And darkness mingled as they passed me by.
Both believed she had been spared the darkness to achieve two goals: literary heights and the love of Ladye. But there was George to accommodate, and Dolly too. George no longer heeded the ‘cynical remarks’ the world made about his wife. He had prostate trouble, felt old and ‘barred from the pleasures of everyday life’. His pension was not good and though his son-in-law Austin Harris looked after his business affairs, he found Margaret, as he felt it right to call her, more than generous with money.
But he was pushed aside. In the summer of 1909 John and Ladye went to the French Riviera and to Alassio where John rented a villa. George hoped to travel out to meet them. To deter him they wrote discouraging letters about the crowds, the heat, the mosquitoes. And then his doctor advised him not to make the journey. ‘I fancy he was prompted by some little bird or minx’, George wrote to Cara.
He booked in for three weeks at the Pwllycrochan Hotel in Conway Bay, north Wales. He went there with Mabel’s maid, Susan Attkins. Each afternoon he walked half a mile with her to the sea and paid twopence for their admission to the pier where they listened to the band. On Saturdays she accompanied him to the hotel dance. Mabel wrote happy letters from the Grand Hotels in Monte Carlo and Lake Maggiore and from Molino di Sopra, John’s villa. ‘She seems to be enjoying herself’, George told Cara.
Dolly Diehl too made other plans. On 19 October 1909, with John as her witness, she married Robert Coningsby Clarke at St Paul’s Church, Knightsbridge. They moved to a house in Swan Walk, Chelsea on the bank of the Thames. John went on paying her a monthly allowance, a small price for the freedom to be alone with the woman whom she now called her ‘true unfailing inspiration’ and her ‘reason for all things’.
JOHN
6
John and Ladye
Mabel Batten offered John the stability she seemed to need. It was her art to weave other relationships into the fabric of life with ‘darling Johnnie’. ‘My dear old George’s 78th birthday’, Ladye wrote in her diary on 22 January 1910. She took him and their grandchildren to a matinée of Our Miss Gibbs then to Rumpelmayers, a fashionable teahouse. Her sister, Emmie Clarendon, was ‘frosty’ at first. ‘Never sends a line. Never wrote to thank Johnnie for an expensively bound copy of her poems.’ After a while, she thawed. To Cara, Ladye freely confided her love:
I find Jonathan delightful to be with. Of course her temper is hotter than tabasco and she is very impulsive but what does that matter? She is true grit all through and a real poon in her outlook on life and is so kind and darling to me. I admire and respect her downright honesty and she is awfully clever too.
John moved with Grandmother Diehl from Kensington to a Chelsea flat in Tite Street, adjacent to Ralston Street where Ladye lived. She breakfasted in Ladye’s bedroom; they lunched at the Bath Club and had tea with Dolly Clarke in Swan Walk. They shopped at Harrods or Maples, took a box at the Opera House with the Duchess of Rutland to hear Nellie Melba sing Mimi in La Bohème and spent long weekends at Malvern. John bought Ladye a sapphire ring, a necklace of diamonds and emeralds, and supervised Madame Barroche as she fitted her for a black satin evening gown with red crêpe Spanish bows on its lace hem and sleeves.
‘Above all else,’ John wrote of Ladye, ‘I owe her a debt for bringing me into the Catholic church.’ God, they believed, had meant them to be together. Ladye had problems with early morning mass, but in her bedroom were a prie-dieu, a shrine with a gilt altar piece, statues of the Madonna and Child and photographs of the Pope. She viewed eternal life and the Lord’s benevolence as certainties, liked Gregorian chant, and believed the first three things you asked for in church you usually got.
John was a ready convert. ‘The little spiritual ship my grandmother had launched long ago was steered into the quiet harbour.’ She joined Ladye for mass, confession and benediction at Brompton Oratory and in private devotions. Her ‘faith never wavered’. Both were undeterred by the Vatican’s condemnation of same-sex love or the adulterous terms of their match.
They considered themselves blessed and respectable. They were royalists, patriots, Conservatives, Christians, with allegiance to country, God and class. Above all, they were assiduous at having a good time. Their holidays were long and of the sort Ladye adored. Winters in the sun that were a rejuvenation and extravagance George could not provide. In February 1910 they sailed from Southampton in the SS Burgermeister for three months in Tenerife. George was despatched with Susan Attkins to Mrs Jefferson in Grantham.
On board ship their cabins, though ‘miles away from the ladies’ bathrooms’, were large. There were storms and John lay clothed, holding her rosary and expecting to die. A young man in a green Homburg and tight trousers assumed they were mother and daughter and wooed John. ‘Germans never know when they are not wanted’, Ladye wrote to Cara.
In Santa Cruz the weather was perfect. They stayed at the Quisisana Hotel, perched on a cliff up endless steps. In the foyer were palm trees and caged monkeys. They rode on pack mules into the mountains, bought a parrot they called Mr Povey, sang island songs and picnicked overlooking a ravine. Ladye worked on John’s poems and read them aloud. Both declared they had never been as happy in their lives before and that this was their one great love. They thought the meaning of the close tie they felt was because they had lived together in a previous incarnation.
For John, it was as if the trials of childhood were past. She was
