THE FLY

- By Katherine Mansfield
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New Zealand author (1888–1923) Katherine MansfieldKatherine MansfieldBornKathleen Mansfield Beauchamp(1888-10-14)14 October 1888Wellington, New ZealandDied9 January 1923(1923-01-09) (aged 34)Fontainebleau, Île-de-France, FranceOccupationShort story writer, poetNationalityBritish (New Zealand)Alma materQueen's College, LondonPeriod1908–1923Literary movementModernismSpouses George Bowden ​ ​(m. 1908; div. 1917)​ John Middleton Murry ​ ​(m. 1918)​PartnersMaata MahupukuEdith Kathleen BendallIda Constance BakerRelativesArthur Beauchamp (grandfather)Harold Beauchamp (father)Elizabeth von Arnim (cousin)WebsiteOfficial website Kathleen Mansfield Murry (née Beauchamp; 14 October 1888 – 9 January 1923) was a New Zealand writer and critic who was an important figure in the modernist movement. Her works are celebrated across the world, and have been published in 25 languages.[1] Born and raised in a house on Tinakori Road in the Wellington suburb of Thorndon, Mansfield was the third child in the Beauchamp family. She began school in Karori with her sisters before attending Wellington Girls' College. The Beauchamp girls later switched to the elite Fitzherbert Terrace School, where Mansfield became friends with Maata Mahupuku, who became a muse for early work and with whom she is believed to have had a passionate relationship.[1] Mansfield wrote short stories and poetry under a variation of her own name, Katherine Mansfield, which explored anxiety, sexuality and existentialism alongside a developing New Zealand identity. When she was 19, she left New Zealand and settled in England, where she became a friend of D. H. Lawrence, Virginia Woolf, Lady Ottoline Morrell and others in the orbit of the Bloomsbury Group. Mansfield was diagnosed with pulmonary tuberculosis in 1917, and she died in France aged 34. Biography[edit] Katherine Mansfield's birthplace, Thorndon, New Zealand Early life[edit] Kathleen Mansfield Beauchamp was born in 1888 into a socially prominent Wellington family in Thorndon. Her grandfather Arthur Beauchamp briefly represented the Picton electorate in parliament. Her father Harold Beauchamp became the chairman of the Bank of New Zealand and was knighted in 1923.[2][3] Her mother was Annie Burnell Beauchamp (née Dyer), whose brother married the daughter of Richard Seddon. Her extended family included the author Countess Elizabeth von Arnim, and her great-granduncle was Victorian artist Charles Robert Leslie. Mansfield had two elder sisters, a younger sister and a younger brother.[4][3][5] In 1893, for health reasons, the Beauchamp family moved from Thorndon to the country suburb of Karori, where Mansfield spent the happiest years of her childhood. She used some of those memories as an inspiration for the short story "Prelude".[2] The family returned to Wellington in 1898. Mansfield's first printed stories appeared in the High School Reporter and the Wellington Girls' High School magazine[2] in 1898 and 1899.[6] Her first formally published story "His Little Friend" appeared the following year in a society magazine, New Zealand Graphic and Ladies Journal.[7] In 1902 Mansfield became enamoured of Arnold Trowell, a cellist, but her feelings were for the most part not reciprocated.[8] Mansfield was herself an accomplished cellist, having received lessons from Trowell's father.[2] London and Europe[edit] 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,[8] but she began contributing to the college newspaper with such dedication that she eventually became its editor.[4][6] She was particularly interested in the works of the French Symbolists and Oscar Wilde,[4] and she was appreciated among her peers for her vivacious, charismatic approach to life and work.[6] Mansfield met fellow student Ida Baker[4] at the college, and they became lifelong friends.[2] 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.[9][10] 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.[6] This was also the first occasion on which she used the pseudonym K. Mansfield.[8] She rapidly grew weary of the provincial New Zealand lifestyle and of her family, and two years later, headed back to London.[4] Her father sent her an annual allowance of 100 pounds for the rest of her life.[2] 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.[4] 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.[11] The second relationship, with Edith Kathleen Bendall, took place from 1906 to 1908. Mansfield professed her adoration for her in her journals.[12] Return to London[edit] After having returned to London in 1908, Mansfield quickly fell into a bohemian way of life. She published one story and one poem during her first 15 months there.[6] Mansfield sought out the Trowell family for companionship, and while Arnold was involved with another woman, Mansfield embarked on a passionate affair with his brother Garnet.[8] By early 1909, she had become pregnant by Garnet, but Trowell's parents disapproved of the relationship, and the two broke up. She then hastily entered into a marriage with George Bowden, a teacher of singing 11 years her senior;[13] they were married on 2 March, but she left him the same evening before the marriage could be consummated.[8] After Mansfield had a brief reunion with Garnet, Mansfield's mother Annie Beauchamp arrived in 1909. She blamed the breakdown of the marriage to Bowden on a lesbian relationship between Mansfield and Baker, and she quickly had her daughter dispatched to the spa town of Bad Wörishofen in Bavaria, where Mansfield miscarried. It is not known whether her mother knew of this miscarriage when she left shortly after arriving in Germany, but she cut Mansfield out of her will.[8] Mansfield's time in Bavaria had a significant effect on her literary outlook. In particular, she was introduced to the works of Anton Chekhov. Some biographers accuse her of plagiarizing Chekhov with one of her early short stories.[14] She returned to London in January 1910. She then published more than a dozen articles in Alfred Richard Orage's socialist magazine The New Age and became a friend and lover of Beatrice Hastings, who lived with Orage.[15] Her experiences of Germany formed the foundation of her first published collection In a German Pension (1911), which she later described as "immature".[8][6] Rhythm[edit] Mansfield in 1912 In 1910, Mansfield submitted a lightweight story to Rhythm, a new avant-garde magazine. The piece was rejected by the magazine's editor John Middleton Murry, who requested something darker. Mansfield responded with a tale of murder and mental illness titled "The Woman at the Store".[4] Mansfield was inspired at this time by Fauvism.[4][8] Mansfield and Murry began a relationship in 1911 that culminated in their marriage in 1918, but she left him in 1911 and again in 1913.[16] The characters Gudrun and Gerald in D. H. Lawrence's Women in Love are based on Mansfield and Murry.[17] Charles Granville (sometimes known as Stephen Swift), the publisher of Rhythm, absconded to Europe in October 1912 and left Murry responsible for the debts the magazine had accumulated. Mansfield pledged her father's allowance toward the magazine, but it was discontinued, being reorganised as The Blue Review in 1913 and folding after three issues.[8] Mansfield and Murry were persuaded by their friend Gilbert Cannan to rent a cottage next to his windmill in Cholesbury, Buckinghamshire in 1913 in an attempt to alleviate Mansfield's ill health.[18] The couple moved to Paris in January the following year with the hope that a change of setting would make writing easier for both of them. Mansfield wrote only one story during her time there, "Something Childish But Very Natural", then Murry was recalled to London to declare bankruptcy.[8] Mansfield had a brief affair with the French writer Francis Carco in 1914. Her visit to him in Paris in February 1915[8] is retold in her story "An Indiscreet Journey".[4] Impact of World War I[edit] Mansfield's life and work were changed by the death of her younger brother Leslie Beauchamp, known as Chummie to his family. In October 1915, he was killed during a grenade training drill while serving with the British Expeditionary Force in Ypres Salient, Belgium, aged 21.[19] She began to take refuge in nostalgic reminiscences of their childhood in New Zealand.[20] In a poem describing a dream she had shortly after his death, she wrote: By the remembered stream my brother standsWaiting for me with berries in his hands..."These are my body. Sister, take and eat."[4] At the beginning of 1917, Mansfield and Murry separated,[4] but he continued to visit her at her apartment.[8] Ida Baker, whom Mansfield often called, with a mixture of affection and disdain, her "wife", moved in with her shortly afterwards.[13] Mansfield entered into her most prolific period of writing after 1916, which began with several stories, including "Mr Reginald Peacock's Day" and "A Dill Pickle", being published in The New Age. Virginia Woolf and her husband Leonard, who had recently set up the Hogarth Press, approached her for a story, and Mansfield presented to them "Prelude", which she had begun writing in 1915 as "The Aloe". The story depicts a New Zealand family, configured like her own,[21] moving house. Diagnosis of tuberculosis[edit] In December 1917, at the age of 29, Mansfield was diagnosed with pulmonary tuberculosis.[22] For part of spring and summer 1918, she joined her friend Anne Estelle Rice, an American painter, at Looe in Cornwall with the hope of recovering. While there, Rice painted a portrait of her dressed in red, a vibrant colour Mansfield liked and suggested herself. The Portrait of Katherine Mansfield is now held by the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa.[23] Rejecting the idea of staying in a sanatorium on the grounds that it would cut her off from writing,[6] she moved abroad to avoid the English winter.[8] She stayed at a half-deserted, cold hotel in Bandol, France, where she became depressed but continued to produce stories, including "Je ne parle pas français". "Bliss", the story that lent its name to her second collection of stories in 1920, was also published in 1918. Her health continued to deteriorate and she had her first lung haemorrhage in March.[8] By April, Mansfield's divorce from Bowden had been finalised, and she and Murry married, only to part again two weeks later.[8] They came together again, however, and in March 1919 Murry became editor of The Athenaeum, a magazine for which Mansfield wrote more than 100 book reviews (collected posthumously as Novels and Novelists). During the winter of 1918–1919, she and Baker stayed in a villa in San Remo, Italy. Their relationship came under strain during this period; after she wrote to Murry to express her feelings of depression, he stayed over Christmas.[8] Although her relationship with Murry became increasingly distant after 1918[8] and the two often lived apart,[16] this intervention of his spurred her, and she wrote "The Man Without a Temperament", the story of an ill wife and her long-suffering husband. Mansfield followed Bliss (1920), her first collection of short stories, with the collection The Garden Party and Other Stories, published in 1922. In May 1921, Mansfield, accompanied by her friend Ida Baker, travelled to Switzerland to investigate the tuberculosis treatment of the Swiss bacteriologist Henri Spahlinge. From June 1921, Murry joined her, and they rented the Chalet des Sapins in the Montana region (now Crans-Montana) until January 1922. Baker rented separate accommodation in Montana village and worked at a clinic there.[8] The Chalet des Sapins was only a "1/2 an hours scramble away" from the Chalet Soleil at Randogne, the home of Mansfield's first cousin once removed, the Australian-born writer Elizabeth von Arnim, who visited Mansfield and Murry often during this period.[24] Von Arnim was the first cousin of Mansfield's father. They got on well, although Mansfield considered her wealthier cousin—who had in 1919 separated from her second husband Frank Russell, the elder brother of Bertrand Russell—to be rather patronising.[25] It was a highly productive period of Mansfield's writing, for she felt she did not have much time left. "At the Bay", "The Doll's House", "The Garden Party" and "A Cup of Tea" were written in Switzerland.[26] Last year and death[edit] 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.[8] From 4 June to 16 August 1922 Mansfield and Murry returned to Switzerland, living in a hotel in Randogne. Mansfield finished "The Canary", the last short story she completed, on 7 July 1922. She wrote her will at the hotel on 14 August 1922. They went to London for six weeks before Mansfield, along with Ida Baker, moved to Fontainebleau, France, on 16 October 1922.[26][8] 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,[27] 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.[28] Mansfield suffered a fatal pulmonary haemorrhage on 9 January 1923, after running up a flight of stairs.[29] She died within the hour, and was buried at Cimetière d'Avon, Avon, near Fontainebleau.[30] 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.[31] Mansfield was a prolific writer in the final years of her life. Much of her work remained unpublished at her death, and Murry took on the task of editing and publishing it in two additional volumes of short stories (The Dove's Nest in 1923, and Something Childish in 1924); a volume of poems; The Aloe; Novels and Novelists; and collections of her letters and journals. Legacy[edit] The following high schools in New Zealand have a house named after Mansfield: Whangārei Girls' High School; Rangitoto College, Westlake Girls' High School, and Macleans College in Auckland; Tauranga Girls' College; Wellington Girls' College; Rangiora High School in North Canterbury, New Zealand; Avonside Girls' High School in Christchurch; and Southland Girls' High School in Invercargill. She has also been honoured at Karori Normal School in Wellington, which has a stone monument dedicated to her with a plaque commemorating her work and her time at the school, and at Samuel Marsden Collegiate School (previously Fitzherbert Terrace School) with a painting, and an award in her name. Her birthplace in Thorndon has been preserved as the Katherine Mansfield House and Garden, and the Katherine Mansfield Memorial Park in Fitzherbert Terrace is dedicated to her. A street in Menton, France, where she lived and wrote, is named after her.[32] An award, the Katherine Mansfield Menton Fellowship is offered annually to enable a New Zealand writer to work at her former home, the Villa Isola Bella. New Zealand's pre-eminent short story competition is named in her honour.[33] Mansfield was the subject of a 1973 BBC miniseries A Picture of Katherine Mansfield, starring Vanessa Redgrave. The six-part series included depictions of Mansfield's life and adaptations of her short stories. In 2011, a television biopic titled Bliss was made of her early beginnings as a writer in New Zealand; in this she was played by Kate Elliott.[34] Archives of Katherine Mansfield material are held in the Turnbull Collection of the National Library of New Zealand in Wellington, with other important holdings at the Newberry Library in Chicago, the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas, Austin and the British Library in London. There are smaller holdings at New York Public Library and other public and private collections.[8] In fiction[edit] J.M. Murry wrote in Reminiscences of D.H. Lawrence (1933): "I have been told, by one who should know, that the character of Gudrun in Women in Love was intended for a portrait of Katherine [Mansfield]. If this is true, it confirms me in my belief that Lawrence had curiously little understanding of her... And yet he was very fond of her, as she was of him."[35] Murry said that the fictional incident in the chapter "Gudrun in the Pompadour" – when Gudrun tears a letter from Julian Halliday's hands and storms out – was based on a true event at the Cafe Royal.[36] The character Sybil in the 1932 novel But for the Grace of God, by Mansfield's friend J.W.N. Sullivan, has several resemblances to Mansfield. Musically trained, she goes to the south of France without her husband but with a female friend, and lapses into an incurable illness that kills her.[37] The character Kathleen in Evelyn Schlag's 1987 novel Die Kränkung (published in English as Quotations of a Body) is based on Mansfield.[38] C.K. Stead's 2004 novel Mansfield depicts the writer in the period 1915-18.[39] Kevin Boon's 2011 novella Kezia is based on Mansfield's childhood in New Zealand.[40] Andrew Crumey's 2023 novel Beethoven's Assassins has a chapter featuring Mansfield and A.R. Orage at George Gurdjieff's institute in France.[41] Works[edit] Library resources about Katherine Mansfield Online books Resources in your library Resources in other libraries By Katherine Mansfield Online books Resources in your library Resources in other libraries Collections[edit] In a German Pension (1911), ISBN 1-86941-014-9 Bliss and Other Stories (1920) The Garden Party and Other Stories (1922) ISBN 1-86941-016-5 The Doves' Nest and Other Stories (1923) ISBN 1-86941-017-3 Poems (1923) ISBN 0-19-558199-7 Something Childish and Other Stories (1924), ISBN 1-86941-018-1, first published in the U.S. as The Little Girl The Journal of Katherine Mansfield (1927, 1954) ISBN 0-88001-023-1 The Letters of Katherine Mansfield (2 vols., 1928–29) The Aloe (1930), ISBN 0-86068-520-9 Novels and Novelists (1930), ISBN 0-403-02290-8 The Short Stories of Katherine Mansfield (1937) The Scrapbook of Katherine Mansfield (1939) The Collected Stories of Katherine Mansfield (1945, 1974) ISBN 0-14-118368-3 Letters to John Middleton Murry, 1913–1922 (1951) ISBN 0-86068-945-X The Urewera Notebook (1978), ISBN 0-19-558034-6 The Critical Writings of Katherine Mansfield (1987) ISBN 0-312-17514-0 The Collected Letters of Katherine Mansfield (4 vols., 1984–96) Vol. 1, 1903–17, ISBN 0-19-812613-1 Vol. 2, 1918–19, ISBN 0-19-812614-X Vol. 3, 1919–20, ISBN 0-19-812615-8 Vol. 4, 1920–21, ISBN 0-19-818532-4 The Katherine Mansfield Notebooks (2 vols., 1997) ISBN 0-8166-4236-2 The Montana Stories (2001, a collection of all the material written by Mansfield from June 1921 until her death)[26] ISBN 978-1-903155-15-8 The collected poems of Katherine Mansfield, edited by Gerri Kimber and Claire Davison, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, [2016], ISBN 978-1-4744-1727-3 Bliss & other stories (2021), PROJAPOTI, India ISBN 978-81-7606-276-3 Short stories[edit] "The Tiredness of Rosabel" (1908) "Germans at Meat" (1911 from In a German Pension) "A Birthday" (1911 from In a German Pension) "A Blaze" (1911 from In a German Pension) "A Truthful Adventure" (1911) "The Journey to Bruges" (1911) "How Pearl Button Was Kidnapped" (1912) "New Dresses" (1912) "The Little Girl" (1912) "The Woman at the Store" (1912) "Bains Turcs" (1913) "Millie" (1913) "Ole Underwood" (1913) "Pension Séguin" (1913) "Violet" (1913) "Something Childish But Very Natural" (1914) "The Apple-Tree" (1915) "The Little Governess" (1915) "Spring Pictures" (1915) "A Dill Pickle" (1917) "Feuille d'Album" (1917) "Je ne parle pas français" (1917) "Late at Night" (1917) "Pictures" (1917) "See-Saw" (1917) "The Black Cap" (1917) "Two Tuppenny Ones, Please" (1917) "Prelude" (1918) "Bliss" (1918) "Carnation" (1918) "A Suburban Fairy Tale" (1919) "The Wrong House" (1919) "An Indiscreet Journey" (1920) "Bank Holiday" (1920) "Miss Brill" (1920) "Mr Reginald Peacock's Day" (1920) "Poison" (1920) "Psychology" (1920) "Revelations" (1920) "Sun and Moon" (1920) "The Escape" (1920) "The Lady's Maid" (1920) "The Singing Lesson" (1920) "The Wind Blows" (1920) "The Young Girl" (1920) "This Flower" (1920) "An Ideal Family" (1921) "Marriage à la Mode" (1921) "The Voyage" (1921) "Her First Ball" (1921) "Mr and Mrs Dove" (1921) "Life of Ma Parker" (1921) "Sixpence" (1921) "The Daughters of the Late Colonel" (1921) "The Stranger" (1921) "The Man Without a Temperament" (1921) "At the Bay" (1922) "The Fly" (1922) "The Garden Party" (1922) "A Cup of Tea" (1922) "The Doll's House" (1922) "A Married Man's Story" (1923) "Honeymoon" (1923) "Taking the Veil" (1923) "The Canary" (1923) Biographies[edit] Katherine Mansfield: The Early Years, Gerri Kimber, Edinburgh University Press, 2016, ISBN 9780748681457 Katherine Mansfield, Antony Alpers, A.A. Knopf, NY, 1953; Jonathan Cape, London, 1954 LM (1971). Katherine Mansfield: The Memories of LM. Michael Joseph; reprinted by Virago Press 1985. ISBN 0-86068-745-7. LM was "Lesley Morris", which was the pen name of Mansfield's friend Ida Constance Baker. Katherine Mansfield: A Biography, Jeffrey Meyers, New Directions Pub. Corp. NY, 1978; Hamish Hamilton, London, 1978 The Life of Katherine Mansfield, Antony Alpers, Oxford University Press, 1980 Tomalin, Claire (1987). Katherine Mansfield: A Secret Life. Viking. ISBN 0-670-81392-3. Katherine Mansfield: A Darker View, Jeffrey Meyers, Cooper Square Press, NY, 2002, ISBN 9780815411970 Katherine Mansfield: The Story-Teller, a biography by Royal Literary Fund Fellow Kathleen Jones, Viking Penguin, 2010, ISBN 9780670074358 Kass a theatrical biografie, Maura Del Serra, "Astolfo", 2, 1998, pp. 47–60 Kimber, Gerri; Pégon, Claire (2015). Katherine Mansfield and the Art of the Short Story. Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 9781137483874. OCLC 910660543. . All Sorts of Lives: Katherine Mansfield and the art of risking everything. Harman, Claire (5 January 2023)Random House. ISBN 978-1-5291-9167-7. Film and television about Mansfield[edit] A Picture of Katherine Mansfield, a 1973 BBC television drama series starring Vanessa Redgrave Leave All Fair (1985), directed by John Reid A Portrait of Katherine Mansfield: The Woman and the Writer (1987), directed by Julienne Stretton The Life and Writings of Katherine Mansfield (2006), directed by Stacy Waymack Thornton Bliss (2011), produced by Michele Fantl,[42] directed by Fiona Samuel[43] Fiction featuring Mansfield[edit] Mansfield, A Novel by C.K. Stead, Harvill Press, 2004, ISBN 9781843431763 In Pursuit: The Katherine Mansfield Story Retold, 2010, a novel by Joanna FitzPatrick Katherine's Wish by Linda Lappin, Wordcraft of Oregon, 2008, ISBN 9781877655586 Dear Miss Mansfield: A Tribute to Kathleen Mansfield Beauchamp, 1989, a short story collection by Witi Ihimaera My Katherine Mansfield Project by Kirsty Gunn ISBN 9781910749043, 1910749044 Spring by Ali Smith, Penguin, 2019, ISBN 978-0-241-97335-6 Beethoven's Assassins by Andrew Crumey, Dedalus, 2023, ISBN 9781912868230 Plays featuring Mansfield[edit] Katherine Mansfield 1888–1923, premiered at the Cell Block Theatre, Sydney in 1978, with choreography by Margaret Barr and script by Joan Scott, which was spoken live during performance by the dancers, and by an actor and actress. Two dancers played Mansfield simultaneously, as "Katherine Mansfield had spoken of herself at times as a multiple person".[44] The Rivers of China by Alma De Groen, premiered at the Sydney Theatre Company in 1987, Sydney: Currency Press, ISBN 086819171X[45] Jones & Jones by Vincent O'Sullivan, a Downstage commission for the Mansfield centenary[46] in 1989: Victoria University Press, ISBN 0864730942 Adaptations of Mansfield's work[edit] "Chai Ka Ek Cup", an episode from the 1986 Indian anthology television series Katha Sagar was adapted from "A Cup of Tea" by Shyam Benegal. Mansfield with Monsters (Steam Press, 2012) Katherine Mansfield with Matt Cowens and Debbie Cowens[47] The Doll's House (1973), directed by Rudall Hayward[48] See also[edit] New Zealand literature New Zealand Post Katherine Mansfield Prize List of Bloomsbury Group people References[edit] ^ a b Taonga, New Zealand Ministry for Culture and Heritage Te Manatu. "Mansfield, Katherine". teara.govt.nz. Retrieved 17 October 2021. ^ a b c d e f "Katherine Mansfield:1888–1923 – A Biography". Katharinemansfield.com. Archived from the original on 14 October 2008. Retrieved 12 October 2008. ^ a b Nicholls, Roberta. "Beauchamp, Harold". Dictionary of New Zealand Biography. Ministry for Culture and Heritage. Retrieved 1 April 2012. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Katherine Mansfield (2002). Selected Stories. Oxford World's Classics. ISBN 978-0-19-283986-2. ^ Scholefield, Guy (1950) [First ed. published 1913]. New Zealand Parliamentary Record, 1840–1949 (3rd ed.). Wellington: Govt. Printer. p. 95. ^ a b c d e f g "Mansfield: Her Writing". Katharinemansfield.com. Archived from the original on 14 October 2008. Retrieved 12 October 2008. ^ Yska, Redmer, A Strange Beautiful Excitement: Katherine Mansfield's Wellington, Otago University Press, 2017 ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u Woods, Joanna (2007). "Katherine Mansfield, 1888–1923". Kōtare. 7 (1). Victoria University of Wellington: 68–98. doi:10.26686/knznq.v7i1.776. Retrieved 13 October 2008. ^ Alpers, Antony (1954). Katherine Mansfield. Jonathan Cape Ltd. pp. 26–29. ^ LM (1971). Katherine Mansfield: the memories of LM. Michael Joseph, reprinted by Virago Press 1985. p. 21. ISBN 0-86068-745-7. ^ The Canoes of Kupe. Roberta McIntyre. Fraser Books. Masteron. 2012. ^ Laurie, Alison J. "Queering Katherine". Victoria University of Wellington. Archived from the original (PDF) on 25 March 2009. Retrieved 23 October 2008. ^ a b Ali Smith (7 April 2007). "So many afterlives from one short life". The Daily Telegraph. Archived from the original on 18 May 2007. Retrieved 13 October 2008. ^ Wilson, A.N. (8 September 2008). "Sincerely, Katherine Mansfield". The Telegraph. Archived from the original on 12 January 2022. Retrieved 8 January 2019. ^ "As mad and bad as it gets", Frank Witford, The Sunday Times, 30 July 2006 ^ a b Kathleen Jones. "Katherine's relationship with John Middleton Murry". Archived from the original on 6 January 2009. Retrieved 22 October 2008. ^ Kaplan, Sydney Janet (2010) Circulating Genius: John Middleton Murry, Katherine Mansfield and D. H. Lawrence. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press ^ Farr, Diana (1978). Gilbert Cannan: A Georgian Prodigy. London: Chatto & Windus. ISBN 0-7011-2245-5. ^ NZ History. Leslie Beauchamp Great War Story. New Zealand Government History site (text and video). Retrieved 13 August 2020 ^ "Katherine Mansfield". Britishempire.co.uk. Retrieved 25 May 2007. ^ Harman, Claire (5 January 2023). All Sorts of Lives: Katherine Mansfield and the art of risking everything. Random House. ISBN 978-1-5291-9167-7. ^ Clarke, Bryce (6 April 1955). "Katherine Mansfield's illness". Proceedings of the Royal Society of Medicine. 48 (12): 1029–1032. doi:10.1177/003591575504801212. PMC 1919322. PMID 13280723. ^ "Portrait of Katherine Mansfield". Collection of Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa. Retrieved 21 July 2020 ^ Maddison, Isobel (2013) Worms of the same family: Elizabeth von Armin and Katherine Mansfield in Elizabeth von Arnim: Beyond the German Garden, pp.85–88. Farnham: Ashgate. Retrieved 19 July 2020 (Google Books) (Note: this source incorrectly states that Mansfield was in Switzerland until June 1922, but all Mansfield biographies state January 1922, for after that she sought treatment in France.) ^ Mansfield, Katherine; O'Sullivan, Vincent (ed.), et al. (1996) The Collected Letters of Katherine Mansfield: Volume Four: 1920–1921, pp. 249–250. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Retrieved 20 July 2020 (Google Books) ^ a b c Mansfield, Katherine (2001) The Montana Stories London: Persephone Books. (A collection of all Mansfield's work written from June 1921 until her death, including unfinished work.) ^ Lappin, Linda. "Katherine Mansfield and D. H. Lawrence, A Parallel Quest", Katherine Mansfield Studies: The Journal of the Katherine Mansfield Society, Vol 2, Edinburgh University Press, 2010, pp. 72–86. ^ O'Sullivan, Vincent; Scott, Margaret, eds. (2008). The Collected Letters of Katherine Mansfield. Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 360. ISBN 9780198183990. ^ Kavaler-Adler, Susan (1996). The Creative Mystique: From Red Shoes Frenzy to Love and Creativity. New York City / London: Routledge. p. 113. ISBN 0-415-91412-4. ^ Wilson, Scott. Resting Places: The Burial Sites of More Than 14,000 Famous Persons, 3d ed.: 2 (Kindle Location 29824). McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers. Kindle Edition. ^ Sir Michael Holroyd, "Katherine Mansfield's Camping Ground" (1980), in Works on Paper: The Craft of Biography and Autobiography (2002), p. 61 ^ "Menton, le havre secret de Katherine Mansfield". La Croix (in French). 9 June 2007. Retrieved 22 August 2018. ^ "Katherine Mansfield Menton Fellowship". The Arts Foundation. 16 September 2015. Retrieved 22 August 2018. ^ "Sunday Theatre | Television New Zealand | Television | TV One, TV2, U, TVNZ 7". Archived from the original on 26 September 2011. ^ Murry, John Middleton (1933). Reminiscences of D.H. Lawrence. New York: Henry Holt and Company. p. 88. ^ Murry, John Middleton (1933). Reminiscences of D.H. Lawrence. New York: Henry Holt and Company. pp. 89–90. ^ Sullivan, J.W.N. (1932). But for the Grace of God. London: Jonathan Cape. ^ Sobotta, Monika (2020). "7.5". The Reception of Katherine Mansfield in Germany (PDF) (PhD). The Open University. Retrieved 13 June 2023. ^ Lee, Hermione (29 May 2004). "Capturing the chameleon". The Guardian. London. Retrieved 13 June 2023. ^ Romanos, Joseph (12 January 2012). "A fresh look at Mansfield". The Post. New Zealand. Retrieved 13 June 2023. ^ Crumey, Andrew (2023). Beethoven's Assassins. Sawtry: Dedalus. p. 388. ISBN 9781912868230. ^ Bliss For Platinum Fund Archived 19 February 2011 at the Wayback Machine. NZ On Air. Retrieved 28 August 2011 ^ "Bliss: The Beginning of Katherine Mansfield; Television". NZ On Screen. Retrieved 1 November 2019. ^ Ballantyne, Tom (15 July 1978). "Double image: defining Katherine Mansfield". The Sydney Morning Herald. Sydney, NSW, Australia. p. 16. Retrieved 5 July 2019. ^ De Groen, Alma (1988). The rivers of China. Sydney: Currency Press. ISBN 086819171X. OCLC 19319529. ^ "Jones & Jones | Playmarket". www.playmarket.org.nz. Archived from the original on 7 September 2018. Retrieved 7 September 2018. ^ Mansfield with Monsters. Steam Press, NZ. Retrieved 18 September 2013 ^ NZ on Screen Filmography of Rudall Hayward. Retrieved 17 June 2011 External links[edit] Library resources about Katherine Mansfield Online books Resources in your library Resources in other libraries By Katherine Mansfield Online books Resources in your library Resources in other libraries Quotations related to Katherine Mansfield at Wikiquote Works by or about Katherine Mansfield at Wikisource Media related to Katherine Mansfield at Wikimedia Commons "Impressions of Katherine Mansfield at Nga Taonga (audiovisual items)". Nga Taonga (NZ). 2023. "Katherine Mansfield at New Zealand Electronic Text Collection". NZETC. 2023. Katherine Mansfield Society Katherine Mansfield House and Garden Katherine Mansfield Papers at the Newberry Library Katherine Mansfield biography from the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography "Archival material relating to Katherine Mansfield". UK National Archives. Works by Katherine Mansfield at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks) Audio discussion about Katherine Mansfield and her female lovers, PrideNZ.com Katherine Mansfield at the British Library Katherine Mansfield at the IMDB vteShort stories by Katherine Mansfield "Frau Brechenmacher Attends a Wedding" "The Woman at the Store" "How Pearl Button Was Kidnapped" "Millie" "Something Childish But Very Natural" "The Little Governess" "Revelations" "The Escape" "An Indiscreet Journey" "The Wind Blows" "Prelude" "Mr Reginald Peacock's Day" "Feuille d'Album" "A Dill Pickle" "Je ne parle pas français" "Sun and Moon" "Bliss" "Psychology" "Pictures" "The Man Without a Temperament" "The Stranger" "Miss Brill" "The Daughters of the Late Colonel" "Life of Ma Parker" "The Young Girl" "Mr and Mrs Dove" "Her First Ball" "The Singing Lesson" "Bank Holiday" "An Ideal Family" "The Lady's Maid" "Marriage à la Mode" "At The Bay" "The Voyage" "A Married Man's Story" "The Garden Party" "The Doll's House" "The Fly" "A Cup of Tea" "The Canary" "The Sister of the Baroness" vteModernismMovements Acmeism Art Deco Art Nouveau Ashcan School Constructivism Cubism Dada Expressionism Der Blaue Reiter Die Brücke Music Fauvism Functionalism Bauhaus Futurism Imagism Lettrism Neoplasticism De Stijl Orphism Surrealism Symbolism Synchromism Tonalism Literary artsLiterature Apollinaire Barnes Bely Breton Broch Bulgakov Chekhov Conrad Döblin Forster Faulkner Flaubert Ford Gide Hamsun Hašek Hemingway Hesse Joyce Kafka Koestler Lawrence Mann Mansfield Marinetti Musil Dos Passos Platonov Porter Proust Stein Svevo Unamuno Woolf Poetry Akhmatova Aldington Auden Cavafy Cendrars Crane H.D. Desnos Eliot Éluard Elytis George Jacob Lorca Lowell (Amy) Lowell (Robert) Mallarmé Moore Owen Pessoa Pound Rilke Seferis Stevens Thomas Tzara Valéry Williams Yeats Works In Search of Lost Time (1913–1927) The Metamorphosis (1915) Ulysses (1922) The Waste Land (1922) The Magic Mountain (1924) Mrs Dalloway (1925) The Sun Also Rises (1926) The Master and Margarita (1928–1940) The Sound and the Fury (1929) Visual artsPainting Albers Arp Balthus Bellows Boccioni Bonnard Brâncuși Braque Calder Cassatt Cézanne Chagall Chirico Claudel Dalí Degas Kooning Delaunay Delaunay Demuth Dix Doesburg Duchamp Dufy Ensor Ernst Gauguin Giacometti van Gogh Goncharova Gris Grosz Höch Hopper Kahlo Kandinsky Kirchner Klee Kokoschka Léger Magritte Malevich Manet Marc Matisse Metzinger Miró Modigliani Mondrian Monet Moore Munch Nolde O'Keeffe Picabia Picasso Pissarro Ray Redon Renoir Rodin Rousseau Schiele Seurat Signac Sisley Soutine Steichen Stieglitz Toulouse-Lautrec Vuillard Wood Film Akerman Aldrich Antonioni Avery Bergman Bresson Buñuel Carné Cassavetes Chaplin Clair Cocteau Dassin Deren Dovzhenko Dreyer Edwards Eisenstein Epstein Fassbinder Fellini Flaherty Ford Fuller Gance Godard Hitchcock Hubley Jones Keaton Kubrick Kuleshov Kurosawa Lang Losey Lupino Marker Minnelli Murnau Ozu Pabst Pudovkin Ray (Nicholas) Ray (Satyajit) Resnais Renoir Richardson Rossellini Sirk Sjöström Sternberg Tarkovsky Tati Trnka Truffaut Varda Vertov Vigo Welles Wiene Wood Architecture Breuer Bunshaft Gaudí Gropius Guimard Horta Hundertwasser Johnson Kahn Le Corbusier Loos Melnikov Mendelsohn Nervi Neutra Niemeyer Rietveld Saarinen Steiner Sullivan Tatlin Mies Wright Works A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte (1886) Mont Sainte-Victoir (1887) The Starry Night (1889) Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (1907) The Dance (1909–1910) Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2 (1912) Black Square (1915) The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920) Battleship Potemkin (1925) Metropolis (1927) Un Chien Andalou (1929) Villa Savoye (1931) Fallingwater (1936) Citizen Kane (1941) Meshes of the Afternoon (1943) PerformingartsMusic Antheil Bartók Berg Berio Boulanger Boulez Copland Debussy Dutilleux Feldman Górecki Hindemith Honegger Ives Janáček Ligeti Lutosławski Milhaud Nono Partch Russolo Satie Schaeffer Schoenberg Scriabin Stockhausen Strauss Stravinsky Szymanowski Varèse Villa-Lobos Webern Weill Theatre Anderson Anouilh Artaud Beckett Brecht Chekhov Ibsen Jarry Kaiser Maeterlinck Mayakovsky O'Casey O'Neill Osborne Pirandello Piscator Strindberg Toller Wedekind Wilder Witkiewicz Dance Balanchine Cunningham Diaghilev Duncan Fokine Fuller Graham Holm Massine Nijinsky Shawn Sokolow St. Denis Tamiris Wiesenthal Wigman Works Don Juan (1888) Ubu Roi (1896) Verklärte Nacht (1899) Pelléas et Mélisande (1902) Salome (1905) The Firebird (1910) Afternoon of a Faun (1912) The Rite of Spring (1913) Fountain (1917) Six Characters in Search of an Author (1921) The Threepenny Opera (1928) Waiting for Godot (1953) Related American modernism Armory Show Avant-garde Ballets Russes Bloomsbury Group Buddhist modernism Classical Hollywood cinema Degenerate art Ecomodernism Experimental film Film noir Fourth dimension in art Fourth dimension in literature Grosvenor School of Modern Art Hanshinkan Modernism High modernism Hippie modernism Impressionism Music Literature Post- Incoherents International Style Late modernism Late modernity List of art movements List of avant-garde artists List of modernist poets Maximalism Modernity Neo-primitivism Neo-romanticism New Hollywood New Objectivity Poetic realism Postmodern music Postmodernism Film Television Pulp noir Reactionary modernism Metamodernism Remodernism Second Viennese School Structural film Underground film Vulgar modernism ← Romanticism Category Authority control databases International FAST ISNI 2 3 VIAF National Norway Chile Spain France BnF data Catalonia Germany Italy Israel United States Sweden Latvia Japan Czech Republic Australia Greece Korea Croatia Netherlands Poland Portugal Vatican Academics CiNii Artists MusicBrainz Te Papa (New Zealand) People Deutsche Biographie Trove Other RISM SNAC IdRef

THE FLY

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"Y'are very snug in here," piped old Mr. Woodifield, and he peered out of the great, green-leather armchair by his friend the boss's desk as a baby peers out of its pram. His talk was over; it was time for him to be off. But he did not want to go. Since he had retired, since his...stroke, the wife and the girls kept him boxed up in the house every day of the week except Tuesday. On Tuesday he was dressed and brushed and allowed to cut back to the City for the day. Though what he did there the wife and girls couldn't imagine. Made a nuisance of himself to his friends, they supposed....Well, perhaps so. All the same, we cling to our last pleasures as the tree clings to its last leaves. So there sat old Woodifield, smoking a cigar and staring almost greedily at the boss, who rolled in his office chair, stout, rosy, five years older than he, and still going strong, still at the helm. It did one good to see him.

Wistfully, admiringly, the old voice added, "It's snug in here, upon my word!"

"Yes, it's comfortable enough," agreed the boss, and he flipped the Financial Times with a paper-knife. As a matter of fact he was proud of his room; he liked to have it admired, especially by old Woodifield. It gave him a feeling of deep, solid satisfaction to be planted there in the midst of it in full view of that frail old figure in the muffler.

"I've had it done up lately," he explained, as he had explained for the past how many? weeks. "New carpet," and he pointed to the bright red carpet with a pattern of large white rings. "New furniture," and he nodded towards the massive bookcase and the table with legs like twisted treacle. "Electric heating!" He waved almost exultantly towards the five transparent, pearly sausages glowing so softly in the tilted copper pan.

But he did not draw old Woodifield's attention to the photograph over the table of a grave-looking boy in uniform standing in one of those spectral photographers' parks with photographers' storm-clouds behind him. It was not new. It had been there for over six years.

"There was something I wanted to tell you," said old Woodifield, and his eyes grew dim remembering. "Now what was it? I had it in my mind when I started out this morning." His hands began to tremble, and patches of red showed above his beard.

Poor old chap, he's on his last pins, thought the boss. And, feeling kindly, he winked at the old man, and said jokingly, "I tell you what. I've got a little drop of something here that'll do you good before you go out into the cold again. It's beautiful stuff. It wouldn't hurt a child." He took a key off his watch-chain, unlocked a cupboard below his desk, and drew forth a dark, squat bottle. "That's the medicine," said he. "And the man from whom I got it told me on the strict Q.T. it came from the cellars at Windor Castle."

Old Woodifield's mouth fell open at the sight. He couldn't have looked more surprised if the boss had produced a rabbit.

"It's whisky, ain't it?" he piped feebly.

The boss turned the bottle and lovingly showed him the label. Whisky it was.

"D'you know," said he, peering up at the boss wonderingly, "they won't let me touch it at home." And he looked as though he was going to cry.

"Ah, that's where we know a bit more than the ladies," cried the boss, swooping across for two tumblers that stood on the table with the water-bottle, and pouring a generous finger into each. "Drink it down. It'll do you good. And don't put any water with it. It's sacrilege to tamper with stuff like this. Ah!" He tossed off his, pulled out his handkerchief, hastily wiped his moustaches, and cocked an eye at old Woodifield, who was rolling his in his chaps.

The old man swallowed, was silent a moment, and then said faintly, "It's nutty!"

But it warmed him; it crept into his chill old brain he remembered.

"That was it," he said, heaving himself out of his chair. "I thought you'd like to know. The girls were in Belgium last week having a look at poor Reggie's grave, and they happened to come across your boy's. They're quite near each other, it seems."

Old Woodifield paused, but the boss made no reply. Only a quiver in his eyelids showed that he heard.

"The girls were delighted with the way the place is kept," piped the old voice. "Beautifully looked after. Couldn't be better if they were at home. You've not been across, have yer?"

"No, no!" For various reasons the boss had not been across.

"There's miles of it," quavered old Woodifield, "and it's all as neat as a garden. Flowers growing on all the graves. Nice broad paths." It was plain from his voice how much he liked a nice broad path.

The pause came again. Then the old man brightened wonderfully.

"D'you know what the hotel made the girls pay for a pot of jam?" he piped. "Ten francs! Robbery, I call it. It was a little pot, so Gertrude says, no bigger than a half-crown. And she hadn't taken more than a spoonful when they charged her ten francs. Gertrude brought the pot away with her to teach 'em a lesson. Quite right, too; it's trading on our feelings. They think because we're over there having a look round we're ready to pay anything. That's what it is." And he turned towards the door.

"Quite right, quite right!" cried the boss, though what was quite right he hadn't the least idea. He came round by his desk, followed the shuffling footsteps to the door, and saw the old fellow out. Woodifield was gone.

For a long moment the boss stayed, staring at nothing, while the grey-haired office messenger, watching him, dodged in and out of his cubby-hole like a dog that expects to be taken for a run. Then: "I'll see nobody for half an hour, Macey," said the boss. "Understand? Nobody at all."

"Very good, sir."

The door shut, the firm heavy steps recrossed the bright carpet, the fat body plumped down in the spring chair, and leaning forward, the boss covered his face with his hands. He wanted, he intended, he had arranged to weep....

It had been a terrible shock to him when old Woodifield sprang that remark upon him about the boy's grave. It was exactly as though the earth had opened and he had seen the boy lying there with Woodifield's girls staring down at him. For it was strange. Although over six years had passed away, the boss never thought of the boy except as lying unchanged, unblemished in his uniform, asleep for ever. "My son!" groaned the boss. But no tears came yet. In the past, in the first few months and even years after the boy's death, he had only to say those words to be overcome by such grief that nothing short of a violent fit of weeping could relieve him. Time, he had declared then, he had told everybody, could make no difference. Other men perhaps might recover, might live their loss down, but not he. How was it possible? His boy was an only son. Ever since his birth the boss had worked at building up this business for him; it had no other meaning if it was not for the boy. Life itself had come to have no other meaning. How on earth could he have slaved, denied himself, kept going all those years without the promise for ever before him of the boy's stepping into his shoes and carrying on where he left off?

And that promise had been so near being fulfilled. The boy had been in the office learning the ropes for a year before the war. Every morning they had started off together; they had come back by the same train. And what congratulations he had received as the boy's father! No wonder; he had taken to it marvellously. As to his popularity with the staff, every man jack of them down to old Macey couldn't make enough of the boy. And he wasn't the least spoilt. No, he was just his bright natural self, with the right word for everybody, with that boyish look and his habit of saying, "Simply splendid!"

But all that was over and done with as though it never had been. The day had come when Macey had handed him the telegram that brought the whole place crashing about his head. "Deeply regret to inform you..." And he had left the office a broken man, with his life in ruins.

Six years ago, six years....How quickly time passed! It might have happened yesterday. The boss took his hands from his face; he was puzzled. Something seemed to be wrong with him. He wasn't feeling as he wanted to feel. He decided to get up and have a look at the boy's photograph. But it wasn't a favourite photograph of his; the expression was unnatural. It was cold, even stern-looking. The boy had never looked like that.

At that moment the boss noticed that a fly had fallen into his broad inkpot, and was trying feebly but desperately to clamber out again. Help! help! said those struggling legs. But the sides of the inkpot were wet and slippery; it fell back again and began to swim. The boss took up a pen, picked the fly out of the ink, and shook it on to a piece of blotting-paper. For a fraction of a second it lay still on the dark patch that oozed round it. Then the front legs waved, took hold, and, pulling its small, sodden body up, it began the immense task of cleaning the ink from its wings. Over and under, over and under, went a leg along a wing, as the stone goes over and under the scythe. Then there was a pause, while the fly, seeming to stand on the tips of its toes, tried to expand first one wing and then the other. It succeeded at last, and, sitting down, it began, like a minute cat, to clean its face. Now one could imagine that the little front legs rubbed against each other lightly, joyfully. The horrible danger was over; it had escaped; it was ready for life again.

But just then the boss had an idea. He plunged his pen back into the ink, leaned his thick wrist on the blotting-paper, and as the fly tried its wings down came a great heavy blot. What would it make of that? What indeed! The little beggar seemed absolutely cowed, stunned, and afraid to move because of what would happen next. But then, as if painfully, it dragged itself forward. The front legs waved, caught hold, and, more slowly this time, the task began from the beginning.

He's a plucky little devil, thought the boss, and he felt a real admiration for the fly's courage. That was the way to tackle things; that was the right spirit. Never say die; it was only a question of...But the fly had again finished its laborious task, and the boss had just time to refill his pen, to shake fair and square on the new-cleaned body yet another dark drop. What about it this time? A painful moment of suspense followed. But behold, the front legs were again waving; the boss felt a rush of relief. He leaned over the fly and said to it tenderly, "You artful little b..." And he actually had the brilliant notion of breathing on it to help the drying process. All the same, there was something timid and weak about its efforts now, and the boss decided that this time should be the last, as he dipped the pen deep into the inkpot.

It was. The last blot fell on the soaked blotting-paper, and the draggled fly lay in it and did not stir. The back legs were stuck to the body; the front legs were not to be seen.

"Come on," said the boss. "Look sharp!" And he stirred it with his pen - in vain. Nothing happened or was likely to happen. The fly was dead.

The boss lifted the corpse on the end of the paper-knife and flung it into the waste-paper basket. But such a grinding feeling of wretchedness seized him that he felt positively frightened. He started forward and pressed the bell for Macey.

"Bring me some fresh blotting-paper," he said sternly, "and look sharp about it." And while the old dog padded away he fell to wondering what it was he had been thinking about before. What was it? It was...He took out his handkerchief and passed it inside his collar. For the life of him he could not remember.

Current Page: 1

GRADE:9

Word Lists:

Pram : a four-wheeled carriage for a baby, pushed by a person on foot.

Treacle : a thick, sticky dark syrup made from partly refined sugar; molasses.

Sodden : saturated with liquid, especially water; soaked through

Spectral : of or like a ghost

Scythe : a tool used for cutting crops such as grass or wheat, with a long curved blade at the end of a long pole attached to which are one or two short handles.

Plucky : having or showing determined courage in the face of difficulties

Snug : comfortable, warm, and cozy; well protected from the weather or cold

Exultant : triumphantly happy

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Additional Information:

Rating: A Words in the Passage: 770 Unique Words: 748 Sentences: 179
Noun: 429 Conjunction: 187 Adverb: 151 Interjection: 2
Adjective: 176 Pronoun: 272 Verb: 430 Preposition: 239
Letter Count: 9,023 Sentiment: Positive / Positive / Positive Tone: Conversational Difficult Words: 385
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