Radclyffe Hall in Rye, East Sussex

'Radclyffe Hall

1880-1943

Novelist

Lived here'

The plaque on the High Street, Rye, is short and rather uninformative, but Radclyffe Hall lived here in the 1930s with her long-term lover Una Troubridge.

Highgate Cemetery (West) #1: Radclyffe Hall

Unfortunately, admission to West Cemetery is by guided tour only, which means that you're at the mercy of the guide, and that (at least on the occasion when I went this August) could well mean that you'll be subjected to the predictable: the 'menagerist' George Wombwell, the boxer Tom Sayers, etc. If the guide isn't interested in literature, as ours obviously wasn't – then there'll not even be a mention of Christina Rossetti, let alone Radclyffe Hall or Ellen Wood. Which isn't good enough for me, so it was fortunate that I'd done some online research before, and had worked out that we'd be passing by the last two authors at least. In the end, I was surprised to find the number of graves I did find – but in spite of, rather than because of – the guide. 

The Egyptian Avenue, leading on to the Circle of Lebanon.

 

 

 

Radclyffe Hall (1880–1943) is probably most well known for her 'lesbian' novel The Well of Loneliness (1928), which was the subject of a court case. She lived with the singer Mabel Veronica Batten from her husband's death until Batten's own death in 1916.

'RADCLYFFE HALL

1943

...AND, IF GOD CHOOSE,

I SHALL BUT LOVE THEE BETTER

AFTER DEATH.

UNA.'

 

Batten's cousin Una Troubridge (1887–1963) was a sculptor and translator (notably of Colette) who lived with Hall from 1917.