For two years, I chased Radclyffe Hall through rural spaces and archives. The process of discovery reflected the subject in both content and logistics. Archives are structured for retrieval and preservation, and reporting discoveries involves lining up ‘facts’ into recognisable narratives. When government data favours financial accountability and industry, and the remains of life writing and personal effects, life depends on the judgement of their keepers, the story is formatted to fit the records. Discovery is a process of ‘filling in the blanks’. How familiar the archivist and researcher are with the subject will determine whether connecting evidence into a narrative is conjecture or fact. This experience of researching Radclyffe Hall determined what needed to happen.
There are findings, circumstances and the provocative (but could be irrelevant) coincidences that can be dismissed or addressed as the signs, posts, and roadblocks they are. The gaps left by them encourage conjecture and inference about lives lived regardless of the (lack of) evidence. Hall’s life-after-death is a testament to this kind of speculation – in an effort to reinscribe invisible lives into the archive, something must be done. Collaging the fragments and devising a new narrative reveals personal desires; in doing so, definitions of what a viable life looks like begin to take shape. Walking-with this knowledge, specifics of where she/they were and when, analysis of literary content, missing letters and overly confident biographies all point to desires and needs to find lives that resemble, and then reach beyond, our own (queer) ways of being.
Fragments about Archive work related to Malvern
August 2022 – I approached the archivists in Worcester with a simple prompt, ‘Anything related to Radclyffe Hall and companions’ time in the Malvern region’. I was met with the expected reminder that locating individual lives is difficult, even more so with folx who did not marry or have children (ie, queer). One archivist also speculated that no one had come looking for Radclyffe Hall in the Worcester archives before1Alice Maltby-Kemp to Jess T. Hooks, “Worcestershire Archive Research – FLINTA [Email],” August 8, 2022.. Based on my investigation of RH in secondary sources, this did not surprise me. The majority of ‘evidence’ pointed back in on itself, all dwindling to personal papers kept by two long-term partners: Mabel Batten and Una Troubridge – the latter of which is kept (and digitised) by the Harry Ransome Archive at the University of Texas and the former referred to in the personal collection belonging ‘Cara Lancaster of London’, the granddaughter of Mabel Batten, who, if alive is well into her 80s – these are essential for knowledge of the period2Cara Lancaster has Mabel Batten’s letters referred to in numerous biographies(Radclyffe Hall, Your John: The Love Letters of Radclyffe Hall (NYU Press, 1999); Richard Dellamora, Radclyffe Hall: A Life in the Writing (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011); Michael Baker, Our Three Selves the Life of Radclyffe Hall (William Morrow & Company, 1985); Diana Souhami, The Trials of Radclyffe Hall (Kindle: Open Road Media, 2014).) However, they were last consulted nearly a decade before..
Residences in Malvern:
- Highfield House (~1900 – 1911)
- White Cottage (~1910 – 1916).
News from Texas archives:
Nov 5th—An archivist in Texas notified me that the whereabouts of Mabel Batten’s letters are unknown—if she is currently deceased and if so, who took over the estate. She has an unnamed daughter who might have them. She would recommend I contact one of RH’s biographers, Sally Cline. However, she passed away this year. She’s no one else to recommend.
An archivist in Worcester checked the 1910 Finance Act ‘day book’ for reference to either home in Malvern (Highfield House and the White Cottage). From that bit of information, it was likely to find other ‘public records’ of this sort in the timeframe that linked RH to Highfield. Throughout this period, a number of directories and annuals were published that should, at least, refer to these homes and whether to call on Radclyffe Hall there.
In the archives, I looked up building plans, deeds, leases, property lines, and other documents that might refer to Hall and her companions’ locations at any point in time. I also looked up manors and estates that resemble those in her novels and poems, as well as references to friends and colleagues identified by later partners in similar documents.
Findings at the British Library:
November 2nd—An ‘Annual’ turned up, very similar to a phone directory (Stevens Annual). There were listings for both White Cottage and Highfield, which coordinate with other public records (but there is still the problem with the memoirs and biographies).
A writeup, first draft.
Historian Laura Doan found conflicts in her research of Radclyffe Hall, similar to my own. She recounted this in her monograph ‘Disturbing Practices’ and elsewhere3Laura Doan, Disturbing Practices: History, Sexuality, and Women’s Experience of Modern War (University of Chicago Press, 2013); Laura Doan, “‘Miss Ogilvy Finds Herself’: The Queer Navigational Systems of Radclyffe Hall,” English Language Notes 45, no. 2 (September 1, 2007): 9–22.. In her research, Doan found that the daybooks from the 1920s indicated little travel to the continent, thus challenging the ‘myth’ of Radclyffe Hall as part of the soiree of afab bohemians gathering at the homes of Natalie Barney and Gertrude Stein4. Both Barney and Stein’s likenesses appeared as part of a Parisian coterie of ‘inverts’ in the second half of The Well of Loneliness – their presence at the real parties was likely infrequent, if at all. Doan also discovered RH’s frequent trips to department store salons to attend to her ‘coif’ challenges, some critics claim of butchness of premised on her ‘barbered’ look. Hall was fashionable and had a more typically feminine grooming frequency.
What does it look like if ‘facts’ referred to or inferred in literature and biography are based on memoirs and not public records? How queer does it get? What geolocated ‘points’ will claim themselves if there is not a home here or there, just speculation upon speculation left to my imagination?
Citations
- 1Alice Maltby-Kemp to Jess T. Hooks, “Worcestershire Archive Research – FLINTA [Email],” August 8, 2022.
- 2Cara Lancaster has Mabel Batten’s letters referred to in numerous biographies(Radclyffe Hall, Your John: The Love Letters of Radclyffe Hall (NYU Press, 1999); Richard Dellamora, Radclyffe Hall: A Life in the Writing (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011); Michael Baker, Our Three Selves the Life of Radclyffe Hall (William Morrow & Company, 1985); Diana Souhami, The Trials of Radclyffe Hall (Kindle: Open Road Media, 2014).) However, they were last consulted nearly a decade before.
- 3Laura Doan, Disturbing Practices: History, Sexuality, and Women’s Experience of Modern War (University of Chicago Press, 2013); Laura Doan, “‘Miss Ogilvy Finds Herself’: The Queer Navigational Systems of Radclyffe Hall,” English Language Notes 45, no. 2 (September 1, 2007): 9–22.
- 4. Both Barney and Stein’s likenesses appeared as part of a Parisian coterie of ‘inverts’ in the second half of The Well of Loneliness