Chelsey

Katherine Mansfield and John Middleton Murry have one of the messiest, unusual, and outright strange relationships of all my favourite writers. That’s a bold claim, but I stand by it. I’d love to focus on their story, rather than Katherine’s previous relationships, but they’re important to understanding just what was going on in their lives.

*My information for this post comes from a few sources, and I recommend Pamela Dunbar’s Radical Mansfield, Andrew Bennett’s Katherine Mansfield, and Katherine Mansfield and Children, edited by Gerri Kimber and Todd Martin

Katherine Mansfield and John Middleton Murry, Chaucer Mansions, Kensington, London. Murry, M Middleton (Mrs) :Photographs of Katherine Mansfield. Ref: 1/2-028643-F. Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand. /records/23025665

So, Katherine Mansfield was originally from New Zealand. Before she moved to London to study, she had a friendship with a Maori princess, Maata, that’s believed to have been a romantic relationship. These kinds of friendships are a theme in her life – she also had a relationship with Edie Bendall when she was in London.

Between Maata and Edie, Katherine fell in love with Tom Trowell. She lost touch with him, but later, in 1908, she developed feelings for his twin brother, Garnet Trowell. They were engaged for a while, but they separated before she discovered that she was pregnant. She then married George Bowden, which is generally believed to be her attempt at legitimising her pregnancy, but she abandoned him the very same day. They remained married for nine years, which would prove to be an issue for her relationship with John Middleton Murry, but they saw little of each other, and were pretty much estranged from the beginning of their marriage. It doesn’t seem like the wedding was a happy occasion – Katherine wore black, and her only witness was her friend Ida Constance Baker, with whom she has another complicated relationship.

In fact, it was Katherine’s attachment to Ida that caused her mother, Annie, to send her to a pension in Bavaria to ‘heal’. While she was there, she miscarried Garnet’s baby. Within a couple of months, she’d begun an affair with Floryan Sobieniowski, who introduced her to Russian literature. It’s believed that she became pregnant again during this affair, and chose to abort their baby, though this isn’t talked about as much as her other affairs, so it’s hard to be certain. She did however catch gonorrhea from Floryan, which went untreated, and likely contributed to her untimely death. She ended her affair with Floryan and returned to London where she briefly lived with her husband, then with Ida. She was possibly pregnant again at this time, but it’s not clear if this was by George, or another of her affairs. She also had a fallopian tube removed around the same time, and she was cared for by Ida.

Finally, in 1911, Katherine submitted a short story to Rhythm magazine, which was edited by none other than John Middleton Murry. In the same month, she met John at a dinner party. He became her lodger, and she became assistant editor of his magazine, and all was well until they were forced to leave their home as they weren’t married. This began a period of frequent moves and separations for the couple.

First, Katherine lived in Buckinghamshire, and John joined her on weekends. They briefly lived in Bloomsbury with Dorothy Brett and Dora Carrington. John, Katherine, and Ida lived in various configurations (more often than not, it was Ida and Katherine together, though) across England, France, Italy, and Switzerland, never staying in one place for too long.

This isn’t just odd in hindsight; Katherine’s friends suspected her ‘friendship’ with Ida was a romantic relationship, and her relationship with John has been described as childlike. They viewed themselves as children, but equally, Katherine suggested that they were each other’s children, even referred to John as her child. It was all very strange. She also intensely hated John ‘for his Englishness’ at times, but still, they loved one another equally intensely.

Katherine had a complicated relationship to motherhood – it’s evident in her writing. But in general, prior to her relationship with John, she didn’t particularly care for it. Once she developed her relationship with John, she did wish to be a mother – in particular, she wanted a son. Sadly, her untreated gonorrhea and previous pregnancies had left her infertile, which put a strain on Katherine and John’s relationship.

In the winter of 1917 to 1918, Katherine became ill with tuberculosis, which she never recovered from. It didn’t take her life immediately, but it left her weak for her remaining years. 

Katherine and George were finally divorced and she was able to marry John in 1918. Oddly, she spent the six weeks following her wedding in Cornwall with Anne Estelle Rice. Not John.

After that summer, though, she and John lived together, with Ida joining them as their ‘housekeeper’. Ida and Katherine travelled a lot during her illness, as the milder European climates were better for her health. John, however, often had to stay in England to work. For some reason, Katherine referred to Ida as her ‘wife’ during this time, and Ida was both a friend and caregiver. 

In 1920, the most turbulent period of Katherine and John’s relationship happened. Firstly, Katherines was blackmailed by Floryan over the love letters she had sent to him during their affair. As well as this, Katherine discovered that John had been having an affair with Elizabeth Bibesco – the daughter of Asquith, and the wife of Prince Antoine of Romania. She later became a writer – possibly influenced by her friendships with Katherine and Virginia Woolf (though they did not see view her kindly in private – in particular due to her relationship with John).

In 1923, John visited Katherine in France, but on his arrival, Katherine exerted herself by climbing the stairs and hemorrhaged, resulting in her death. Their complicated love story does not end there, though. After her death, John published Katherine’s previously unpublished works, many of which she didn’t wish to be released, as well as her love letters to him. While this helped him financially, I can’t help but think about how so much of what we know about Katherine and John’s relationship comes from John acting against Katherine’s wishes after her death.