The Trials of Radclyffe Hall

by Diana Souhami

  ‘I’ve married Ladye and I’ve married you’, John said equivocally to Una in January 1918. They fought more than newly-weds ought. After one bout John had to ‘resort to a Ponds compress’ and Una bruised her back. Next evening Una read aloud all Ladye’s 1916 diary, ‘a sad occupation and painful’, she said.

  They submitted their joint research paper ‘On a series of sittings with Mrs Osborne Leonard’ to the council of the Society for Psychical Research. The secretary, Isabel Newton, called them ‘investigators of whom the Society expects great things’. Radclyffe Hall was asked to read it at a Society meeting. It was over two hundred pages. She read the first part on 31 January 1918 at the Society’s rooms in Hanover Square. Gerald Balfour was in the chair. The audience learned how MRH (Marguerite Radclyffe Hall) and UVT (Una Vincenzo Troubridge) had gone anonymously to a medium Mrs Osborne Leonard, how Mrs Leonard went into a trance, her normal voice thrust aside by Feda her Control, herself possessed by an ‘Ostensible Communicator from the other side’ whose resemblance to MRH’s dear friend MVA (Mabel Veronica Batten – the A was to protect her identity) was unmistakeable. Radclyffe Hall told them how Feda describedMVA’s clothes, hair-do and voice, the houses she and MRH had lived in together, their holidays in Tenerife, the car accident at Oxford, their thermal baths and poetry, the domestic minutiae of their shared lives. She then gave a description of MVA’s living arrangements on plane three and evidence of her continued communication with MRH and UVT through raps, book tests, lights on the wardrobe and worse.

  After the reading one council member, St John Lane Fox-Pitt of South Eaton Place, pioneer of incandescent lamps for municipal street lighting, left the room in disgust. Apart from him, it was all highly commended. Balfour said Una was the finest recorder he had ever known. For the second half of the paper to be read on Friday 22 March, the Society rented the Steinway Hall and invited the public.

  John rehearsed for it with Una. On the day, they breakfasted in bed together, got the ten-fifty train to London, did book tests, then dressed for the lecture at four-thirty. Sir Oliver Lodge was in the chair. Mrs Visetti, Una’s mother, Cara, her daughter Honey and Dolly Clarke were in the audience.

  John read beautifully, Una said. Isabel Newton called it a flawless paper. It was to be published in the Society’s journal and John was nominated for election to the council. Well pleased, she and Una took the train home to Datchet and in the evening cycled to Old Windsor in divine weather on the Sparkbrook bicycles John had bought.

  But not all those who heard the paper thought it flawless. Quite a few knew the drama of sex, guilt and jealousy that underpinned it, bleached though it was into pseudo-science. ‘Outrageous gossip’ was not easily pushed aside. Radclyffe Hall was telling the world about herself and her life with Mabel Batten and Una Troubridge. The mausoleum at Highgate, the pews, plaques and inscribed roods in churches and now this monolithic effort at resurrection testified publicly to the same thing – an outspoken declaration of lesbian love.

  In June, Cara complained to Helen Salter at the Society. She said the paper was a pack of lies. Radclyffe Hall was separating her from her mother. Una had abandoned her husband and child and was mentally unbalanced, which was why she was treated by Crichton-Miller. Mabel Batten had resented Una. Quarrelling about her with Radclyffe Hall had precipitated her stroke. Cara wrote an ‘infamous letter’ to John, who in turn wrote to Oliver Lodge:

  Mrs Salter now has the matter in hand and we believe intends to inform Mrs Harris that she must either put her accusations in black and white and affix her signature thereunto, or else withdraw them, also in black and white, in toto. If she does the former, the matter will be dealt with by our solicitor as it will constitute a very grave slander, but we both pray that she will not compel us to such steps. I can never forget who she is, and Una feels as I do. On several occasions relations of Mrs Harris’s have told us that we had no right to encourage her to take an interest in Psychical Research as they considered her unbalanced to the extent of being mentally deranged … I think her lack of balance and excitability are perhaps the kindest and truest explanation of what she has done … To have to admit such things about the daughter of the most wonderful friend a woman ever had is painful beyond all words.

  It was not so painful as to stop Radclyffe Hall making such admissions or from threatening legal action. Cara did not put anything in black, white or in toto, but nor did she withdraw her accusations. Mabel Batten had, in her will, asked them to stay friends. Their loathing for each other lasted a lifetime.

  The war ended in November 1918. John looked for a large house for herself and Una. In January 1919 she bought Chip Chase in Hadley Wood, Middlesex, a mock castle, quite outside the financial reach of Troubridge. She arranged for builders to refurbish it. As a gift for Mrs Leonard, she bought Hampworth Cottage at Oakleigh Park nearby. She wanted her medium available for daily sittings.

  Troubridge, who had been promoted to ‘full Admiral with seniority’, arrived that month unannounced at the Datchet house. There was ‘an unpleasant scene’. Una refused to see him except in John’s presence. They told him of Chip Chase and their plans to live together. He threatened legal action and accused John of having wrecked his home.

  Una saw Alfred Sachs, Crichton-Miller and on three consecutive days Mr Hastie, John’s solicitor. She provided medical evidence that Troubridge had infected her with syphilis and that as a consequence she suffered neurasthenia for which she needed psychiatric help. Hastie ‘thought he could settle things’. He prepared a deed of separation which gave Una custody of Andrea. Troubridge signed this on 8 February. Radclyffe Hall thought he did so ‘in the full understanding that should he refuse, the scandal would be made public and Una would sue publicly for a judicial separation’.

  Troubridge had received enough adverse publicity. He had no desire for any more of his life to be made public. Nor could he afford litigation. But that same day he made a new will with a clause about Andrea:

  In the event of my wife Una Vincenzo Troubridge formerly known as Margot Elena Gertrude Troubridge predeceasing me I appoint my sisters Laura Hope and Violet Gurney to be the guardians of my infant daughter Andrea Theodosia Troubridge during such period or periods as I shall be on foreign service and I direct that my said daughter shall under no circumstances be left under the guardianship or care of Marguerite Radclyffe-Hall.

  He hated Radclyffe Hall and thought her influence pernicious. Enraged and humiliated, he intended revenge. But he did not know what to do about Andrea. He could not provide her with a home, but he would sooner she was on the streets than with her. Una countersigned the deed of separation on 10 February. She talked to her mother and sister about it and ‘explained’ matters to Andrea. ‘Great peace and relief upon me’, she wrote. ‘Deo Gratis.’

  Troubridge made another angry move. On Una’s birthday, 8 March, a letter arrived that he was now seeking custody of Andrea. John took Una to her own solicitor in Holborn, Sir George Lewis, head of the firm Lewis & Lewis. He told them ‘the deed signed by the Admiral was binding’. ‘He could not take the child, and his letter was a mere subterfuge written with a view to intimidating Una into making certain statements to his advantage.’

  Una made no statements to Troubridge’s advantage. She did not see him again. In April she moved with John into Chip Chase. Troubridge agreed to pay maintenance for Andrea who was eight. She was sent to a convent boarding school in Sussex, seventy miles away. Called Mayfield, the convent was run by nuns who inspired her with a dislike of the Catholic Church. John paid her fees.

  Una’s legacy of venereal disease depressed her. A succession of doctors failed to cure her. Dr May treated her by some kind of painting of the vaginal wall. He told her she ‘would always be sensitive’, but three years’ extreme care might make her ‘relatively sound’. ‘I think it so damnably hard on John and an uphill lookout!’ Una wrote. Cystitis and discharges figured more in her diary than the joys of desire. Dr Hathaway tried ‘electrical treatment’
. Alfred Sachs gave her daily injections and vaccines and was forever taking swabs. It all reduced her to tears. ‘Oh John is good to me’, she wrote in May 1919. ‘Where would I be in this terrible trouble without her devotion and friendship?’

  She resumed hypnosis with Crichton-Miller – once a week on a Monday. These sessions, the seances with Mrs Leonard, endless book tests, evidential proof of Ladye, venereal disease and the stress of separating from Troubridge took its toll. She became phobic and felt unreal. Crichton-Miller wanted her to have psychoanalysis as an inpatient at Bowden House.

  John took her there by car at the end of May. Miller asked John not to visit for three weeks and to send only postcards not letters. John told Una she would communicate telepathically. She was writing a paper on this for the Society. And Ladye, she said, would knock on the clinic walls or shine lights in the night.

  John disliked Una being controlled by a regime other than her own. Adrift without her, she walked the dogs in the moonlight and ‘longed for Squig to see it’. She wrote Squig’s diary entries, went alone to Mrs Leonard and suffered the separation. Una had become essential to her and her dependence was acute. Without her the paranormal lost its fascination. She sent peaches, carnations and roses. Una longed to be home. She called her routine ‘damned dull’ and said Miller ‘took loonies’ at Bowden House.

  While Una was there her mother, Minna, rang John to say Troubridge had been knighted and Una was now ‘a Lady’. ‘Troubridge has had K added to his threadbare CMC’, John wrote in Una’s diary on 3 June. Una called it ‘a bore’ and affected not to care. But she readily dropped her more than threadbare Mrs, embellished the title and assiduously thereafter called herself Una, Lady Troubridge. Servants addressed her as such and it was printed on her visiting cards. She pulled rank though the honour came from a man she despised and whom she had left. If Mabel Batten was a spoof Ladye, she was the real thing. John, too, let the world know that she was partner to Lady Troubridge. It made her more of a Lord.

  Una stayed three weeks at Bowden House. On the evening of 20 June she made a scene and demanded to see Miller. He went to her room at half past ten. She told him she had had enough and was leaving in the morning. He was emphatic that she should stay. He told her she needed intensive analysis. ‘He went at 11.30 very angry. So was I, but I concealed it which he did not.’

  She was up at five-thirty next day ‘wildly excited’ about getting away. John arrived mid-morning. Una said goodbye to Crichton-Miller. He had, she said, ‘recovered outward control’. It was the end of the relationship. She did not want such insights as he perhaps might have helped her to find. He, like most of the living inhabitants of their former lives, was discarded. A wrangle over money marked the end of it. John and Una accused him of overcharging on his final account. ‘It is my misfortune and not my fault,’ he wrote, ‘that I have to justify my existence and provide for a wife and family on a time-basis. As I am not a surgeon who gets £1000 for an hour’s anatomical dissection, but only a person who tries to talk people well, my time has to be charged for, more or less … Suppose we split the thing and call it 12 guineas …’

  At Chip Chase Una found everything divine. ‘Almost too good to be true that I’m home’, she wrote in her diary on 22 June. She did not want again to be parted from John, even for a day. Like Feda from the spirit world with ‘ostensible possession’, John was the air she breathed and where she lived.

  12

  A grossly immoral woman

  Tongues wagged in the West End men’s clubs, the Travellers, the Beefsteak, the Garrick, where the armchairs were large and leather and the whisky flowed. News spread that Radclyffe Hall was a lesbian, a seducer of wives and addicted to sorcery.

  Troubridge was in town in January 1920. St John Lane Fox-Pitt told him of the paper Radclyffe Hall had read to the Society for Psychical Research. Troubridge let him know how she had wrecked his private life, broken his home and seduced his wife, who had mental problems because of it all. Lady Troubridge said that ‘this spirit business was now her life’ and she no longer had concern for him or his occupation. Mabel Batten had been immoral too. She had given favours to numerous men before being lured from her husband by this lesbian.

  Radclyffe Hall was recommended for membership of the Society’s council. Mrs Eleanor Sidgwick, Balfour’s sister, proposed her and a circular gave notice that her election would be on 20 January 1920. Fox-Pitt saw opportunity for reprisal. Troubridge had confirmed his suspicions. Radclyffe Hall was a pervert, a threat to decency and the Society’s name. He went to Isabel Newton, the Secretary, and declared:

  Miss Radclyffe Hall is a grossly immoral woman. Admiral Sir Ernest Troubridge has recently been home on leave, and has, in my presence, made very serious accusations against her. He said she had wrecked his home. She ought not to be co-opted as a member of the council. I did not like to be hostile to her at first, but my own feelings about her have been confirmed by what Sir Ernest Troubridge told me.

  Miss Newton thought his accusations ‘risky’. She asked in what way Admiral Troubridge regarded Radclyffe Hall as a ‘grossly immoral woman’. ‘In every way’, Fox-Pitt replied. For one thing, she had lived with the MVA of her paper, who was herself immoral. He said he would oppose this election by all means in his power.

  He went to Helen Salter, editor of the Society’s journal, and complained to her too:

  Miss Radclyffe Hall is a thoroughly immoral woman. She lived for many years with the woman mentioned in the paper which she and Lady Troubridge wrote, a woman who was a most objectionable person. Miss Radclyffe Hall has got a great influence over Lady Troubridge and has come between her and her husband and wrecked the Admiral’s home. I am quite determined to oppose her election to the council. If I cannot persuade Mrs Sidgwick to withdraw her proposal of Miss Radclyffe Hall for the council I intend to bring the matter before the council myself and put it strongly so as to carry my point, as she is quite an unfit person to be on the council.

  Mrs Salter also asked whether ‘immoral’ was a dangerous word to use. Fox-Pitt fidgeted then said, ‘Admiral Troubridge is not at all afraid of anything, and would be quite willing to make this statement publicly. He would not mind it all coming out. He has faced a Court martial at his own request.’

  Radclyffe Hall was summoned and told of Fox-Pitt’s words. They were catalytic. Here, demeaned, was her life. She acted with a forcefulness thought to be the prerogative of admirals and lords. She demanded that he withdraw his accusations. He refused. Like others after him, he underestimated her. She said her honour and Mabel Batten’s were impugned and she gave the eighteenth-century equivalent of a challenge to a duel. She saw her solicitor, Sir George Lewis, and took out a slander action.

  Fox-Pitt and Troubridge went into a tizz. Money gave Radclyffe Hall power to use the law and they knew it. She challenged them to make their accusations public and to justify their prejudice. She had no fear of the court’s judgement or publicity from such a case. Had the price been crucifixion or public pillory she would have paid it. She was not going to be embarrassed into silence. She was a homophobe’s nightmare: dykish, rich, unyielding, outspoken, successful with women and caring not at all for the small vanities of men. Mabel Batten would have been placatory, smoothed feathers and soothed tempers. Radclyffe Hall wanted justice, honour and scruple to resound.

  It took six months for the case to come to court. It was heard in the King’s Bench division before the Lord Chief Justice – the Rt Hon. Rufus Daniel Isaacs – and a special jury. It began at noon on 18 November and finished at seven-thirty the following evening. Una bought a special hat for the occasion, a thing with an enormous bow. Radclyffe Hall wore a discreet cloche and rouched shirt. The public gallery was full, the press eager.

  The story made the front page in most of the papers. ‘Society women and the Spooks’ in the Daily Sketch; ‘Spirit Slander Suit’ in the Daily Mirror; ‘Lord Chief and the Spiritualist’ in the Evening Standard. The Times ran twelve columns on it. The
photographs told the true story: Troubridge (though he was not in court) in Admiral’s uniform; Fox-Pitt in top hat and tails; Radclyffe Hall in mannish jacket; Una, the erstwhile admiral’s wife, now with bobbed hair and monocle. The unethereal eye could see that here were mortal passions: unconventional infidelity, jealousy, prejudice and pride.

  Radclyffe Hall’s counsel was Sir Ellis Hume-Williams, barrister and Unionist MP. Fox-Pitt he said had made

  as horrible an accusation as could be made against any woman in this country. The words used by the defendant could only mean that the plaintiff was an unchaste and immoral woman who was addicted to unnatural vice and was consequently unfit to be a member of the council of the Society for Psychical Research.

  It was hard to find a law to apply to sexual immorality between women. Homosexual men were criminalized for ‘acts of gross indecency’. But there was nothing on the statutes for lesbians, gross or decent. Men made the laws for their own convenience. The Lord Chief Justice said he was unsure whether the word ‘immoral’ in this case came within the meaning of ‘unchastity’ in the Slander of Women Act. The word unchastity came next to adultery and it might be that both referred only to immorality between the sexes. His advice to the jury was that they must satisfy themselves that the defendant had used the words complained of, and that they were defamatory either as imputing immorality generally, or as imputing ‘unnatural offences’. If Fox-Pitt had used such words, he had to prove them to be true, otherwise damages should be awarded to the plaintiff.

  ‘All trials are trials for one’s life’, said Oscar Wilde. This one ought to have proved historic. It might have been about consensual sex between women and with what moral tenets this should comply. Radclyffe Hall had a litigious mind. She claimed the high moral ground. She wished to defend her right to love Mabel Batten and Una Troubridge. But both her lovers had husbands. And she had loved them both at the same time.