The World' and other unpublished works of Radclyffe Hall

Jana Funke

• Publisher: Manchester University Press
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781784998103
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Social History
• Index: History

This book presents a wide range of previously unpublished works by Radclyffe Hall. These new materials significantly broaden and complicate critical views of Hall's writings. They demonstrate the stylistic and thematic range of her work and cover diverse topics, including 'outsiderism', gender, sexuality, race, class, religion, the supernatural and the First World War. Together, these texts shed a new light on unrecognised or misunderstood aspects of Hall's intellectual world. The volume also contains a substantial introduction, which situates Hall's unpublished writings in the broader context of her life and work. Overall, the book invites a critical reassessment of Hall's place in early twentieth-century literature and culture and offers rich possibilities for teaching and future research. It will be of interest to scholars and undergraduate and postgraduate students in the fields of English literature, modernism, women's writing, and gender and sexuality studies, and to general readers.

The World

Chapter 1

I

When the searchlight of War illumined Europe in the summer of 1914, some people saw mankind as a whole and in that vision lost sight of themselves. But others – and of these Stephen Winter was one – felt the searchlight turn sharply on their own personalities, on the dim and hitherto unnoticed corners of their quiet, everyday lives.

Stephen had been a very average young man, as far as he had been able to judge. There had been hundreds like him in England alone. Except for the fact that he suffered from asthma and had consequently gone out less than most men in the evenings, he had differed very little from the other clerks with whom he worked at the bank. He was twenty five years old, pale, with kindly brown eyes and hair that looked prematurely thin; he stooped a little from long hours at a desk and a not over strong constitution; he was always neatly dressed but always slightly shabby; he was thoroughly reliable and temperate in all things, and had thus every prospect of attaining his ambition and ultimately becoming a Bank Manager.

Hitherto Stephen had been well content, or at least had imagined that he was so; but the searchlight showed him, all in a moment, that this had not been the case. He had not been discontented either, he found; he had just been nothing at all. For the past five years of his business career, there had been Stephen Winter, his shabby clothes, his cheap cigarettes and his asthma. There had also been that enormous appendage of ledgers and pass-books, dividends and cheques, with here and there an over-draft, and here and there a bank-loan, and here and there a client bringing in a silver-chest or a jewel-case for custody during the holidays. There had been the bus from Notting Hill early every morning, and the bus again to Notting Hill early every evening. There had been the boarding house, the male and female boarders, the badly cooked unappetising meals. There had been the evenings, sometimes spent at [the] cinema or theatre, but more often in his rather dingy bedroom with a book; never if he could help it among his fellow boarders – he always felt so tired in the evenings.

His reading had consisted of imposing books of travel, occasionally varied by a good detective story or a novel of the sentimental kind. For the most part however, he preferred the books of travel, though why he should have done so at that period is a mystery, – he had never been further from England than Boulogne, a place that he had thought distinctly smelly. But there it was, he did enjoy those books of travel, they made him feel less narrow in the chest. He would say, a little smugly, that the wise man did his travelling between the covers of a book. He had quite a useful store of such helpful platitudes wherewith to garnish the cold mutton of his life. But all this had been before the summer of 1914; after that the whole world changed and Stephen with it.

The change in Stephen was a gradual affair; it began with a feeling of surprise. The German menace had been talked about for years, and now it was upon us – how surprising! Surprising too that he, Stephen, counted to himself in a way that he had never done before; became acutely conscious of his work, his surroundings, the trifles that made up his existence; things that he had taken as a matter of course before the outbreak of the war. As his surprise diminished, he experienced a shock, there were no everyday things! The things of today might not be tomorrow; might never be again any more. For a time this thought possessed him, it was terrible, appalling, it did not go at all with Stephen Winter; it threatened the very foundations of his life; destroying all his preconceived ideas.

Wild energy, confusion, a nation under arms and no longer decorative in scarlet; the grim suggestion of the khaki in the parks, the endless stream of khaki in the streets. The awful will to smile through it all, to take it lightly, in spite of an instinct of disaster; the idiotic fetish of that first year of the war, with its cat-call: “Business as usual!” The persistent belief that the war could not last, that the Zeppelins could never reach England, that the German army was mostly on paper, that “The Russian Steam Roller” had actually been seen in several places at once! The first shock of indignation when a bank-note was refused: “You must pay in gold, please, sir, we are not accepting notes.” The first scarcity of coal, the first scarcity of food, the first batch of Red Cross Ambulances on the London streets, the first warning lists of dead and wounded. And through it all that stubborn refusal to face facts, the resentment against those who faced them. The eternal smile, the cat-call: “Business as usual,” quickly followed by: “It’s not patriotic to stop spending, we ought to spend, Business as usual!”

Some of Stephen’s fellow-clerks had enlisted and were gone, their bank stools knew them no longer. Mr. Scott, the Manager, had lost his only son during the first few weeks of fighting. “Business as usual, business as usual!” – and black grief creeping over England. “Business as usual, business as usual!” – and a dumb, persistent horror at the very core of things. A horror to go to sleep with, a horror to wake up with; the sense of desolation on waking: “What’s the matter, what’s happened? – Oh, yes, of course – the war.” Then dressing, and another day to face.

Breakfast, the morning papers; all slightly unfamiliar, because of that dumb, persistent horror. Names, little printed names, dozens of them, hundreds of them, covering several columns, like a telephone directory. Coffee and eggs and bacon and those little printed names –

The front door bell! Sit still – it’s more British to sit still. Only a box from Harrods – not this time –

“If the Germans should take Calais – have another cup of coffee?”

“Yes, please. Oh, but they won’t; and they’ll never get to England, I don’t believe in Zeppelins, they can’t carry enough petrol.” Then: “I say! That’s hard on Thompson, he’s just lost another son, the one that went to France – look here –”

Stephen felt it all around him, at the boarding house, the bank, in the shops, in the crowded city streets. It filled him with a kind of passionate regret; he wanted to cry out, to hear other men cry out. His emotions startled him, he had always been so placid, rather timid of emotions in the past. There was no one he could talk to, no one who would sympathise, no one who would even care to listen.

As the weeks went on a change became perceptible in people. A quiet, intense resentment was taking hold of England; the resentment of a slow-witted, big-hearted nation that gradually awakens to its wrongs. It was: “Business as usual!” but the words now sounded different, now there was menace in them. “Business as usual;” yes, but more shells, more guns and more men – above all more men! The temper of the nation was rising, always rising, one saw it in people’s eyes – in the sudden suspicions, the breaking of friendships, the intolerance of any but a National opinion, of any but a National ideal. “Business as usual;” yes, but England was at war; England had not wanted war! “Business as usual;” yes, but England was at stake, England must win the war or perish. “Business as usual;” yes, but only England’s business, only the business of killing! The vast, slow-moving Mother was awake now, wide awake; ferocious with the smell of her children’s blood. Her ferocity was all the more terrible perhaps, because it leapt forth, vital, purposeful, strong with the strength of her placid womb.

Then Stephen felt afraid; he felt afraid of England, he loved her and yet he felt afraid. She was calling to him, urging him, but he did not need to listen, he knew quite well what England wanted. He struggled to forget her if only for an hour, struggled to think only of himself.

He went backwards step by step on the road that led to childhood. He dared not look ahead so he looked back. He remembered with self-pity that he had lost his parents early, that the uncle who had brought him up had not been very kind; that in dying and leaving him a paltry thousand pounds, he had done much less than was expected. That beyond that thousand pounds he had nothing but his pay and bad health into the bargain. That his father, a solicitor, had drunk himself to death, while his mother had died of a general inability to face the struggle for existence. Other men had had a chance in life, but Stephen’s retrospection showed him, he believed, that he had not. He had never thought much about his circumstances before, yet now he thought about them daily. He set them as a buffer between himself and England; he hid behind them, pitiful, defiant. He demanded an explanation of the war, of Stephen Winter with his shrinking, unreliable nerves. Why should there be such things as war, such people as himself to whom the very thought of it was anguish?

He grew restless. Every day now a great restlessness possessed him, it irked him to sit still at his desk. He began to long for change, any change, no matter what, so long as he could get away from things. He would lie awake at nights tormented by his asthma, tormented by the thought of the bank, tormented by the narrow, shabby confines of his bedroom, and above all tormented by himself. His life by now had gone completely out of focus, he tried to see clearly but failed. At moments he was conscious of something drawing nearer, every day it came a little nearer. At the thought of it physical terror possessed him, together with a kind of spiritual elation. Then quite suddenly the mists seemed to clear completely and Stephen knew what he must do.

A great peace descended on him. He marvelled at himself, why had he ever been in doubt? He felt the gentle glow of companionship again, he was one with his fellow-men. It was all so simple, so beautifully simple; no problems, no need for fear. After all a man could only die once, and dying was comparatively easy. Then he thought of himself in uniform; he would have his photograph taken. He would visit Mr. Scott at the bank:

“Well, goodbye, sir – we’re just off! I’ll write, sir, if I may?”

“My dear boy, of course, write very often.”

At the sound of a military band in the street, his heart swelled with pride and pleasure. It was his band now, it was playing for him; he had wanted it to be his band. – He swaggered a little at the boarding house: “Well, I’m going, can’t be left behind!” The women fawned up on him, the older men looked glum: “If only I were a few years younger –”

It was splendid! He carried his head very high; England needed him, well, she should have him! He jostled the people that he passed in the street – he was not going to get out of anybody’s way! For a few days more he gloated over his resolve, savouring the sweetness of it; then he brushed his Sunday suit, put on a new blue necktie, and set out for the recruiting office.

II

It was over very quickly; he was in the street again, shaken, frustrated, outraged. They had told him, not unkindly but with shattering decision, that chronic asthma disqualified a man. A kind of horror seized him; he stood there on the pavement, shaking in the grip of his reaction. His stupendous bid for courage to ratify his manhood, his moments of spiritual elation, the peace, the sense of having all men now as comrades, the relief of cutting loose from common things – gone, all gone, all utterly wasted; he was just where he had been in the first weeks of the war, with the added bitterness of having been rejected as unfit to serve his country. He shivered a little, and began to bite his nails in an effort to keep back his tears. People stared at him in passing, and buttoning up his coat, he turned in the direction of home.

Then a terrible thing happened; he still felt cold and tearful and as if some hidden spring had given way, but a sense of deep relief was beginning to creep over him, pervading every crevice of his mind. He thought: “I nee...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• A note on the texts
• Introduction
• The Career of Mark Anthony Brakes
• The Blossoms
• The Modern Miss Thompson
• Bonaparte
• Poor Miss Briggs
• The Legend of Saint Ethelflaeda
• The Scarecrow
• Miles
• The World
• Miss Ogilvy Finds Herself (unpublished draft)
• Malise
• Paul Colet
• Editorial notes
• Appendix: Miss Ogilvy Finds Herself (published version)
• Index of introduction and critical apparatus