“The mind I love must have wild places, a tangled orchard where dark damsons drop in the heavy grass, an overgrown little wood, the chance of a snake or two, a pool that nobody’s fathomed the depth of, and paths threaded with flowers planted by the mind.”
Born in a storm, Katherine Mansfield’s life was as turbulent and short as one of her stories. Born and brought up in a wealthy family in New Zealand just before her 20th birthday she risked everything to voyage to London and a new life free, as she saw it, of provincial restrictions. ‘Ah! London’ she exclaimed at the time, ‘It is Life!’
That life was to be short. She died at just 34 years of age. By which time she had strode across Europe, the embodiment of the ‘New Woman’ – a daring risk-taker heavily influenced by the work of Oscar Wilde and his maxim: ‘push everything as far as it can go’. She had also left us with her equally daring short stories and letters, from which the wonderful quote above is taken. A mind to love – certainly.
