‘That Pole outside our door’: Floryan Sobieniowski and Katherine Mansfield

Abstract

This essay considers the relationship between Floryan Sobieniowski and Katherine Mansfield whilst attempting to reconstruct one of the more obscure periods of Mansfield’s life. She made deliberate and sustained efforts to destroy personal papers from the years 1909–10 — a difficult and painful period — and, as a result, biographers have had very little material evidence to work on when trying to piece together her exact movements during this time. Supposition and guesswork must necessarily replace hard facts. However, we do have a tantalising glimpse of Mansfield’s life at this time through an intriguing file of letters accumulated by George Bowden — and therefore not personally destroyed by her — deposited in the Alexander Turnbull Library in 1986. The documents include three letters written by Sobieniowski, two letters written by Mansfield to unknown recipients, most likely Ida Baker, and a letter to Mansfield from her friend Vera French, all of them written during this frustrating void of tangible biographical evidence. In addition, another item with biographical relevance has only recently come to light: a hitherto unknown complete story ‘A Little Episode’, written by Mansfield in the late spring of 1909, whose plot also sheds new light on this obscure period.¹