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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 November 2024
Introduction
In the two postcards below, KM reveals once more the frequently playful aspect of her letter-writing, together with her love of bringing to life treasured possessions such as her dolls (see the Introduction to ‘Ribni’ above, p. 472), and here, her beloved cat family. Wingley and Athenaeum were the sons of Charlie Chaplin, KM and JMM’s cat when they lived in Hampstead, and who they had initially mistaken for a male. Little is heard of Athenaeum (‘Athy’) but much more is known about his Continentaltravelling brother, Wingley. As Ali Smith expresses so perfectly, he was
a cat who’d travelled the world, walked up and down French and Swiss railway station platforms in collar and lead, Ida Baker having brought him all the way from England to Montana-sur-Sierre in Switzerland, no easy feat. From Hampstead Heath to the mountains, Wing, there in the chalet asleep on the window sill or out chasing birds in the snow as Mansfield writes some of her best stories in the last years of her life. But then, as the year and the illness close in on Mansfield a cat becomes not possible, a weight on her conscience, a worry, so much so that she suggests to Ida Baker quite unflinchingly that it might be a good idea to have Wing destroyed.
Luckily, Ida Baker was ultimately able to find a permanent home for Wingley back in England with her aunt, Mrs Scriven, who lived in Lewes near Newhaven.
Several of KM’s letters in this – and the previous – volume make mention of these cats. For example, in a letter to Ida Baker, written on 27 May 1922 (CL1, p. 153), KM reveals how emotionally invested she still is in her beloved Wingley:
It is nice to know the poor little cat is out of its basket. Awful to love that cat as one does. I suppose you imagine I don’t care a bean for him because I keep on talking of having him destroyed. To say that and see his little paws dodging in and out of the wool basket, & see him sitting in the scales or returning from his walk with paw uplifted stopping now and then …
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