books once held in the Library of Alexandria.

  • “My fantasy... someone discovers the long lost manuscript of Callimachus' Pinakes so that we can read the summaries of all the great literature of the ancient world that was lost to us.” ([52:00] Ken Sacks)

• Intellectual Mapping and Loss:

  • Sacks argues the catalog would let us “trace intellectual ideas” of antiquity and create a nuanced intellectual map, despite the inherent bittersweetness of knowing what’s missing.

  • “I'm focusing on the sweet, not the bitter.” ([55:07] Ken Sacks)

• Philosophical Resonance:

  • Jacke agrees:

    “This is humanity and intellectual humanity at its greatest. This is where we get to see ideas coming into being for the first time.” ([55:21] Jacke Wilson)

---

Selected Timestamps for Key Segments

• Auden’s Letters Scandal: [03:00-10:18]
• Gerri Kimber / Katherine Mansfield Biography: [10:18-49:47]
  • Mansfield and Bloomsbury Group: [10:44-14:00]
  • Early life in New Zealand & rebellion: [14:00-18:49]
  • Artistry & modernism: [20:17-25:50]
  • Complicated love life: [29:32-36:06]
  • Relationship with Murry and Orage: [36:06-45:23]
  • Her posthumous reputation: [45:23-47:43]
  • Reading recommendations: [48:00-49:30]
• Ken Sacks on Emerson and the Lost Library: [50:49-55:41]

---

Notable Quotes (with Timestamps & Attribution)

• Jacke Wilson on Auden’s blunt verse:

  “Sounds like a receipt.” ([06:27] Jacke Wilson)

• Gerri Kimber on Katherine Mansfield’s writing:

  “It's almost more important what you leave out than what you say because you have such a small word count...” ([21:27] Gerri Kimber)

• Gerri Kimber on Murry’s editorial legacy:

  “He made it all look so seamless... but it really wasn't what she did.” ([47:43] Gerri Kimber)

• Ken Sacks on the pain and value of the lost Alexandrian catalog:

  “I'm focusing on the sweet, not the bitter.” ([55:07] Ken Sacks)

---

Conclusion

This episode traverses a profound landscape of literary history, gossip, artistic reinvention, and philosophical yearning:

• Auden’s letters show the poignancy of love and loyalty amid criminalization.
• Katherine Mansfield, via Gerri Kimber, emerges as a luminous, complicated genius whose art and life still challenge the limits of literary biography and modern identity.
• Ken Sacks leaves us reflecting on the collective memory of human thought and the bittersweet yearning for lost wisdom.

This is a must-listen for lovers of literary history, fans of modernism, and anyone fascinated by the hidden corners of artists’ lives.

Transcript

[Jack Wilson]

The History of Literature Podcast is a.

Member of the podglomerate Network and Lit Hub Radio. Hello everyone, it's Jack Wilson telling you that the History of Literature Podcast tour through Literary England is still accepting deposits and we'd love to have you join us. We will be visiting some of the greatest literary sites in history, including walks, tours, pub visits and leisure time activities, and with visits from scholars and other special guests as we experience the amazing cities of London, Oxford and Bath in a small group accompanied by yours truly. If you love literature and if you love life, you are not going to want to miss this. It's next year in May of 2026, but we need you to put down a deposit now so we can finalize the itinerary. 2026 is around the corner people. Give yourself something to look forward to next spring. You can find out more at John Shores Travel John S H O R S Or you can find the links to the itinerary and sign up [e-mail] hope to see you soon.

[Sponsor/Ad Voice]

This episode is brought to you by Disney. This Thanksgiving, Judy Hopps and Nick Wilde are back on the big screen. So grab your family and friends as Disney invites you to return to Zootopia for the Fur Nominal movie event of the holiday season. See all your favorite Zootopia characters, plus new favorites in the most paw eomet movie of the year. Don't miss Disney Zootopia 2 when it hits theaters everywhere November 26th. Get your tickets now.

[Jack Wilson]

Hello. If we're looking for a reason to want to read and learn more about New Zealand writer Katharine Mansfield, we can cite no less an authority than her contemporary, Virginia Woolf. Catherine Mansfield's writing, said Woolf, was the only writing I was ever jealous of. But as rich as Mansfield's writing is, it's possible that her life story was even richer. We'll talk to Jerry Kimber, author of a new biography of Katherine Mansfield. Plus, we hear some breaking news of English American poet W.H. auden, who, it turns out, was once robbed by the sex worker he had hired and with whom he then maintained an intense friendship, quote unquote, writing him over 100 letters that have recently emerged. And we'll hear from an expert in Ralph Waldo Emerson, Ken Sachs, on his choice for the last book he will ever read. That's all coming up today on the History of Literature.

[Jerry Kimber]

Foreign.

[Jack Wilson]

Here we go. Welcome to the podcast. I'm Jack Wilson. How are you, my friends, my listening friends? I hope you're doing well today. We're in the thick of November now, and the brisk air is really helping to restore my spirits. Thank goodness that summer is over. The leaves are still beautiful. I'm doing well. The world is crazy, but I can keep my mind in a positive place. That's how we win in life. So, W.H. auden. This is a strange story. W.H. auden. One would think we've chased down just about everything there is to know about the man, who was a famous poet at a fairly early age and was a public figure in the 20th century and has been well studied by scholars and biographers, including several who have appeared on this podcast. Lauden's a fantastic poet, kind of everything a poet should be, really. Everything I like in a poet, anyway. Serious, thoughtful, engaged. His poetry is very rich. He also had an interesting personal life. People used to describe him walking through Manhattan in his bedroom slippers, for example. And he married Erika Mann, one of Thomas Mann's daughters. A marriage of convenience to help her escape the Nazis. Well, it turns out there's more to Auden's life than we knew. About 100 letters of his have been newly released. They're written in a kind of primitive, ungrammatical German by Auden to a sex worker with whom he had an intense friendship and who burgled him. Wow. Auden was in his mid-50s when he met Hugo Kirka, a car mechanic and Viennese sex worker. Auden wrote a poem about it that was fairly blunt as these things go. Our live, our sorry, our life paths crossed at a moment when you were in need of money and I wanted sex, end quote. That was in one of the letters. It's not exactly up there with. About suffering. They were never wrong, the old masters, how well they understood its human position, how it takes place while someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along. It's kind of incredible, really. Why. Why did he even put that in verse with the line breaks? Our life paths crossed at a moment when you were in need of money and I wanted sex. Other than those line breaks, that's basically just a sentence. Kind of hearing this poem kind of reminded me of that moment in Crimes and Misdemeanors. Do you know that film when Woody Allen's hero, Woody Allen's character, is doing a documentary on a hero of his, a great philosopher, and then he learns that the man has committed suicide and he's left behind a note that says, I've gone out the window. And Woody Allen's character says, this is a major intellectual. I've gone out the window. You'd think he'd leave a decent note. Well, Auden afraid to say posterity, if posterity is. If I can speak for posterity here. Posterity, AKA Jack Wilson, expected something similar from your love poems or your intense friendship poems. Maybe a little more than explaining.

[Ken Sachs]

You.

[Jack Wilson]

Were in need of money and I wanted sex. Sounds like a receipt. Anyway, what's remarkable about the relationship is that Auden kept up this friendship at all. After the two had had their fling, Auden was leaving for a trip to the United States, and so he lent KRKA his car to use, a Volkswagen Beetle. Kirka and a couple of associates used the car to go on a crime spree, burgling several cars before breaking into Auden's home and robbing that. The police chased them, arrested them and found the stolen goods. And because their car was registered to Auden, it risked a scandal. This was in 1962. Auden had won the Pulitzer Prize, was often mentioned as a candidate for the Nobel. Same sex acts were criminalized and this could have been a big scandal for Auden. But the newspapers agreed to cover things up. Only refer. They covered the court case, but they only referred to Auden as, quote, one of those Americans who got stuck in old Europe with its different, much freer way to live and let live. End quote. Auden was actually asked to testify against Kirka, but instead he helped him get a lawyer. Kirka was sentenced to 15 months in prison. Auden appreciated Kirka's reticence about their relationship. He then continued to send KRKA money for KRKA and his wife. KRKA was married for the two of them to take English lessons and for the occasional flight to come and visit Auden in America. Auden is friendly and enthusiastic in these letters. He writes in this colloquial German, but gung ho, gung ho German. And we don't have Kirka's letters to Auden. Those didn't survive, but it seems like Auden and Krka were at least intimate friends. Krka's wife, too. She had spent eight months jail as a result of the crime spree. And some of the letters from Auden are addressed to her. All in all, a pretty amazing addition to the biography of Auden, a chapter in his middle life that makes me sad that the whole relationship was criminalized. It reminds me a bit of Beatles manager Brian Epstein being beaten up by London toughs in these same years, same exact period. Auden calls himself and Kirka a streetwalker and a john. It just didn't have to be that way decriminalizing same sex ex would probably have let Auden avoid this by taking some legitimate boyfriends. But one never knows, I guess. And I suppose I shouldn't be too sad about it because it also shows that Auden had what appears to be a nice friendship that he found nurturing and sustaining and worth keeping with both KRKA and his wife, even if it all did start out with something transactional. Okay, one thing to mention before we bring out Jerry Kimber, who's going to tell us all about Katherine Mansfield's life and what made her so unusually good at writing short stories. And what I need to mention is that Jerry wanted us to make clear that this biography that she's written called Katherine Mansfield A Hidden Life is a full biography of Katherine Mansfield. Other biographies have looked at a particular period, but this one covers the whole life, which I actually said at the beginning of the conversation with Jerry. But we had some technical difficulties and we had to edit that part out. So I want to make sure to tell it to you here right up front. Let's not even take a break here. We'll just go straight to Jerry Kimber and Kathryn Mansfield.

Okay. Joining me now is Jerry Kimber, who is visiting professor in the Department of English at the University of Northampton. She was president of the Kathryn mansfield Society for 10 years and has published extensively on Mansfield's life and work. She's here today to discuss Kathryn Mansfield, A Hidden Life. Jerry Kimber, welcome to the History of Literature.

[Jerry Kimber]

Thank you very much for having me. I'm very excited to talk to you this afternoon.

[Jack Wilson]

So let's start a bit in the middle with Katherine Mansfield's arrival in London in 1908.

What does the Bloomsbury Group make of her?

[Jerry Kimber]

Well, at that time, of course, the Bloomsbury Group wasn't really a group as such. The main players were all friends. They didn't really call themselves the Bloomsbury Group until 1910, when they showed some of the artists in the group showed their work at the second Post Impressionist exhibition, and that was organized by Roger Fry. And Mansfield really would not have known who any of them were, and they certainly would not have known who she was. She first came into their radar in 1916 when she invited herself to stay at Lady Otterline Morrell's country house just outside Oxfordshire, Garsington Manor, which was where so many writers and intellectuals of the time met. And Virginia Woolf wasn't there that first weekend, but Lytton Strachey, a great friend of the Woolf's and obviously one of the founder members of the Bloomsbury Group was there and wrote to Virginia. And I can just read out a tiny of what he wrote because it is so quite amusing.

[Jack Wilson]

Yeah, yeah.

[Jerry Kimber]

But not very nice, it has to say. But I don't think. Listen straight. She was very nice about many people. So he said there were 16 souls here for the weekend. That's just over from Friday onwards. The door seemed to open every two hours and new arrivals appeared in batches of five or seven. Among the rout was, in inverted commas, Catherine Mansfield, if that's her real name, I could never quite make sure. Have you ever heard of her or read any of her productions? She spoke with great enthusiasm about the Voyage out, which was a novel that Virginia had recently published, and said she wanted to make your acquaintance more than anyone else's. So I said I thought it might be managed. Was I rash? I really believe you'll find her entertaining. But just now she's in the recesses of Cornwall, so it must be later on, I may add. She has an ugly, impassive mask of a face cut in wood, with brown hair and brown eyes very far apart, and a sharp and slightly vulgarly fanciful intellect sitting behind it.

[Jack Wilson]

Right.

[Jerry Kimber]

That was Mansfield's first introduction into Bloomsbury, if you like. They shared all their letters among each other, so Lytton's commentary on her would have done the rounds of the Bloomsbury Group.

[Jack Wilson]

And Virginia Woolf said, she stinks. She was talking about some French perfume that she liked to wear, and she said, I'm a little shocked by her commonness. But she did say she's so intelligent and inscrutable that she repays friendship. And of course, later she said that Mansfield's writing was the only writing I was ever jealous of. But let's save that for now and let's just talk about who Kathryn Mansfield was. What was her background, and what kind of life did she have in New Zealand, and how did she make it to London?

[Jerry Kimber]

Okay, so she was born into a wealthy family that became ever more wealthy. Her father was in trade in shipping, commerce, and then banking. He became chairman of the bank of New Zealand. And having started with quite a small sort of background, the family originated two generations previously in London. There had been seven brothers, all of whom had emigrated with various degrees of success. And Mansfield's father's father had emigrated to New Zealand and set himself up as an auctioneer. The family weren't rich at that time, but Harold Beecham, her father, was determined that he was going to make good. And by golly, he did do that by the time Mansfield Left, she, in 1908, left New Zealand. Her family really could count themselves among the highest echelons of Wellington society. Bearing in mind that that didn't mean that much. New Zealand was a small country. I mean, it's a small country now. It was an even smaller country then, but they were important. When she left, it was the Prime Minister's daughter who gave her a little leaving afternoon tea, which was duly reported in the local papers, etc. But she had already been to London. Harold Beecham wanted to show how wealthy he was and that nothing was too good for his family. And so from 1903 to 1906, Mansfield and her two elder sisters were sent to Queen's College in Harley street to be educated. It's a very avant garde institution. Mansfield absolutely loved it. And what she realized was when the time came for her to be sent home with, you know, with the family Cayman, to take them back to New Zealand, was that it was the last place she wanted to be. And she famously said, I will make myself so objectionable when I return that they will have to send me back. And true to her word, that is exactly what she did. She embarrassed her family, she embarrassed her siblings. She didn't want to be in New Zealand, all she wanted to do was be back in London. But she had had ideas of being a professional musician, a cellist, and she was a very competent cellist because she thought herself in love with a young cello player from New Zealand, Tom Trowell. But he really didn't return her affection. And her father also. I mean, at that time, for a woman to be a professional musician was no better than your daughter wanting to go on the stage. I mean, it was unthinkable, think, for a family of their social standing.

[Jack Wilson]

So what did she do to make herself objectionable?

[Jerry Kimber]

She was rude, arrogant, she locked herself in her room. She, you know, all the things that a very temperamental teenager, how you would expect them to react today was how she was over a hundred years ago. She would go to parties and have like, and be seen, you know, kissing boys and, you know, and her parents were absolutely horrified. And she also started to have unsuitable relationships with other women. Well, women, young girls. And one was a 27 year old woman which she managed to keep from her parents. But I think there were, you know, there was this undercurrent that a lot of what she was doing was unsavoury and they weren't happy about it. I mean, all of it led in the end to her father saying Right. Okay. She wanted desperately to be a writer. And while she was there, in the autumn and winter of 1907, she had some short stories published in an Australian journal called the Native Companion. And that gave her father, because it was obviously her father that made all the decisions, that sense that maybe she could become a writer. And also, there was precedence in the family because Harold's first cousin, Mary Beacham, who became far better known as Elizabeth von Arnim, had recently become really famous with her first book, Elizabeth of the German Garden. And the family loved to announce that connection to everyone. And so eventually, in 1908, I mean, she just pushed and pushed and pushed and pushed for, you know, please let me go to London. I want to be a writer. Eventually, I think they were just pleased to see the back of her. She had become an embarrassment, and they just felt that there was no point in keeping her in New Zealand. She was probably better off being in London, and that's what she did.

[Jack Wilson]

Yeah. And even before she published those stories, she had always exhibited signs of being a particularly creative young person and an imaginative person. And did her family recognize that?

[Jerry Kimber]

I'm not sure they did, but you're absolutely right. I mean, in my biography, I sort of. It's hard to. It's hard to overstate how words and creativity with words was almost imbued in her from birth. I mean, she was writing poetry from a very young age. She was penning little stories. Her first story was published when she was just 10 years old in a magazine in New Zealand. A writer from New Zealand, Redmir Iska, discovered a couple of years ago. She was a wordsmith through and through. And I think as time went on and after her, she had sold some stories to this Australian magazine. I think that impressed her father. Anything to do with money impressed Harold Beecham. And I think he recognized that maybe this was something that his daughter could do. And with Elizabeth von Arnim, AKA his cousin Mary Beecham, having been so successful, perhaps they should let her do what she wanted to do. Yeah.

[Jack Wilson]

Okay. So these short stories, what made hers different? Why did they stand out?

[Jerry Kimber]

Are we talking in general or the early stories?

[Jack Wilson]

Well, let's just talk about in general. Yeah. And maybe we can. If she's not showing that in the early stories, you can point that out. But just in general, why is she someone that Virginia Woolf would admire so much? And. And how did these stories. How were they in general regarded? But you know, what. What was unusual about them?

[Jerry Kimber]

Well, first of all, the short story genre, which nowadays, I mean, it is making a comeback. But not many people read short stories nowadays, let's face it. But 100, 150 years ago, they were really, really popular in the days when there weren't mobile phones and we spent all our time scrolling when we were watching telly or doing something else. You know, people had to fill in these gaps in their daily routine. And short stories were a brilliant way of doing that. All the newspapers, all the magazines all published short stories. And if you were a good short story writer, you would never be out of work and you would always be able to make a living.

[Jack Wilson]

Yeah, but even for many people, like F. Scott Fitzgerald is a good example. He made almost nothing from his novels and all of his income was from his short stories and his readership. It dwarfed the number of people who were going out and buying his novels.

[Jerry Kimber]

Absolutely. That is a brilliant example. And that was the same for Mansfield. So initially, I'm sure that she expected, she didn't know she was going to die so young. And I'm sure that she expected that she would start off writing short stories and then progress to novels. Sadly, that never happened for her. But the short story form also did suit her. She was able to condense life into a few words. And that is a great gift. It's like people think that watercolors, when people retire, oh, I'm going to take up painting. I'll start with watercolors because they seem so easy compared to oil paints, where you need terps and you need all the canvas surfaces and the primers. Watercolors, all you need is a little block and, and some water and a brush. But watercolors are the hardest of all because if you make a mistake, you're done for. You cannot retract it with oil painting, you can just get a rag, wipe it off and start again. But you can't do that with watercolors and with short stories, everything, it's. It's almost more important what you leave out than what you say because you have such a small word count in which to express what you're trying to say. Mansfield was the genius at that. Especially what we now call in medias? Re, where her stories would start, or often start in the middle of something. Like she. Some of the stories, for example, the Garden Party, one of her most famous. And after all, the weather was ideal. And if you think about that very short sentence, what does it imply? We have no need to say, oh, that the Sheridan family had been so worried about what the weather was going to be like in for their Garden party. Because of course, New Zealand has very changeable weather. It's a bit like England. It. It blows hot, blows cold, it rains a lot. And so just by saying that and after all those three words, so much of the backstory is expressed. It was in at the Bay, possibly one of my favorite story begins very early morning. That's almost cinematic, that's almost a direction for a script. Very early morning. And then you go on and she describes the early morning at the bay and the sun starting to rise, etc. Etc. The reader is then left to fill in the gap. And that theatrical cinematic tone is a real feature of all her best stories. It's really hard to do. Anyone who's attempted to write a short story will tell you that it's actually easier to write a novel, especially a non modernist novel, because with a modernist short story, again, there's no plot to speak of. Most things, nothing much happens by way of plot. Plot. It's just feelings, emotions and that indirect free discourse. The way that Mansfield puts. And she was doing this from a very early age as well. The narrative comes through the thoughts and feelings of one character or another. So for that particular moment, you become that character. Again. It's really hard to do. It's a real feature of modernist writing and Mansfield was a genius at it and that. She called it her Prelude invention, which was another of her most famous stories. It just, she wrote, it just unfolds and opens. And there's no backstory, there's no after story. You are just presented with a family or a situation or a couple, and you live that moment with those characters or just that character, and then it's gone. But in that short moment, you know everything, right?

[Jack Wilson]

Okay, let's take a quick break and come back with more from Jerry Kimberly Foreign.

Hey, everyone. The days are getting shorter. The holidays are around the corner. It's time for an energy boost. Here's something I've been using. AG1, a whole body health program. In one easy scoop after my morning workout, I combine AG1 with water, shake it up and enjoy a brisk little drink that's packed with antioxidants, prebiotics, probiotics and enzymes, and micronutrients. That little scoop also has multivitamins, greens, immune support, cognitive support, functional mushrooms, and stress adaptogens all in one scoop. And it tastes good too, which was a nice surprise. It's an easy part of my daily routine and I feel great head to drinkag1.com literature to get a free welcome kit with an AG1 flavor sampler and a bottle of vitamin D3 plus K2 when you first subscribe. That's drinkag1.com literature hey folks, the countdown is on. Holiday shopping season is officially here. Uncommon Goods takes the stress out of gifting with thousands of unique, high quality finds you won't see anywhere else. When you shop at Uncommon Goods, you're supporting artists and small independent businesses. But that means they can sell out. So shop now. I bought my dad a very cool throwback radio with Bluetooth so he can listen to his old time radio shows in style. The Uncommon Gifts website has something for everyone from moms and dads to kids and teens. Die hard football fans, history buffs, foodies, avid gardeners, mixologists, and of course, book lovers. So don't wait. Cross those names off your list before the rush. To get 15% off your next gift, go to uncommongoods.com literature that's uncommongoods.com literature for 15% off. Uncommon Goods were all out of the ordinary.

[Sponsor/Ad Voice]

This episode is brought to you by Rakuten. The holidays are here, and that means it's the most wonderful time of the year. To save with Rakuten, use Rakuten to stack cash back at your favorite stores on top of holiday sales. That's savings on savings. With Rakuten, you can get cash back on gifts for everyone on your list, from toys for the kids to kitchen gear for the person who loves to cook, to electronics for everyone. You can even save on something for yourself. Cash back is automatically added to your account as you shop and you can get paid with gift cards, PayPal or check or eligible American Express card members can choose to earn membership rewards points, join for free today and get a new member bonus after minimum qualifying purchases. Just go to rakuten.com, download the app or install the browser extension. Terms and conditions apply.

[Jack Wilson]

Okay, we're back. So, Jerry, let's get back to sort of Katherine's life and, you know, as.

Her writing becomes sort of more known.

And more successful and she's back living.

In London, where she wanted to get to.

What kind of life was she living there?

[Jerry Kimber]

Very, very complicated. Yeah, and very sad. She led a very complicated life until she met John Middleton Murray at the end of 1911. She really went the whole hog in experiencing life in all its manifestations.

[Jack Wilson]

Yeah, a lot of relationships.

[Jerry Kimber]

A lot of relationships which led to unwanted pregnancies. More than one, as my biography will reveal, and more than has previously been understood. She had several abortions. She played around. She had more than one lover at the same time, which contributed to her contracting gonorrhea. Not that she knew she had it until 1918. She just thought she had rheumatism, and she called it all those pains that she had, her rheumatism, but actually she was suffering from gonorrhea, and there was. She could have caught it from any number of sexual partners that she had at the time. And CK Stead, a New Zealand critic, said that it was very sad in a way, because Mansfield, if she'd been born in the 1960s and had been living this life in the 1960s, no one would have batted an eyelid because there was the pill, number one.

[Jack Wilson]

Yeah.

[Jerry Kimber]

And there were also antibiotics to prevent you catching venereal diseases or to, you know, to. To cure venereal.

[Jack Wilson]

Right, right.

[Jerry Kimber]

But Mansfield had none of that. So she was living the free life of the 1960s, but in the 1910s, early 1910s. And that made a huge difference. It did affect her health. It contributed to her early death, undoubtedly, because at the same time that she contracted gonorrhea, she almost certainly contracted the tuberculosis that would kill her. But the symptoms of that were masked by the gonorrhea and didn't manifest themselves with a hemorrhage of the lungs until 1918. And then she only had four years left to live.

[Jack Wilson]

Yeah.

Dying at the age of 34. What was drawing her to different people? Why was she restless? Did she keep falling in love? What was animating this?

[Jerry Kimber]

I think she did. She did want to experience life. And Mansfield was one of those people that seem to fall in love really quickly and then want to cement the relationship with every single one of her relationships in those early years, like, for example, when she realized that her first love, this Tom Trowell, this chalice that she had met in New Zealand, wasn't reciprocating her affection. She immediately turned her affection in 1908 when she arrived back in London to his brother, his twin brother, Garnet, who was a very proficient violinist. Within four weeks, the couple believed themselves to be engaged. And this was the pattern that would then develop. That didn't work out. She became pregnant. Her parents didn't know. They thought that the reason. She then had a very brief relationship with another man called George Bowden, because she had to seek respectability. She didn't know she was not going to have the child. Garnet's family had rejected her and Garnet had disappeared. This was the father of the child. So she met a man while she was undertaking work as a speaker at Soire's, she was very good at that sort of thing, and met this man, George Bowden, within four weeks, five weeks, I think they were married. Unbelievable. But she had this ability to infiltrate people's affections very quickly. She did have a magnetic personality. She left him the day after the wedding because she realized that she couldn't go through with a sexual relationship with him, not at that time, stage, anyway. And that caused a lot of confusion. Her family having heard of this wedding, her mother came over on a boat from New Zealand and took George Bowden believed that the reason that the marriage hadn't worked was because Catherine was a lesbian. And so her mother took her to Bavaria because at that time, a water cure was deemed to be, you know, inverted commas. A cure for homosexuality. Well, if A, it wasn't, and B, that wasn't Mansfield's issue. The issue was that she was pregnant, but her parents didn't know that. But she had a miscarriage or she gave birth to a stillborn child. But then she stayed on in Bavaria, met a Polish man called Florian Sobianowski. Within a few weeks, they were more or less engaged. They were going to be married. They were going to go and live in Paris together. And then she got cold feet and abandoned him. She then moved back to London, had lots of other affairs, mostly with men, a couple with women, until she met John Middleton Murray. She invited him to be her lodger, and within four weeks, again, they believed themselves to be in love, even though they couldn't get married because she was already married and she didn't get a divorce until 19. To all intents and purposes, they lived as man and wife. And that was her pattern of falling in love. And immediately it had to be everything, all at once, until she either got bored or the situation changed, and then she just moved on. And that was her pattern. The only time she stopped that was once she met John Middleton Murray.

[Jack Wilson]

Right.

[Jerry Kimber]

But there were other complications there.

[Jack Wilson]

Yeah, let's talk about that. Because Leonard Wolf said something really interesting about John Middleton Murray. And one of the things that I was struck by in this passage is just his description of her. He says, by nature, I think she was gay, cynical, amoral, ribald, witty. When we first knew her, she was extraordinarily amusing. I don't think anyone has ever made me laugh more than she did in those days. And he talked about her storytelling and the flashes of her wit while she was telling stories. And then he said, I think that in some abstruse way, Murray corrupted and perverted and destroyed Catherine both as a person. And a writer. What did he mean by that? And do you agree?

[Jerry Kimber]

100%. And this new biography of mine really does bring that to the fore. Mansfield and Murray should never have been together. No man was less suited to, to being Mansfield's long term partner than Murray. He couldn't give her the emotional support she needed. He was never there for her. Murray couldn't be an emotional support to anyone, never mind himself. He was vague. I mean, he was a brilliant editor. We won't take that away from him.

[Jack Wilson]

And he admired her writing, right?

[Jerry Kimber]

He did admire her writing. He admired it a lot more once she was dead. And he knew that he could make a lot of money from it. He was a great admirer of her work. But the problem was that he never stepped up to the mark. Every time she needed him, he was never there. They spent more time apart than together. Mansfield, okay, she was always seeking a warmer climate and Murray was at home working, etc. But all the times that she really needed him, he never really did step up to the mark. He himself had affairs. He believed himself to be in love with Ottoline Morrell, although she always denied that that ever came from her. He had an affair with Dorothy Brett, who was both their friends. And when Mansfield was ill in the south of France, you know, he sort of casually dropped into conversation that he was thinking of moving in with Brett when Mansfield returned to France. I mean, husbands don't do that. And also the fact that he thought, he actually didn't think that that would hurt her. And time and time again, because I've recently with, over the last few years with Claire Davison, we've re transcribed and re edited every single one of Mansfield's letters. And boy, did that form my biography. Because what it showed was Mansfield's absolute frustration, anger and disappointment time after time after time that Murray was unable to be the man that she wanted him to be. He never understood it. Even in that last final year when she made that last break for freedom and decided to go to Paris to take on this very strange, ultimately useless treatment of X rays of her spleen, which apparently would cure her tuberculosis. Of course it didn't. Murray stayed on in Switzerland, which is where they had been. He was happy there. He was ice skating, he was skiing. He had Mansfield's second cousin, Elizabeth von Arnim. She had a very grand chalet just a short walk from their little rented one where she entertained very famous literary people. He was happy there. Mansfield went to Paris on her own. And then, you know, and it was only when she literally had to chastise him and say, look, what is going on? Are you coming? Are you staying? What do you want? That he finally realized that he had to think about his sick wife and not just himself. And that was in the last year of their life, but the whole of 1917, for example, they spent apart. They weren't really in a partnership during most of 1917. But there is another man, and this is what my. That was very close to mansfield throughout from 1910, when she met him, onwards until the very last day that she drew breath. And that was Ar Arage, the editor of the New Age. And what my book reveals is a love affair, a physical and emotional love affair that lasted for the best part of 12 years. There were estrangements on both sides, but ultimately that was the man that Mansfield should have been with. And as Araj said to people afterwards that she was the only woman that he truly loved. Murray must have had a sense of it. But Murray was so obtuse as well, in the sense he never picked up. You know, like a lot of us do get a sense when things aren't going right or we get a sense that maybe in whatever relationship we're in, that maybe the other person is not happy or maybe is looking elsewhere. Murray never saw any of that.

[Jack Wilson]

Yeah, he just strapped on his ice skates and got about. Enjoyed his life.

[Jerry Kimber]

He did. But I think even he must have had a sense that Arage was important. And especially in that last year when they both returned very miserable from Switzerland after they'd been to Paris, were living separately, leading separate lives, and Mansfield now openly rekindled what was superficially her friendship with Orage. But as we show in the biography, I have to say that my biography was so informed by the kindness and generosity of an Orange scholar called John Wood, who had never published all his research on Orage. And I made contact with him and he was so generous in letting me use anything I wanted to. And in fact, he almost became my unpaid researcher. You know, he was a very well known lawyer and had a distinguished career as a lawyer. And in his retirement, he had undertaken an ma, which he wrote on Orage. And what he uncovered for me and what we uncovered together really informed this biography. But it definitely proves without a shadow of a doubt that the relationship between Mansfield and Orange was the defining relationship of her life.

[Jack Wilson]

And you say that he was erased from the public record by Murray?

[Jerry Kimber]

Absolutely. So after her death, I mean, there were letters, many letters sent between them after her death, after the funeral. I think it Was about three months later, Murray went back to Fontainebleau where Arage was still at the Good Jeff community for a meeting. We don't really know what happened. Arage, famously, like Lawrence, destroyed so many letters and he only ever kept one that was the one from Mansfield that we all know where she thanked him so profusely for everything that he had done for her, that he had taught her how to write, etc, Etc. Anyway, apparently the sense was that Murray had gone to give back to Araj the letters that he had written to Mansfield, because obviously everything was now in Murray's possession and to retrieve the letters that Mansfield had written to him thereafter in his own biography and in all his publications, the so called journal that Mansfield apparently wrote, although she wrote no such thing, the letters that the various editions of letters that he wrote, he just removed Araj from her life. And everyone was shocked by that who knew them, because most people had a sense who knew them that Arash had at least been in her life, even if they didn't understand how important. He also helped in inverted commas, a young American researcher, Ruth Mance, firstly with her bibliography. She was a Mansfield addict and it's not hard to become a Mansfield addict, so I have lots of sympathy for her. But she created the first bibliography of Mansfield and Murray basically told lies and said that during the only publications in the New Age were the early ones, the ones that famously were then put into that book in a German pension. And that from then on until he started accepting fiction in the Athenaeum, Mansfield had nowhere to place her fiction was completely untrue. She never stopped publishing in the New Age. But Murray didn't want people to know that. And so he told a lie to Ruth Mance and that's what she put in her bibliography. And then of course the terrible biography that she started to write wrote to Murray asking for his permission, which legally she had to do. And he then said, oh no, well, I'll help you, you. And he ended up constraining her, redacting so much he took over the book, ended up with both of them as authors and he made her stop the biography where his life with mansfield began in 1912, because he said, there's no need for us to continue. Everything that anyone needs to know about Mansfield will be in the volumes of journals and letters which I have already published. There was so much more to say.

[Jack Wilson]

Yeah, when Woolf says that Murray destroyed her as a writer, does he mean destroyed her reputation or her presentation as a writer? Or is he talking about the editing that he did took away from the power of her stories? Or does he mean literally that she wrote differently because of Murray's influence?

[Jerry Kimber]

I think possibly the latter. I mean, whilst she was alive, I think she very much was her own writer. But I think as soon as she died, that was Murray's turn then. I mean, the hagiography of Mansfield's life post her death by Murray is so famous. I mean, it's hard to imagine any other writer having their personality so distorted in order to create a different personality that suited the narrative of the remaining spouse. It's quite incredible. And he did. And he Baudelarized so much and changed so much. And certainly the first editions of the journal, so called journal because she never wrote a journal. He created it from a mass of loose pieces of paper, jottings in notebooks. What Mansfield never ever wrote was a journal. And what I always used to impress on my students was that, please don't use that word because it's Murray's made up word. If you want to talk about what Mansfield wrote, talk about notebooks writing that she wrote in notebooks. She did write the odd diary entry, but mostly she just wrote on loose pieces of paper scrap and just, you know, she would turn notebooks upside down. She would use a notebook, come back to it five years later because there was some empty pages and carry on writing in that. Murray just created something out of all of this and in that he was supremely successful. And if you're going to congratulate Murray for anything, it's the fact that he made it all look so seamless. He made it look like Mansfield had decided, yes, I'm going to write a journal and this is what I wrote. So he did do a very good job of it, but it really wasn't what she did.

[Jack Wilson]

Right, okay, so I want to make sure we encourage listeners to seek out some Kathryn Mansfield to get a taste of her works. Are there stories in particular that you recommend for listeners who might be new to Katherine Mansfield?

[Jerry Kimber]

Oh, where do you start? I would definitely say because all her work is still in print. It's never been out of print, luckily. And I suppose in a way we initially have Murray to thank for that, but I think nowadays people recognise her for what she is. And now all the editions of her letters and her so called journal and her fiction are now completely all traces of Murray's hand have now been removed. But I would definitely say either of the two of the Inner German Pension stories, the very first collection, are wonderful, but they're not really where I would Start with Mansfield. I would definitely start with either Bliss and Other Stories or the Garden Party and Other Stories. The Garden Party and the Other Stories was the last collection that she personally had a hand in, decided on every single story. And it was the collection that came out at the beginning of 1922 in the last year of her life. So that was the last great publication of Mansfield's during her lifetime. And there are some wonderful stories in there. You've got at the Bay, the Garden Party and the Daughters of the Late Colonel, an absolutely fantastic story. If you only want to read one story to understand Manson Mansfield's humour and her ability to evoke emotion and to delineate characters. The Daughters of the Late Colonel will give you all of that.

[Jack Wilson]

Right. Well, that was going to be my last question is what to look for. And you just answered it before I could ask it. So that's very efficient.

Thank you.

The book is called Kathryn A Hidden Life. Jerry Kimber, thank you so much for joining me on the history of literature.

[Jerry Kimber]

Thank you. It's been an absolute pleasure. Thank you.

[Sponsor/Ad Voice]

We all love a legendary comeback and Degree Original Cool Rush is back and better than ever. Cool Rush isn't just a scent. It's a movement, a fan favorite that delivers bold, fresh vibes and all day sweat protection. Whether you have a man that spends hours in the gym, heads into the office early, or is just trying to stay fresh on a long day, Cool Rush has their back. Head to your local Walmart or Target and grab Degree Cool Rush, the fan favorite scent from the world's number one antiperspirant brand.

[Jack Wilson]

Foreign.

Today. Ken Sachs was here to discuss Ralph Waldo Emerson and his evolving anti slavery views. Emerson was always against slavery, but he couldn't figure out the best way to try to end it or where he as a philosopher should land. What were his obligations to the real contemporary world and the politics of his day? What would be the best course of action? It was a dilemma he addressed somewhat slowly over a period of several years. It was a fascinating conversation and after it was over, I asked Ken a special question. Okay.

I'm joined now by Ken Sachs, expert in Ralph Waldo Emerson and author of Emerson's Civil Wars, Spirit and Society in the Age of Abolition. Ken, this question comes from a listener.

Who asks, what do you want your last book to be? This will be the last book you will ever read. You can either choose one that exists.

Or describe one that has not yet been written.

[Ken Sachs]

Well, I'm going to offer one that perhaps no one's ever suggested before.

[Jack Wilson]

Okay.

[Ken Sachs]

It's one that's not been written as one that probably can never be written, but it's my fantasy book. In the third century BCE in Alexandria, there was a great library that collected all the great books of literature from all the people, history, geography, science, poetry, et cetera, epic that they could find in the world. Boats came into the harbor at Alexandria, which was the greatest port in the Mediterranean. And books that were not in this library in Alexandria were confiscated and copied, and either the originals or the copies, as debated, end up in. In this massive, massive library. Well, there was a librarian and a great poet named Callimachus who was in charge of cataloging them all. They were called Panakes, which literally means the catalog. But it wasn't just a catalog like the Dewey Decimal System. It described in detail all these books. It was many, many volumes long. And this contained the wisdom of the ancients. It was lost to us as the library was lost to us. And it was a terrible, terrible blow that, that many of the greatest works of literature and philosophy and science from the ancient world were lost. Carl Sagan in his Cosmos series has a wonderful description of this library. And so I would like in my fantasy for someone to discover the long lost manuscript of Callimachus Pinakes so that we can read the summaries of all the great literature of the ancient world that was lost to us.

[Jack Wilson]

Okay, well, let's see here.

Let's unpack this a little bit. So my first impulse when you said.

This is, well, wouldn't this just be frustrating to see to read a synopsis of a book and to think, well, that's a book that should not have been lost.

That's a book I want to read the whole book.

I mean, I'm feeling like you could maybe get that feeling over and over and over of, well, now here's another book I can't read, and another one I can't read.

[Ken Sachs]

That's true, but there's enough description. We know in these things that what we can do is we can trace intellectual ideas, say, well, this particular thing is lost to us, but we can see from the description of it that it was influenced by this author. We can start to map the evolution of ideas throughout antiquity in a much, much more finely grained way than we do today. I mean, classically, for example, we read Plato, we read Aristotle, and we say, well, here's where Aristotle is very, very different from Plato, and here's where he may have been influenced by Plato. That's kind of a classic strategy. But if we have all of this, we can start to really see the ways that Sophocles may or may not have reacted against Aeschylus, for example, far more description of what epic poetry was like, which was really important. We could start to see science who discovered what or who was the first person to suggest what in more detail. We could create an intellectual map, a much more finely grained intellectual map of antiquity and what was available to them. Yes, we would mourn even more the loss of all this. It's true, it would be a bittersweet, but I'm focusing on the sweet, not the bitter.

[Jack Wilson]

Yeah, yeah, well, you've sold me on that. So now I agree that that would.

Be a good choice and you would.

Have a lot of fun with it, I think.

And it would be kind of a nice way of, you know, as a last book to read of kind of thinking through.

Well, this is humanity and intellectual humanity at its greatest.

This is where we get to see ideas coming into being for the first time and to see the people who came before us, who were thinking these deep and profound thoughts and how they were influenced and who they influenced.

[Ken Sachs]

That's right, exactly.

[Jack Wilson]

Ken Sachs, thank you so much for.

Joining me on the History of Literature.

[Ken Sachs]

Oh, it's totally my pleasure.

[Jack Wilson]

Okay, there we go. That's going to do it for this episode of the History of Literature. My thanks to Ken, Sandra Sachs and Jerry Kimber for joining me today. At the time of recording this, I think our sign up for the History of Literature podcast tour is still open. People will be going to England and seeing some great literary sites, traveling together as a small group in hotels and on trains, and enjoying our meals and meeting a number of your favorite guests, those scholars and experts whom we've gotten to know over the years. So do check that out in our show notes. You can follow the link to John Shore's travel or you can find [e-mail] you do need to put down a deposit, though. We're getting to crunch time there. And you can sign up for a low ad version of the podcast if you're tired of sitting through the ads. And that'[e-mail] literature we make that available as a bonus to all our Patreon members. Shakespeare's coming up, Faulkner, Hemingway, Gertrude Stein. A black woman roams through the Romantic archives. We talk about consent in the Regency period. All of these good episodes are coming up soon, so please do come back for those. I'm Jack Wilson. Thank you for listening and we'll see you next time.

[Sarah]

Hey, this is Sarah. Look, I'm standing out front of a.m. p.m. Right now and, well, you're sweet and all, but I found something more fulfilling, even kind of cheesy. But I like it. Sure, you met some of my dietary needs, but they've just got it all. So farewell, oatmeal. So long, you strange soggy breakup with.

[Sponsor/Ad Voice]

Bland breakfast and taste AM PM's bacon.

[Jack Wilson]

Egg and cheese biscuit made with K.

[Sponsor/Ad Voice]

Tree eggs, smoked bacon and melty cheese on a buttery biscuit. AM PM Too much good stuff.