Mary Jane had an aspirational regard for the English gentry. She was twenty-seven, widowed and dissatisfied at living with her mother in Philadelphia. In her teens she had run off with and married a young Englishman, Wallace Sager, who died of yellow fever. The Halls, their cousins and uncles the Reades, Martins and Russells, were conservative gentry who had ladies for wives. ‘They believed in God, upheld the Crown and supported the Church of England.’ They were clergymen, factory owners, teachers, doctors. Portraits showing their sidewhiskers, stiff clothes and solemn thoughts hung on the library walls of Derwent, a greystone estate with an elm park in Torquay, Devon.
Rat’s father, Charles Radclyffe-Hall, was President of the British Medical Association and a physician at the Western Hospital for Consumption. He was author of Torquay in its Medical Aspects and Is Torquay Relaxing? He founded a charitable sanatorium there for the treatment of ‘reduced gentlewomen with affected chests’. His career was lucrative, his business acumen shrewd, his nature cautious and thorough and his wife rich in her own right. Esther Westhead when he married her in 1847 was, at thirty-six, a widow with three children – a son and two daughters.
Radclyffe was the only child of her second marriage. He studied law at Oxford but did not qualify. He had a large allowance and no desire to work. He collected mandolins, wrote songs, did magician’s tricks, took photographs of the New Forest and waves crashing on rocks and painted landscapes his daughter when adult judged ‘too appalling for words’. He hunted, kept horses, and dogs whose names were in the Kennel Club books – French poodles were his favourite breed. He liked travel, owned a yacht and never stayed in one place long.
He wore expensive clothes and diamond studs in his cuffs. Women took up his time. ‘I regret to say that his love affairs were seldom in accord with his social position.’ He offended his father by a foray into acting under the alias Hubert Vane and a fling in Torquay with a local fisherman’s daughter.
He and Mary Jane Sager married at St Andrew’s parish church, Southport, on 2 July 1878 within months of meeting. The ceremony was to legitimize the birth of their first daughter, Florence Maude. Walter Begley, a friend from Radclyffe’s student days, a large, shambling clergyman with nervous mannerisms, officiated. The wedding breakfast was held in a hotel. Mary Jane’s mother stayed in Philadelphia. The Halls from Torquay and the Reades from Congleton deplored the speed of the alliance, the irregularity of the reception, the uncouthness of Americans, the fisherman’s daughter, the scandalous Hubert Vane. In his wedding speech Rat said, ‘You’ve heard of the glorious stars and stripes, well I’ve married one of the stars may I never deserve the stripes.’
He called himself a painter and wore a green velvet coat, check trousers and a silk bow tie. He sailed with his wife to Philadelphia to meet his in-laws. This honeymoon was not a success: ‘They quarrelled in private and they quarrelled before friends in public, they quarrelled before the negro servants, they quarrelled from the moment they opened their eyes. Their scenes were crude, disgraceful and noisy.’
A year later, in 1879, Radclyffe’s father died, leaving him a trust income of £90,000. Domestic chaos and divorce were not considerations in Charles Radclyffe-Hall’s will. It was a document of propriety with family loyalty and indissolubility at its root. By the terms of it at Radclyffe’s death the family capital would pass in turn to his children.
But Radclyffe’s marriage was a disaster. It did not so much fail as implode. When Marguerite was born the doctor was unavailable, the nurse was at the chemist and Rat was in bed with the maid. ‘When I was born my father was being blatantly and crudely unfaithful. The details were too base to record.’ The maid, Elizabeth Sarah Farmer, was ordered from the house by Mary Jane. She moved to London and gave birth to another of Rat’s daughters the following year. She registered the child as Mary Ratcliffe Farmer, left blank the box ‘Name of Father’ and took in needlework to supplement the £200 a year he gave her.
Three weeks after Marguerite’s birth Florence, her legitimate baby sister, died. She too had had wide-set blue eyes and ash blonde hair. For the last eight days of her life she also had infected gums, diarrhoea and convulsions. Mary Jane said she died ‘by reason of her father’s sins’ – that she had inherited syphilis from him. Rat left Sunny Lawn never to return.
Mary Jane became hysterical. It was seven weeks before she registered her second daughter’s birth. She gave the father’s occupation as Gentleman, left blank the box ‘Name of Child’, then started court proceedings. She claimed that a month into the marriage her husband used violent and abusive language, beat her and in September 1880, with one daughter dying and another newborn, deserted her. Through counsel Radclyffe denied the charges. He said her temper was so violent, her personality so unstable, it was necessary physically to restrain her.
Mary Jane was granted judicial separation, custody of the child and substantial maintenance. But socially her life was bleak. She had an unwanted child and no house of her own. The Halls accused her of provoking her husband and would have nothing to do with her. There was nothing for her in Philadelphia, Sunny Lawn was a house of horrors, she knew no one in London, and English society viewed her as American, gold-digging and vulgar.
In a gesture of respectability she had her daughter christened in a Protestant church. ‘My mother had me christened Marguerite. She could not have chosen a more inappropriate name. I detested it.’ A Mrs Baldrey, who lived in Bournemouth in a big house with a pine-tree drive, was godmother. She gave Marguerite a prayer book with an ivory cover and a Bible with a silver gilt clasp.
Marguerite, the abiding
