A Well of Discrepancies: Hall and Company

Marguerite Radclyffe Hall was born August 1880 to a wealthy father who abandoned the family shortly after her birth, and an American socialite mother¹Michael Baker, Our Three Selves: The Life of Radclyffe Hall (London: William Morrow & Company, 1985), pp. 7–8; Terry Castle, The Literature of Lesbianism: A Historical Anthology from Ariosto to Stonewall (New York: Columbia University Press, 2003), p. 632; Diana Souhami, The Trials of Radclyffe Hall (London: Quercus, 2014), p. 5. Ledger: BH-01.. Upon her father’s death, at the age of 18, Hall inherited her family’s fortune, granting her a degree of independence and freedom from the need to pursue a career or marriage²Baker (1985), p. 22; Una Vincenzo Troubridge, The Life and Death of Radclyffe Hall (London: Read Books Ltd, 2013), p. 12; Souhami (2014), p. 24. Ledger: BH-01, BH-02.. This financial security funded her writing practice and let her cultivate transient romantic attachments off the staircase of marriage-to-financial-stability that most women of this era and the one before were obliged to climb. Her early relationships with women were characterised by a ‘passionate nature and a roving eye,’ but lacked the long-term commitment and intellectual depth she sought³Including cousins Jane Randolph and Dorothy Diehl, and singer Agnes Nicholls, Baker (1985), p. 25..

In 1907 Hall met Mabel Veronica Batten, a married concert singer 23 years her senior⁴Sally Cline, Radclyffe Hall: A Woman Called John (London: John Murray, 1997), ch. 5; Troubridge (2013), p. 30; Souhami (2014), ch. 5. Ledger: BH-06, BH-07.. This relationship marked the beginning of Hall’s first serious and long-term love affair, laying the groundwork for the pivotal changes that would define the next decade of her life⁵Cline (1997), pp. 59–61; Robin Joyce, “The Creation of Radclyffe Hall,” Women’s History Network, 5 June 2016, https://womenshistorynetwork.org/the-creation-of-radclyyffe-hall/; Harry Ransom Center, 2022. Ledger: BH-07, BH-08.. Mabel Veronica Batten, “Ladye”, was a celebrated concert singer and patroness of the arts⁶Cline (1997), pp. 59–61. Ledger: BH-27.. Often cited as her first great love, their relationship was one grounded in mentorship and spiritual awakening⁷Baker (1985), p. xiii; Cline (1997), ch. 5; Joyce (2016).. She was a sophisticated and influential figure who saw potential in the younger Hall and took it upon herself to encourage her to find a sense of purpose and direction⁸Cline (1997), ch. 5; Richard Dellamora, Radclyffe Hall: A Life in the Writing (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011), pp. xiv, 27–30; Troubridge (2013), pp. 38–40..

It was Batten who first changed Hall’s name from Marguerite to ‘John’ and encouraged her to adopt a masculine, husband-like image, which Hall readily embraced: a deliberate and collaborative act of establishing a recognised role within their same-sex relationship⁹Joyce (2016); Cline (1997), p. 66.. By cultivating a tailored image Hall was embodying the dutiful husband to Batten’s regal façade¹⁰Baker (1985), p. 47.. The view from today is that this persona became a way for Hall to navigate a society that lacked a framework for same-sex unions¹¹This is the main subject of many queer archival inquiries. According to Ann Cvetkovich, Heather Love, David Halpern and others, queer lives are impossible to track within the scope of these records relative to Heteronormative domestic arrangements. See Anarchive entry ‘Intimacy’ (https://routesandplaces.co.uk/england/places/route-haunting/dis-comfort-in-common-intimacy-revisited/) for more.. By inhabiting an established, if unconventional, gender role, Hall was creating a public and private identity that was both personally authentic and socially legible¹²In their essay Sex in Public, Lauren Berlant and Michael Warner speak to the privatizing of queer lives. See the essay ‘Sex in Public’ here, explored in depth in the Barnes walks.. This formative experience of self-fashioning laid a crucial foundation for the defiant public persona she would later assume¹³Souhami (2014), p. 60..

Between 1912 and 1915 Hall met and developed a relationship between Una Vincenzo Troubridge, Mabel’s cousin¹⁴Baker (1985), pp. 6, 62; Cline (1997), p. 61. Ledger: BH-15, BH-28.. Una was a sculptor, intellectual and gregarious, trapped in an unhappy marriage to a prominent naval admiral¹⁵Baker (1985), p. 6; Joyce (2016). Ledger: BH-30, BH-31.. Una’s pursuit of Hall initiated a dramatic emotional conflict that would define the shape not only their time in Malvern, but the remainder of their lives¹⁶Baker (1985), p. 6.. Her appearance on the scene introduced a disruptive and powerful new force into the stable, if sometimes stifling, world Hall and Mabel had built together¹⁷Castle (2003), p. 633.. Troubridge would add a bohemian layer — bohemian as posture, not politics; the class assumptions stayed intact, as did the scorn for the Sapphic set’s decadence¹⁸Dellamora (2011), p. 191; Loralee MacPike, p. 231; see also Radclyffe Hall, The Well of Loneliness (London: Virago Modern Classics, 2010), chs. 45, 51, 52.. If Batten was the romantic-patron figure, Hall and Troubridge met as co-conspirators: matched in ambition, restlessness, and shared swagger¹⁹Souhami (2014), p. 122; Kathryn G. Lamontagne, “‘Our Three Selves:’ Radclyffe Hall and Mabel Batten’s Lived Catholicism,” Ecclesial Practices 9, no. 1 (2022): 69–85, at p. 80..

Quite young, Hall invested in a lease at Highfield on the eastern slopes of the Malvern Hills²⁰Cline (1997), p. 65. Ledger: HF-01.. There were horses and a riding accident. The existing account of Hall at Highfield, leased in 1911 by some accounts but sold after the 1908 hunting accident in others, does not only lack sense, it does not survive contact with the register evidence showing her at Highfield in 1910²¹‘Hanley Castle Assessment No. 301-400’, 1910; Troubridge (2013), p. 33. Ledger: HF-02, HF-03, HF-04, HF-07, HF-11, HF-12.. Later her Malvern base would move to White Cottage – claimed as purchased outright, but the move in date is long before the sale went through. White Cottage is variously dated as purchased in 1906 (a 2005 Worcester article), 1911 (Dellamora citing Souhami), and 1912 (the local Malvern article), while the HM Land Registry records the freehold transferring to Hall on 16 March 1914 from Ada Constance Beatrice Cabrera — a vendor no biographer names²²Worcester News, 2005; Dellamora (2011), p. 38; Souhami (2014); Fradgley, 2022; HM Land Registry, 2022. Ledger: WC-07, WC-10, WC-11, WC-12, MP-01.. The most-told event of the Malvern decade, the 22 September 1914 motor crash in transit between Malvern and London. An event narrated as the moment Batten’s stroke was set in motion²³Troubridge (2013), p. 43. Ledger: WC-17, WC-17a, AV-02., as a litigated accident in which Hall’s account was vindicated²⁴Cline (1997), p. 97. Ledger: WC-17, WC-36., and as the prelude to the contested White Cottage sale²⁵Baker (1985), p. 74. Ledger: WC-18, WC-19, WC-19a..