The Trials of Radclyffe Hall by Diana Souhami (interesting novels to read txt) 📕

escape of the Goeben. He did not want a part in a court drama of revelations about his wife’s lesbianism, syphilis and spiritualism.

Sir John Fox-Pitt wriggled, equivocated and lied. He conducted – discursively – his own defence without witnesses or corroborating evidence. Had he sought it, wise counsel might have advised him to settle out of court. But he was son-in-law of the ninth Marquess of Queensberry, who had ruined Oscar Wilde. (Fox-Pitt married Queensberry’s daughter, Edith, in 1898.) There was family pride in victory over subverters of morality. But he was not adept at using the law. He had previously lost a lengthy suit about the patent of his invention of an incandescent lamp for street lighting. Nor had he much common sense.

Had Fox-Pitt proved gross immorality against Radclyffe Hall for unnatural offences and unchastity with a spirit on plane three and an admiral’s wife, he might have added richness to the picture of women’s lives. In court he denied the words attributed to him and he denied slander. He claimed he had used the word immoral in a special sense. What he said he meant by immoral was that Radclyffe Hall’s paper was scientific rubbish, unworthy of the Society for Psychical Research and that its publication was harmful. Her paper, he said, produced a condition of mind which he considered immoral. He had not meant in any way to infer that her character was immoral.

It was all bluff, bluster and backtrack. If ‘grossly immoral’ meant authoring twaddle, then few at the Society would escape the dock. The Lord Chief Justice struggled to keep his semantic grasp:

You say that you used the word immoral only in relation to her work in the society … You deny that you used the language complained of as implying unnatural vice, unchastity, or sexual immorality. The plaintiff contends that you meant that. Whether you have used language calculated to imply it is a matter for the jury.

Cross-examining Radclyffe Hall, Fox-Pitt dithered and obfuscated. He read out passages from her paper about Mabel on plane three, spirit horses and vibratory houses. He asked her whether Lady Troubridge had been under medical treatment for hysterical phobias and obsessions because of her ‘spirit experiences’. Radclyffe Hall denied it. Neurasthenia, she said, had a different cause.

Fox-Pitt:  What did you pay the medium?

RH:  A guinea a session.

Fox-Pitt:  What was the medium called?

RH:  Feda.

The Lord Chief Justice:  What is Feda?

RH:  When a woman goes into a trance she has a different and complex personality. I cannot say what Feda is.

The Lord Chief Justice:  Then Feda is Mrs Osborne Leonard in a trance?

RH:  Yes.

Fox-Pitt:  You consider the paper evidential?

RH:  Yes.

Fox-Pitt:  It gives evidence of a spirit world?

RH:  It purports to do so.

Fox-Pitt:  On page 355 there is continual reference to a spirit lady and Feda says: ‘She’s got a nice complexion, very nice. It isn’t a bit wrinkled, it’s very smooth. Before she passed on, her cheeks fell in a little bit.’ It says the lady’s complexion has improved.

RH:  Those are Feda’s words.

Fox-Pitt:  I learn too that MVA has learned to ride a horse.

The Lord Chief Justice:  I am groping at present. What is, or was, MVA?

RH:  It purports to be a communication from a person after her death.

Fox-Pitt:  Then Feda says MVA is so glad there are animals in the spirit world. She used to be afraid of horses but is not now.

RH:  I cannot tell you that.

Fox-Pitt:  Look at page 452. There are various quotations about a spirit having a bath.

The Lord Chief Justice:  How does a spirit bathe? I see later on that the lady has a private bathing pool in the spirit world. You must bear in mind that hearsay evidence is not admissible. (Laughter).

Fox-Pitt:  (to his Lordship) This is senseless stuff which many people who read it will think is the product of scientific minds. It is pure rubbish and only gives evidence of incipient dementia.

The Lord Chief Justice:  (with astonishment) But you allege against the plaintiff unchastity and sexual immorality.

Fox-Pitt then wanted to refer to a dictionary to support his revised definition of the word immoral.

The Lord Chief Justice:  You do not mean by the word ‘immoral’ anything sexual?

Fox-Pitt:  No my lord and I will call evidence to prove it.

The Lord Chief Justice:  You are not suggesting that the relationship between the plaintiff and Lady Troubridge led to the separation between the Admiral and his wife?

Fox-Pitt:  Who suggested it?

The Lord Chief Justice:  Not a spirit in the other world.

Miss Salter told the court that no one on the Society’s Committee who read and passed Radclyffe Hall’s and Lady Troubridge’s paper thought it immoral, subversive or improper. She said she had understood Fox-Pitt’s accusations to refer to ‘some perversion’ between the plaintiff and MVA. Cross-examined by him, she admitted she did not know that in the New English Dictionary, where many columns defined ‘moral’ and ‘immoral’, there was no reference to sexual relationship.

Una, when questioned by Fox-Pitt, tried to pull rank and quash any lesbian implications. She appealed to the judge about Mabel:

Una:  If his Lordship would allow me I should like to say that in life she occupied a high social position and lived in perfect amity with her husband.

The Lord Chief Justice:  How does this affect the case?

Sir E. Hume-Williams: There is an allegation made by the defendant that she was a person of low and immoral character.

The Lord Chief Justice:  Her high position in society would be no answer to the charge that has been made.

Gerald Balfour, cross-examined by Fox-Pitt, was asked if he ‘accepted the meaning of the spirit hypothesis of a discarnate entity’. Balfour asked the Lord Chief Justice if he had to give his views. His Lordship replied that were he and the jury kept there ever so many days, they would not understand what he was talking about. He said he wanted to hurry matters along because not everyone had for ever to live.

Cross-examined by Sir Ellis Hume-Williams, Fox-Pitt cracked. He garbled about a conspiracy against him to oust him from the Society. A conspiracy, he said was ‘a breathing together so that lies came out of their mouths’. He called this the ‘junta’. The Lord Chief Justice, a