Mansfield (edition 2005)

What would it be like, I wonder, to read CK Stead's novel of Katherine Mansfield and her milieu without a working knowledge of English literary and intellectual culture in the opening decades of the 20th century? Prompted by Stead, the familiar cast of characters emerges from the recesses of memory a little uncertainly at first like clockwork figures, each with their characteristic stage make-up, grimaces, mannerisms and accoutrements. There is Bertrand Russell with his high celluloid collar, clenched pipe and withering halitosis; D H Lawrence, with wiry ginger hair, jutting red beard, tiresome argumentativeness and Frieda, his large German wife. In one of the more memorable set pieces in the novel Lawrence quarrels with Frieda and beats her viciously before collapsing in exhaustion and self pity. Ottoline Morrell is there, too, horsefaced, voracious in her pursuit of intellectual celebrities and oddly pathetic. Even Ludwig Wittgenstein, who was fighting on the German Front, makes an offstage appearance as the painful thorn in Bertrand Russell's self esteem. These well known figures provide the background for CK Stead's exploration of the triangular relationship between Katherine Mansfield, her awareness of her pre-eminent literary talent and 'Jack' Middleton Murry, her on and off lover, whom she eventually married. (To be continued) ( )