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

wheal. He reads the gospels, has visions of suffering pack mules, goes into psychic catatonic trances and knows that a firm hand is binding him for inscrutable ends.

Andrea visited for a week. She was nineteen and had won a scholarship to read English at Oxford. Una met her at the Gare du Nord. They had not seen each other for nearly a year. Andrea did not know what to call Radclyffe Hall. John did not sound right. Una showed her the sights of Paris while John worked.

Wilette Kershaw did not back down. Her solicitor, Clarence Samuel Tomlinson of New Bond Street, established that Dorothea Fassett was prepared, if subpoenaed, to testify that the discrepancy in the contract was because a secretary had inadvertently omitted a page in the post. He provided evidence that Radclyffe Hall’s real motivation in issuing a writ was that she did not think his client’s acting suitable for the part. Wilette Kershaw reiterated on his advice that she proposed to produce the play in accordance with her contract of May 1929. And he added a bombshell:

I have made enquiries and have ascertained that on the 16th November 1928 an Order was made at the Bow Street Police Court directing that all copies of the Plaintiff’s book The Well of Loneliness (the same having been seized by the Police) should be destroyed upon the ground that they constituted an obscene publication. The memorandum of conviction is now produced.

Radclyffe Hall saw this as no more than a gratuitous insult to stir prejudice. But Goddard realized what should have occurred to him at the start: because of its suppression, The Well of Loneliness probably had no copyright. He took counsel from Sir Patrick Hastings who thought it highly doubtful that a copyright existed and advised against legal proceedings. Goddard asked for a ‘Discontinuance’ of the trial. Radclyffe Hall paid all costs incurred by Wilette Kershaw and herself.

She had sought to use a technicality of the law to overrule Wilette Kershaw in much the same way as Joynson-Hicks and Chartres Biron had overruled her. She lost. They had won. The obscenity ruling left her and her book unprotected. Her wishes did not count. Any charlatan could exploit her text.

She and Una returned to London. They stayed in the Grand Central Hotel and looked at houses and flats for sale in Kensington but liked none of them. John felt unwell. She had a rash, a racing pulse and giddy spells. Una gave her usual diagnosis of ‘heart attack’ and put her to bed. Dr Sachs diagnosed indigestion. Dr Curtis and Dr Scott Pinchen said ‘her nerves were worn out’ and she should rest. The savagery of the obscenity trial, the way she had been vilified, months of floating in Europe, Wilette Kershaw’s disrespect, had left her brittle and depressed. Relationships with friends, with other writers, with Audrey, Cape and now her lawyers, all seemed spoiled.

Wanting peace she went to Rye. She stayed at the Mermaid Inn, hunted for a house to buy and chose one of the oldest in the town. Timber framed and in the high street, Una called it the Black Boy (the sobriquet attached to Charles II, who was swarthy and who was said to have stayed in it). It had once been part of a monastery. It had oak rafters, open grates and a priest’s cell. John bought it for Una, the one person she trusted, in gratitude for all her years of devotion, love and unswerving support.

The builders moved in. While they worked she rented 8 Watchbell Street, a terraced house opposite Rye’s small unfinished Catholic church of St Anthony of Padua. From the drawing-room she could see the nave of the church and votive candles. She poured money into this church. If the Black Boy was Una’s, the church of St Anthony was hers. She paid for its roof, pews, paintings of the Stations of the Cross and a rood screen of Christ the King. A tribute to Ladye was engraved on a brass plaque set into the floor:

Of your charity

pray for the soul of Mabel Veronica Batten

in memory of whom this rood was given.

She paid off all the outstanding debts of the church. It was as if she was buying her way to the right hand of God. Masses, benedictions, processions and venerations stemmed from her beneficence. The church’s priest, Father Bonaventura, was indebted to her. Out of gratitude he gave her an oak chair for her new house.

As Radclyffe Hall worked at The Carpenter’s Son she thought herself alone with God. At his communion Christophe Bénédit hallucinates a crucified man. He has searing pains in his hands when he tries to embrace a woman and his arms go rigidly cruciform. While writing, Radclyffe Hall felt itching and stabbing pains in her palms. Red stains appeared on them. A Dr Dowling X-rayed them which made them worse. She then wrote with her hands bandaged.

She ‘felt like hell’. Una worried about the long hours she worked. ‘At 12.30 I got up & went down to find as I suspected – fire out – bitter cold & she had made no effort to light the electric stove.’ Una, neglected, chose decorations for the Black Boy – wood panelling, door fittings and fire guards – and did an adaptation of Chéri by Colette for the stage. Andrea visited. She missed the train. Una ‘lectured her all afternoon and she left after tea’.

Radclyffe Hall wrote The Carpenter’s Son to take refuge after the indictment of The Well. Maligned by Beresford Egan, the Conservative government, the Daily Express, her mother, called obscene and disgusting, humiliated and reviled, she responded by showing them all how high-minded she was. She, not they, was close to God. Una chose a new title, The Master of the House, from Mark chapter 13 verse 35: ‘for ye know not when the master of the house cometh, at even, or at midnight, or at the cockcrowing, or in the morning …’

At the book’s end Christophe