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

fishermen find Miss Ogilvy sitting at the mouth of the cave, dead with her hands in her pockets.

Even within the tolerance world of whatever gets you through the night, it was a disconcerting tale. It was not every lesbian’s dream of a sexy time, what with the bracken and the bellowing aurochs and Miss Ogilvy’s startling change of appearance.

In Rye, as ever, Radclyffe Hall became embroiled in a trial. The essence of these trials was that she was right and the world was wrong. Through them she asserted her will. They were always a quest for control, for justice of a cosmic sort. If she lost she felt martyred and closer to God.

This time her quarrel was with the Church. She wanted Bonaventura replaced by ‘a decently behaved parish priest’ who would ‘minister to our spiritual needs with sympathy, calm, and due order’. She prepared a formal complaint to be sent to the Bishop of Southwark. It detailed Bonaventura’s rages, persecution mania and delusions about being in the secret service, his squalor and unseemly behaviour, failure to visit the poor, sick or dying, his indecent remarks, the women he had had (three of them Spanish), his confusion when giving holy communion, his swearing, raging and starving of Rodney the dog.

At St Anthony’s Church, Bonaventura preached a sermon saying that those who spoke against him should be excommunicated. He then had a depressive episode, left Rye suddenly and went on leave to Malta. Radclyffe Hall wanted to ensure that he never came back. She got Harold Rubinstein to check that her complaint was not libellous and then sent it to the Bishop of Southwark with a request that the matter be reported to Rome.

She did not get the reply she desired. Father Thomas Grassman, Provincial of the Friars, would hold no enquiry in Bonaventura’s absence. And Radclyffe Hall came up against another side of Rye that had no sympathy with the trials of genius, congenital sexual inversion or the fight for right. When she asked the Reverend Barnet to move his car from outside the Black Boy, he shouted and asked if she owned the whole street. There was a scene. An educated curate, she told him, does not start a brawl in the public high street with gentry from the parish. The police called to say she had been reported for non-payment of licences for her manservant and two dogs. A neighbour, Mrs Ross, was snide about her tailor-made clothes. Mr Cheyney defended Bonaventura. Radclyffe Hall cancelled his invitation to tea. Una called him a tradesman, rooted in his own class.

They suspected a conspiracy among the Rye Catholics. At a meeting Una reminded them that Radclyffe Hall was an eminent writer and she herself of a social position quite other than theirs. She let them know that they both acceded to acquaintance only because they were co-religionists, and she accused Mr Paterson and Mrs Sykes of slander and defamatory attacks. ‘They would rather the rubric was mauled, the poor and sick neglected and the blessed sacrament in unsuitable hands than follow our lead. And then such people think The Well of Loneliness was not a necessary book to write!’

Molly Bullock called at the Black Boy and tried to conciliate. But John and Una found they now had enemies. They could not see how insulated they had become, how sustained by fantasy, how arrogant they appeared. In their hermetic world strange codes applied. Una lived vicariously through an aggrandized version of Radclyffe Hall. But Radclyffe Hall now described herself as dry, as dry as bones, as not alive. She began to hate Rye. She talked of it as a place of dreary solitude and the Black Boy as a dark and airless prison. She said the house was infested with mice, she deplored the lack of garden, the noise, traffic dust and trippers.

She took a lease in February 1933 on 17 Talbot Mansions, a top-floor flat in St Martin’s Lane in London. As always a new address gave the illusion of a fresh start. She had the flat rewired, the walls painted yellow, a marble bath installed. Father Arbuthnot blessed the place. Minna when she saw it said, ‘How are the mighty fallen.’

John and Una divided their time between London and Rye. Mabel Bourne who had won their friendship travelled with them. Jane the spaniel was given to kennels because of her sharp bark and scrambling ways. From Chapmans in Tottenham Court Road they bought Harry, an Amazonian blue-fronted parrot. They renamed him Cynara. He cost £15 and said ‘Hello Polly’ in the shop. Back home he bit John, took food from her plate and strewed it round. He was returned. A hostile assistant said they had judged him too soon. Radclyffe Hall asked if he knew the name of the customer he was bullying, that she was a well-known author whose pets were frequently mentioned in the press.

Mr Chapman offered them Charlotte for £33. She nestled her head in their bosoms, loved grapes, barked like a dog, sang along with Una, belched, had a vulgar laugh and shouted bow-wow at mealtimes. Her vocabulary was wide: ‘Give us a scratch’, ‘What about a scratch then?’, ‘Ta ta’, ‘Oh, dear’, ‘Hello father’, ‘Father’s in love with his goose’, and ‘Give us a kiss.’ They filed her nails, bought her two cages and taught her to say ‘Goodnight’. Una took her for walks round Covent Garden secured on her hand with a cord and ring.

Soon Charlotte was saying, ‘Mabel Bourne! Mabel Bourne come on there!’ And soon John and Una were again in the swing. ‘The cameras flashed for us’, Una said. They were guests at Ernest Thesiger’s cocktail party, they went to the first nights of C. B. Cochran’s show, Escape Me Never, at the Apollo, to When Ladies Meet at the Lyric, and to see John Gielgud in Richard of Bordeaux. Radclyffe Hall sent a note: ‘I salute your greatness’, then went backstage to meet him. He invited them to supper.