Marguerite began to perceive herself as a suitor. She assumed a masculine chic and found that women responded to her. ‘They were even inclined to love me a little or at least to let me make love to them. This I did on every occasion and occasions were not lacking among my stepfather’s pupils.’
Agnes Nicholls encouraged other flirtations, but kept her own hold secure. And Marguerite grew more enamoured of her singing. ‘I believe the girl’s in love with her voice,’ Mrs Visetti said. ‘And it was so. I would have tramped half the world over to hear that perfect organ, so strong, thrilling, chaste and pure. To this day I cannot hear it unmoved.’ But it was not just that perfect organ, strong and thrilling. Nor was Marguerite’s interest chaste and pure. It was the prospect of sex that obsessed her thoughts, made her tramp from home and neglect her studies.
Diversion from this hot pursuit occurred in October 1898 when she was eighteen. Her father died of tuberculosis. He was forty-nine. She and Grandmother Diehl were called to the Station Hotel, Paddington. Radclyffe Radclyffe-Hall had intended to winter at Cannes. He was thin and feverish with a chronic cough. He wanted to know about her studies and aims in life. He advised her to choose a speciality and stick with it, not spread herself thin as he had. He told her she was good-looking and asked her to send him a photograph of herself. He also told her that she would inherit his estate.
Marguerite did not see her father again. In Paris, a doctor advised him he was too ill for his journey to the sun. He turned back and died at the Lees Hotel, Folkestone, on 24 October. His death was ‘markedly lonely and tragic’, Marguerite said. An unknown person registered it and on the certificate misspelt his name and got his age wrong.
His will was administered by Walter Begley, his sole executor, the clergyman who had officiated at his wedding. Begley then took a protective interest in Marguerite. She questioned him about her father’s life, wanting to find a connection to herself, to counter her mother’s denigration and refusal ever to let her meet his family. ‘I only feel that I have missed something, some experience that I was meant to have that my father could have given’, she wrote.
In his will, Radclyffe left a diamond ring and an annuity of £100 to his and the housemaid’s daughter Mary Ratcliffe Farmer, all his mandolins and unpublished musical compositions to a Victoria Holloway who lived in Battersea, his paintings, books, pictures and sketches to Walter Begley. All the family money, by the terms of his own father’s cautious will, was to pass to Marguerite when she was twenty-one. Until then, she was to draw a generous allowance. It was a large inheritance for 1898, some £100,000. ‘There were some things I shall never forget and my sudden independence was one of them … I was free, free to go where I liked and do what I pleased, or at least so I fondly imagined. But in this I was reckoning without two reactive elements.’
These elements were her mother and Agnes Nicholls. Mrs Visetti became vicious with envy. Lavish with money whatever its source, she felt this fortune by rights was hers. She was determined to benefit from it. Marguerite resisted her and rows ensued. ‘I had no intention of allowing my mother to handle my estate and she had every intention of doing so.’ The first row was over the capital the divorce court had initially awarded Mrs Visetti which she had foregone to ensure Marguerite’s inheritance but now wanted to claim. The second was about the way she and Alberto Visetti had spent thousands of pounds of Marguerite’s maintenance fund on themselves.
Marguerite turned to Agnes Nicholls who now seemed always to be at the house. ‘She had grown essential to my existence’, Marguerite wrote. Agnes was Alberto’s prodigy, had lessons with him daily and he defended all she did and said. She joined the family on visits to Pontresina in Switzerland with Arthur Sullivan, a winter music festival in Dresden, a festival in Prague with Dvoˉák. Mrs Visetti resented her presence and influence but Agnes tried to act as go-between for her and Marguerite. She appealed to each of them to see the other’s point of view.
Marguerite wanted independence and to travel abroad. Mrs Visetti asked Walter Begley to forbid her to leave home until she was twenty-one. Agnes Nicholls supported this. When Marguerite asked why, she cried, accused her of wanting to break their friendship and kissed her on the mouth. Marguerite felt ‘pleased, revolted, terrified and a sense of being trapped. From that moment I felt that Agnes and I shared a secret. In many subtle ways she made it evident that she felt this too. There was a great bond between us and I grew less restless and more content to remain at home.’ Sex and money made a potent mix. She was no longer just the queer little kid. She was rich, which was power in itself.
That winter, Agnes Nicholls had late lessons at Trebovir Road. She was the last pupil of Visetti’s day and he often invited her to dinner. If the weather was cold he feared it might harm her voice and he insisted she stay the night. Marguerite thought Agnes manoeuvred these invitations. ‘I used to watch for a certain look in her eyes across the dinner table. I never failed to find it there. It was a strange look, half warning, half invitation. Then I would grow restless glancing continually at the clock, waiting for the hour when we would say goodnight and part outside my door.’
Their
