Book Review: In a German Pension, short stories by Katherine Mansfield (1911)

The paperback cover of my copy of In a German Pension, by Katherine Mansfield. Originally published in 1911, this edition is from 2005. (Photo by Mark C. Taylor)

The author Katherine Mansfield was born in New Zealand and spent much of her adult life in England. Mansfield’s time spent living in German spa towns influenced her first collection of short stories, In a German Pension, published in 1911. And here’s where I clarify that Mansfield was not receiving a pension from the German government but was using the word “pension” in its second definition: “accommodations especially at a continental European hotel or boardinghouse.” Thanks Merriam-Webster!  

In a German Pension is comprised of 13 short stories. The stories are all quite short, as my edition of the book is just over 100 pages long. Some of the stories deal with cultural differences between Germans and the English.  

One of my favorite lines was from the story “Frau Fischer,” where the narrator invents a husband. She makes him a sea captain “on a long and perilous voyage.” Frau Fischer says to the narrator, “Handfuls of babies, that is what you are really in need of. Then, as the father of a family he cannot leave you. Think of his delight and excitement when he saw you!” The narrator thinks to herself, “The plan seemed to me something of a risk. To appear suddenly with handfuls of strange babies is not generally calculated to raise enthusiasm in the heart of the average British husband. I decided to wreck my virgin conception and send him down somewhere off Cape Horn.” (p.25)  

In the short story “The Modern Soul,” Sonia is an actress who befriends the narrator. After Sonia gives a performance at the pension, she and the narrator take a walk to the train station and back. Sonia says, “What a night! Do you know that poem of Sappho about her hands in the stars...I am curiously sapphic. And this is so remarkable—not only am I sapphic, I find in all the works of all the greatest writers, especially in their unedited letters, some touch, some sign of myself—some resemblance, some part of myself, like a thousand reflections of my own hands in a dark mirror.” (p.41)  

I thought that was such a beautiful quote. Okay, Sonia might be hitting on the narrator by mentioning Sappho so much, but it seems to go over the narrator’s head. But I love the idea of finding some part of yourself in the works of great artists. Even if we might not be great artists ourselves, perhaps there is something that resonates in their work with us, like a shard of reflected glory. Or as Mansfield writes, “like a thousand reflections of my own hands in a dark mirror.”  

If you’re a fan of short stories, I’d recommend Katherine Mansfield’s work. Unfortunately, she died young, at the age of just 34 in 1923, but she left behind stories that still resonate more than a century after they were written.  

Book Review: The Garden Party and Other Stories, by Katherine Mansfield (1922)

Penguin paperback cover of The Garden Party and Other Stories, by Katherine Mansfield, originally published in 1922.

The author Katherine Mansfield, 1888-1923.

Katherine Mansfield died in 1923 at the age of 34, but she had a significant impact as a writer of short stories. Mansfield’s final collection of short stories to be published in her lifetime was The Garden Party and Other Stories, released in 1922. A collection of 15 short stories, The Garden Party is a superb showcase for Mansfield’s talents. 

Mansfield was able to inhabit the voices and perspectives of many different characters in her stories. This talent is on full display in the first story in the book, “At the Bay,” as Mansfield shifts the point of view repeatedly. But these shifts aren’t distracting, they just add to the composition of the picture she is painting for the reader.  

Mansfield was born in New Zealand in 1888, and from 1908 on she lived mainly in England. There’s often a sense of displacement in Mansfield’s stories, that her characters are sometimes caught in between spaces, not quite fitting in anywhere.  

One of the highlights of the book is the title story. Told through the eyes of Laura, “the artistic one” of the Sheridan girls, it’s a look at class and privilege. When a working-class man who lives down the hill from the Sheridans is killed in an accident on the morning of the garden party, Laura wants to cancel the party. But she seems to be the only person in her family who cares.  

Mansfield is astute in her observations, and I loved this paragraph of narration from “The Garden Party”: 

“Oh, impossible. Fancy cream puffs so soon after breakfast. The very idea made one shudder. All the same, two minutes later Jose and Laura were licking their fingers with that absorbed inward look that only comes from whipped cream.” (p.44)  

Some of my other favorite stories from the volume were “The Daughters of the Late Colonel,” “Marriage a la Mode,” “Her First Ball” and “The Singing Lesson.”  

There are some marvelous moments in “Mr. And Mrs. Dove” where Mansfield seemed to be channeling P.G. Wodehouse. The inner monologue of Reggie, the main character, contains the following passage that seemed especially Wodehousian to me: 

“Of course Reginald was fond of the mater and all that. She—she meant well, she had no end of grit, and so on. But there was no denying it, she was rather a grim parent.” (p.72) One can imagine Bertie Wooster thinking much the same about his Aunt Agatha.  

The title character in “Miss Brill” operates much like a good writer: “She had become really quite expert, she thought, at listening as though she didn’t listen, at sitting in other people’s lives for just a minute while they talked round her.” (p.111) That’s the dream of every writer, isn’t it? To eavesdrop for a moment on other people’s conversations and come away with a fascinating observation about the human condition.  

“Her First Ball,” the tale of a girl’s first dance, struck me as a story that F. Scott Fitzgerald would have enjoyed. Fitzgerald included The Garden Party and Other Stories on a list he made in 1936 of books he thought everyone should read, so he must have admired Mansfield’s work. It’s perhaps a bit of a stretch, but thinking about Mansfield’s economy of language in The Garden Party made me wonder if her stories had any influence on the style of The Great Gatsby. The Garden Party was published in the United States in 1922, and if Fitzgerald read the book that year or in 1923, perhaps it stuck with him as he moved from the overstuffed style of The Beautiful and Damned to the graceful understatement of The Great Gatsby. (This would be a difficult thesis to prove, of course, but one that intrigues me.)  

The Garden Party and Other Stories is a short book, as the 15 stories only occupy about 150 pages or so of my Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics paperback. All of the stories stick with you, and Mansfield’s economy of language is superb. Her style isn’t really minimalist—she’s not like Hemingway with short, terse sentences. But in her stories she only conveys the information that you absolutely need to know, there’s nothing extraneous. Her style and subject matter combine to make Katherine Mansfield a superb short story writer. Another arrow in Mansfield’s quiver was her expert ability to inhabit characters’ voices. Every author must have this skill to some degree, but Mansfield gives the reader a tour de force performance in The Garden Party, as she writes from the viewpoint of young and old, male and female, rich and poor.  

The edition of The Garden Party that I read also featured an introduction and endnotes by Lorna Sage, which added more biographical context and information. I appreciated that Sage’s notes about the stories offered up tidbits about Mansfield’s writing style and connections to her other works.  

There is an inevitable feeling of melancholy as you finish The Garden Party. While these 15 excellent short stories constitute a great accomplishment, that emotion is also tinged with the sad knowledge that this was the final book that Katherine Mansfield lived to see published. It makes you wonder what else Mansfield would have written had she lived longer. 

If you like short stories, or have an abiding interest in modernism, you need to read Katherine Mansfield’s excellent short stories, and The Garden Party is a wonderful place to start.