‘The odour of chrysanthemums’: Katherine Mansfield’s School Years in London

This chapter explores the three years Katherine Mansfield spent in London, from 1903–1906, where she and her two older sisters were enrolled at Queen’s College in Harley Street. These years witnessed a transformation in Mansfield, where, for the first time, freedom and the absence of her parents allowed her artistic creativity to flourish, and her true personality to thrive. When the time came to return home, Mansfield announced her battle plan to a schoolfriend: ‘When I get to New Zealand, I’ll make myself so objectionable that they’ll have to send me away.’ And, true to her word, that was exactly what she did. While her New Zealand roots were imprinted in her brain, to resurface time and again in her adult fiction, Mansfield’s three years in London would effectively cut the ties between herself and her parents’ stuffy, middle-class, colonial world. She wanted none of it. If there was a choice to be made between art nouveau interior décor and purple sofas in Ladbroke Grove, or a grand house in Wellington, with its incumbent dull round of parties and the same old faces, the choice would be an overwhelmingly easy one.