The Unlit Lamp E-Book

Thomas Hardy.

• Herausgeber: Thomas Hardy
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016

Beschreibung

Radclyffe Hall (born Marguerite Radclyffe Hall on 12 August 1880 – 7 October 1943) was an English poet and author, best known for the novel The Well of Loneliness. The novel has become a groundbreaking work in lesbian literature. Marguerite Radclyffe Hall was born in 1880 at "Sunny Lawn", Durley Road, Bournemouth, Hampshire (now Dorset) to a wealthy philandering father and a quarrelsome[mother. Hall was a lesbian and described herself as a "congenital invert", a term taken from the writings of Havelock Ellis and other turn-of-the-century sexologists. Having reached adulthood without a vocation, she spent much of her twenties pursuing women she eventually lost to marriage. In 1907 at the Homburg spa in Germany, Hall met Mabel Batten, a well-known amateur singer of lieder. Batten (nicknamed "Ladye") was 51 to Hall's 27, and was married with an adult daughter and grandchildren. They fell in love, and after Batten's husband died they set up residence together. Batten gave Hall the nickname John, which she used the rest of her life. Under Batten's influence, Hall converted to Roman Catholicism; Joanne Glasgow writes that for Hall and other lesbians of the early twentieth century, such as Alice B. Toklas, the church's erasure of female sexuality offered a cover for lesbianism

Leseprobe

The Unlit Lamp

Radclyffe Hall

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BOOK ONE

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

BOOK TWO

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

BOOK THREE

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-one

Chapter Twenty-two

Chapter Twenty-three

Chapter Twenty-four

BOOK FOUR

Chapter Twenty-five

Chapter Twenty-six

Chapter Twenty-seven

Chapter Twenty-eight

Chapter Twenty-nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-one

Chapter Thirty-two

Chapter Thirty-three

Chapter Thirty-four

Chapter Thirty-five

Chapter Thirty-six

Chapter Thirty-seven

Chapter Thirty-eight

Chapter Thirty-nine

Chapter Forty

BOOK FIVE

Chapter Forty-one

Chapter Forty-two

Chapter Forty-three

Chapter Forty-four

Chapter Forty-five

Chapter Forty-six

Chapter Forty-seven

Chapter Forty-eight

Chapter Forty-nine

Chapter Fifty

Book one

Chapter one

The dining-room at Leaside was also Colonel Ogden’s study. It contained, in addition to the mahogany sideboard with ornamental brackets at the back, the three-tier dumb waiter and the dining-table with chairs en suite, a large roll-top desk much battered and ink-stained, and bleached by the suns of many Indian summers. There was also a leather arm-chair with a depression in the seat, a pipe-rack and some tins of tobacco. All of which gave one to understand that the presence of the master of the house brooded continually over the family meals and over the room itself in the intervals between. And lest this should be doubted, there was Colonel Ogden’s photograph in uniform that hung over the fireplace; an enlargement showing the colonel seated in a tent at his writing-table, his native servant at his elbow. The colonel’s face looked sternly into the camera, his pen was poised for the final word, authority personified. The smell of the colonel’s pipes, past and present, hung in the air, and together with the general suggestion of food and newspapers, produced an odour that became the very spirit of the room. In after years the children had only to close their eyes and think of their father to recapture the smell of the dining-room at Leaside.

Colonel Ogden looked at his watch; it was nine o’clock, He pushed back his chair from the breakfast table, a signal for the family to have done with eating.

He sank into his arm-chair with a sigh; he was fifty-five and somewhat stout. His small, twinkling eyes scanned the columns of The Times as if in search of something to pounce on. Presently he had it.

‘Mary.’

‘Yes, dear.’

‘Have you seen this advertisement of the Army and Navy?’

‘Which one, dear?’

‘The provision department. Surely we are paying more than this for bacon?’

He extended the paper towards his wife; his hand shook a little, his face became very slightly suffused. Mrs. Ogden glanced at the paper; then she lied quickly.

‘Oh, no, my love, ours is twopence cheaper.’

‘Oh!’ said Colonel Ogden. ‘Kindly ring the bell.’

Mrs. Ogden obeyed. She was a small woman, pale and pensive looking; her neat hair, well netted, was touched with grey, her soft brown eyes were large and appealing, but there were lines about her mouth that suggested something different, irritable lines that drew the corners of the lips down a little. The maid came in; Colonel Ogden smiled coldly. ‘The grocer’s book, please’, he said.

Mrs. Ogden quailed; it was unfortunately the one day of all the seven when the grocer’s book would be in the house.

‘What for, James?’ she asked.

Colonel Ogden caught the nervous tremor in her voice, and his smile deepened. He did not answer, and presently the servant returned book in hand. Colonel Ogden took it, and with the precision born of long practice turned up the required entry.

‘Mary! Be good enough to examine this item.’

She did so and was silent.

‘If’, said Colonel Ogden in a bitter voice, ‘if you took a little more trouble, Mary, to consider my interests, if you took the trouble to ascertain what we are paying for things, there would be less for me to worry about, less waste of money, less . . . ’ He gasped a little and pressed his left side, glancing at his wife as he did so.

‘Don’t get excited, James, I beg; do remember your heart.’

The colonel leant back in his chair. ‘I dislike unnecessary waste, Mary.’

‘Yes, dear, of course. I wonder I didn’t see that notice; I shall write for some of their bacon today and countermand the piece from Goodridge’s. I’ll go and do it now — or would you like me to give you your tabloids?’

‘Thanks, no’, said the colonel briefly.

‘Do the children disturb you? Shall they go upstairs?’

He got up heavily. ‘No, I’m going to the club.’

Something like a sigh of relief breathed through the room; the two children eyed each other, and Milly, the younger, made a secret face. She was a slim child with her mother’s brown eyes. Her long yellow hair hung in curls down her back; she looked fragile and elfish; some people thought her pretty. Colonel Ogden did; she was her father’s favourite.

There were two years between the sisters; Milly was ten, Joan twelve. They were poles apart in disposition as in appearance. Everything that Milly felt she voiced instantly; almost everything that Joan felt she did not voice. She was a silent, patient child as a rule, but could, under great provocation, display a stubborn will that could not be coped with, a reasoning power that paralysed her mother and infuriated Colonel Ogden. It was not temper exactly; Joan was never tearful, never violent, only coldly logical and self-assured and firm. You might lock her in her bedroom and tell her to ask God to make her a good child, but as likely as not she would refuse to say she was sorry in the end. Once she had remarked that her prayers had gone unanswered, and after this she was never again exhorted to pray for grace.