by Jane Brown
114 ‘DWS The Argosy of Grace’, the text in Dartington archives DWE/G/5 General Correspondence, filed alphabetically under Mrs Paul Hammond (the former Susan R. Sedgwick, widow of Arthur W. Swann.
115 Bertrand Russell, A History of Western Philosophy, 1946, 2004, p. 731. Russell expressed his admiration for John Dewey who was ‘very liberal’ but never a Marxist, ‘having emancipated himself with some difficulty from the traditional orthodox theology, he was not going to shackle himself with another’.
116 ‘to commit suicide’, Richard Eyre and Nicholas Wright, Changing Stages, 2001, p. 146; also O’Neill’s plays at this time, Stephen A. Black, ‘Celebrant of Loss’, pp. 4–17 in Manheim ed., 1998.
117 Eyre and Wright p. 146.
118 Major Grotelueschen gives separate figures for each action, and that (Dorothy’s) 77th Division suffered fewer than nine hundred casualties 1st–11th November, but they were trained for trench warfare, p. 339. There are impressive websites: AEF Facts gives 116,708 killed of which 53,513 were battlefield deaths, and the rest died in the US, many of the effects of Spanish influenza on gas-damaged lungs, but the total killed and wounded is well over 300,000; westernfrontassociation.com gives compatible figures.
119 The fate of Sacco and Vanzetti is widely documented. The New Republic covered it regularly, marking ‘The murder of Sacco and Vanzetti’ 10th August 1927, but Dorothy’s name is never mentioned.
120 Rose Schneiderman (c.1882–1972) worked in garment factories as the breadwinner for her family before she was twenty; she organised trade unions and came to prominence speaking out against the maiming of her sister workers amidst unguarded machinery, and the spate of deaths from fires behind the locked doors of factories, these reforms now the challenges to WTUL.
121 Whitman’s words are from the final stanzas of ‘Passage to India’, 1871–81, Leaves of Grass and Selected Prose, Crasnow and Bigsby eds., 1993, pp. 356–64; Dorothy’s Whitman notebook in DWE/G/S7/E/002.
122 This copy is in WDS 1260 Series IV, Box 20, folder 17.
123 Levy’s biography of Croly, sub-titled The Life and Thought of an American Progressive, especially ‘The Years of Despair 1919–1930’, pp. 295 ff.
124 John Rothschild was their tutor for part of every summer until 1926 aside from his work for the Student Forum of New York hosting Youth Movement exchange students. A report for The Harvard Crimson dated 22nd November 1922 (available online) describes his connection to this pre-Hitler German Youth Movement as leading the youthful in spirit ‘and not necessarily the youth of years’ away from the defeated militarism to a liberal culture based on philosophy, literature and religious beliefs.
125 Benjamin Seebohm Rowntree (1871–1954), son of Joseph Rowntree the great Quaker philanthropist and chocolate maker of York, had interests closely allied to Dorothy’s; he had studied poverty, gambling and labour conditions, and published The Human Needs of Labour, 1919, and The Human Factor in Business, 1921. He became chairman of Rowntree in 1923 (until 1941) and remained a friend to Dorothy.
126 Albert Mansbridge (1876–1952), a native of Gloucester, was educated at evening classes and devoted to the cause of adult education, setting up the Workers’ Educational Association in 1903.
127 Rev. Phillip ‘Tubby’ Clayton (1885–1972) was the Vicar of All Hallows by the Tower 1922–62. Dorothy supported Toc H but when he extended his work to leprosy relief in Africa his appeal came at the moment of her deepest despair, making her feel inadequate for not going to Africa herself.
128 Kenneth Lindsay (1897–1991) was to be a founder of PEP, then Independent National MP for a Kilmarnock seat 1933–45, his career strongly influenced by this visit to America. He describes 1130 Fifth Avenue as ‘a kind of conference centre for her causes – there could be three different meetings in progress simultaneously, on three different floors’, Young p. 72. He also gave Michael Young the oft-repeated phrase describing Dorothy’s society at this time, as ‘made up of men and women who walked down Fifth Avenue with serious tread, intellectuals most of them with uphill work to do in a sad world’, Young p. 71.
129 The genesis of Willard Straight Hall at Cornell is to be found among the hundreds of letters of condolence that Dorothy received in December 1918 and early 1919. The poignancy of his words and the date on Dorothy’s birthday alerted me to Professor Brauner’s letter on the WDS 1260 Microfilm reel 8; his ‘ideas’ letter of 31st October 1919 and President Schurman’s of 28th October are also here.
130 Press cutting with photographs ‘In Beautiful Ceremony at Suresnes Thousands Pay Tribute to Heroes’, 31st May 1923, WDS 1260 Microfilm 173/180 with additional material in Series V, Boxes 22 and 24.
131 Research into the virulence of the 1918 virus continues, and the University of Arizona released results on 28th April 2014 showing that those born 1880–1900 (Willard was born 1881) were most vulnerable to the H1N1 strain because they did not possess antibodies from previous exposure. Willard’s case is complicated presumably by his time in China (where he complained of flu in 1909) and also by the fact that the gas damage to his lungs was unrecognised.
132 The British diplomat Sir Mark Sykes, born 1879, died from similar causes a few weeks later, on 16th February 1919 in the Hôtel Lotti near the Tuileries Gardens. The Independent, 17th September 2008, reported that Sir Mark’s lead-lined coffin had been exhumed to gain DNA of the H1N1 virus for further research into present-day pandemics.
133 Ophelia’s Song, Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act IV Scene 5.
134 Anna Bogue’s note on the contents of the casket, DWE/C/1923–4.
135 The chapter title is from John Masefield (1878–1967), ‘The Passing Strange’, Collected Poems, 1923, and from Dorothy’s Commonplace Book:
For all things change, the darkness changes,
The wandering spirits change their ranges,
The corn is gathered to the granges.
The corn is sown again, it grows:
The stars burn out, the darkness goes;
The rhythms change, they do not close.
She typed the whole long poem out for Leonard, because it meant so much to her.
136 ‘glad you’ve come’, 25th July 1924, Dartington Archive LKE/DWE Box E. Leonard Knight Elmhirst (1893–1974) was the second of nine children of the Rev. William Elmhirst and his wife Mary, a family well rooted in Yorkshire country society. He had an MA from Cambridge in 1915; his priestly vocation and being certified ‘unfit’ kept him from the war, in which two of his brothers were killed. Leonard worked for the YMCA with British soldiers in remote parts of India and the Middle East, observing that ‘the Indians’ as well as ‘the Turks’ left deserts wherever they went; he lost his convictions, telling his father that he ‘could not honestly put my name to most of the things the Church demands’, Young p. 27. Sam Higginbottom, a missionary in Allahabad who had started an agricultural institute and taught the leper colony to make gardens, inspired Leonard, exhorting him to go to an American university for a ‘down-to-earth’ education in practical agriculture. For a fuller biography, see Young, Chapter 2 ‘The Englishman’.
137 Young, Chapter 4 ‘Together’ begins with Leonard Elmhirst’s diary entry for ‘a Friday’ in September 1920, p. 61, for when he had first seen Dorothy in New York. Although written in hindsight this is misleading, as they were not ‘together’ (at least not outside of Leonard’s fantasy) nor would they be for more than four years; archivists distort timings, and the Dartington arrangement of LKE/DWE Personal Letters misleadingly begins in 1920, when she was not DWE until 1925, but then the Cornell archives call her DWS well before she married Willard Straight.
138 Dartington DWE/LKE Personal Letters 1920/21. These letters make dispiriting reading: Dorothy’s maternal attitude is reminiscent of her ‘babying’ of Willard in 1911 but now babying without love, only a kind of patrician flattery; Leonard is protesting adoration and at the same time demeaning her sensibilities and intelligence with lugubrious tales.
139 ‘for the benefit of India’, DWE/LKE 28th June 1921.
140 18th August 1921.
141 Leonard from Calcutta, 10th January 1922; he ends, ‘whatever the answer I’ll be for ever, ever your own loving friend’, DWE/LKE.
142 The eldest Elmhirst brother William was killed at Serre on the Somme on 13th November 1916, aged twenty-four; then came Leonard; Christopher was killed in the Dardanelles in 1915, aged twenty; Thomas was brilliant at Dartmouth, a balloon pilot hunting U-boats and in 1920 in command of the RAF Flying Boat Base at Malta; Victor, Marlborough, Sandhurst, Royal Flying Corps; Richard, Rugby, Household Brigade, 2nd Lieutenant in the Coldstream Guards; Alfred ‘Pom’, Winchester, Bisley Prizewinner and outstanding cricketer destined to become a family solicitor. See Paul B. Elmhirst ed., 2011.
143 Dorothy’s 1923 diary, 11th August, notes Leonard ‘too critical’ of Willard Straight ms, and Herbert Croly as ‘hurt’.
144 ‘a Jerusalem’, Leonard from 1130 Fifth Avenue to Dorothy at Woods Hole, 25th July 1924 continuing to 5th August. Euphoric notes fly – ‘in spirit and in absence’ is linked to Leonard’s ‘If I can only see you every year for a few weeks or even a few days I shall be content’ – and yet the nucleus of their school is here; in retrospect this is the denouement of Leonard’s struggle (not revealed to Dorothy) to choose between her and Tagore, as was now forced upon him. Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941), Nobel Laureate, was a figure of world status, beloved, of crucial influence in India. The Institute for Rural Reconstruction that he and Leonard had achieved at Surul fulfilled Leonard’s dreams; his love for Tagore’s ‘beauty and stature’ transforms Leonard so that he could write, ‘one touch of your magic wand and my imagination... finds the windows of the cage open and its wings free’. Even Michael Young, closer to Leonard than anybody else, knew little of Leonard’s emotional life in India. Tagore’s play Red Oleanders about an old man, a younger man and a beautiful girl was dedicated to Leonard, Young pp. 86–8.
145 Verdict on A Passage to India 3rd September 1924, DWE/LKE.
146 Leonard’s proposal from London 18th September reached Dorothy on 25th September and her reply is dated 28th – ‘Do you really and truly want me to join you in April?’, Dartington DWE/LKE.
147 Her enthusiasm seems prompted by two New Republic pieces: Frank H. Simonds, ‘The British Revolution’, 2nd April 1924 (on Ramsay MacDonald’s Labour government) and H.M. Tomlinson, ‘The England of Hardy’, 12th January 1921, included in Conklin ed., The New Republic Anthology 1915–35, 1936.
148 Hasan Zillur Rahim, ‘Tagore and Victoria Ocampo’, bdnews24.com (Bangladesh) 19th June 2011.
149 Michael Straight wrote of his eight year old’s passion for birds and wild animals from his reading of Ernest Thompson Seton’s Biography of a Grizzly, How to Play Indian, etc. Seton’s ‘rather tough, call of the wild morality’ affected him, ‘thanks to Seton the tragic sense of life was imprinted on my own for good. I sensed, perhaps, the reason for my mother’s sadness, and so, for me, Seton’s stories had the ring of truth’, Straight p. 29.
150 Young pp. 103–5 tells of Leonard’s search for Dartington, informed by Leonard himself; additionally Dartington Hall Estate before 1945, T/EST/1/A3 Particulars of Sale etc., T/EST/1/A5.
151 Irene Rachel Elmhirst (1902–78) seems to have been accomplished indoors and out – and Dorothy found a friend in her. She married George Barker in 1935 and they had two daughters, but he was killed in a riding accident in 1945.
152 Young p. 104.
153 Louise Croly from 255 East 71st Street, NYC to Dorothy, 23rd February 1925; Herbert Croly to Dorothy 10th and 27th February 1924, typed transcripts DWE/G/2.
154 Dorothy does not say, but ‘much of it I don’t care for at all’ could have referred to the extremes of prosperity and the poverty of the migrant labourers, for she was travelling in Steinbeck country – he was educated at Salinas High School and Stanford – which formed the background for so many of his stories.
155 Anna Bogue’s role as the perfect amanuensis, relayer of messages, organiser of the children’s welfare, buyer of presents and arranger of everyone’s travelling comes into focus in DWE/US/Office series. Mrs Bend from Rome to Mr Elmhirst 19th February 1925, to ‘My precious Dorothy’ 21st March, to ‘dear Leonard’ 18th April; 28th April records Whitney’s arrival in Rome, all DWE/G/1.
156 ‘nice crank’, Friedman pp. 468–9.
157 Dartington Hall Estate before 1945, T/Est/1/A5.
158 As note 157 above.
159 My essay ‘The Henry James Americans’ in Eminent Gardeners, 1990, describes this coterie of Americans who preferred to live in England.
160 Young p. 97 quotes Susie Hammond’s reflection on Dorothy’s second marriage from her letter to him of May 1977.
161 Masefield, as note 135.
162 Oundle School, presumably on H.G. Wells’s recommendation – his Story of a Great Headmaster, 1923, paid tribute to the progressive methods of Frederick William Sanderson of Oundle, who had died in 1922. The visit to Stratford and Clifford Chambers is from Dorothy’s 1925 diary; my investigation of this on a bursary from the Hosking Houses Trust at Clifford Chambers resulted in ‘Dorothy: A biographical essay’, 2011, which plots her life’s echoes of Shakespearean heroines.
163 Dartington DWE/C/1, 23rd November 1925, President Farrand on the opening of Willard Straight Hall.
164 ‘learning by doing’: Leonard was keen that the whole estate was ‘to be the school’s common workshop’, an attitude to strike horror into the hearts of his farming neighbours. Dorothy led nature walks, and gardening, beekeeping and botanical projects were available. Michael Young joined the school in 1929 largely because his Australian grandfather would pay for him to learn about fruit farming. These four principles from the Outline prospectus are in Young pp. 136–9. See also Cochran ed., Chapter 12 ‘Dewey’s philosophy of education’, pp. 265 ff.
165 Presumably when Whitney, Beatrice and Michael arrived in England there was no going back. Dorothy’s notebook DWE/G/S7/E/007, Friday 24th September 1926, ‘Wyatt Rawson arrived from Totnes at four bringing five children, Keith and Mary Ponsford, Michael Preston, Lorna Nixon, Louis Heidinger’; Whitney, Beatrice and Michael met them for tea and games.
166 Dorothy to Susie Hammond 15th March 1927, DWE/G/5.
167 This work was not completed until February 1938.
168 Henry Avray Tipping (1855–1933), architectural editor of Country Life, is likely to have been Lord Sandwich’s introduction; there is now a biography, Helena Gerrish, Edwardian Country Life: The Story of H. Avray Tipping, 2011.
169 Jane [Sylvia] Fox-Strangways taught for about two years and became Dorothy’s first close friend in Devon; her letters begin in 1928, DWE/G/4. Her poems edited by Dorothy were published in 1949 and later in special editions from the Dartington Bindery. Dorothy paid her medical fees and left her a legacy to pay for her nursing home; she died in 1975 aged eighty-three.
170 King James Version, John 3:8.
171 Young pp. 151–2.
172 As note 166 above.
173 1130 Fifth Avenue, now a New York City Landmark and for some years the International Center for Photography, is at the time of writing a private house again.
174 ‘clothed in dollar bills’, an alienation confirmed from an interesting source: Agatha Christie, Mrs Max Mallowan, their neighbour down the Dart valley, gives her heroine Mary Ann the words, ‘I have connections with that large part of the European world which is still heavily snobbish as far as birth is concerned. A poor and shabby countess sits down first at the table whilst a rich American with a fabulous fortune in dollars at the bank is kept waiting’, Passenger to Frankfurt: An Extravaganza, 1970, 1993, p. 94.
175 Dorothy to Leonard about Fincham 8th October 1925, Young p. 112. Albert Fincham had been Sir Edwin Lutyens’s foreman and clerk (and he knew how to charm Dorothy) and his Arts and Crafts style cottages are most fitting.
176 Snell, 1989, pp. 23–4.
177 DWE/US/Office folders have the Committee on Commitments papers through the 192
0s.
178 The purchase of the Chalet is covered in LKE/4/G. It was made over by Deed of Gift to William Elmhirst in 1952.
179 Maurice Browne (1881–1955) wrote long autobiographical articles for Nash’s Pall Mall in January/February 1933 and ‘Milestones toward Journey’s End’, c.1932, and these and the correspondence are in folders LKE/BR/1–6. As with the Chalet above this archival assignment is because Leonard signed the letters, but there would have been no Chalet and no Journey’s End but for Dorothy’s intuition and inspiration. Browne returned to live at Dartington and wrote his autobiography, Too Late to Lament, which was published the year he died; he is buried in St Mary’s graveyard at the end of the drive.
180 Ellen Van Volkenburg, ‘Nellie Van’ as she became known, came to Dartington from considerable success in America with the Chicago Little Theatre and serious classic roles. She remained teaching at Dartington, particularly encouraging Beatrice Straight; they went together to the Cornish School of Arts in Seattle, then Nellie returned to Dartington where she took part in the Chekhov classes, playing Dorothy’s role in The Possessed in New York in 1939. She returned to Devon after the war, when Dorothy helped her to buy a cottage, then she went back to America, leaving the cottage to Maurice Browne.
181 Additional information on Journey’s End from the 2005 revival at the Playhouse Theatre, London, and director David Grindley’s programme notes. Laurence Olivier’s commitment elsewhere was with Noël Coward in America.
182 It was his mother’s privilege to call him ‘Bill’ but he preferred William in later life, as he will be called here.
183 And for his father who was Leonard Knight Elmhirst, with William for Dorothy’s father and for the eldest Elmhirst, ‘Willie’, killed in 1916.
184 This must have been Leonard’s first meeting with Tagore since they had parted in early 1925, and it was his first return to the ashram since 1924.
185 Michael’s discomfort was linked to his mother’s misery, Straight p. 41. Dorothy never went to India again and Leonard resumed his trips alone or with colleagues, just as she so often went to America alone.