I looked on death a moment eye to eye
And knew him not so swift the vision came
So hard upon the heels of life, that flame
And darkness mingled as they passed me by.
Both believed she had been spared the darkness to achieve two goals: literary heights and the love of Ladye. But there was George to accommodate, and Dolly too. George no longer heeded the ‘cynical remarks’ the world made about his wife. He had prostate trouble, felt old and ‘barred from the pleasures of everyday life’. His pension was not good and though his son-in-law Austin Harris looked after his business affairs, he found Margaret, as he felt it right to call her, more than generous with money.
But he was pushed aside. In the summer of 1909 John and Ladye went to the French Riviera and to Alassio where John rented a villa. George hoped to travel out to meet them. To deter him they wrote discouraging letters about the crowds, the heat, the mosquitoes. And then his doctor advised him not to make the journey. ‘I fancy he was prompted by some little bird or minx’, George wrote to Cara.
He booked in for three weeks at the Pwllycrochan Hotel in Conway Bay, north Wales. He went there with Mabel’s maid, Susan Attkins. Each afternoon he walked half a mile with her to the sea and paid twopence for their admission to the pier where they listened to the band. On Saturdays she accompanied him to the hotel dance. Mabel wrote happy letters from the Grand Hotels in Monte Carlo and Lake Maggiore and from Molino di Sopra, John’s villa. ‘She seems to be enjoying herself’, George told Cara.
Dolly Diehl too made other plans. On 19 October 1909, with John as her witness, she married Robert Coningsby Clarke at St Paul’s Church, Knightsbridge. They moved to a house in Swan Walk, Chelsea on the bank of the Thames. John went on paying her a monthly allowance, a small price for the freedom to be alone with the woman whom she now called her ‘true unfailing inspiration’ and her ‘reason for all things’.
JOHN
6
John and Ladye
Mabel Batten offered John the stability she seemed to need. It was her art to weave other relationships into the fabric of life with ‘darling Johnnie’. ‘My dear old George’s 78th birthday’, Ladye wrote in her diary on 22 January 1910. She took him and their grandchildren to a matinée of Our Miss Gibbs then to Rumpelmayers, a fashionable teahouse. Her sister, Emmie Clarendon, was ‘frosty’ at first. ‘Never sends a line. Never wrote to thank Johnnie for an expensively bound copy of her poems.’ After a while, she thawed. To Cara, Ladye freely confided her love:
I find Jonathan delightful to be with. Of course her temper is hotter than tabasco and she is very impulsive but what does that matter? She is true grit all through and a real poon in her outlook on life and is so kind and darling to me. I admire and respect her downright honesty and she is awfully clever too.
John moved with Grandmother Diehl from Kensington to a Chelsea flat in Tite Street, adjacent to Ralston Street where Ladye lived. She breakfasted in Ladye’s bedroom; they lunched at the Bath Club and had tea with Dolly Clarke in Swan Walk. They shopped at Harrods or Maples, took a box at the Opera House with the Duchess of Rutland to hear Nellie Melba sing Mimi in La Bohème and spent long weekends at Malvern. John bought Ladye a sapphire ring, a necklace of diamonds and emeralds, and supervised Madame Barroche as she fitted her for a black satin evening gown with red crêpe Spanish bows on its lace hem and sleeves.
‘Above all else,’ John wrote of Ladye, ‘I owe her a debt for bringing me into the Catholic church.’ God, they believed, had meant them to be together. Ladye had problems with early morning mass, but in her bedroom were a prie-dieu, a shrine with a gilt altar piece, statues of the Madonna and Child and photographs of the Pope. She viewed eternal life and the Lord’s benevolence as certainties, liked Gregorian chant, and believed the first three things you asked for in church you usually got.
John was a ready convert. ‘The little spiritual ship my grandmother had launched long ago was steered into the quiet harbour.’ She joined Ladye for mass, confession and benediction at Brompton Oratory and in private devotions. Her ‘faith never wavered’. Both were undeterred by the Vatican’s condemnation of same-sex love or the adulterous terms of their match.
They considered themselves blessed and respectable. They were royalists, patriots, Conservatives, Christians, with allegiance to country, God and class. Above all, they were assiduous at having a good time. Their holidays were long and of the sort Ladye adored. Winters in the sun that were a rejuvenation and extravagance George could not provide. In February 1910 they sailed from Southampton in the SS Burgermeister for three months in Tenerife. George was despatched with Susan Attkins to Mrs Jefferson in Grantham.
On board ship their cabins, though ‘miles away from the ladies’ bathrooms’, were large. There were storms and John lay clothed, holding her rosary and expecting to die. A young man in a green Homburg and tight trousers assumed they were mother and daughter and wooed John. ‘Germans never know when they are not wanted’, Ladye wrote to Cara.
In Santa Cruz the weather was perfect. They stayed at the Quisisana Hotel, perched on a cliff up endless steps. In the foyer were palm trees and caged monkeys. They rode on pack mules into the mountains, bought a parrot they called Mr Povey, sang island songs and picnicked overlooking a ravine. Ladye worked on John’s poems and read them aloud. Both declared they had never been as happy in their lives before and that this was their one great love. They thought the meaning of the close tie they felt was because they had lived together in a previous incarnation.
For John, it was as if the trials of childhood were past. She was valued, loved, encouraged, needed. On their departure day they watched from the hotel through a telescope for their boat, the SS Habsburg, to dock in the port. They sailed on to Lisbon with first-class board in the captain’s cabin. They arrived in pouring rain, lunched at the hotel where Byron wrote Childe Harold, went to a bullfight, visited monasteries and churches and hired an interpreter to help them buy hats. After a week, with lots of bothers with luggage and the parrot, they travelled on to Paris in the Sud Express.
Such poems as John wrote reflected her love of Ladye and life with her. In London in May she took her next volume to Bumpus. Called Poems of the Past and Present, edited, compiled and revised by Mabel, they were about her and dedicated to her. They told of John’s rootlessness before meeting her and the fulfilment she had brought. They spoke of Mabel’s blue eyes, beloved hands and the flowers and graveyards of Tenerife. The litany of the Catholic Church became ‘A Rosary of Love’.
By all dead lovers’ tears and pains
I swear I love thee,
By all their joys and glad refrains
I swear I love thee.
By all the lovers that still live,
I swear I love thee,
By all they take and all they give,
I swear I love thee.
By all my youth and passion’s might,
I swear I love thee
By all thy beauty and delight,
I swear I love thee.
By Love himself, his holy flame,
I swear I love thee,
By those I loved ere thy love came,
I swear I love thee.
And so on for fifteen verses. Reviewers gave teatime praise. The Lady said ‘many fair and gentle thoughts are gracefully expressed by Marguerite Radclyffe-Hall.’ The Daily Express called her ‘a poetess with a very charming gift’. The Daily News talked of ‘neat statements of the woman’s point of view’.
John and Ladye’s intimacy was exclusive and the old life faded away. King Edward VII, ill with bronchitis, died at midnight on 6 May 1910. Ladye and John wore black, offered mass for him and watched his funeral procession. John had a miniature of him mounted in a black Wedgwood pendant for Ladye to wear.
Then George became ill. In August he stayed with them at Clifton Cottage, Sidmouth. John composed Spanish songs on her mandolin. ‘Her accompaniment is different every time she tries it’, Ladye wrote to. Ca
ra. Ladye and George sang the vocal parts, ‘and the parrot Mr Povey squealed with joy and excitement’. But George was weak on his legs, had swollen ankles and bladder problems, his mind wandered and he put Devonshire cream in his tea.
On 2 October they went with him and Ladye’s sister-in-law, Nelly Hatch, to a concert at the Albert Hall where Louise Kirkby-Lunn sang Ladye’s setting of John’s ‘Ode to Sappho’. The next day Mr Povey died, Grandmother Diehl, who was seventy-nine, had a stroke and George sank into delirium. His sister Lady Strachey and Emmie Clarendon sat with him. Dr Pardoe operated on his prostate and a Dr Grosvenor said he ‘held out hope’. John divided her time between her grandmother and Ladye.
On 18 October in the early morning Grandmother Diehl died. She had asked to be buried in the family grave in the old cemetery in west Philadelphia. John went with her mother and the coffin to Southampton, saw her and it on to the Atlantic liner, then hurried to Ralston Street. George was rambling and scarcely conscious. He was given intravenous heroin. Ladye held his head and urged him to eat a beaten egg. Kelly, his barber, came to shave him. John, Ladye and Cara went to Westminster Cathedral to pray for him. He died at ten past six in the evening of 24 October.
He was despatched to a chapel of rest in Woking and given a memorial service at St Peter’s Church, Eaton Square. The house at Ralston Street, disinfected and left with agents, fetched a high rent as it was coronation year. The solicitor, Mr Johnson, sorted out George’s will, investment papers, pension and shares. Ladye benefited by £400 rental income a year, the house and £8,000 capital. As consolation for her bereavement, John bought her a mauve coat and a Pekinese called Fuji and promised her a villa in the sun.
Within a month they and their maids were on their way to the south of France, Alassio, Bordighera, Corsica. They were away six months, a seemly absence. Their itinerary precluded sorrow and Ladye’s diaries and letters suggested happy times. With Dolly Diehl married and Grandmother Diehl and George Batten dead, nothing it seemed could now separate her and John from each other and their pledge of eternal love. She wrote of walks in the mountains where the air smelled of pine and eucalyptus, of waves breaking in a sirocco wind, of drives through moors and meadows full of flowers, of their search for a villa for John to buy and of picnics in the sun.
The Bobby Clarkes, as Ladye called them, joined them in Alassio. ‘They seem very happy together’, she wrote to Cara. ‘He looks like a bald cherub. She is much improved in every way and seems now to appreciate Johnnie and all her kindness in a way she never did when she was living with her.’ He had a ‘wonderful’ telescope, and in the garden of the villa by moonlight John and Ladye looked at the stars.
They considered themselves married. John, once the perfect suitor, was now the perfect spouse. In London she leased a large Chelsea flat, 59 Cadogan Square. They furnished it with antique mantelpieces, oak tables, blue Italian pillars for Ladye’s bedroom shrine and Dresden china birds. John plied Ladye with presents – a black-and-white bead evening gown, a brocade evening cloak with crimson lining and hood, a black chiffon and voile dress for the afternoons, a diamond safety pin, more strings of pearls.
In Malvern she sold Highfield, which Ladye had thought bleak, and bought the White Cottage, which was thatched and cosy with roses over the porch. ‘How I wish you could see this cottage’, Ladye wrote to Cara. ‘I know you would like it as much as you disliked Highfield. It is really very comfy.’ She called it ‘a perfectly darling big cottage’. It cost £1,500 freehold and was set in the hills. It had a steep sloping garden, beautiful views, a walnut tree with a seat built round it. There was a garage for John’s new car, a field for Judy her horse and a separate cottage for two of the servants. Ladye furnished her bedroom with a cream carpet, yellow curtains, an Italian four-poster bed, Indian paintings and portraits of George and Johnnie.
They planted fruit trees and flowering myrtle and had a terrace made. To complete family life, they bought a Yorkshire terrier called Claude, and Otero, a French bulldog. They rescued Rufus, a collie from Battersea Dogs’ Home, and acquired a parakeet with clipped wings. John prided herself on her affinity with animals, impulsively acquired them and championed their rights. But she demanded alarming deference and punished them or gave them away if they failed to obey. Claude disappeared into the Malvern Hills when she ‘whipped him severely’ for running in front of a cart and not coming when called. He was found but wanted nothing to do with her. And the parakeet was judged spiteful and returned to the shop when it took an opportunistic nip from her finger.
Ladye sang John’s songs at concerts, arranged their musical settings with Robert Coningsby Clarke and Mr Cuthbert Wynne and prepared her fourth volume of poems, Songs of Three Counties, for publication. Socially they mixed with other lesbians of their class who had money and cultural interests. They went to Ethel Smyth’s ‘suffragette concert’, saw ‘clever pictures’ by Romaine Brooks at the Graphic Gallery and motored with Toupie Lowther to Herstmonceux Castle in Sussex, the estate of her brother, Claude. The Princesse de Polignac, a wealthy patron of the arts, came to tea with her lover Olga de Meyer, wife of the society photographer Adolf de Meyer who had taken Mabel’s photograph in 1880.
The wider world only lightly impinged. They deplored the prolonged miners’ strike, the scarcity of coal, an exhibition of ‘mad futuristic paintings’ at the Bath Club and the militancy of suffragettes. 1913 was the year when, on Derby Day, Emily Davison died by throwing herself under the King’s horse. In London, suffragettes smashed windows and chained themselves to railings. John wrote and Ladye edited a letter to the Pall Mall Gazette:
Sir
Have the Suffragettes no spark of patriotism left that they can spread revolt and hamper the Government in this moment of grave national danger? According to Mrs Pankhurst they are resorting to the methods of the miners! Since when have English ladies regulated their conduct by that of the working classes? But indeed up to the present the miners have set an example of orderly behaviour which the Suffragettes might do well to follow!
I was formerly a sympathiser with the cause of female suffrage, as also were many women who, like myself, are unrepresented, although taxpayers. Women who are capable of setting a revolutionary example at such a time as this could only bring disgrace and destruction on any Constitution in which they played an active part.
Yours, etc.,
A Former Suffragist
Such worries as they had were domestic. There was the day the engine of John’s car caught fire and the day the water pipes burst. She and Ladye fussed over each other’s safety and health. They nursed sore throats and avoided draughts. When Ladye had trouble with her teeth, John painted her gums with tincture of iodine. When she was breathless, she took her to a heart specialist – he prescribed amyl nitrite. When John had her haemorrhoids excised, Ladye stayed with her in the Devonshire Street Clinic in London.
John had the security she said she wanted, the safe harbour of her fantasy. She was loved and protected with a fortune to spend, servants, pets, a circle of friends, a flat in town, a house in the country. Reviewers praised her poems. The pain of childhood was over, the Visettis no more than ghosts. She fretted when her mother sent a telegram about financial problems and fretted even more when, with Alberto, she stayed at the White Cottage. But they left after a few days and it seemed the past was dead. If some dark magnet had not drawn her, she might have kept intact all she now had and redefined her life with Ladye’s calmness and ease.
7
If I can fix something for Ladye
In 1912 John was formally received into the Roman Catholic Church. She took the baptismal name of Antonia and chose St Anthony as her patron saint. Bishop Butt confirmed her at Westminster Cathedral. Ladye was her sponsor. Money bought privileges in a number of churches: the personalized pew at the front of the congregation, the inscribed rood, tea with the priest.
They made a pilgrimage to Rome. They stayed in the Grand Hotel de Russie and dined with the Bishop of Nottingham.
They went to confession and mass in St Peter’s and bought triptychs, gilt angels and an alabaster Madonna. ‘Johnnie is pink and happy and delighted with everything and so am I,’ Ladye wrote to Cara, ‘barring Roman feet which are as bad as Homburg ones. St Peters was more wonderful than ever yesterday … I adore Italy so that I’m always happy here.’
For a financial consideration, Pope Pius x received them in a ‘semi-private audience’ at the Vatican. ‘Only eight people in a little camera.’ He gave them signed pictures of himself, blessed them in a tired voice and looked ‘inexpressibly sad and ill’.
They say he suffers agonies of intense gout. He has a very kind face but none of the dignity of the last Pope who loved the pomp and ceremonies which this one is bored by. He is always longing for the sea, can’t remember his clothes are white and is always wiping his pen on his soutane.
Ladye endured frailties too. She was overweight, had chest pains, was breathless on exertion and lamented the hills of Tuscany and the stairs in the hotel. She was ‘flooding’ and found no relief from Dr Dakin’s haemorrhage pills and proprietary medicines for ‘the change of life’. She disguised her discomforts because they made John anxious. Dolly Clarke joined them for a week. ‘She is quite a nice little thing and mad about Rome.’ Thirty years younger than Ladye, she was a more sprightly sightseeing companion for John.
And then John became ill with what sounded like glandular fever. Ladye said she had come out of the hot tearooms of the Grand Hotel and did not put on her coat. She was wretched with anxiety. John became irascible with the hotel staff and complained that her room was unhealthy. She decided impulsively to leave Rome for Viareggio then Monte Carlo, though Ladye had hoped to stay for the Ambassador’s Ball.
The Trials of Radclyffe Hall Page 6