KATHERINE MANSFIELD: DH LAWRENCE'S "LOST GIRL"
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But then, in the post-Katherine version, her former governess, Miss Frost, describes Alvina as having 'a gargoyle' face, 'she would see the eyes rolling strangely under the sardonic eyelids, and then Miss Frost would feel that never, never had she known anything so utterly alien.' 36

When Katherine got to know the Bloomsburies after first meeting them in artist Dorothy Brett's studio in November 1915, a number of them discussed her appearance. Dorothy Brett remarked on Katherine's 'mask-like composure'. 'The dark eyes glance about, much like a bird's, the pale face is a quiet mask, full of hidden laughter, wit and gaity…'37 Lytton Strachey described Katherine as 'an odd satirical woman behind a regular mask of a face…' Strachey wrote to Virginia Woolf: 'I may add that she has an ugly impassive mask of a face - cut in wood, with brown hair and brown eyes very far apart; and a sharp and slightly vulgarly- fanciful intellect sitting behind it.' 38 An echo of this 'gargoyle look' also appears in Women in Love 'Gudrun looked at Ursula with a mask-like expressionless face.' 39, and also in Lawrence's short story, 'Smile', a cruel depiction of a Murry-figure at a Katherine-figure's (Ophelia's) death bed 'And for the first time they saw the faint ironical curl at the corners of Ophelia's mouth.'40 It is clear, I suggest, that the later Alvina is at least partly based on Katherine rather than Florence Cullen.

But appearance is not the only parallel between the fictional Alvina and the real-life Katherine. Both had sharp tempers. Lawrence in The Lost Girl says that Alvina had outbursts of temper, with the addition of sudden fits of 'boisterous hilarity' and 'mad bursts of hilarious jeering.' 41 Katherine, too, was known for her ill temper. She once wrote: 'I think the only thing which is really 'serious' about me, really 'bad'. Really incurable, is my temper…' 42 Dorothy Brett remarked on Katherine's rapid and disconcerting changes in mood… 'ironic ruthlessness' …

'satirical wit' and said Katherine had a 'a tongue like a knife'. 43 Dora Carrington described her as having 'the language of a fishwife'. 44 And Virginia Woolf, despite being a great admirer of Katherine and her writing, said cattily that Katherine 'dressed like a tart and behaved like a bitch.' 45

However, it is in the theme of The Lost Girl where perhaps Katherine makes her greatest contribution to the novel. It is Alvina's attempts to achieve independence that most of all mirror Katherine. Indeed, her attempts to escape her social and emotional bonds reflected the theme that obsessed Lawrence at this time: the role of women in modern society. Lawrence saw in Katherine the personification of the dilemma of the modern woman, and which (I now argue) he played out in The Lost Girl. The on-and-off relationship between Katherine and Murry haunted him, as did her attempts to escape from a settled relationship. Lawrence had observed Katherine's repeated attempts to leave Murry, and, referring to Jung's ideas, he likened her role as the 'mother' to Murry's 'child' 46. He suggested Katherine should look for a more manly, sensual man - perhaps like Ciccio, the swarthy Italian with whom Alvina runs off. (In 1915, Katherine ran off briefly with a swarthy French poet - Francis Carco. The surname is rather like the name Ciccio. Indeed, when the novel was first published the name was spelt with one 'c' and Lawrence himself spelt it often with one' c' but he later insisted on the double 'c' 47, possibly, I suggest, to make it sound less like Carco, for fear of antagonising him. It should be noted that Cicio did not appear in the original - 'Elsa Culverwell' version. He only appears in the post-Katherine version of the novel.)


 

  

But was a Ciccio the solution to Alvina's dilemma? Lawrence confessed he was troubled by Alvina. He was concerned that he hadn't found a solution to her quest for independence. He could see similarities between Alvina and the heroine of his friend Compton Mackenzie's recently-published novel, The Adventures of Sylvia Scarlett 48, a picaresque story of a young girl questing for independence. In a letter to Mackenzie in May 1920 Lawrence wrote that he was: 'terrified of my Alvina who marries a Ciccio'. He went on, referring to Mackenzie's heroine, Sylvia, who married an upper-middle class Englishman, but finally decided to leave him: 'I believe neither of us has found a way out of the labyrinth. How we hang on to the marriage clue! Doubt if its really a way out […]' 49

Lawrence leaves Alvina still married to Ciccio, but he also leaves a question over the future of that marriage - as he did over the relationship between Katherine and Murry. He summed up the complicated relationships between himself, Murry and Katherine in fictional form in his 1920 play, 'Touch and Go' 50. Anabel Wrath (a Katherine/Gudrun-figure and Oliver Turton (a Lawrence/Birkin figure) are talking about the failure of their relationship with Gerald Barlow (a Murry/Gerald Crich-figure)

ANABEL: But we were a vicious triangle, Oliver -
you must admit it.
OLIVER: You mean my friendship with Gerald went
against you?
ANABEL: Yes. And your friendship with me went
against Gerald.
OLIVER: So I am the devil in the piece.
ANABEL: You see, Oliver, Gerald loved you far too
well ever to love me altogether. He loved us both.
But the Gerald who loved you so dearly, old, old
friends as you were, and trusted you, he turned a
terrible face of contempt on me….He had a passion
for me but he loved you.

The Lost Girl was published in the UK on November 25, 1920. The reviews were tepid. (Nevertheless, Lawrence later won the James Tait Memorial Prize for the novel - his only writing award.) Murry reviewed it in his literary magazine, The Athenaeum, in December 1920, but it was not a favourable critique:

Mr. Lawrence's own grasp of the central theme of his story, of the peculiar attraction which held Alvina and Cicio together, despite an ecstatic hatred that would have sufficed to separate a hundred ordinary lovers for ever, may possibly be profound; but he does not convey it to us. He writes of characters as though they were animals circling around each other; and on this sub-human plane no human destinies can be decided. Alvina and Cicio become for us like grotesque beasts in an aquarium, shut off from our apprehension by the misted glass of an esoteric language, a quack terminology. 51

 

Murry later recorded 52 that at the time of writing this review he was unaware that Lawrence had written Women in Love before The Lost Girl (as Women in Love had not yet been published). He revealed that Lawrence had kept what was in Women in Love a secret while he was

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