Brantwood

Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1682286
From Lectures on Landscape, by John Ruskin

I discuss in this post, the house of Brantwood, in Coniston, which is, most famously, the home of John Ruskin, but also a house which appears in the texture of some of Cumbria’s queer stories.

John Ruskin, 1819-1900, bought Brantwood in 1871. The house itself is situated overlooking Coniston Water, Cumbria, and may be reached by boat, as well as by road. Ruskin retained a home in London, but spent long periods in Brantwood in the Lake District. John Ruskin was a significant art critic, patron of the arts, and social thinker, influential during his lifetime, and after. He had early an interest in geology, and advocated greater naturalism in art and in his own pictures. Ruskin was a patron of Turner, and became a notable figure in Pre-Raphaelite circles. His personal life was troubled, both with relationships, and later, with illness.

CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 John Ruskin by Leonida Caldesi albumen carte-de-visite, 1862 NPG x12957 © National Portrait Gallery, London

CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 John Ruskin by Lewis Carroll
albumen print, 6 March 1875
NPG P50 © National Portrait Gallery, London

Ruskin’s ideas about craft, mechanisation, and education for work people, sometimes intersecting with those of Thomas Carlyle, influenced Canon Rawnsley, who went on to co-found the National Trust, and also the proponent of the arts and crafts movement, William Morris. John Ruskin lived an active life, publishing and giving lectures, as well as foreign travels to sites of artistic importance. He left behind him many published works on artistic and social subjects, as well as interesting personal correspondence and diaries. Today, Brantwood is owned by the Brantwood Trust, and the house and its gardens are open to the public.

When I was investigating people who might have relevance to Cumbria’s LGBTQ heritage, I came across mentions of Brantwood several times. The first was in connection with the Victorian author, Eliza Lynn Linton, who had a rather queer life, and who wrote suggestively queer novels. Eliza Lynn, who grew up in Cumberland and then moved to London, married in 1858, William Linton, an engraver, and a social and political reformer. William James Linton bought the house of Brantwood in 1852, and moved into it, with his children and second partner, Emily. In Brantwood, Linton set up a private printing press and was joined there in 1854 by three young men who helped him print pamphlets, and his monthly magazine, espousing Republican principles, the English Republic. According to one of these men,

“I was also one of the three young men who went to Brantwood in the spring of 1854, to help with the mechanical portion of the publication of the English Republic. Here we printed not only that work, but also a Tyneside magazine called the Northern Tribune; but the scheme in which we were engaged was not financially successful, hence the English Republic ceased, the establishment was broken up, and the little community we had constituted had dispersed.” (W.E. Adams in Somes Layard, p90)

William James Linton, c.1858 in George Somes Layard. Mrs Lynn Linton. Methuen: London, 1901, p91

“Only an enthusiast would have thought of setting up a printing office in a remote quarter of the Lake District, miles away from the nearest railway station. Paper and other materials had to be carted over the Fells from Windermere to Brantwood, and the printed magazines had to be carted over the Fells from Brantwood to Windermere back again. Nor did the circulation of the English Republic warrant this inevitable addition to the cost of production. As a matter of fact, it never did pay at all. Mr. Linton had therefore to finance the establishment out of his own earnings as an engraver.” ((W.E. Adams in Somes Layard, pp91-2)

It was during this period that William Linton, while living with Emily at Brantwood, first met Eliza Lynn. She already had a reputation as a writer, and being a native of Cumberland, happened to be in Keswick. Eliza Lynn visited Brantwood and made friends with William and Emily. Eliza Lynn’s first impression of Brantwood is of the unkempt garden, where nature was allowed to flourish, and, given the reforming ideas of the household, where the children of the house were playing in gender neutral clothing:

“Playing in the neglected, untrimmed garden, where never tree nor bush was lopped nor pruned, and where the long grass of the lawn was starred with dandelions and daisies as better flowers than those which man could cultivate, was a troop of little children…all dressed exactly alike – in long blouses of that coarse blue flannel with which housemaids scrub the floors; and all had precisely the same kind of hats – the girls distinguished from the boys only by a somewhat broader band of faded ribbon.” (Eliza Lynn Linton, Somes Layard, p94)

Not long after, Emily died, and Eliza married William Linton, and took on responsibility for the seven children. Eliza Lynn Linton’s book, The Lake Country, 1864, was illustrated with engravings by her husband. William. In fact, their marriage did not last, due to incompatible habits, and they stopped living at Brantwood. In 1866, William Linton left with his children for America, and Eliza Lynn Linton stayed in England. The house of Brantwood was let, and, in 1871, it was bought by John Ruskin.

In his correspondence of 1871, Ruskin mentions his newly acquired house:

“The view from the house was finer than I expected, the house itself dilapidated and rather dismal.” (To Mrs Arthur Severn, 12 Sept, 1871, Letters, Vol 2, pp34-5)

“I’ve bought a small place here, with five acres of rock and moor, a streamlet, and I think on the whole the finest view I know in Cumberland or Lancashire, with the sunset visible over the same.
The house – small, old, damp, and smoky-chimneyed – somebody must help me get to rights.” (To Charles Eliot Norton, 14 Sept, 1871, Letters, Vol 2, p35)

In addition to Eliza Lynn Linton’s links with Brantwood, I also came across the household of Miss Harriette Rigbye and Miss Frances Tolmie in connection with the house. I have discussed their arrangement in my talk on Partnerships and Relationships. I do not claim that this was a gay relationship; however, between 1874-1895, the women shared a household in an enduring arrangement, and Harriette Rigbye left Frances Tolmie a substantial bequest in her will. They were living at Thwaite Cottage, Coniston, where they met their neighbour, John Ruskin. As Ethel Bassin notes, the references to Harriette Rigbye are slight, but they make clear that Miss Rigbye, and probably by extension, Frances Tolmie was part of the Ruskin circle at Coniston.

Ruskin was friendly with the Miss Beevers of Thwaite, and the little distance from Brantwood allowed easy visiting. The Miss Beevers were friends of Miss Harriette Rigbye, and Ruskin includes his love to Harriette Rigbye in a letter to Miss Susan Beever and her sister, Mary. Ruskin’s diary mentions him taking a walk “through Miss Rigbye’s wood in quite lovely spring day”. (Diaries, p1103) Ruskin also writes to Miss Rigbye herself, and including a drawing of leaves. thanking her for a tree-peony. Interestingly, Ruskin does not appear to refer to Frances Tolmie anything like as much, if at all. Perhaps this is a question of status; Frances Tolmie was considered Harriette Rigbye’s companion, rather than the other way around. This circle of friends at Coniston, with the exception of John Ruskin himself, was quite feminine; it is likely that they saw each other very frequently, and they did correspond when they were out of the country.John Ruskin continued at Brantwood until the end of his life in 1900, as indeed, did Frances Tolmie and Harriette Rigbye at Thwaite Cottage, until 1894-5.

When researching for this project, I also came across the singer and musician, Mary Wakefield, 1853-1910, through the work of Sophie Fuller and Catherine Maxwell. Mary Wakefield, born in Kendal, was a very active amateur musician, who greatly encouraged local choirs. Maxwell and Fuller have written on the possibility of Mary Wakefield having same sex relationships. There is a link with Brantwood here too. Mary Wakefield and John Ruskin were introduced at a luncheon party in London in 1876 (Newmarch, Chp. V, p.55) Gradually during the later 1870s and in the 1880s, they became much better acquainted with each other, and developed a friendship of significance to them both.

Mary Wakefield and John Ruskin exchanged ideas on art, music, and nature. Wakefield would drive the thirty miles to Brantwood from her Westmorland home of Sedgwick, and Ruskin had paid a visit to Sedgwick, where he heard Mary Wakefield and her sister, Agnes singing. Wakefield referred to Ruskin’s views on music in her publications, and she also wrote an affectionate account of the house and gardens of Brantwood,”Brantwood, Coniston: John Ruskin’s Home”, for Murray’s Magazine, November, 1890. Ruskin had built a turret room at Brantwood, with a magnificent view of the scenery; Wakefield might well have felt at home there, as she herself occupied rooms in the tower in her family home of Sedgwick. (Newmarch Chapter V, p.58 and passim).

In this 1890 article, Wakefield describes in particular, her long-remembered first visit to Brantwood, the approach to the house, the courtesy of the host, the aesthetics of the interior, and the detail of the garden and surrounding countryside:

“you come quite suddenly upon a singularly peaceful-looking little nook, from whence opens out the short carriage-drive, under tall larches on one side, and a lovely mossy wall, covered with a profusion of ferns, on the other, bringing us to the door, and hearty welcome, which at Brantwood is always bestowed at the threshold” (quoted from Wakefield’s article in Newmarch, Chp. 5, p.62)

Interestingly, both William James Linton and John Ruskin favoured self-publishing. William Linton had a physical printing press in the establishment of Brantwood, where he printed his political pamphlets. Ruskin found Linton’s press in an outhouse, when he gained ownership of the house, and Ruskin’s biographer, Timothy Hilton, states that this spurred Ruskin towards self-publishing his own works (pp. 499-501) Self-publishing works of interest and importance to oneself was a feature of certain nineteenth century circles, and in this context, we may note William Morris, and the Kelmscott Press.

Here are pictures of William Linton and of John Ruskin, in their old age.

William James Linton in Old Age, George Somes Layard. Mrs Lynn Linton. Methuen: London, 1901, p286. From the Engraving by Mr. W. Biscombe Gardner

CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 John Ruskin by John McClelland half-plate glass negative, 25 July 1898 NPG x12179
© National Portrait Gallery, London

Brantwood, house and grounds, has formed a thread through the records of some of the people of interest to Cumbria’s LGBTQ past. This may be a meaningless coincidence. It does, however, give another way to consider a narrative of the property. In my view, it also reflects the likelihood that people who either lived in, or were on visiting terms with, this well-situated and substantial house, were those middle or upper middle class people who would leave records behind them. These records come in the form of letters, diaries, publications, photographs. This means in turn, that it is easier to identify queer elements in their lives.

Acknowledgements:

Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, entry on William James Linton
https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/16745

Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, entry on John Ruskin
https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/24291

These biographical entries can be viewed via the number on a Cumbria public library card.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brantwood

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_James_Linton

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Ruskin

George Somes Layard. Mrs Lynn Linton. Methuen: London, 1901

Eliza Lynn Linton. The Lake Country. London, 1864
https://archive.org/details/lakecountry00lintiala
This is in the public libraries of Barrow-in-Furness, Carlisle, Kendal, Keswick, and Whitehaven.

Ethel Bassin. The Old Songs of Skye: Frances Tolmie and her circle. London: Routledge, 1977, Chp. 8

http://corsair.themorgan.org/vwebv/holdingsInfo?bibId=191180
Record of a letter from John Ruskin to Harriette Rigbye

Timothy Hilton. John Ruskin. Yale University Press, 2002

Eds Joan Evans, John Howard Whitehouse. The Diaries of John Ruskin: 1874-1889. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1959 I have been unable to consult this book properly, but the reference to Ruskin’s walk is on p.1103

Rosa Newmarch. Mary Wakefield, a memoir. Kendal: Atkinson & Pollitt, 1912. This is a memoir of Mary Wakefield, by her friend, the musicologist, Rosa Newmarch, is the key source for Wakefield’s life. You can download a pdf of this publication on The Mary Wakefield Westmorland Festival website. There is a reference copy in the Fred Barnes Collection in Barrow-in-Furness public library; in the Jackson library, in Carlisle public library; and in the reference collection in Kendal public library. See especially Chapter V Friendship with Ruskin.

https://www.npg.org.uk/

There are many books on John Ruskin and Brantwood in Cumbria public libraries. For example,
Ed Helen Viljoen. The Brantwood diary of John Ruskin: together with selected related letters and sketches of persons mentioned. Yale University Press, 1971
in the Jackson library, in Carlisle public library 1 F RUS
Windermere public library L820 RUS

Mary Wakefield

Augusta Mary Wakefield, in Rosa Newmarch. Mary Wakefield, a memoir. Kendal: Atkinson and Pollitt, 1912

Mary Wakefield, a highly talented musician from Cumbria, never married and had close friendships with other women – but although the evidence is suggestive, it does not allow us securely to conclude that she was gay, while it raises reflections about LGBTQ+ terms today, and about the language of the past.

An important consideration about LGBTQ+ language today, is not only the sorts of words which people use – such as lesbian, gay, homosexual, bisexual, asexual, queer, pride, transgender, transsexual, or LGBT(Q) – but whether people do in fact choose to use these words. Many do. If you go back in time, however, not only were different words were available, but the different social norms prevailing meant that clear statements of identity are more elusive.

In the late nineteenth century, and in the first part of the twentieth century, it was possible to refer to someone as a sapphist or lesbian, meaning a woman who was attracted to others. Yet, neither word was one which you could say in polite company, without raising eyebrows. At this date, Sapphist, or “saph”, or the adjective, Sapphic, was probably a little more acceptable than lesbian; lesbian was a word which could be found in Havelock Ellis’s study of sexology or in medical literature. Virginia Woolf notes in her diary on the 23rd of October, 1929, on the publication of A Room of One’s Own, that she would be “hinted at for a sapphist”. But this was a note in a personal record, not a public announcement.

“Invert”, a term famously found in Radclyffe Hall’s novel, Well of Loneliness, 1928, with lesbian and transgender associations was technically available, but was in no way a polite or positive word. This is the language of a clinical category, rather than a label which queer women could proudly adopt. Women who liked other women normally chose not to use any such word to convey this aspect of their nature, and that makes it harder to find out who they were!

In the case of Mary Wakefield, we look partly at words, partly at situations, and connections of people. Catherine Maxwell has drawn attention to Mary Wakefield’s close friendship with the actress, Marion Terry (sister of the more famous actress, Ellen Terry).

CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 Marion Terry
by Herbert Rose Barraud, published by Eglington & Co
carbon print, published 1891
NPG Ax5513 © National Portrait Gallery, London

The writer, Vernon Lee, who would herself go on to visit Mary Wakefield at the family home in Sedgwick, Kendal, notes that in 1886, Mary Wakefield and Marion Terry are constantly to be found in one another’s company (Maxwell, p.965). Indeed, as Rosa Newmarch, Mary’s biographer points out, Mary’s “acquaintance ripened into life-long ties”. (Newmarch, p.24) Marion Terry seems to have kept her private life successfully private, although she never married, and it is impossible to know from the evidence available, the exact nature of her friendship with Mary Wakefield.

I note here, that Mary Wakefield’s friendship with the novelist, Rhoda Broughton, is worth exploring.

Vernon Lee, the pseudonym of Violet Paget, was a varied writer, of fiction and of non-fiction. She became friendly with Mary Wakefield, when they met in London, in 1882. (Maxwell, p.964) This is of interest, because we know that Vernon Lee had emotional involvements with women, including, particularly, Mary Robinson, and Clementina Anstruther-Thomson.

CC-BY-NC-ND 3.0 (Unported) Vernon Lee 1881 John Singer Sargent 1856-1925 Bequeathed by Miss Vernon Lee through Miss Cooper Willis 1935 http://www.tate.org.uk/art/work/N04787

Vernon Lee visited Mary Wakefield at Mary’s family home in Sedgwick, near Kendal, Cumbria, from late July, over the first part of August, 1886. (Maxwell, pp.965-6). During this time, the women went on long pony and trap drives together through the countryside.

Photo of Sedgwick, by Hogg, in Rosa Newmarch. Mary Wakefield, a memoir. Kendal: Atkinson and Pollitt, 1912

Irene Cooper Willis edited Vernon Lee’s letters, in an edition which was published in 1937. Some of Vernon Lee’s letters give us much fascinating detail about her stay with Mary Wakefield in 1886. I wish to quote at length from one of these letters, because it provides an excellent picture of character and scene. We may here imagine the two women, unaccompanied (except by a pony), ranging over the Cumbrian landscape:

“Dearest Mama. The day before yesterday at ten Miss Wakefield & I started in the pony cart with a gladstone bag, an umbrella & an enormous stick wherewith she ascends these hills; furthermore her sheepdog who always sleeps in her room. We returned here yesterday at three, having gone over about forty miles going & coming. We slept at an inn on Ullswater, which is pretty, but I think uncommonly like most other lakes, as also Windermere where we had lunch yesterday. The prettiest are the tiny lakes in the Kirkstone Pass which we crossed yesterday. The great achievement the day before yesterday was crossing a high hill covered with bog and moorland (what they call a fell here) called Gater garth. There was only a bridle path & not much of that, and the pony, who climbs like a cat, had to be led up & down. We got a haymaker to do the leading up, but the coming down, which is much the worst, was achieved by Miss W. leading the beast by the bridle, with me occasionally to lift the cart over a stone behind. It was a tremendous business & in my eyes quite an adventure, not only because it was so very northern & forlorn up there, scrambling over the big stones & sinking into the wet moss with not a tree visible and a wintry wind blowing, but also because it brings out something odd & picturesque in the character of this fat & lazy singer, who on no account gets up for breakfast, and who, on this sort of occasion shows a strength of pluck like no man I have ever met.” (ed.Cooper Willis, p.227, VL’s letter dated Sedgwick House, Kendal, Aug. 2.)

Again, it is impossible to ascertain the exact nature of the friendship and attraction which Wakefield and Lee felt at this juncture. Making allowances for Vernon Lee’s occasional verbal toughness, Vernon Lee was impressed by the situation and by Mary Wakefield. We don’t have a reverse account, of Vernon Lee by Mary Wakefield, to my knowledge, to hear her view of the friendship, although Rosa Newmarch mentions that Mary Wakefield kept diaries. The women holidayed together with Marion Terry. Maxwell notes that Vernon Lee dedicates a story to Mary Wakefield in 1890.

To my mind, there is something queer about the image of these self-reliant women roaming manfully over the countryside, and in this regard, Rosa Newmarch reports a similar adventurous tale, this time involving Marion Terry, whom I mentioned above. During one of the long drives, on which Marion Terry would accompany Mary when visiting Sedgwick, their horse became very tired, and so Mary proposed a shortcut over some fields. Unfortunately, they “found themselves brought up suddenly by one of those long walls of loose stones” which divide up the land.

Mary acted decisively: “Her decision was characteristic. ‘Take the wall down,’ she said, and hitching up the horse to graze, she and Miss Marion Terry set to work to unbuild the obstacle. The twilight was rapidly drawing on as with aching backs and sore fingers they flung down the heavy slabs of limestone and then arranged them into a kind of ascending and descending causeway over which, in the course of an hour or so, horse and dogcart were piloted in safety.” (Newmarch, p.25)

Sophie Fuller has written on the possible queer links between the composer and songwriter, Maude Valérie White, and Mary Wakefield, who performed in many concerts together. (Fuller, p.89, Newmarch, p.23)

Fuller makes the broader point that the lyrics of many songs of the period were addressed to women, which could cause a frisson when sung by women, and frequently with the female composer accompanying. (Fuller, p.92)

CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 (Unported)
Maude Valérie White
by Herbert Rose Barraud, published by Eglington & Co
carbon print, published 1889
NPG x27374© National Portrait Gallery, London

Rosa Newmarch explains that Mary Wakefield and Maude Valérie White became friends early, in the later 1870s, and indeed, that Maude came often to visit at Sedgwick, “where she had her own particular room in the lower story of the tower”. (Newmarch, p.22) Maude Valérie White wrote some of her best songs there, and was apt to leave “traces of ink on other surfaces than that of her music paper”. (Newmarch, pp.22-3) This certainly suggests cosy intimacy as well as professional collaboration. Again, Maude Valérie White never married, and had close friendships with other women, as well as with Mary Wakefield.

Maude Valérie White, in fact, wrote fulsomely and sensitively about Mary Wakefield, in Friends and Memories, 1914. She says, “I certainly spent some of the pleasantest hours of my life in the tower situated at the top of the house. Mary’s ‘den’ was in this tower, and a more attractive, a more fascinating little room I have never seen.” She affectionately describes Mary’s octagonal room with its cultured belongings, and exclaims at its “extraordinary attraction”; she continues, “I alway felt that Mary Wakefield possessed that magic key, that she realised more than any human being I have ever met the inexhaustible treasures that literally lie at our feet if we remove the scales from our eyes”. (pp.187-8)

Photo of Mary’s room in the tower in Sedgwick, by Hogg, in Rosa Newmarch. Mary Wakefield, a memoir. Kendal: Atkinson and Pollitt, 1912

Mary Wakefield also numbered Matthew Arnold and John Ruskin among her friends. Clearly, the word “friend” sometimes has to do a lot of work, and I believe that we need more evidence to understand properly the nature of the friendship between Mary Wakefield and Maude Valérie White. I do find Sophie Fuller’s discussion cumulatively intriguing and convincing, though.

In 1895, Mary Wakefield settled in a house called Nutwood, at Grange-over-Sands, Lancashire with a fine garden, and from which she could see the Cumberland and Westmorland hills. We need to be attentive to both circumstance and language here, and Mary’s near contemporary biographer, Rosa Newmarch, is our best guide. Significantly, Mary “welcomed the idea of sharing the house with a companion who was in every respect congenial to her. Miss Valentine Munro Ferguson, the writer of several works of fiction and some graceful verse, joined her at Nutwood in the spring of 1895. Apart from their mutual interest in art and literature, Miss Ferguson was in delicate health, and Mary soon lavished upon her that maternal, protective tenderness which all her friends felt to be one of the most beautiful qualities in her strong and practical nature.” Mary’s pleasure in the surrounding countryside of North Lonsdale “was doubled when she could share it with a friend”. (Newmarch p.110) Additionally, both women supported the female suffrage movement.

Valentine Munro Ferguson (1864-1897), who was born in Abbotshall, Fife, in fact, dedicated her last novel, Love again – Life again, which she must have written while she was living at Nutwood, to Mary. All this information tells us that the two women, neither of whom married, were living together, and sharing their lives. The word, “companion”, is used, as well as “friend” – it seems to me that Newmarch is alluding delicately to a very close relationship here. Whether or not the word, “partner” is appropriate for us to use of their arrangement today, due to social norms, it would have been quite unthinkable to use this word in the 1890s for a same sex personal relationship.

Sadly, this happy, companionable arrangement did not last very long, because Valentine Munro Ferguson died at Nutwood in 1897, rather over two years after she had moved in with Mary. Of this, Newmarch says,

“The life which the friends enjoyed together at Nutwood”,at Nutwood lasted only until the summer of 1897, when, after six or seven weeks’ acute illness, during the later days of which Mary watched unceasingly by her sick bed, Miss Ferguson died on September 14th. It is needless to touch upon a sorrow to which, even ten years later, Mary Wakefield could hardly endure to allude.” (Newmarch, p.111)

Following this significant relationship and loss, Newmarch tells us that Mary, after a journey to Italy, was now spending her days quietly at Nutwood. But Mary “had the good fortune to meet a new friend and helper in Miss Stella Hamilton, of Windermere. At first Miss Hamilton would come to her on short visits, which gradually became of longer duration, until finally she divided her life fairly evenly between her home and Nutwood, and learnt to help Mary Wakefield better than anyone else could do.” (Newmarch, p.113).

At this time, Stella Lockhart Hamilton (1872-1955), was living her her family home of Oakthorpe, Windermere. She and Mary spent many hours together landscaping the garden at Nutwood. Many of the photos in Rosa Newmarch’s biography, are taken by Stella – as are many photos for Mary Wakefield’s own publication, Cartmel Priory and Stetches of North Lonsdale, 1909. Stella Hamilton and Mary Wakefield must have visited these places and worked on them together. In 1911, after Mary’s death, Stella proposed with others that the Association of Musical Competition Festivals create medals bearing a portrait of Mary, to commemorate her through the movement with which she was so strongly associated. Rosa Newmarch was able to speak to Stella when compiling her memoir. Stella herself never married.

Mary Wakefield in the garden at Nutwood, photo by Stella Hamilton, in Rosa Newmarch. Mary Wakefield, a memoir. Kendal: Atkinson and Pollitt, 1912

As you can see, the language which we have available to give us clues to Mary Wakefield’s relationships is subtle. None of the language is that of official categories, or of distant reportage. It is the language of close or special friendship, of affection, of devoted attachment, of companionship. It is also the language used by people close to her, who knew her personally, and described her sympathetically. Exactly what Mary’s contemporaries thought about these friendships is hard to determine. However, it it was possible for Mary Wakefield and these other women to choose lives outside of marriage, often lives shared with other women, while using the socially acceptable language of friendship and of companionship.

Acknowledgements:

Rosa Newmarch. Mary Wakefield, a memoir. Kendal: Atkinson & Pollitt, 1912. This is a memoir of Mary Wakefield, by her friend, the musicologist, Rosa Newmarch. This is the key source for Wakefield’s life. You can download a pdf of this publication here,

https://archive.org/details/marywakefieldmem00newmuoft/page/n5/mode/2up

or on The Mary Wakefield Westmorland Festival website. There is a reference copy in the Fred Barnes Collection in Barrow-in-Furness public library; in the Jackson library, in Carlisle public library; and in the reference collection in Kendal public library.

Catherine Maxwell. “Sappho, Mary Wakefield, and Vernon Lee’s ‘a Wicked Voice’.” The Modern Language Review 102.4 (2007): 960-74. Available free by registering with JSTOR. This article first alerted me to the LGBTQ+ connections with Mary Wakefield, and it provides very useful information on Vernon Lee, including the source of Irene Cooper Willis’s edition of Lee’s letters, which I have also consulted.

Irene Cooper Willis. Vernon Lee’s Letters, privately printed, 1937 This brings to life Mary Wakefield’s character and surroundings at Sedgwick, as well as illuminating Vernon Lee.

Sophie Fuller, ‘ Devoted Attention”: Looking for Lesbian Musicians in Fin-de-Siècle Britain’, chapter three, pp.79-101, in Sophie Fuller, and Lloyd Whitesell. Queer Episodes in Music and Modern Identity. Urbana; [Great Britain]: U of Illinois, 2002 This is a very interesting and suggestive chapter on queer musicians and their networks at the time of Mary Wakefield. It also mentions Newmarch’s discussion of Mary’s friends and companions.

Philip Ross Bullock. Rosa Newmarch and Russian music in late nineteenth and early twentieth-century Britain,Routledge, 2017. Ross Bullock discusses Newmarch in connection with her sensitive delineation of Mary Wakefield and of other women, and also cites Catherine Maxwell and Sophie Fuller. See p.120.

https://www.findmypast.co.uk/

http://www.tate.org.uk/

https://www.npg.org.uk/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lesbian

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maude_Valérie_White

The Oxford English Dictionary. Entries on “lesbian”, “sapphist”, and “sapphic”. Like other entries, these are viewable through the number on a Cumbria public library card.

Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, entry on Marion Terry https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/38758

Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, entry on Violet Paget [pseud. Vernon Lee} https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/35361

Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, entry on White, Maude Valérie
https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/59603

These biographical entries can be viewed via the number on a Cumbria public library card.

Eds Anne Olivier Bell & Andrew MacNeillie. Virginia Woolf. The Diary of Virginia Woolf, London: Hogarth Press, 1925-1930, vol. III, 1980, p.262

A. M. (Augusta Mary) Wakefield. Cartmel Priory and Sketches of North Lonsdale, Grange-over-Sands: H.T. Mason, 1909 There is a reference copy in the Fred Barnes Collection in Barrow-in-Furness public library; in the Jackson library, in Carlisle public library; in the Local Studies collection in Grange over Sands public library; in the reference collection in Kendal public library; and in the Local History reference collection of Whitehaven Record Office.

Maude Valérie White. Friends and Memories. London: Edward Arnold, 1914 This book, which is a chatty and expressive memoir, mentions Mary Wakefield on many occasions; see, for example, p.147, “I was extremely fond of the whole family – though of course, it was Mary who was my special friend.”

Lynne Janine Braithwaite

• 

• 

Lynne Janine Braithwaite (1934-2008) grew up as Lawrence James in a village by Windermere in the Lake District; after a long career in the RAF, Lawrence James became Lynne Janine in 1994, and subsequently, a transgender advisor to the Lancashire Constabulary.

Lynne Janine Braithwaite, who grew up in the Lake District, in what is present day Cumbria, led a long and eventful life. In her later years, while living in Lancashire, she transitioned from male to female, and her individual path through life may be reflected upon by Cumbria’s LGBTQ+ community.

Lynne was born as Lawrence in the village of Near Sawrey, close to Hawkshead, by Lake Windermere (in a house rented from Beatrix Potter) in 1934. This is in the border area between Westmorland and Lancashire, and Hawkshead used be part of the historic county of Lancashire. You can hear Lynne discuss her early days growing up in rural Cumbria in a recording held by the British Library Sounds Archive. Lawrence went to Hawkshead school, and on leaving school at fifteen years old, joined the RAF. This was possible at the time, through the boy entrant scheme.

Lawrence trained as an airframe mechanic and as a fitter, and became a junior technician, working on Brigand aircraft. Different postings were to follow, including in Lincolnshire, RAF Celle in Germany, and RCAF Goose Bay, in Canada. In all, Lawrence served in the RAF from 1949 to 1989, retiring as a flight sergeant. Lawrence had developed expertise on Vulcan bombers, and was later consulted, as Lynne, after retirement, as an engineering consultant on the “Vulcan to the Sky project”: the restoration of the Avro Vulcan XH558.

After retirement, Lawrence also ran a model aeroplane making business, as a qualified silversmith, producing tiny aircraft, in gold or silver. Following the ending of that business and also of a second marriage, in 1993, Lawrence began the long process of reflecting, and of transitioning from male to female. An interview by Eleanor Levin with one of Lynne’s friends, Carol, notes that Lynne’s personal encounters with the police prompted her to offer them her services for transgender training. Lynne was living in Lancashire at this time, and the Lancashire constabulary were receptive to this, becoming one of the first forces to provide transgender training (Levin). She became a member of Trans Lancs, the Lancashire police advisory group. She also worked on transgender and transsexual issues with the WRVS, and with magistrates, and was active with “Press for Change“. The interview mentions too the possible sexism which Lynne as a woman could encounter, when dealing with mechanics!

During the later part of her lifetime, Lynne wrote several books. These cover a variety of topics from school days, to experiences while serving in the RAF, to transitioning. The books appear to have been published as ebooks, or as paperbacks which have become unobtainable, so in the absence of seeing actual copies, it is possible to glean a sense of Lynne’s experiences and style from the excerpts which appear on her author’s website.

Lynne died in 2008, and her funeral service in Lancaster was marked by a flypast of the Vulcan bomber which she helped to restore.

Acknowledgements:

I have compiled this post using the following websites:

http://www.authorsden.com/visit/author.asp?AuthorID=13527 Lynne Braithwaite’s author’s profile page.

http://www.authorsden.com/visit/viewworks_all.asp?Authorid=13527 The list of books by Lynne Braithwaite on her author’s listing.

https://www.forcesreunited.co.uk/m/lynnejaninebraithwaite#?activeTab=1 Lynne Braithwaite’s personal profile, on the forces reunited website. This has the photograph above from the days of the RAF.

https://www.documentingdissent.org.uk/lynne-braithwaite This informative page is based on an interview by Eleanor Levin with one of Lynne’s friends, Carol. It also uses material from Lynne’s book, Lynne’s Diaries. London: Paragon Press Publishing, 2000.

https://www.thewestmorlandgazette.co.uk/news/3629109.mrs-l-braithwaite/ This is an obituary, published by the Westmorland Gazette, on 28 August, 2008.

https://zagria.blogspot.com/2010/07/lynne-janine-braithwaite-1934-2008.html This page gives a brief account of Lynne’s life, with two photographs of her.

https://sounds.bl.uk/Accents-and-dialects/Millenium-memory-bank/021M-C0900X08001X-0400V1#_

This page on the British Library Sounds website contains a five minute clip of Lynne reminiscing about her childhood, near Hawkshead and Grizedale, by Lake Windermere, in the Lake District, for the period just before, and during, the Second World War. It was recorded in November, 1998.

Two Newspaper Articles

Bowder Stone, Borrowdale c.1863-8 Atkinson Grimshaw 1836-1893 Purchased with assistance from the Friends of the Tate Gallery 1983 http://www.tate.org.uk/art/work/T03683

I have been looking at the “Penrith Observer”, a former Cumbrian newspaper, in the British Newspaper Archive. The edition of Tuesday, 10 November, 1953, contains some interesting LGBTQ+ related material. The first article is an opinion column, while the second article is a serialised novel.

Page five of the newspaper carries an opinion column condemning homosexuality. The first part of this column is headed “Moral Standards”, and the second part, “Stigma”. It is unsigned – this is quite normal, for what appears to be an editorial position. It is worth thinking about the language which is used in this column, and setting it in its historical background too.

“Moral Standards” begins by by praising Lord Samuel, for speaking out against homosexuality, which is “not an agreeable subject to write about or speak”, and refers to the recent appearance of a certain “titled personality…before a London magistrate”. We shall come back to these men later. The column is concerned that far from homosexuality being a rare occurence, “at nearly every assize court in the country the calendars are full of crimes of this nature”. It then notes with approval, that public opinion was “justifiably shocked” by the revelations of the trial of Oscar Wilde in 1895, and that his plays were taken off the stage for years.

The column contrasts this severe Victorian reaction with the perceived looseness of attitude towards homosexuality in contemporary society, denouncing in its first paragraph, “the laxity of the moral standards of our country”. Homosexuality is seen both as a crime – the law was not liberalised in England until 1967 – and as a sin: “facts must be faced, and sin condemned wherever it rears its ugly head”.

This language may fairly be described as unequivocal. The second section of the column, “Stigma”, following directly underneath, carries on these themes. Indeed, the language becomes more biblical, asking rhetorically whether those who are guilty of the crime of the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah suffer the same stigma nowadays as they did in Victorian times. According to the bible, these cities are destroyed in divine retribution for the wickedness of their inhabitants.

I believe that the intended comparison is between 1953, and the Victorian age, and not between 1953 and the time of Book of Genesis, although the structuring of the material is a little loose! It is interesting to note that the newspaper uses the modern term, homosexuality, but does infer the older term, sodomy, by this reference to the cities of the plain. The column then states that although the Victorians are now looked down on, they did possess a “moral code”; their society ostracised those who broke it, as with homosexuality, whereas modern society is too accepting, even welcoming: “they are no longer outcasts”.

Finally, the column touches on the debate of whether homosexuality is a sin or a disease, quoting the differing views of Lord Dawson of Penn, who referred to ” ‘a pathological condition’ “, and Lord Atkin, who believed that it was the ” ‘result of wicked impulses which like other wicked impulses are capable of being controlled”. The reference to disease reminds us that homosexuality was declassified as a mental illness in 1973, while the word, “wicked”, reminds us, perhaps, of sin.

In total, the message from the Penrith Observer’s opinion column is clear: homosexuality is all too prevalent, it betrays degraded morals, and is bad for the country; the writer or writers fear that Britain can be neither “good” nor “great”.

If we step back from the article, and turn to the wider context, we can see that this column in the Penrith Observer is responding to national events. The 1950s were a difficult time for LGBT people in Britain. The authorities sought detection and arrest; figures such as the home secretary, David Maxwell Fyfe, who wished to root out homosexuality, were active and influential, and the number of prosecutions rose very significantly. This included a number of high profile men such as Lord Montagu of Beaulieu, Hampshire, who was convicted and imprisoned in 1954.

But the “titled personality” to which our column refers was the actor and director, Sir John Gielgud, who had recently been knighted. In October, 1953, he was charged with “persistently importuning male persons for immoral purposes”, fined, and told to see his doctor. The column makes a veiled reference to him, taking the view that this is the tip of a much bigger problem. Lord Samuel, whom the column commends for speaking out “with complete frankness on crimes which are a terrible blot on our civilisation”, made a speech in the House of Lords, on 4 November, 1953. In it, he surveyed many national issues, including social issues, stating that, “the vices of Sodom and Gomorrah, of the cities of the Plain, appear to be rife among us”.

This gives us an immediate context for the Penrith Observer’s comments. Like many newspapers of the time, it is giving us its view of recent, controversial, and widely publicised occurrences. It would require further study to identify exactly how newspaper coverage of these issues varied, from paper to paper, and across different regions; however, the views expressed in this column, if forcibly worded, do not seem to be exceptional.

Ironically, although the Penrith Observer carries this condemnation of homosexuality on page six of the newspaper, the preceding page contains an entirely different article. Page five is almost entirely given over to the first part of Farthing Hall, a novel co-written by Hugh Walpole and J.B. Priestley. Hugh Walpole (1884-1941) is now acknowledged to have been gay. Indeed, he had a home at Brackenburn, by Derwentwater, near Keswick.

Above the novel appears the title, “An exciting new serial with a Lakeland setting”. The introduction reads, “Thanks to the co-operation of Sir Hugh Walpole’s literary executor, Mr Rupert Hart-Davies, and his publishers, Messrs Macmillan and Co. we are publishing ‘Farthing Hall’ as a serial. You can begin reading this exciting story [t]oday.”

That the Penrith Observer should be serialising this novel is entirely unsurprising. Hugh Walpole was a distinguished local figure, who had held the Lake District landscape in affection, and who featured local places in his fiction. Part of the action in Farthing Hall itself takes place in Penrith, Keswick, and the surrounding countryside; it contains a fictional Garrowdale, which is likely to derive its name from nearby Borrowdale (pictured above). It appears to be a romantic adventure story with a touch of the Gothic, and an epistolary novel too, as its action is narrated by the letters and telegrams of the main characters. Readers of the newspaper might well have been keen to read this story with its lightness of touch, and local colour.

What is clear is that the Penrith Observer does not connect up the possible LGBTQ+ links within its pages. Perhaps the newspaper was oblivious to the sorts of relationships which Hugh Walpole had; perhaps his merit as a popular local figure and author far outweighed perceptions of his sexuality; or, perhaps, we need not look to find homogeneity of content in any one publication. But the juxtaposition of these two articles is fascinating.

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to Stephen White, Local Studies Librarian, Carlisle, for first bringing “Moral Standards” to my attention.

The Penrith Observer, 10 November, 1953, pp.5-6

https://hansard.parliament.uk/Lords/1953-11-04/debates/0a3f989b-d307-4d56-99f1-6fba1cf4d8ca/LordsChamber Lord Samuel’s speech. Accessed 16 May, 2020

Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, entry on Sir John Gielgud https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/74146 Accessed 17 May, 2020 This entry mentions that Gielgud was told by the magistrate to see his doctor, referencing, S. Morley, John G: the authorised biography of John Gielgud (2001), p.246

Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, entry on Sir Hugh Walpole https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/36711 Accessed 16 May, 2020

These biography entries can be viewed via the number on a Cumbria public library card.

Wendy Moffat. “Forster and Liberace; or, The Invert’s Tale”. Modernism/modernityVolume 17, Number 3, September 2010 In Project MUSE https://muse.jhu.edu/article/406820 Accessed 16 May 2020

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_LGBT_history_in_the_United_Kingdom

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Gielgud

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugh_Walpole

https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/news/the-night-gielguds-career-lay-in-ruins-ndash-and-his-cry-for-help-was-ignored-2199013.html Accessed 16 May 2020

Justin Bengry. “Queer profits: homosexual scandal and the origins of legal reform in Britain”, in eds Heike Bauer and Matthew Cook, Queer 1950s: Rethinking Sexuality in the Postwar Years. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012

John Atkinson Grimshaw’s lovely painting of Bowder Stone, Borrowdale, is held by the Tate Gallery.

https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/grimshaw-bowder-stone-borrowdale-t03683

https://reading19001950.wordpress.com/2014/07/04/farthing-hall-by-hugh-walpole-and-j-b-priestley-1929/ Accessed 16 May, 2020

If anyone would like to read Walpole and Priestley’s novel, Farthing Hall, it can still be bought today.

Finally, for an artistic and more sympathetic treatment of the idea of Sodom and Gomorrah, I recommend volume four of Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time, whose title is sometimes translated as “Sodom and Gomorrah”, and sometimes as “The Cities of the Plain”.