Domiciliation Fever (or sweltering shelter)

Fieldnotes

August 12, 2022

Learning how to negotiate knowledge that may or may not be shared …

archives, malvern, Malvern Fieldnotes, pivot, prompts, public records, Radclyffe Hall, Recces, The Hive, Walk-in-Progress, Worcestershire

The concept of the archive … shelters itself from this memory which it shelters: which comes down to saying also that it forgets it …
Jacques Derrida, 1995 Archive Fever¹

I would like to share what I learned when the archivist’s retrieved items b009:5 BA8585/1 Volume 47² and 493:9196/270 Parcel xxviii³. However, due to important but strict data protection regulations, I cannot share them.

Neuroqueer Inquiry

This entry is part of a walk-in-process, updated as new ideas and facts come up. Syntax and grammar reflects dyspraxis in action and may not ‘line up’ with a linear narrative.

I can’t share this application for a building permit

Nor can I share the telegram deep inside this legal portfolio – a congratulation for a won court case awarded to a parish priest.

I can share a few items …

Like the phone directory listing Highfield House – Ratcliffe-Hall Miss archived in the University of Leicester Special Collections Online⁴.

I can point you to the Finance Act and census, which you can visit at the National Archives in Kew.

What I can’t do is share with you the very specific public records I’ve found that put into question Radclyffe Hall’s time in Malvern.

I can direct you to these resources, and advise about its contents. However, due to complicated but necessary data protection and copyright regulations, including the ones I physically signed as a researcher affiliated with the University of Roehampton, the documents remain domiciled in a Derridian house arrest with me as an interpreter and the Worcester archives as guardians ⁵. The reader (you), will continue to be told a story based on facts that may only be referenced in name and not shared with the kind of visual evidence that has become the cornerstone of ‘fact’ in this post-truth era.

So I’ve made up a story and you’ll have to trust me …

“Not very far from Upton-on-Severn – between it, in fact, and the Malvern Hills ….”

Radclyffe-Hall’s connection to the Malvern Hills and environs is present across her fiction and poetry, as well as in biographies and memoirs written by friends and partners. She was there mostly from her 20s, mostly with Mabel Battan, her partner during the period.

This is the zero-point of the journey, where I would orient myself to devise the route …

The biographies have already assembled good narratives, deduced from memoirs, letters, and biographies: first-hand documents that have for decades informed what we (think we) know about Radclyffe Hall, her partners, and her homes. The documents are scattered, occasionally lost since their writing, and when recovered, frequently indecipherable due to Hall’s dyslexia and handwriting. Some documents are available online, but most are stored in boxes and envelopes or in the private collection of an octogenarian who may or may not be alive and may or may not still have the documents.

Here is a summary of evidence gathered at the Hive.

Radclyffe Hall was a lodger at Highfield in 1910. The owner was H.W. Jephson.
Radclyffe Hall or Mabel Batten aren’t in phone directories related to White Cottage. Radclyffe Hall is linked to Highfield in directories from 1908 – 1912.
Radclyffe Hall sold a parcel of land belonging to White Cottage to Ada Constance Beatrice Cabrera in 1914.
In May 1914 Radclyffe Hall and Mabel Batten sent a telegram from Slone Street to William Bennington in Little Malvern, wishing him congratulations on winning a court case.
The Environmental records department does not hold any documentation on either White Cottage or Highfield House.

What I have come to understand from memoirs and word of mouth

The current residents of White Cottage confirm that Radclyffe Hall and Mabel Batten lived at White Cottage. They have photos; they shared one of them. When asked about documents that may relate, they did not respond.
There is a dispute about which years the residences were occupied. Most refer to the biography written by Una. However, some also cite some journals and letters of Mabel Batten – these documents were cited as being in the private collection of her granddaughter, Cara Lancaster. I’ve not been able to locate Cara Lancaster (who, if alive, is on the far side of octogenarian)⁶.
According to later partner Una Troubridge, the years at White Cottage were idyllic for Radclyffe Hall and Mabel Batten.
Most people I discussed Radclyffe Hall’s presence in the Malvern Hills were unaware and in some instances, did not know who she was (but did know some of her poetry about the area that was set to song).

So I’m conflicted and pulled in a few directions.

What I don’t want is to draw attention to the observations and conclusions drawn by biographers who’ve conveyed narratives and drawn meaning for readers to connect and see themselves in the lives of Radclyffe Hall and companions that don’t match up⁷ . I hesitate to stand by myself, my own observation, because the observation, the ergo sum to make, is simply this: we make up stories.

We make up stories because we need one. I need one. Like a Cvetkovichian quest to fulfil a queer psychic need⁸. A need to know who was where when in order to triangulate how a life might have been in a landscape that was once before.

This is the setting and landscape that informed Well of Loneliness. The landscape inspired several volumes of poetry, establishing Hall as a romantic writer. Malvern Hills is what biographers refer to as Hall’s idyllic times and local newspapers claim her for their own.

It’s also where local museums, bookshops, and tourist information centres responded to my inquiries without knowing this was the case. The archives advised, to their knowledge, no one has developed any work that deals exclusively with Hall’s time in the area ⁹. To their knowledge, no one has come asking about it.

This tandem post presents a series of notes and conversations taken as I confronted these issues. The purpose of presenting what is below is to visually represent the parallel conversations that lead to a single narrative. It is meant to be read in any order, hovering over and/or clicking on areas that lead to others.

Citations

1
Derrida, J. and Prenowitz, E. (1995) ‘Archive fever: a Freudian impression’, Diacritics, 25(2), pp. 9–63.
2
District Valuation Department Worcestershire (1910) 1910 Finance Act: Hanley Castle. Malvern Wells, Little Malvern and Welland [Building Lines]. The Hive – Worcester: Worcestershire Archive and Archaeology Service. Available at: b009:5 BA8585/1 Volume 47 (Accessed: 16 August 2022).
3
Leahyer, C. (1911) Builder’s Notice under Bye Laws. Alterations & Additions to The White Cottage for P.H.W. Bachelor Esq [Building Lines]. The Hive – Worcester: Worcestershire Archive and Archaeology Service. Available at: Reference: 493; Accession Number: 9196/270; Parcel xxviii (Accessed: 16 August 2022).
4
Littlebury (1908) ‘Littlebury’s Directory of Worcester, Malvern…, 1908’. {Littlebury} (Special Collections Online). Available at: https://specialcollections.le.ac.uk/digital/collection/p16445coll4/id/333560/rec/1 (Accessed: 14 September 2022).
5
Derrida, J. and Prenowitz, E. (1996) ‘Archive fever: a Freudian impression’, Diacritics, 25(2), pp. 10.
6
EDIT: I was contacted by an archivist at the University of Texas who had some information, available in this post here
7
See the ‘Queer and Now‘ post series for details of some of these plot twists
8
See Chapter 7 in Cvetkovich, A. (2003) An Archive of Feelings: Trauma, Sexuality, and Lesbian Public Cultures. Kindle. Durham: Duke University Press Books.
9
Maltby-Kemp, A. (2022) ‘Worcestershire Archive research – FLINTA [email]’.

The short URL of the present article is: https://routesandplaces.co.uk/zine/k0ou