TWO LETTERS BY KATHERINE MANSFIELD PUBLISHED IN THE NEW AGE

AUGUST11, 1910
A PAPERCHASE. [Re: Dr Crippen]

LETTER TO THE EDITOROF “THE NEW AGE.”

by Katherine Mansfield

A rabbit nibbling a lettuce leaf one moment before it becomes a python’s dinner is hardly a
spectacle for universal and ironic laughter - whatever crimes the rabbit may have committed,
whatever just hunger the python may feel. And yet if we are to believe the Little Fathers of
Fleet Street the whole world has been bursting its sides over Crippen stroking a newly-grown
beard and Miss Le Neve with her trousers safety-pinned on confronted by the Inspector from
Scotland Yard and six good men and true snapped into a carefully prepared trap with that
quiet air of triumph which doubtless distinguishes the true British sportsman. This nation of
fair play seems satiated with small game, and in the desire to outdo “Teddy “ is on the
warpath for human heads. Captain Kendall, supported by his Kermit of a first officer, has
become the latest national hero, and I have no doubt but that he will be publicly presented
with Miss Le Neve’s outfit of boy’s clothing to grace his pretty little country home in the
vicinity of Pinner.

Perhaps we have underestimated the peculiar subtlety of the methods employed by Scotland
Yard - perhaps full to the brim of that entente cordiale syrup which flowed at the funeral of
our late lamented Peace Maker, they have banded all the nations of the world together as
brothers - invited them down into the cellar to have a look on their own account and chase
after the little man with bulging eyes and false teeth and his typist who proved her guilt by
wearing another lady’s dresses. I believe that the English nation has the reputation of not
being particular with regard to its food - quantity, never mind quality, being the axiom.
Certainly the stomach for which the Press caters is a mighty affair indeed, and now the staple
joint of the Crippen menu being “off,” demands the scrapings of prison plates which the
“Daily Mail ” so obligingly heats up for breakfast each morning.

There can be no question of judging Crippen. He can be bought outright, with a photograph
and a book of words, by any street gamin possessed of a halfpenny. Surely we owe a debt of
gratitude to all concerned who have shepherded us in this personally conducted tour into the
hidden chambers of that machine which separates the wheat from the tares with all the
impartiality and infallibility of our Courts of Law.

KATHERINE MANSFIELD.
[In the light of new evidence 2008 which shows that Crippen may well have been innocent,
this letter is interesting.]

LETTER

NORTH AMERICAN CHIEFS.

Sir, - As a respectable citizeness of pagan England I cannot fail to be thrilled by R. B. Kerr’s
letter justifying the claims of Canada’s seven millions to a literature pioneered by the “two
boldest popular novelists of our time,” Grant Allen and Elinor Glyn. Far be it from me to
repudiate Mr. Allen’s statement in declaring his own novels rubbish, but Elinor Glyn
doubtless “because she is a woman,” and “even more admirable” has not yet spat upon her
inspiration or condemned her feminine fancies as unfit reading for our hardy Colonial
children. Am I to understand as a result of this very natural and praiseworthy modesty she is
to accept the precious ointment of the reading public-she is to be provided with a little bower
of laurel wreaths sacredly set apart for the production of yet another “Three Weeks ” ? But I
think it is “hardly fair ” to speak of that exquisite creature in purple draperies who ate so
many strawberries and cooed like a dove, and was obviously the slave of her sexual passions,
as a “real free woman.” If Elinor Glyn is the prophetic woman’s voice crying out of the
wilderness of Canadian literature, let her European sister novelists lift shekelled hands in
prayer that the ‘‘great gulf’’ may ever yawn more widely. As regards the United States it
would seem that the only course open to the entire literary world is to make a pilgrimage into
those pregnant fastnesses where stories “too true to life and too vivid in imagination to be
printed in any country “ are “handed round in the form of typewritten manuscripts” (did ever
creation take on so novel a disguise) “among a very few select persons.” Mr. Kerr has
touched America with the wand of romance. Fascinating thought ! That your companion on
the Elevated Railway may be hiding under a striped chewing-gum wrapper the quivering first
fruits of his soul.

KATHERINE MANSFIELD.