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Una Troubridge (1887-1963)
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 Radclyffe
Hall : A Woman Called John by Sally Cline
She's best known as the
author of The
Well of Loneliness, "the one lesbian novel everyone
has heard of," feminist scholar Sally Cline wittily remarks.
But in her lifetime (1880-1943), Radclyffe Hall was a popular
writer who deliberately courted controversy with her fifth novel,
banned as obscene in 1928 after one of the 20th century's most
notorious literary trials. Cline devotes valuable critical
attention to Hall's other books, and to a flamboyant personal life
(a virtual who's who of homosexual Britain) that was at odds with
her political and religious conservatism.
This biography meticulously analyses the effects
on a writer of her readiness to become a martyr to a cause.
Contrary to her popular image, each of Radclyffe Hall's seven
novels is a serious subterranean spiritual quest. Beginning her
career as a poet she wove her inner life around her Catholic
conversion. That a Catholic should also be a strong spiritualist
was but one of her irreconcilable oppositions. Withdrawn and
awkward, she nevertheless found herself in bold and brazen
situations. Initially a keen feminist, a member of the Natalie
Barney - Djuna Barnes Paris circle and a suffragist supporter,
later her domestic life upheld reactionary values of hearth and
home. Though she was a passionate believer in sexual loyalty, her
blazing acts of infidelity led to her infamous and tormented
triangular relationships. The first of these agonizing affairs
combined the singer Mabel (Ladye) Batten and the married sculptor
Una Troubridge, Colette's original English translator; the second,
Una Troubridge (who in the end was her partner for 28 years) and a
young White Russian nurse, Evguenia Souline.
 Your
John : The Love Letters of Radclyffe Hall by Radclyffe
Hall, Joanne Glasgow (Editor)
In 1934, after 20 years
of a mostly monogamous relationship with Una Troubridge, Radclyffe
Hall, author of the notorious lesbian classic The
Well of Loneliness, fell in love with someone else.
Evguenia Souline, a poor, friendless, Russian exile living in
Europe, had 30 years to Hall's 54. To Hall, Souline was the
picture of a virgin maiden in distress. Hall's obsessive
relationship with Souline, Joanne Glasgow argues in her
introduction, precipitated the author's creative and physical
decline. These letters to Souline, written between 1934 and 1942,
the year Hall died, contain Hall's ideas about the origins of
homosexuality, the obligations of marriage and passion, political
opinions, and ideas about art. Perhaps most poignantly, they are
records of the daily, sometimes hourly, fluctuations of a nervous
lover's anxieties and desires. The Radclyffe Hall of these letters
is a flawed, vulnerable, utterly human woman who passes through
romantic obsession to avuncular concern for a young charge she met
late in life.
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Una Troubridge's papers are arranged in four
series: Series I, Day Books and Diaries; Series II, Writings;
Series III, Personal Papers, and Series IV Writings of Others.
Series I begins with Troubridge's sixty-volume set of day books
written from the last days of 1930 to June 21, 1943, just months
before Hall's death. These books chronicle the day-to-day
activities of Hall and Troubridge, reporting everything from
mundane weather reports to details of significant events. Written
mostly from their home in Rye, Sussex, they also cover other
locations during their travels, especially Italy. Troubridge's
diaries, which provided basic information for the more detailed
day books, cover the years 1934, 1935, 1941, and 1942.
Troubridge's writing in Series II include
holograph notebooks on various topics, drafts and galley proofs of
Life and Death of Radclyffe Hall published in 1961, and her
translations of works by Colette and Matilde Serao...
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From The
Knitting Circle
Excerpt:
In 1915 Radclyffe Hall fell in love with Mabel
Batten's cousin, Una Troubridge
(1887-1963), a sculptor who was married to an admiral and had a
young daughter. Mabel Batten died in 1915, and in 1917 Radclyffe
Hall and Una Troubridge began living together. A black and white
photograph showing Radclyffe Hall and Una Troubridge together
c1927 is reproduced in Jivani
(1997), page 29. A back and white photograph of 37 Holland
Street, London, W8 where they lived from 1924 to 1929, and where
most of The Well of Loneliness was written, is reproduced
in Elliman
and Roll, (1986), page 93...
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Excerpt:
Mabel Batten died in 1916 and Radclyffe set up
home with Batten's cousin, Una Troubridge. The first of Radclyffe
Hall's novels 'The Unlit Lamp' was published in 1924, swiftly
followed eighteen months later by her second, 'Adams Breed', which
won two major literary awards. It was her third, The Well of
Loneliness', originally published in 1928 - which ensured
Radclyffe Hall's place in literary history.
In her diary, Una recalled how the book could so
easily have never been written.
26th June 1926.
'It was after the success of 'Adam's Breed'
that John came to me one day with unusual gravity and asked my
decision on a serious matter. She had long wanted to write a
book on sexual inversion, a novel that would be accessible to
the general public who did not have access to technical
treaties. It was her absolute conviction that such a book could
only be written by a sexual invert, who alone could be qualified
by personal knowledge and experience to speak on behalf of the
misunderstood and misjudged minority. She pointed out that in
view of our union and all the years that we had shared a home,
what affected her must also affect me and that I would be
included in any condemnation. Therefore she placed the decision
in my hands and would write or refrain as I should decide. My
reply was made without so much as an instant's hesitation. I
told her to write what was in her heart, that so far as any
effect on myself was concerned, I was sick to death of
ambiguities, and only wanted to be known for what I was and to
dwell with her in the palace of truth.'
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Names Index:
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