Mansfield bones stay put

The eldest relative of Katherine Mansfield has blocked a move to have the author’s remains exhumed from her burial site in France.

Janine Renshaw-Beauchamp – Mansfield’s great niece – is understood to have petitioned the mayor of Avon in France after moves by the Katherine Mansfield Birthplace Society in Wellington to get the celebrated author’s bones returned home.

Mansfield was born in Wellington in 1888 but was buried in Avon in 1923 after dying from tuberculosis, aged 34.

Birthplace society president Nicola Saker yesterday confirmed it had received a letter from Avon’s mayor rejecting the proposal.

English Mansfield biographer and member of the International Katherine Mansfield Society Gerri Kimber called the proposal a ‘‘crass and ill-judged venture’’.

‘‘The body of Katherine Mansfield is not a Maori artefact taken overseas by a colonial ruler, which would justifiably need to be returned. She was a private individual who chose, alongside all her sisters, to spend her entire adult life away from New Zealand,’’ Kimber said.

Victoria University Mansfield scholar Lydia Wevers echoed Kimber’s sentiments.

‘‘It’s a mad and idiotic suggestion that goes against everything she wrote about herself.’’

Mansfield had an ‘‘ambiguous’’ relationship with Wellington and New Zealand and she was desperate to escape the provincial confines of the city as a teenager.

Colonial Wellington was certainly a provincial place, especially for someone of such serious intellect and high ambitions, Wevers said.

Moving her remains from France, where she had spent much of her adult life, would be ‘‘exactly what she didn’t want. She didn’t want to make a fuss and she would hate to have a big memorial.’’