by Jane Brown
In the meantime Leonard and Tagore had left Buenos Aires, and Leonard had reached England. He presented himself at the Hanover Square office of estate agents Knight, Frank & Rutley to be greeted with a polite wall of scepticism on announcing that he was looking for a large agricultural estate in south-west England. They smiled indulgently when he mentioned marriage to a rich American. He persevered (he dined out on this story for ages afterwards) and found himself with a long list of estates in Dorset, Somerset and Devon – country houses were falling like ninepins, it was a desperate decade – which he narrowed down to seven in Devon.150 So much for Dorothy’s dream of Dorset. He bought a small car and took one lesson in driving it, and, with his brave young sister Irene Rachel Elmhirst151 as passenger, set off for Exeter, and westwards on the Plymouth road. He rejected Marley as it was then called, elegant eighteenth-century Syon Abbey, which can be seen now sitting in its wide green vale when turning south off the A38 at Rattery.
A little further south he found, with difficulty, Dartington Hall nestling in the valley of the brown and bubbling River Dart. Nosing their way up an overgrown track and peering through the ruined gatehouse, it was ‘like love at first sight’. He was once again upon his knees. He wrote to Dorothy, ‘I wanted to kneel and worship the beauty of it all – unlimited farm buildings with roofs and windows and doors like a fairy land, and such farmer folk, and the garden and trees you must see for yourself, the orchards, the river and the boathouse.’152 He looked no further, his mind was made up while she was gazing down canyons in Colorado.
Dorothy, Whitney and Beatrice had come by ‘California Limited’ to the Grand Canyon, then south to Phoenix. They stayed at Chandler with army friends of Willard’s for a sociable four days, before being taken north to Holbrook on the Colorado River, and more army friends, to see the Painted Desert, the Petrified Forest and more spectacular canyons. Dorothy’s journey was followed by letters from the Crolys, motherly Louise’s pleasure that she would ‘once more enter upon and take up the activities that a young woman naturally has’, softening Herbert’s pessimism. His longer letters were filled with warnings, that she would find it difficult to adjust to living in two countries, that she would legally be a British citizen by marriage, and ‘the major part of your wealth will be demanded by the British government for the support of the British Empire’, and that Leonard’s ‘roving experimentalism’ made it more important than ever to have a settled home for herself and the children. Without this, he prophesied, ‘Your life may develop into a series of excursions tied together by a purpose which will have but little relationship to any national affiliation or background.’153
Dorothy’s verdict on California was, ‘I’m so glad we came – it has been infinitely worthwhile – much of it I don’t care for at all – but Yosemite, Pebble Beach and the Ojai valley – these remain a picture of deep and stirring beauty.’154 Taking Whitney and Beatrice to meet their father’s army colleagues bequeathed memories of Willard to his children. From somewhere in Colorado they caught a train which delivered them home to New York on 20th March. That same afternoon Dorothy went to the dock to meet Leonard, having found a long letter of assurances from him, ending, ‘Please don’t be afraid.’ She ‘waited from five until seven’ as the Berengaria was late. She had been wise to absent herself while the news travelled round. Anna Bogue’s icy business letters to ‘Mr Elmhirst’ were negated by a warm hand-written expression of , ‘My feelings of joy in the happiness that has come to you and Mrs Straight – my loyalty and feeling for her is unfailing and I hope that now we can work together.’ From Marraine Bend in Rome with Beatrice and Prather Fletcher, for whom Dorothy was the ‘most unselfish, devoted and loving daughter’, Leonard received a frosty reply saying, ‘Dorothy has never mentioned the subject to me.’ After hearing from Dorothy she changed to calling him ‘Dear Leonard’ and ending, ‘Please let me know – when you will become my son-in-law.’155
There were a thousand things to do. Leonard took the boys to Aviation Field and went riding with Beatrice. Then he went into the city and Ruth Morgan stayed with Dorothy for some time in quiet, prayerful talk. Then Dorothy went into Manhattan for shopping and a visit with Leonard to her doctor who, in the way of medical men, probably told her to enjoy herself. This she seemed eager to do, she was ready for a new sexual relationship, a photograph shows her posing coquettishly, and it is most likely that the complete withdrawal of her sedatives had fired her libido into an eager and erotic desire to be ravished, no matter how inexpertly. They bought a Havelock Ellis handbook on sexology and read it together.
Leonard’s brother Victor, who had followed him to Cornell, was to be his best man. Victor told Leonard that ‘he must have Dorothy for a sister because he feels he grows sizes bigger’ every time they met! Harry and Gertrude Whitney were less easy. Gertrude was famous after the triumph of her Buffalo Bill Monument in Cody, Wyoming, and embroiled in the difficulties of casting her memorial figure standing on the wings of an American eagle for Saint-Nazaire in Brittany. Harry was in pain from a bad fall from his polo pony, which aggravated other ills, and their three children – Sonny with legal problems, Barbara recovering from the difficult birth of her daughter and Flora’s five-year marriage ending in divorce – made it ‘all a horrible spring’. Harry’s ills, wrote Gertrude’s biographer, ‘probably neutralized’ his pleasure in Dorothy’s new marriage, though ‘it is unlikely that, under any circumstances, Harry would have taken his new brother-in-law to his bosom’. Gertrude’s old friend Charles Draper described Leonard to her as ‘quite a nice crank’.156 It was Payne Whitney who came up trumps and offered them his yacht for their honeymoon. And so, after a lot of walking and talking, and a dash to Manhasset for a licence, Leonard and Dorothy were married by Bishop Wilbur at ten o’clock on the morning of 3rd April 1925 under the pine trees on Old Westbury’s lawn. There was a small lunch party before they walked across to visit the ailing Harry, then they caught the 3.50 p.m. train for Miami, via Washington. Leonard had cabled his solicitor brother Pom Elmhirst in York, ‘Happily married complete purchase Dartington immediately.’157
As pampered passengers on Payne’s yacht they drifted around the Florida Keys, reading and birdwatching. On the way home Dorothy showed Leonard around Aiken and some of the sights of Washington. In New York she had three days of gynaecological attentions, pronounced herself ‘as fit as a flea’, did more shopping and had ‘last talks’ with everyone. Their truly last supper was with the children before they boarded the Majestic late in the evening. She slipped her moorings at six the next morning, 23rd May, bound for Southampton, the original of that name, in England.
The newly-weds landed on 29th May to be met by Leonard’s sister Irene Rachel, and another brother, Richard, who took them to Exeter and the Royal Clarence Hotel. The following day they drove to Totnes and then to Dartington where they spent the morning – ‘too heavenly’ was Dorothy’s verdict. As Leonard had written, ‘a fairy land’ or at least otherworldly, for what they were looking at was an ivy-covered ruin with roofless Great Hall and agricultural squalor predominant in all the surroundings. After lunch at the Seymour Hotel in Totnes they returned for a second inspection; ‘interior difficult’ noted Dorothy, presumably referring to the abandoned rabbit warren that might one day be her home. There was nowhere for them to live in the foreseeable future. Her old life crumbling behind her, her prospect only ruins. The next morning they went to ‘a lovely service’ in Exeter Cathedral, and afterwards she broke down and ‘wept idiotically’.
After a day on Dartmoor in lovely weather and her third Devon teashop cream tea in three days, they headed for London and the Haymarket Hotel. They went to Knight, Frank & Rutley and to Hamptons as the Dartington purchase was not going well. They had offered £25,000 against an asking price of £30,000 for the 820-acre estate, and the seller, Arthur Champernowne, tenth owner of that name since the mid-sixteenth century, was not willing to proceed.158 They discussed matters over dinner at the RAF Club with yet another Elmh
irst brother, Tommy. Next day they watched the Trooping the Colour and dined at the Berkeley, and the following day they set out to buy a new motor and also called at the architect Henry Tanner’s West End office, seeing the Carl Rosa production of Madame Butterfly in the evening. Freed from trains they drove back to Devon on the Friday, having a picnic in a field and looking at churches at Wyle and Mere. The following day, 6th June, was Leonard’s thirty-second birthday, spent in more exploration at Dartington.
In the middle of June they motored to York and lunch with the Seebohm Rowntrees, then back southwards via Bawtry to the Elmhirst home, a 600-acre holding of that name near Worsborough, south of Barnsley. To Leonard’s parents the Reverend William and Mrs Mary Elmhirst Dorothy smiled, held out her hand and said, ‘I’m Dorothy,’ and her victory was apparently complete. On the way home they stopped at Stratford-upon-Avon to visit Shakespeare’s grave in Holy Trinity Church – de rigueur for an American, especially one with a place in her heart for the sonnets and plays, or was there something more? They drove south over the Avon to the still-feudal hamlet of Clifford Chambers, its one gravelled street bordered by wide lawns and leading to the gates of a lovely Queen Anne manor house grouped with a medieval church and stunning E-shaped timbered rectory, reputedly the haunt of the poet Michael Drayton and his drinking friend ‘Mr Shaxpere’. Had Dorothy’s appearance at Hamptons or Knight Frank & Rutley improved their client status beyond ruins to plum estates? Who sent them there if not? The manor was owned by Mrs Douty, the former Kathleen Wills of the Bristol tobacco family, but she was recently widowed with a young son, and had perhaps given ‘the right buyer’ a thought. They drove on to Broadway to tea with the actress legend of the New York stage, Mary Anderson de Navarro, who presided over a literary, gardening and cricketing society with a strong American flavour which embraced Major Lawrence Johnston and his garden at Hidcote Manor.159
Their gypsy life continued into July, the chance of Clifford Manor faded as Mrs Douty decided to marry Colonel Rees-Mogg, and Leonard was determined to have Dartington. Manorial rights and the valuation of the timber had complicated matters, Arthur Champernowne was digging in his heels, and on the 23rd he wrote, ‘I can see no certainty of any agreement,’ nor could he hold himself under any obligation. With the advice of Charles Elmhirst, Leonard’s solicitor uncle in York, and brother Pom, a younger solicitor, they increased their offer to £30,000.
This might be the moment to introduce Susie Hammond’s considered reflections on her friend’s second marriage as ‘self-denying, filled with generosity and consideration for others, serious [and] creative’.160 This was never going to be a marriage as before; that Dorothy could not be given again as she no longer existed. Now, she had reached outside herself, she appreciated and admired Leonard’s ‘luminous simplicity of mind’ and purity of heart, and she gave him her loyalty to their great project, her loyalty that would be unshakeable. She would find the money, he would make it work, that was their agreement. She paid for the Dartington estate and everything they did for the first four years, though thanks to her, or Harry Whitney’s, clever lawyers and accountants, comparatively little of her wealth fell into the hands of the British government as Herbert Croly had feared. She remained an American citizen for more than twenty years, though she did call herself ‘Mrs Dorothy Elmhirst’. She was also generous to herself, and to Leonard, in that they would continue to live in the style to which she was accustomed. Herbert Croly was right about the difficulties of living in two countries and here her ‘consideration’ verged on the courageous; as she gazed out into the Atlantic from the deck of the Majestic carrying her to England she made a silent pact with the great ocean that she was destined to cross, not for pleasure or at will but for love and duty, at beck and call, for the rest of her life. The great liners became part of her life, her transatlantic crossings became her ‘decompression chambers’, with always her own cabin and often a sitting room, where she could read and think and calm her fears. Poetry became her great solace, from this time she was hardly ever without a poetic hero to whom she could turn; at the moment it was John Masefield and the haunting cadences of ‘The Passing Strange’:
For all things change […]
They change, and we, who pass like foam,
Like dust blown through the streets of Rome,
Change ever, too; we have no home.161
The serious nature of her sacrifice, that her part of their bargain was to let Leonard have his own way, would have denied her Clifford Manor in its enchanting countryside, with a group of ready-made friends, all basking in the theatrical glow of Shakespearean Stratford, even had it become available. Her dream for her school beckoned her onwards. On their way to Yorkshire they had called at Oundle School in Northamptonshire on the strength of H.G. Wells’s admiration of the headmaster Frederick William Sanderson and his progressive methods.162 She found Sanderson’s influence rapidly weakened after his recent death, which disappointed her, deterring her from following any English pattern and deciding her to rely upon her American experience.
In the middle of August 1925 their despair over Dartington turned to relief as the purchase was agreed. Work started on the restoration of their house, three Elizabethan storeys with attics at the west end of the Great Hall. Dorothy knew she was pregnant. They lived in a rented house called Elmsleigh in Totnes, somewhere to leave their belongings as in October they went separate ways, Leonard to Denmark to learn about modern dairying, and Dorothy to New York.
President Farrand of Cornell had written of the exciting and inspiring opening days of Willard Straight Hall, now soaring elegantly from the Libe Slope on the Ithaca campus, and urged her, ‘Do come and see for yourself what a beautiful thing you have done.’ Almost five thousand people had roamed its gothic halls, full of admiration, and Willard Straight, ‘WS’ and soon simply ‘the Straight’, had been happily accepted into the life of Cornell.163 On 14th December 1925 Dorothy gave a modest address at the opening, thanking everyone who had made the building possible, including Willard’s old friends George Lincoln Burr and Charles H. Hull, and most especially her architect, William Adams Delano. Leonard had joined her in time for the opening, and they spent Christmas at Old Westbury with Whitney, Beatrice and Michael. She told the children about her new baby, and encouraged Michael to feel it moving inside her, which made for a difficult parting. Her added disappointment was that Louisa Weinstein, who had been around the world with her and lived in Peking, wanted to remain in America, as she really did not like the isolation of the Devon countryside.
Dorothy was not long back in Totnes before leaving for London to be near her consultant, the royal surgeon-gynaecologist Mr William Gilliatt. She needed to rest a great deal of the time but managed some outings with Kenneth Lindsay, and gentle forays to her favourite Floris and other Jermyn Street bazaars, and to Heal’s in the Tottenham Court Road, the Arts and Crafts emporium and the first shop in London to sell Bauhaus modernist designs. Leonard, working hard in Devon, arrived in London in time for the birth of their baby daughter on 28th March 1926. She was named Ruth Whitney Elmhirst – Ruth in honour of Ruth Morgan.
Seven: A School ‘such as has not happened yet’
Dorothy, Leonard and baby Ruth were settled into their temporary home, the Old Parsonage near Dartington church, by the beginning of the summer. Ruth was in the care of her nurse, Miss Edith ‘Jeff’ Jefferies, and Whitney, Beatrice and Michael soon arrived for their holidays. A photograph of Dorothy was taken (probably) by Leonard as she sat in the garden typing the first Dartington school Outline. This pioneering document, strongly aligned with Dewey’s theories on education, can be briefly summarised as follows:
1. Education is conceived as life (and not merely a preparation for life) and thus the centre of gravity shifts to ‘the immediate instincts and activities of the child’ rather than to textbooks and traditions.
2. ‘Learning by doing – handicrafts will be regarded as of vital importance both for co-ordination of hands and brain’ an
d also for bringing access to ‘the world of form, colour and line in the handling of stone, wood, clay and textiles’; Dewey was particularly keen on geography, ‘the unity of all the sciences’ and so ‘doing’ also meant the exploration of immediate surroundings, identifying resources, inventing and using tools.164
3. Adults were to be friends, not authority figures; at Dartington adults were ‘seniors’ and the children were ‘juniors’ and everyone used Christian names (though Dorothy’s butler Thomas and chauffeur Rushton were excepted).
4. The school was to be organised as a miniature society, as Dewey saw a microcosm of ‘the developing, democratic, larger society’. At Dartington this meant a self-governing commonwealth, with the students as decision-makers and with discipline enforced ‘by the students’ own court and judge’.
Leonard had persuaded a friend from Cambridge, the introverted piano-playing Wyatt Rawson, to teach, with assistants, one being Victor Elmhirst, and the other Miss Marjorie Wise who came over from Columbia Teachers’ College. On 24th September 1926 Dorothy noted the arrival of the first children, brought from Totnes station and introduced to Whitney, Beatrice and Michael over tea and games.165 The three Straights had not wanted to return to America at the end of their holidays and so it was decided they would attend Dartington’s school. It was rather like ‘home schooling’ to begin with, an extension of home life in the Old Parsonage, and Dorothy was completely involved, cheerfully describing their evenings to Susie in America: