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

had pneumonia and her life was at risk. ‘I arrived and saw the doctor, only to be told that her lungs were in no way affected. However, their hostess had to return to London the next day and mother could not remain behind at the Metropole which is quite the most expensive hotel in all England. What to do?’

Her mother could not return to a house without servants. She asked to go into a nursing home in Brighton. Radclyffe Hall insisted on one near Holland Street and hired an ambulance to get her there. She put Stephen aside and went through the Visettis’ finances to see if they would be better off in a service flat.

‘I can only say my God! I found chaos beyond my worst nightmares and debts everywhere.’ The lease on their house had expired and under the terms of it they had a liability for repairs of £300. They owed rent and rates, had overdrafts at their banks and had spent their capital inherited from Grandmother Diehl. Mrs Visetti was entertaining extravagantly and ‘spending God knows what on clothes, sometimes £60 to £70 at one go’. Alberto had retired in 1926. He had no income or savings and had not insured his life. He had given someone a piano as a wedding present which was not paid for and, he said, ‘never would be’. ‘In his old age he has come down on me his step-daughter is what it boils down to’, Radclyffe Hall wrote to her cousin Winifred.

Mother just sits back and either is, or pretends to be helpless when I urge any practical steps. Every suggestion I make she opposes in fury and her scenes and her tempers have completely worn me out so that I am unable to work and earn money. This I point out from time to time but I can make no impression on her. She only abuses me the more loudly. To nothing will she listen and frankly my mother acts as though she were deranged at times. She appears to literally hate me.

Nothing softens her in spite of the fact that I have taken on my shoulders the whole burden of paying their rent, rates and taxes and all the expenses of her illness (I have paid for all her illnesses for many years past, as well as meeting constant demands for sums of money) and have put all work aside to go into their affairs and am still hard at it. I have no idea when I shall be able to get on with my book & earn more money to augment an income which was OK before the war, but is now reduced owing to terrific taxation and trade depression.

Meanwhile I am devilled by my publishers and no wonder – I am so fearfully behind hand. Last evening I went to bed early because I was so worn out only to get a message to the effect that Albert was dangerously ill and mother spitting blood! Calling up their doctor I find that mother has a throat cough and that what she spat up was slightly streaked with blood from nose or throat and that Albert has a feverish bronchial cold and should be all right in a few days.

The whole business has shocked me beyond words. Albert is just frankly dishonest and as far as I can see always has been, making no provision and never attempting to pay his debts – my mother has developed into a worse fury than she used to be and that is saying a good deal I can assure you. Are they both mad? I dont know, I only know that their house has such a dreadful name that no decent servant will go near it and that this greatly shames me, who am living in the same neighbourhood and who am now very well known owing to my books. There are moments when I literally feel in despair … My mother screamed at me so loudly in the nursing home that the doctor said that they would probably ask her to leave.

It was intolerable for Maria Visetti to have her daughter preaching to her about money. It rankled with her not to have benefited from her first husband’s estate. She now had the prospect of rented rooms while her daughter lived like a lord in a palatial house. It made her hate her. The hatred was reciprocated. ‘I have so often felt the bitterness of having no mother’, Radclyffe Hall wrote. Her mother’s tempers were, she said, a thousand times worse than in the past. She talked to Alfred Sachs about sending her to a ‘nerve specialist’.

He assured me that in his opinion no nerve specialist could say more than that she is a woman of violent and uncontrolled temper and also extremely hysterical. He says that she is terribly jealous of me! Can you beat that? Moreover as I only seem to excite her every time she sees me, he advises my keeping away. The whole thing has made me rather ill myself.

Maria refused to look after Alberto while he was ill. She said to do so gave her vertigo. She refused to apply powder prescribed for sores on his body, and brought in two nurses at her daughter’s expense. Radclyffe Hall decided to allocate her mother a monthly allowance on the understanding that ‘all communication between us ceases and that she leaves me unmolested and in peace so that I can get on with my work.

What have I ever done to have such a mother, God knows! It’s money they’re both after – they always have been – well they will get my money but not me any more. I don’t see why I should be expected to support my disgusting old Step Father, or why I should have to support Mother because she has run through her capital and does nothing but abuse me for all I have done already, but there it is!

… It