A S H I P B O A R D
D I A R Y
b y A N N I E a n d
H A R O L D B E A U C H A M P
Edited with an Introduction by Ian A. Gordon. 1997
On 19 March 1898 Katherine Mansfield's parents sailed
from Wellington to London via Buenos Aires on a business
trip. Harold Beauchamp booked the best available 1st
Saloon cabin on the steamship S.S. Ruahine, and he and
Annie found their living quarters for the six-week
voyager not only luxurious but, in Annie's sometimes
individual spelling, "comfe". Leaving the children
in New Zealand—Katherine was
ten years old and waiting for her first story to appear
in the Wellington Girls College Reporter—Annie
Beauchamp began a diary expressly for the children, in
which she kept a daily account of the voyage. When the
weather occasionally laid her low, Harold took over in a
measured descriptive prose rather different from Annie's
lively notations, her quick accounts of her condition,
shipboard events and her sharp observations on her
travelling companions.
Together these
parental writings provide a view of the Beauchamps that
editor Emeritus Professor Ian Gordon maintains is out of
step with "the Linda and Stanley Burnell of their
daughter's stories "Prelude" and "At the Bay" .... The
Beauchamps emerge from this shipboard diary in a
different light, a devoted couple, each attentive to the
other's welfare". The diary was mailed back to 75
Tinakori Road, Wellington, shortly after they arrived in
London. The diary then remained with the Beauchamp
family until a few years ago, when it was given by
Katherine Mansfield's youngest sister, the late Mrs
Jeanne Renshaw, to her friend Lady Carnwath, who in turn
generously presented it to the editor. After publication
of this book, the diary was deposited in the Alexander
Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand.
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