In a German Pension

By Katherine Mansfield

First published in 1911, “In a German Pension” is a collection of short stories by the writer Katherine Mansfield. The stories include: "Germans at Meat", "The Baron", "The sister of the Baroness", "Frau Fischer", "Frau Brechenmacher Attends a Wedding", "The Modern Soul", "At “Lehmann’s”", "The Luft Bad", "A Birthday", "The Child-Who-Was-Tired", "The Advanced Lady", "The Swing of the Pendulum", and "A Blaze". Kathleen Mansfield Murry (1888–1923) was a modernist writer from New Zealand who produced poetry and short stories under the pseudonym Katherine Mansfield. She left New Zealand when she was 19 and relocated to England, where she became friends with a number of notable literary figures including D. H. Lawrence, Ottoline Morrell, and Virginia Woolf. Mansfield died of pulmonary tuberculosis in France at the age of 34. Read & Co. Classics is proudly republishing these classic short stories now in a new edition complete with a specially-commissioned new biography of the author.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Read & Co. Classics
• Release date: Dec 7, 2020
• ISBN: 9781528791502

Katherine Mansfield

Katherine Mansfield (1888–1923) was born into a wealthy family in Wellington, New Zealand. She received a formal education at Queen’s College in London where she began her literary career. She found regular work with the periodical Rhythm, later known as The Blue Review, before publishing her first book, In a German Pension in 1911. Over the next decade, Mansfield would gain critical acclaim for her masterful short stories, including “Bliss” and “The Garden Party.”

Book preview

1.png

IN A

GERMAN PENSION

By

KATHERINE MANSFIELD

First published in 1911

Copyright © 2020 Read & Co. Classics

This edition is published by Read & Co. Classics,

an imprint of Read & Co.

This book is copyright and may not be reproduced or copied in any

way without the express permission of the publisher in writing.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available

from the British Library.

Read & Co. is part of Read Books Ltd.

For more information visit

www.readandcobooks.co.uk

Contents

Katherine Mansfield

GERMANS AT MEAT

THE BARON

THE SISTER OF THE BARONESS

FRAU FISCHER

FRAU BRECHENMACHER ATTENDS A WEDDING

THE MODERN SOUL

AT LEHMANN’S

THE LUFT BAD

A BIRTHDAY

THE CHILD-WHO-WAS-TIRED

THE ADVANCED LADY

THE SWING OF THE PENDULUM

A BLAZE

Katherine Mansfield

Katherine Mansfield Beauchamp Murry was born on 14th October 1888. She was a prominent modernist writer of short fiction who was born and brought up in colonial New Zealand. She wrote under the pen name of Katherine Mansfield.

Born Kathleen Mansfield Beauchamp, Mansfield was born into a socially prominent family in Wellington, New Zealand. Her father was the chairman of the Bank of New Zealand, and she was a cousin of the author Countess Elizabeth von Arnim. In 1893, the Mansfield family moved from Thorndon (an inner suburb in Wellington) to Karori (on the western edge of the city), where Mansfield spent the happiest years of her childhood. She used some of her memories of this time as an inspiration for the 'Prelude' story.

Mansfield's first published stories appeared in the High School Reporter and the Wellington Girls' High School magazine in 1898 and 1899. She never felt quite at home in New Zealand however. Mansfield wrote in her journals of feeling alienated, and of how she had become disillusioned because of the repression of the Māori people. Consequently, in 1903, she moved to London, where she attended Queen's College along with her sisters. The year before, she had also become enamoured of a cellist, Arnold Trowell, although the feelings were largely unreciprocated.

At Queens College, Mansfield met fellow writer Ida Baker, and they became lifelong friends and partners. After finishing her schooling in England, she returned to New Zealand in 1906, and only then began 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. Mansfield rapidly wearied of the provincial New Zealand lifestyle and of her family, and two years later headed again for London. Her father sent her an annual allowance of 100 pounds for the rest of her life.

Back in London in 1908, Mansfield quickly fell into a bohemian way of life. She published only one story and one poem during her first fifteen months there. The Trowell family had also moved to London, and Mansfield embarked on a passionate love affair with Arnold's brother, Garnet. By early 1909 she had become pregnant by Garnet, though Trowell's parents disapproved of the relationship and the two broke up. She hastily entered into a marriage with George Bowden, a singing teacher eleven years older than she. They married on 2nd March 1909, but she left him the same evening, before the marriage could be consummated.

Outraged at events (and blaming the breakdown of the marriage on Mansfield's relationship with Baker), Mansfield's mother arrived in London and quickly had her daughter despatched to the spa town of Bad Wörishofen in Bavaria, Germany. Mansfield miscarried after attempting to lift a suitcase on top of a cupboard. 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. Despite this immense tragedy, Mansfield's time in Bavaria had a significant effect on her literary outlook. In particular, she was introduced to the works of Anton Chekhov. She returned to London in January 1910, and her experiences formed the foundation of her first published collection, In a German Pension (published in 1911).

Soon afterwards Mansfield submitted a lightweight story to a new avant-garde magazine called Rhythm. The piece was rejected by the magazine's editor, John Middleton Murry, who requested something darker. Mansfield responded with 'The Woman at the Store', a tale of murder and mental illness. In 1911, Mansfield and Murry began a relationship that culminated in their marriage in 1918. It was around this time that Mansfield started to suffer from ill-health however. In 1917 she was diagnosed with extrapulmonary tuberculosis – though this was also her most prolific period of writing. She began several stories, including 'Mr Reginald Peacock's Day' and 'A Dill Pickle', all being published in The New Age.

At the beginning of 1917, Mansfield and Murry separated, although he continued to visit her at her new apartment. Baker, whom Mansfield often called, with a mixture of affection and disdain, her 'wife', moved in with her shortly afterwards.

Rejecting the idea of staying in a sanatorium on the grounds that it would cut her off from writing, Mansfield moved abroad to avoid the English winter. She stayed at a half-deserted and cold hotel in Bandol, France, where she became depressed but continued to produce stories, including 'Je ne Parle pas Français'. 'Bliss', the narrative that lent its name to her second collection of stories in 1920, was also published in 1918. During the winter of 1918-19 she and Baker stayed in a villa in San Remo, Italy. Their relationship came under strain during this period however. A second collection, The Garden Party was published in 1922. Her health continued to deteriorate and she had her first lung haemorrhage in March.

Mansfield spent her last years seeking increasingly unorthodox cures for her tuberculosis. In February 1922 she consulted the Russian physician Ivan Manoukhin, whose 'revolutionary' treatment, which consisted of bombarding her spleen with X-rays, caused Mansfield to develop heat flashes and numbness in her legs. In October 1922, Mansfield moved to Georges Gurdjieff's 'Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man' in Fontainebleau, France.

Despite making some progress in France, Mansfield suffered a fatal pulmonary haemorrhage after running up a flight of stairs. She died on 9th January 1923, and was buried in a cemetery in Avon, Seine-et-Marne.

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.

IN A

GERMAN PENSION

GERMANS AT MEAT

Bread soup was placed upon the table.

Ah, said the Herr Rat, leaning upon the table as he peered into the tureen, that is what I need. My ‘magen’ has not been in order for several days. Bread soup, and just the right consistency. I am a good cook myself—he turned to me.

How interesting, I said, attempting to infuse just the right amount of enthusiasm into my voice.

Oh yes—when one is not married it is necessary. As for me, I have had all I wanted from women without marriage. He tucked his napkin into his collar and blew upon his soup as he spoke. Now at nine o’clock I make myself an English breakfast, but not much. Four slices of bread, two eggs, two slices of cold ham, one plate of soup, two cups of tea—that is nothing to you.

He asserted the fact so vehemently that I had not the courage to refute it.

All eyes were suddenly turned upon me. I felt I was bearing the burden of the nation’s preposterous breakfast—I who drank a cup of coffee while buttoning my blouse in the morning.

Nothing at all, cried Herr Hoffmann from Berlin. Ach, when I was in England in the morning I used to eat.

He turned up his eyes and his moustache, wiping the soup drippings from his coat and waistcoat.

Do they really eat so much? asked Fräulein Stiegelauer. Soup and baker’s bread and pig’s flesh, and tea and coffee and stewed fruit, and honey and eggs, and cold fish and kidneys, and hot fish and liver? All the ladies eat, too, especially the ladies.

Certainly. I myself have noticed it, when I was living in a hotel in Leicester Square, cried the Herr Rat. It was a good hotel, but they could not make tea—now—

"Ah, that’s one thing I can do, said I, laughing brightly. I can make very good tea. The great secret is to warm the teapot."

Warm the teapot, interrupted the Herr Rat, pushing away his soup plate. What do you warm the teapot for? Ha! ha! that’s very good! One does not eat the teapot, I suppose?

He fixed his cold blue eyes upon me with an expression which suggested a thousand premeditated invasions.

So that is the great secret of your English tea? All you do is to warm the teapot.

I wanted to say that was only the preliminary canter, but could not translate it, and so was silent.

The servant brought in veal, with sauerkraut and potatoes.

I eat sauerkraut with great pleasure, said the Traveller

Reviews for In a German Pension

[drsabs · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

 In the introduction, John Middleton Murry says that Katherine Mansfield was critical of these early stories. I would not ever challenge Mansfield’s judgment, but I did enjoy reading them. Some do take place in a German pension in which a young English woman narrates the goings on and her own observations of the comic social scenes. Others are purely German characters in a non-pension setting that raise more serious questions about marriage, childhood and love.

[leslie398 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This collection is the third and last part of my Kindle edition of "Selected Stories" (the first 2 parts, "The Garden Party and Other Stories" & "Bliss and Other Stories", I read in 2013). I found this collection distinct from the other 2 in that the stories are almost chapters in a "slice of life" novel, describing the various characters & events that occur while the main character, an Englishwoman, is staying at this pension (sort of like a boarding house).

[spiralsheep · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

118/2020. A solid 3/5 for this earliest collection of Katherine Mansfield's short stories, which is well-written and was no doubt insightful, even daring, at the time but without so much to say to a society that's moved on.QuotesBrass: 'He stood in the kitchen puffing himself out, the buttons on his blue uniform shining with an enthusiasm which nothing but official buttons could possibly possess.'Edible: 'her yellow hair tastefully garnished with mauve sweet peas.'Motherhood: 'She turned towards Karl, who had rooted an old illustrated paper out of the [rubbish] receptacle and was spelling over an advertisement for the enlargement of Beautiful Breasts.'Legs: ' "I never walk," said the landlady; "when I go to Mindelbau my man drives me - I’ve more important things to do with my legs than walk them through the dust!" '

[athousandthings · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Mansfield is a great writer, she has facility and wit. The stories flow, they are about ordinary things, yet extraordinary.However, this collection contains a story - The Child Who Was Tired - that also appears in a collection of Chekov's short stories. This bothered me years ago and it still bothers me, along with V. Woolf's comment that K. Mansfield's fingernails weren't any too clean.