The Garden Party and Other Stories - Katherine Mansfield [90]
3. karakas: ‘karaka’ is a Maori name for a native tree with leaves rather like those of English laurel.
4. Telephone!: the telephone was a fairly new and exciting gadget: a sign that the Sheridans, like the Neaves in ‘An Ideal Family’, live in most modern middle-class luxury.
5. canna lilies… on bright crimson stems: canna lilies come in red, orange and yellow as well as pink, and are natives of warm climates.
6. ‘– and I can’t understand… those poky little holes – ’: Mrs Sheridan’s words are almost exactly the same as those used by Constantia in ‘The Daughters of the Late Colonel’ – ‘ “I can’t think how they manage to live at all” ’ (see p. 53) – except that Constantia is thinking about the fate of mice in a house with no crumbs. And there is a thematic connection between the two, for Mrs Sheridan’s bright idea (p. 48) of giving party leftovers to the family of the dead man is based on the assumption that the poor are parasites, or at least indebted to the rich for the crumbs that fall from their tables. A submerged pattern of association is at work (see Introduction, p. xix): earlier on Mrs Sheridan misreads a sandwich label ‘ “Egg and –” Mrs Sheridan held the envelope away from her. “It looks like mice. It can’t be mice, can it?” “Olive, pet,” said Laura…’ (p. 43)
THE DAUGHTERS OF THE LATE COLONEL
1. Ceylon mail…: Ceylon, a British colony in the era of this story, is now Sri Lanka. K. M. seems to have been drawing on the experience of her friend Ida Baker, who had been born in Burma, and was never exactly at home in London (see Introduction p. xi). Almost all K. M.’s British characters are uprooted people, with few local family ties.
2. Busks: the steel or whalebone stiffeners used in corsets.
3. evening Bertha: a name for the lace collar of a low-necked evening dress.
4. It was inside her that queer little crying noise: compare the last words of ‘Miss Brill’ (p. 114): ‘But when she put the lid on she thought she heard something crying.’
5. Until the barrel-organ stopped playing… Now? Now?: this closing sequence was directly inspired by some of Ida Baker’s own words. See Introduction, p. xvii.
MR AND MRS DOVE
1. Rhodesia: this country, settled by British colonists led by Cecil Rhodes in 1890, is now Zimbabwe. Reggie (compare Benny in ‘The Daughters of the Late Colonel’) is another of K. M.’s unheroic colonial adventurers.
THE YOUNG GIRL
1. the Casino: this is almost certainly the one at Monte Carlo, a favourite winter haunt of a moneyed, restless international set: ‘ “I’ve just met Mrs MacEwen from New York” ’ (p. 80).
2. I: the narrator remains nameless, and almost sexless – though asking the young girl’s permission to smoke (p. 82) reveals him as a man. The girl’s namelessness is more interesting and suggestive, emphasizing her archetypal quality, and the ready-made role her world has handed her.
LIFE OF MA PARKER
1. Shakespeare, sir?: the reference to Shakespeare is a fairly heavy hint that we’re to think of Ma Parker as the sort of person a real writer would be – or should be – portraying. The story’s modern ‘literary man’, for whom Ma Parker chars, shows only a token interest in her, unlike (of course) K. M.
MARRIAGE À LA MODE
1. Moira Morrison’s: this character is husband William’s main rival, the leader of the little band of fashionable free-loaders who have invaded his home. She mocks conventional morality and is sexually ambiguous herself (compare Mrs Harry Kember in ‘At the Bay’), though here with an artistic slant. ‘Titania’ is Shakespeare’s Queen of the Fairies in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and the trip to Paris is shorthand for avant garde taste and sexual adventure.
2. ‘would you like me to wear my Nijinsky dress tonight?’: Nijinsky was the male star of Diaghilev’s Russian ballet. The use of the word ‘dress’ is deliberately