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

John and Una went to the French bulldog club show at Tattersall. ‘There is always something in us that wakes up at the sight of thoroughbred stock in the breeds that we love’, Una wrote. Travelling home through the park, they were held up by an unloved breed, ‘a demonstration of 60,000 anti-Hitler jews’.

Exposure to West End society now seemed mechanical. In her work, Radclyffe Hall had lost her way. Such fame as she had achieved turned to infamy with The Well of Loneliness. She gave a lecture to the English Club on ‘Novel Writing’ on 27 February 1933. ‘The propaganda novel must be entirely fearless,’ she told her audience of five hundred:

If propaganda is to be the theme of a novel, then the novel should always be written for a cause in which the author has implicit belief, for a cause which he feels in his very soul has need of someone to rise up and defend it. Such an author will at least have something fine to live with; he will always know that he has given of his strength in order to fortify and help others. If he adds but one stone, however small, to the building of a better civilisation then that in itself is a glorious thing.

She was right. But it seemed she had no more stones to add. The spite of the law had broken her nerve. In Rye she searched for a different house. She hoped for one at Smallhythe. She found some acres for sale, called a water diviner, talked of bore holes. But Edy Craig got into a state and said no house could be built if visible from the farm. Which meant John could not build. Tony Atwood kept saying, ‘We can’t possibly have a house out here.’

Journey’s End, the house John had rented in Hucksteps Row, came up for sale. She offered £750 for it, renamed it the Forecastle and loved its sunny secluded garden, the view of France on a clear day, the adjacent river. A German barque, Elsa Kuhlke, sailed by, swastika flying. John had no regret at leaving the Black Boy but it proved difficult to sell. At auction it failed to reach her reserve price of £1,800. She had spent £3,000 on it. Many properties were for sale in Rye.

She had the freedom of town and country living and a new house, but old preoccupations. The church of St Anthony of Padua was consecrated on 28 September 1933. John was ‘in a towering rage’. No special invitation had been accorded to her, though she had bought the roof, the stations of the cross, the rood and all of it. The Bishop of Southwark sprinkled the walls with holy water. Seventy priests, students, and all the Rye Catholics attended. John and Una sat on camp stools. The Bishop spoke of Father Bonaventura’s labours, the sacrifices he had made, the congregation’s good fortune in having such a priest.

In November the Provincial came to Rye and took mass. From the pulpit he denounced those parishioners who had criticized Bonaventura. He told them to scrutinize their own lives to see whether their calumnies against the priest of God were born of malice. He spoke of libel, quoted Ecclesiastes and the gospels about backbiters and slanderers and compared Bonaventura to Christ who was given gifts of gold, then crucified.

Radclyffe Hall took the reservation card that marked her seat, tore it up, tossed the pieces on to the pew, stared the Provincial in the face, genuflected to the cross and left the church. She vowed never again to go in it while this order controlled it, and she threatened to secede. She sent back the oak chair Bonaventura gave her when she first moved to Rye.

She was beleaguered and locked in with Una. As they both hit out at the world, it seemed to recede. And Una hit out at her daughter. Andrea now wanted to marry a man called Toby Warren who had no clear profession. His mother, Lady Warren, who was divorced, had tea with Una and John and told them she ‘expected the young people to make their way economically’. Andrea turned to Tom Troubridge, her half-brother, to help with her wedding. He offered his house for the reception, to ‘give her away’ and continue her allowance until her husband was better off. Una saw this as Andrea siding against her and offering her stepson ‘another occasion for venting his spleen against me’.

Una vented her spleen too. The prospect of Andrea’s wedding dredged up sexual disgust. The infection from Troubridge, the obscenity trial, her hysterectomy, her piety and high-handedness spilled into undermining her daughter. In August Andrea went on holiday with Toby Warren and Harry Wilcox – a former boyfriend of hers – and his current girlfriend Carol Goodner, ‘a notorious whore’ Una called her. None of them had any money. They stayed in a caravan in Dorking. ‘I am disgusted with Andrea for making herself cheap and with Toby for having no respect for her reputation’, Una wrote in her diary.

I can do nothing except ensure that Lady Warren also knows of this escapade and that I am not the confidante upon the assumption that I am less likely to disapprove. Toby is bringing his mother to luncheon next Saturday and I am not showing any discretion for anybody’s sake. No man worth his salt would take his fiancee to stay in a caravan with a man, on whom she has long had a physical obsession, and his kept woman. I am now wondering if they do marry how long the marriage will last. I am afraid they have anticipated it in more respects than buying the car, the three dogs, and hiring the house. I did not notice any alacrity in respect of calling the date.

It was, Una recorded, an odious lunch. No doubt Andrea agreed. John kept quiet.