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

think that it may very well be that her operation has made her more excitable – women are like that after that operation.’

Una reminded her, until John felt she was going mad, of her obligation as the leader of inverts, of how she ‘stood for fidelity in the case of inverted unions’, of how ‘the eyes of the inverted all over the world were on her’, revering her, respecting her open and faithful relationship.

And when she says this I can find no answer, because she is only telling the truth. I have tried to help my poor kind by setting an example, especially of courage, and thousands have turned to me for help and found it, if I may believe their letters, and she says that I want to betray my inverts who look upon me almost as their leader. Oh, but what’s the use of telling you any more of the hell I went through last night & this morning – I have a debt of honour to pay, I am under a terrific obligation, and can I shirk the intolerable load? It is less whether I can shirk my load than whether I have the strength to bear it.

‘Nineteen years together’, Una wrote in her diary on 1 August. Only twice had they spent a day apart or slept under separate roofs. She prayed to God, the Virgin Mary, St Anthony, Celine and Mabel Batten. She asked them to steady her health and nerves, put her mind at peace and sort this mess out. In church John whispered she would never leave her, they would remain together for ever and ever throughout eternity, Amen.

Una softened when John pleaded that without Evguenia she was too desolate to go on living, could neither eat nor sleep and would never write another book. Una permitted letters and a meeting in Paris provided John gave her ‘word of honour not to be unfaithful in the fullest and ultimate meaning of the word’.

The holiday in Italy was not a success. John called it ‘my terrible summer in Sermione’. They stayed at the Albergo Catullo near Micki Jacob’s villa. Romaine joined them but found her room too primitive and left after a couple of days. Una got bitten by mosquitoes and stung on the ankle by a horsefly. John spent long hours locked in her room pouring out love letters to Evguenia or waiting in agitation for the post.

Distractions were fleeting. Una was delighted when the hotel proprietor gave her the framed photograph of the Duce that hung in the foyer. And she was thrilled when d’Annunzio agreed to see John, sent an armoured Alfa Romeo to collect her and gifts for them both of flowers, and bracelets with rubies and cabochon sapphires. He offered his villa in the garden of the Vittoriale for John to write her next book and said he would send his private plane to collect a first edition of The Well of Loneliness.

But John was no longer interested in her literary career. She could only have one obsession at a time and now it was Evguenia. She sent her forty-one letters in the six weeks she was in Sirmione. They were letters about herself, though God’s will and destiny were categorically invoked. Love was to do with money, sex and coercion. It was locked in the time warp of Sunny Lawn. Long years with Una had not led to subtleties of expression. ‘She would not give allowance for my own feelings’, Evguenia was to write. ‘John was very shy, but nevertheless it was she, her personality that dominated.’

On 31 July John arranged a bank transfer of £100 for Evguenia – a significant sum in 1934. In many letters she enclosed a hundred-franc or two-hundred-franc note. ‘I want you to have everything on this earth that I can possibly afford to buy you’, she told her. She promised coats with high collars, an apartment with a nice bathroom and a large sunny bedroom, holidays by the sea. ‘I resented it at first but really who could resent it for long,’ Evguenia said, ‘when one is in dire need of everything, starting with a pair of pyjamas … and she fretted that I was not eating well, had no money to buy shoes and dresses with. She could not bear the idea of my wanting anything. Besides I had to have something decent on when she would come back.’ Evguenia protested that she felt uncomfortable about taking the money, had ‘no right’ to it, had done nothing to deserve it and could not repay it except with love and devotion.

Love and devotion suited John. And sex. John would ‘make a woman of her’ so Evguenia ‘would know the meaning of passion’. She would protect her ‘as if she were a baby’. She would like her to have her child. Evguenia, she said, was probably bisexual whereas she, John, was a ‘congenital invert’ who could never have sex with a man. What if, John asked, she were released from her promise to Una, would Evguenia then be her lover?

I asked if you would give yourself to me. You say that you are not yet sure. Sweetheart were I in very truth your lover in the ultimate sense of the word – I might not always be very gentle. I might try to be so but I might not succeed, because the sex impulse is a violent impulse – I can’t explain this to you very well because you know so little about it beloved. But this I tell you, were we lovers in deed you would not want me to be very gentle – not if you feel for me even the half of what I feel for you.

Evguenia was bombarded with such warnings of sexual intent. They invoked uncertain desire and terror. Apprehensive about their next tryst, her letters became stiff and formal. She was disturbed, attracted, interested, frightened silly. Once she wrote, ‘I love you too much. When shall I