The Times Great Women's Lives

by Sue Corbett

  Dame Adeline Genée, DBE, ballet dancer, was born on January 6, 1878. She died on April 23, 1970, aged 92

  JANIS JOPLIN

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  HARD-LIVING AMERICAN BLUES SINGER WHO SELDOM APPEARED WITHOUT A BOTTLE OF SOUTHERN COMFORT

  OCTOBER 6, 1970

  Janis Joplin, who died in Hollywood early yesterday at the age of 27, was the foremost female blues singer of her generation. Born in Port Arthur, Texas, she heard the blues at an early age, and began singing when a student at Austin University. For several years she drifted in and out of music and various other jobs all over America, until in 1966 she moved to San Francisco, where she joined the resident band at the Avalon Ballroom, an easy “psychedelic” dance hall which spawned many top groups.

  Her band, Big Brother and the Holding Company, rapidly rose to fame and really broke through with a stunning performance at the Monterey pop festival in 1967. Inevitably she was given the star treatment and broke away from the group the following year to form her own outfit.

  After a disastrous debut in Memphis she triumphed in New York early in 1969, and visited Britain in April of that year to play at the Royal Albert Hall to an enraptured audience. A few months later she was voted World’s Top Female Singer by the readers of the Melody Maker, but since then her career had been quiet until, a month before her death, she began recording with a new band.

  Her harsh delivery and sensual stage act put her in direct line of descent from Bessie Smith, the greatest of all female blues singers. and she cultivated the outrageous image by seldom being seen without a bottle of Southern Comfort whisky near to hand. This quickly became her trade mark, as did the tough, hard-boiled exterior which hides the tensions and fears inside all women who choose to sing the blues for a living.

  Janis Joplin, blues singer and songwriter, was born on January 19, 1943. She was found dead on October 4, 1970, aged 27

  “COCO” CHANEL

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  FRENCH DESIGNER WHO MADE FASHION HISTORY WITH THE COLLARLESS CARDIGAN JACKET

  JANUARY 12, 1971

  Mlle Gabrielle Chanel, “Coco” Chanel, la grande couturière, reached a peak of fame and popularity in the 1920s when she succeeded in replacing the extravagant pre-war fashions with simple, comfortable clothes. The same cardigan jackets and easy skirts that she popularized then were revived in her successful come-back in the late fifties, and her famous Chanel No. 5 scent kept her name in the public eye throughout her long career.

  She became something of a legend in the world of fashion, and a Broadway musical, based on her career and starring Katharine Hepburn, was put on in 1968.

  Most sources suggest that “Coco” Chanel was born in 1883, although this fact, like so many others about her life, was a jealously guarded secret. Traditionally, her nickname “Coco” was earned by her habit of riding in the Bois when the cocks were still crowing “cocorico”, but she later claimed that it was merely a respectable version of “cocotte”.

  Orphaned at an early age, she worked with her sister in a milliner’s in Deauville, where she finally opened a shop in 1912. After a brief spell of nursing in the war, she founded a couture house in the Rue Cambon in Paris. There she worked, lived and entertained for much of the rest of her life, although she actually slept in the Ritz hotel on the other side of the road.

  Chanel sensed the profound need for change, renewal and emancipation that was sweeping the world in 1914 and set out to revolutionize women’s clothing. It was her talent, drive and inspiration that brought about a complete metamorphosis of fashion in post-war years. She began by liberating women from the bondage of the corset. In 1920 she made the first chemise dress and the “poor girl look”, in contrast to the rich woman of pre-war years, was born. She succeeded in making women look casual but at the same time elegant by using the then revolutionary combinations of jersey, tweed and pearls. Dior was to say of her later: “with a black sweater and 10 rows of pearls Chanel revolutionized fashion”.

  In 1925 she made fashion history again with the collarless cardigan jacket. Her bias-cut dress was labelled by one critic “a Ford because everybody has one”. It was Chanel who introduced the shoe-string shoulder strap, the strapped sandal, the flower on the shoulder, the floating evening scarf, the wearing together of “junk” and real jewels. Chanel launched the vogue for costume jewellery, particularly rows of fake pearls, bead and gold chains and gee-gaw-hung bracelets.

  At the height of her career, Chanel was said to be the wealthiest couturière in Paris. She was at that time controlling four businesses: the couture house, textile and costume jewellery factories and perfume laboratories for her famous scent. At this time also her private life, particularly her friendship with the second Duke of Westminster, became a subject of constant public interest and speculation. But although Mademoiselle Chanel’s engagement to Paul Iribe, a well-known artist and fashion sketcher, was reported in 1933, she never married.

  In 1938, after a losing battle with the rising influence of Schiaparelli, Chanel retired from the couture scene. Sixteen years later she staged a spectacular comeback, roused into action it is said by irritation of seeing Paris fashion taken over by men designers. Her first post-war collection in 1954 was ill received by fashion critics, for instead of launching a new fashion revolution, she went on from where she had left off — cardigan suits, short pleated skirts, crisp little blouses, short chiffon and lace dresses, masses of “junk” jewellery. But her timing proved to have been perfect. Rich and famous women once again adopted the Chanel look and when the French magazine Elle ran a Chanel pattern they received a quarter of a million requests for it.

  In 1957 Chanel won the American Nieman Marcus award for fashion, but even without this official recognition, her continuing influence was indisputable. Many different factors contributed to her success as a dress designer, but chiefly it was the result of immense flair coupled with ruthless good taste. In her own language she described all that she most disliked as vulgaire. Her clothes were the antithesis of that.

  “Coco” Chanel, fashion designer, was born on August 19, 1883. She died on January 10, 1971, aged 87

  DAME KATHLEEN LONSDALE

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  CRYSTALLOGRAPHER WHO WAS THE FIRST WOMAN PRESIDENT OF THE BRITISH ASSOCIATION

  APRIL 2, 1971

  Dame Kathleen Lonsdale, DBE, FRS, Professor of Chemistry and Head of Department of Crystallography, University College London from 1949 to 1968, died yesterday at the age of 68.

  Crystallographer, Quaker and pacifist, she was the first woman president of the British Association for the Advancement of Science. Her presidential address delivered in 1968 was a characteristic utterance aiming darts at a variety of targets: the uses of science and technology; the sale of arms; the narrowness of many scientists and responsibility of scientists as a whole for the use made of their discoveries.

  Born January 28, 1903, Kathleen Yardley was the youngest of a large family which had a distant connexion with the makers of perfume. Certainly in later life her appearance was more suggestive of lavender than of the Professor, Dame of the British Empire, vice-president of the Royal Society. The camera could catch her, when she was serious, to give a typical slightly grim look, partly attributable to a depth of eyes exaggerated by lenses, but normally she looked quietly happy. Simply dressed, she was in no way unfeminine. Her hair was usually allowed to blow in the wind and could take on a slightly golliwog form. When she was summoned to Buckingham Palace, on the same day as the leading ballerina, she made herself a neat hat for a few shillings.

  After taking her first London degree from Bedford College for Women she became research assistant to Sir William Bragg at the Royal Institution in 1922. At that time X-ray diffraction methods, pioneered by the Braggs, had been applied to determine the arrangement of atoms in the crystalline forms of a few fairly simple chemical substances. The possibility of determining almost any crystal structure, however complex, could be seen but the practical difficulties seemed very gr
eat. The relative position of a few atoms could be found; no one yet thought of tackling the detailed structure of a protein containing thousands of atoms though the possible revolutionary effects on the biological sciences could be foreseen.

  In fact the general forms but not the dimensions and structural details of the simplest molecules of organic compounds were still known almost entirely from chemists’ inferences. In particular the form of the benzene ring, a group of six carbon atoms, the basis of “aromatic” chemistry and perhaps the most disputed of all molecular structures, had not been determined. Kathleen Lonsdale investigated some other organic substances, and years later recalled with glee that her doctorate was awarded for a structure that later was found to have errors, but her first outstanding achievement was to find the structure of the hexamethylbenzene molecule. This showed that the benzene ring consisted of a flat regular hexagon of the six carbon atoms with the other six carbon atoms of attached methyl groups coplanar with the ring. Previously there was no certainty that it was not a puckered non-planar ring and though it was expected by many that all the sides would be equal there were as many who would not have been surprised had it been otherwise. Even today the aromatic ring is for convenience often represented by a drawing suggestive of alternate longer and shorter sides though this first aromatic crystal structure, and a host of others that came after it from the Royal Institution and elsewhere, established the essential equivalence of many carbon-to-carbon bonds which, in a single graphic formula of the molecule, are misrepresented. Much theoretical work on the nature of aromatic compounds followed this demonstration.

  She held research appointments as Amy Lady Tate Scholar at Leeds University 1927-29, Leverhulme Research Fellow 1935-37, Dewar Fellow at the Royal Institution 1944-46, Special Fellow of the United States Federal Health Service 1947, and in 1949 became Professor of Chemistry and Head of the Department of Crystallography at University College London. In all these posts she was active in research. Her interest was not in the determination of great numbers of crystal structures or in the unravelling of those of the greatest novelty or complexity. She dealt rather with some aspects of the physics of crystals, the fundamentals of structure determination and some key structures.

  Her work included extensive investigations of diamonds, both natural and synthetic — by no means the simple matter that a first examination of this form of elementary carbon might suggest. This work was partly linked with the study of diffuse scattering of X-rays by crystals, which is often related to the movements of atoms in crystal lattices and so may be exploited as an aid to structure determination. She also made detailed studies of thermal movements of atoms in selected lattices at room temperature and at much lower temperatures. One series of investigations contained fundamental work on the magnetic susceptibilities of crystals. From magnetic measurements alone it was possible to calculate the orientations of aromatic molecules in crystals and independent proof of the nature of the complex atomic ring system in the phthalocyanine molecule was obtained.

  She also played a great part in the development of her subject, stimulating and in a remarkable way assisting others engaged in it. She wrote a book on crystals and X-rays but is better known for a number of invaluable aids to crystal structure determination. With Astbury, early in her career she put out fault-free descriptions of the 230 Fedorov space groups, a tiresome and difficult feat. In 1936, when the need was felt, she published the first simplified and practical forms of tabulated mathematical formulae for X-ray crystal structure analysis, first working them out and then, in her own neat script, writing nearly two hundred pages of them so that they could be reproduced without the possibility of printer’s errors. Later she was general editor for the International Union of Crystallography of the several massive volumes of its International Tables. She served on national and international committees which foster the subject. Her work can be seen in great numbers of scientific communications which do not bear her name.

  Many honours came to her from universities and scientific societies at home and throughout the world and she visited many countries to lecture on her work. In 1945 she was elected Fellow of the Royal Society, one of the first women to join it. She was awarded the society’s Davy medal in 1957.

  It is quite clear where the pursuit of scientific knowledge stood in relation to her adherence to Quaker principles. “We utterly deny all outward wars and strife, and fightings with outward weapons, for any end, or under any pretence whatever: this is our testimony to the whole world.” These are the words of the Declaration to Charles II, 1660, which she repeats as preface to Quakers Visit Russia.

  Once, as a result of her writing to The Times complaining about the difficulty of getting funds for certain scientific purposes, a military organization offered support in the form of research contracts. Her reply must have been polite, powerful, and final. When asked, for purposes of obtaining an entry visa, whether she belonged to any peace societies she replied “as many as I can afford”. When similarly asked to state her race she said “human”. The visit of seven Quakers to Russia in 1951 was made to explain the methods which they believed essential if peace was to be achieved. They did not succeed in seeing Stalin, Gromyko, or Vyshinsky but were received by Malik at the Foreign Office and talked for some hours. The talk seems to have been straight and followed lines that might have been predicted. They met representatives of the Soviet press, the Soviet Peace Committee, and leaders of the Baptist and of the Eastern Orthodox Churches. Kathleen Lonsdale said that the party and those they represented may have been idealists but not simpletons. They were not being “used” by others. What the effect was or may be is not for those of limited knowledge to conjecture. Her other public contributions to peace causes include the Swarthmore Lecture 1953 on “Removing the Causes of War” and the Penguin Special Is Peace Possible in 1957.

  To the Quaker, conscription for military training is an offence against the human spirit. What service the individual may voluntarily undertake is a matter of conscience. When compulsory fire-watching for civilians was introduced after some of the great air raids in Britain no one bothered about a conscience clause similar to that applicable to ordinary military service. Men and women were called upon to register. Kathleen Lonsdale responded in a way that was inevitable. She did not object to fire-watching — in fact was already doing it — but the Act, without the clause, was contrary to principle. She knew that her three small children would exempt her but she failed to register. Authority could not budge so eventually she refused to pay the fine and went to Holloway. Someone else paid the fine so her stay was short, but she learnt a lot, including the reason for the temporarily assumed religious adherence of the more knowing ladies in detention. It has something to do with lipstick-substitutes and she must have learnt it when they heard, probably for the first time, of the Quaker way of things. She would not wish this incident to be suppressed though she certainly never used it in any boastful way.

  Aggressiveness had to show somewhere. She was forthright in committee and inclined, with the best intentions, to stick to rules sometimes to the extent of blocking action. Sessions of the Assembly of the International Union of Crystallography, over which she presided, in Moscow, 1966, were prolonged until she was satisfied that the right things were done and were done in the right way. Walking down the staircase at the British Embassy from a pleasant party, broken off too soon for him, her successor, Professor Belov, as she dragged him on to another committee meeting, was heard to say “Kathleen, you are a martinet”.

  In 1927 she married Dr T. J. Lonsdale, physicist (and Quaker) like herself. She had a son and two daughters.

  Dame Kathleen Lonsdale, DBE, FRS, crystallographer, was born on January 28, 1903. She died on April 1, 1971, aged 68

  DAME BARBARA HEPWORTH

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  SCULPTOR WHOSE ABSTRACT AND MONUMENTAL FORMS ECHO THEIR NATURAL SURROUNDINGS

  MAY 22, 1975

  Dame Barbara Hepworth, who died on May 20, aged 72, was a s
culptor of abstract and monumental works in stone, wood and bronze of a quality which gained her an amount of international recognition which few English artists have received. In some ways her work might be compared with that of Mr Henry Moore and it is by no means irrelevant to recall that they came from the same district of Yorkshire, she from Wakefield and Moore from Castleford, a few miles away; that they were students at the same time at the Leeds College of Art and the Royal College of Art. Later in London they had artist friends and ideas in common.

  She seems to have developed, somewhat earlier than Moore, the relation of solids and hollows, of exterior and interior forms which they both used to striking effect, though with less of the energy with which he drew forms out of the material. In the comparatively passive shapes she treated with great refinement she might be said to show a feminine quality in contrast with his essentially masculine expression though there is also the difference between her “classic” and his more romantic sense of form.

  The formative influences on her art included those of nature. She was responsive in youth to the landscape of the industrial West Riding and the Pennines. Cornwall, where she worked in later life, also evoked an uplift of mood akin to that she derived from Greece. She wrote of the carving in yew (“Nanjizal”), now in the Tate Gallery, as “really my sensations within myself” when resting in a Cornish cove with archways through the cliffs. In sculpture the revival of carving found in her a devoted adherent, the texture of surface obtained by this means being one of her main preoccupations. Carving, she defined, in a statement in Unit One, 1934, as “a perfect relationship between the mind and the colour, light and weight which is the stone, made by the hand which feels”.