Edith Bendall (1879-1986)
Edith Kathleen Bendall was an artist and illustrator who worked in Australia and New-Zealand, where she was from. She lived to the age of 107 and exhibited her work up until she was in her 90s. specialising in children's portraits and scenes.
She entertained a relationship with Katherine Mansfield from 1906 to 1908. They collaborated on a book of children’s verse with illustrations which was never published. In 1907, Mansfield invited her to stay at her family beach house at Days Bay, alone. This caused Mansfield's parents great upset until in 1908, she sailed to London. "Last night I spent in her arms - and tonight I hate her - which being interpreted, means that I adore her; that I cannot lie in my bed and not feel the magic of her body. I feel more powerfully all those so-termed sexual impulses with her than I have with any man. She enthrals, enslaves me - and her personal self - her body absolute - is my worship." -Katherine Mansfield in her diary, June 1st 1907.
Katherine Mansfield later wrote about a lesbian relationship in the short story Leves Amores, which Edith Bendall is likely to have inspired.
"Was Youth dead? … Was Youth dead? She told me as we walked along the corridor to her room that she was glad the night had come. I did not ask why. I was glad, too. It seemed a secret between us. So I went with her into her room to undo those troublesome hooks. She lit a little candle on an enamel bracket. The light filled the room with darkness. Like a sleepy child she slipped out of her frock and then, suddenly, turned to me and flung her arms round my neck. Every bird upon the bulging frieze broke into song. Every rose upon the tattered paper budded and formed into blossom. Yes, even the green vine upon the bed curtains wreathed itself into strange chaplets and garlands, twined round us in a leafy embrace, held us with a thousand clinging tendrils. And Youth was not dead."
