John Simkin

Dora Carrington went to the Slade School in 1910. According to Frances Marshall: "She (Carrington) was an attractive and popular figure with her large blue eyes and her shock of thick hair bobbed in the fashion she had set... Moreover, her individual sense of fun and fantasy made her an enchanting companion, though a neurotic strain was also apparent.... Her oil paintings were much influenced by Mark Gertler in their careful, smooth technique, three-dimensioned effect, and dense, rich colour." Ottoline Morrell, who got to know her during this period, described her as "a wild moorland pony".

Mark Gertler and Christopher Nevinson both became closely attached to Carrington. According to Michael J. K. Walsh, the author of C. R. W. Nevinson: The Cult of Violence (2002): "What he (Nevinson) was not aware of was that Carrington was also conversing, writing and meeting with Gertler in a similar fashion, and the latter was beginning to want to rid himself of competition for her affections. For Gertler the friendship would be complicated by sexual frustration while Carrington had no particular desire to become romantically involved with either man."

On 12th June 1912, Carrington wrote to Christopher Nevinson. The letter has not survived, but his response to it has. It starts: "Your note came as a horrible surprise to me. I cannot guess what has happened to make you wish to do without me as a friend next term." It seems that Carrington had complained about the intimacy of his letters. He added: "I swear I will never speak a word to you as your lover... I promise you I will be a great friend of yours nothing more and nothing less and if you want to get simple again I am only too willing to do the same."

Carrington also received a letter from Mark Gertler asking her to marry him. When she rejected this proposal he wrote a further letter on 2nd July, suggesting: "Your affections are completely given to Nevinson. I must have been a fool to stand it as long as I have, without seeing through you. I have written to Nevinson telling him that we, he and I, are no longer friends." In the letter he argued, "much as I have tried to overlook it, I have come to the conclusion that rivals, and rivals in love, cannot be friends."

Nevinson continued to plead with Carrington to remain his friend: "I am now without a friend in the whole world except you.... I cannot give you up, you have put a reason into my life and I am through you slowly winning back my self-respect. I did feel so useless so futile before I devoted my life to you." He also wanted a return of Gertler's friendship: "I am aching for the companionship of Gertler, our talks on Art, on my work, his work and our life in general. God how fond of him I am. I never realised it so thoroughly till now."

Mark Gertler now wrote to Christopher Nevinson: "I am writing here to tell you that our friendship must end from now, my sole reason being that I am in love with Carrington and I have reason to believe that you are so too. Therefore, much as I have tried to overlook it, I have come to the conclusion that rivals, and rivals in love, cannot be friends. You must know that ever since you brought Carrington to my studio my love for her has been steadily increasing. You might also remember that many times, when you asked me down to dinner. I refused to come. Jealously was the cause of it. Whenever you told me that you had been kissing her, you could have knocked me down with a feather, so faint was I. Whenever you saw me depressed of late, when we were all out together, it wasn't boredom as I pretended but love."

However, Carrington refused to begin a sexual relationship with Gerter during this period. Vanessa Curtis has argued: " Although passionate towards Gertler when discussing art, Carrington, at eighteen, had not yet had her sexuality awakened; her upbringing had taught her to repress her innermost feelings. She was looking for a platonic soul mate, but what she found was a man who was highly sexed and constantly irritated and frustrated by Carrington's lack of passion. The heartbreaking letters that passed regularly between them pay sad testimony to the anguish that this long relationship caused."

Dora Carrington left the Slade School in 1914. Her lack of confidence meant that she was reluctant to exhibit or even sign her work. However, she had some important friends who tried to help her career. Virginia Woolf commissioned her to produce several woodcuts for Hogarth Press and Roger Fry provided work restoring a Mantegna for Hampton Court.

Frances Marshall met Carrington in 1914. "Her unique personal flavour makes her extraordinarily difficult to describe, but fortunately she has painted her own portrait much better than anyone else could in her letters and diaries, which no-one can read without recognising her originality, fantastic imagination and humour. Her poetic response to nature shines from her paintings, and from letters whose handwriting was in itself a form of drawing.... Physically, her most remarkable features were her large, deepset blue eyes and her mop of thick straight hair, the colour of ripe corn. Her movements were sometimes almost awkward, like those of a little girl, and she would stand with head hanging and toes turned in; while her very soft voice was also somewhat childish and made a first impression of affectation. Her laugh was delightfully infectious."

Aldous Huxley fell in love with Carrington during this period. "Her short hair, clipped like a page's, hung in a bell of elastic gold about her cheeks. She had large blue china eyes, whose expression was one of ingenuous and often puzzled earnestness." Although she enjoyed his company she was not looking for a physical relationship with Huxley, who put her in his novel Crome Yellow (Mary Bracegirdle). In the novel Huxley recreated his many discussions with Carrington. She explained what she was looking for in a man: "It must be somebody intelligent, somebody with intellectual interests that I can share. And it must be somebody with a proper respect for women, somebody who's prepared to talk seriously about his work and his ideas and about my work and my ideas. It isn't, as you see, at all easy to find the right person."

Carrington met Lytton Strachey while staying with Virginia Woolf at Asheham House at Beddingham, near Lewes, she jointly leased with Leonard Woolf, Vanessa Bell, Clive Bell and Duncan Grant. The author of Virginia Woolf's Women (2002) has pointed out: "Attracted to Carrington from the moment he first laid eyes on her, he had boldly tried to kiss her during a walk across the South Downs, the feeling of his beard prompting an enraged outburst of disgust from the unwilling recipient. According to legend, Carrington plotted frenzied revenge, creeping into Lytton's bedroom during the night with the intention of cutting off the detested beard. Instead, she was mesmerized by his eyes, which opened suddenly and regarded her intently. From that moment on, the two became virtually inseparable. Initially, Strachey's friends viewed the idea of Carrington and Lytton as a couple with repulsion; it was considered extremely inappropriate. Even though it was evident almost from the start that they were to enjoy a platonic relationship rather than a sexual one, the relationship was the talk of Bloomsbury for several months. They were a curious looking couple: Lytton was tall and lanky, bespectacled and with a curiously high-pitched voice, Carrington was short, chubby, eccentrically dressed and with daringly short hair."

In 1917, Dora Carrington set up home with Lytton Strachey at Mill House, Tidmarsh, in Berkshire. Julia Strachey was a regular visitor to the house. She later described the woman who was living with her uncle: "Carrington had large blue eyes, a thought unnaturally wide open, a thought unnaturally transparent, yet reflecting only the outside light and revealing nothing within, just as a glass door betrays nothing to the enquiring visitor but the light reflected off the sea."

In 1918 both Strachey and Carrington began an affair with Ralph Partridge. According to his biographer, Stanford Patrick Rosenbaum, they created: "A polygonal ménage that survived the various affairs of both without destroying the deep love that lasted the rest of their lives. Strachey's relation to Carrington was partly paternal; he gave her a literary education while she painted and managed the household. Ralph Partridge... became indispensable to both Strachey, who fell in love with him, and Carrington."

Frances Marshall was a close friend of Dora Carrington during this period: "Her love for Lytton was the focus of her adult life, but she was by no means indifferent to the charms of young men, or of young women either for that matter; she was full of life and loved fun, but nothing must interfere with her all-important relation to Lytton. So, though she responded to Ralph's adoration, she at first did her best to divert him from his desire to marry her. When in the end she agreed, it was partly because he was so unhappy, and partly because she saw that the great friendship between Ralph and Lytton might actually consolidate her own position."

Carrington married Ralph Partridge in 1921. She wrote to Lytton Strachey on her honeymoon: "So now I shall never tell you I do care again. It goes after today somewhere deep down inside me, and I'll not resurrect it to hurt either you or Ralph. Never again. He knows I'm not in love with him... I cried last night to think of a savage cynical fate which had made it impossible for my love ever to be used by you. You never knew, or never will know the very big and devastating love I had for you ... I shall be with you in two weeks, how lovely that will be. And this summer we shall all be very happy together."

In 1924 Partridge and Strachey bought Ham Spray House in Ham, Wiltshire, where a studio was made for Carrington and a library for Strachey. Julia Strachey, who visited her at Ham Spray House, recalls: "From a distance she (Carrington) looked a young creature, innocent and a little awkward, dressed in very odd frocks such as one would see in some quaint picture-book; but if one came closer and talked to her, one soon saw age scored around her eyes - and something, surely, a bit worse than that - a sort of illness, bodily or mental. She had darkly bruised, hallowed, almost battered sockets."

Lytton Strachey died of undiagnosed stomach cancer on 21st January 1932. His death made her suicidal. She wrote a passage from David Hume in her diary: "A man who retires from life does no harm to society. He only ceases to do good. I am not obliged to do a small good to society at the expense of a great harm to myself. Why then should I prolong a miserable existence... I believe that no man ever threw away life, while it was worth keeping."

Frances Marshall was with Ralph Partridge when he received a phone-call on 11th March 1932. "The telephone rang, waking us. It was Tom Francis, the gardener who came daily from Ham; he was suffering terribly from shock, but had the presence of mind to tell us exactly what had happened: Carrington had shot herself but was still alive. Ralph rang up the Hungerford doctor asking him to go out to Ham Spray immediately; then, stopping only to collect a trained nurse, and taking Bunny with us for support, we drove at breakneck speed down the Great West Road.... We found her propped on rugs on her bedroom floor; the doctor had not dared to move her, but she had touched him greatly by asking him to fortify himself with a glass of sherry. Very characteristically, she first told Ralph she longed to die, and then (seeing his agony of mind) that she would do her best to get well. She died that same afternoon."

Virginia Woolf wrote in her diary: "Glad to be alive and sorry for the dead: can't think why Carrington killed herself and put an end to all this." However, ten years later she followed her example and killed herself.

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/ARTcarrington.htm

john,

the tea party doesn't have an economic policy. they ran on the phrase, "out of control spending." but they never make a simple declarative statement of how much spending has increased. local letters to the editor always talked about the deficit, sometimes getting the debt and deficit mixed up, never quantifying the drop in tax revenues because of the recession, or the component in the stimulus that was a tax cut, which conservatives say they always approve. these are dark times!

there is populist anger, jobs seem to be on a long downward trend. the conditions for a popular protest are there. the democrats do not seem to be a different party than the republicans when it comes to financial regulation, war-making, or the mechanics of government. these are the real problems, and the democrats seem to want to pick off relatively minor issues. so in my view, you have a party in power which deserves to be thrown out. however the anger is out of proportion to their actual misdeeds. and i think that should be placed squarely on the right wing gasbags, limbaugh, beck, drudge, and a whole army of others. the propaganda that is going on unchecked is vicious and immoral. its a political assassination of a different kind.

I was reading yesterday that China is the main holder of American bonds. What impact is this having on the economic policies of the US?

This kind of worries me.

Reading books was the last bastion against sitting in front of your computer.

But now with Kindle, that may all change. The great advantage of course is the price of the book. The disadvantage is the price of kindle. Once the price of Kindle comes down, the revolution is on.

Understandably, Amazon are currently keeping the price of the Kindle high. In a few months it will be in their interest in bringing down the price in order to increase the sale of e-books. These will be provided cheaply to schools and Amazon will take control of the school-textbook market. People will also read their newspapers via their Kindle. All these developments will destroy jobs and will contribute to a future of high-unemployment in the US and Europe.

I would think that it would create new jobs and opportunities for those young enough to want to develop another sector.

And as a writer, I like that 70% of $10 royalities give out rather than the 10% of $20 mainstream publishers give their wriers.

I also think there is a more managable distribution that can be kept track of - like that of music - there is an exact number of downloads of a specific song - whether it is requested on a juke box, played on the radio or downloaded onto a computer, - there's a computerized record of the hits the song got. Same goes for books and articles - you know how many people have requested, or paid to read it.

There was a notice today that they will no longer print telephone directory books, which was met with little interest and saving a tree seen as a positive light.

How is the move from hard copy to soft copy putting anybody out of work except maybe lumberjacks?

Thanks for calling attention to this John,

BK

One possibility is for the Forum to publish that series of seminars on the JFK assassination we produced as an e-book. These could be rewritten based on the comments from other members.

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showforum=197

This kind of worries me.

Reading books was the last bastion against sitting in front of your computer.

But now with Kindle, that may all change. The great advantage of course is the price of the book. The disadvantage is the price of kindle. Once the price of Kindle comes down, the revolution is on.

Understandably, Amazon are currently keeping the price of the Kindle high. In a few months it will be in their interest in bringing down the price in order to increase the sale of e-books. These will be provided cheaply to schools and Amazon will take control of the school-textbook market. People will also read their newspapers via their Kindle. All these developments will destroy jobs and will contribute to a future of high-unemployment in the US and Europe.

On the surface it might seem strange that there are close links with the WSPU and fascism. After all, the WSPU fought for equal rights for women whereas fascists believed that men were superior to women. However, several leaders of the WSPU also held senior positions in the British Union of Fascists in the 1930s. Emmeline Pankhurst and two of her daughters, Adela and Christabel, moved to the far right after the First World War. Adela actually joined the fascist party in Australia. The main reason for this is the WSPU was run as a dictatorship. Those who believed in a democratic organisation left to form the Women's Freedom League. In reality, the WSPU, was always a very small organisation. At its peak it only had 2,000 members and by 1914 it only had a small number of activists. On the other hand, the fully democratic, National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies (NUWSS) had over 100,000 members. After women gained the vote, the NUWSS were active in the Labour and Liberal parties, the WSPU members tended to join the Conservative Party and the British Union of Fascists. Under the leadership of Emmeline Pankhurst, the WSPU was an authoritarian organisation. It therefore attracted authoritarian personalities. For example, one member of the WSPU, Mary Allen, founded the Women Police Volunteers in 1914. In 1920, Allen became the new Commandant of the Women Police Service. Later she joined the British Union of Fascists.

Nora Dacre Fox (Norah Elam) provides a good example of WSPU and BUF membership. She joined the WSPU in 1912 It has been argued by the authors of Mosley's Old Suffragette (2010) that her remarkable rhetorical skill allowed her to rise quickly through the WSPU ranks to become, by early 1913, its General Secretary. In this role she led the "campaign against forcible feeding, concentrating particularly on attempts to persuade Church of England bishops to denounce the practice." In May 1914 Norah Dacre Fox was arrested during a demonstration. While in Holloway Prison she went on hunger-and-thirst strike and was released on licence.

Nora Dacre Fox was involved in the production of The Suffragette, the WSPU newspaper. Emmeline Pankhurst later recalled: "The Government made several last, desperate efforts to crush the WSPU to remove all the leaders and to destroy our paper, The Suffragette. They issued summonses against Mrs. Drummond, Mrs. Dacre Fox, and Miss Grace Roe; they raided our headquarters at Lincoln's Inn House; twice they raided other headquarters temporarily in use; not to speak of raids made upon private dwellings where the new leaders, who had risen to take the places of those arrested, were at their work for the organisation."

On 30th July 1914 she was arrested at Buckingham Palace while attempting to present a letter from Mrs Pankhurst to King George V. According to Julie V. Gottlieb this resulted in her "thrice being imprisoned in Holloway for militant acts, and she had gone on hunger strike for which she received a medal with three bars from the leaders of the WSPU."

On 4th August, 1914, England declared war on Germany. The leadership of the WSPU immediately began negotiating with the British government. On the 10th August the government announced it was releasing all suffragettes from prison. In return, the WSPU agreed to end their militant activities and help the war effort.

Emmeline Pankhurst announced that all militants had to "fight for their country as they fought for the vote." Ethel Smyth pointed out in her autobiography, Female Pipings for Eden (1933): "Mrs Pankhurst declared that it was now a question of Votes for Women, but of having any country left to vote in. The Suffrage ship was put out of commission for the duration of the war, and the militants began to tackle the common task."

Annie Kenney reported that orders came from Christabel Pankhurst: "The Militants, when the prisoners are released, will fight for their country as they have fought for the Vote." Kenney later wrote: "Mrs. Pankhurst, who was in Paris with Christabel, returned and started a recruiting campaign among the men in the country. This autocratic move was not understood or appreciated by many of our members. They were quite prepared to receive instructions about the Vote, but they were not going to be told what they were to do in a world war."

After receiving a £2,000 grant from the government, Norah Dacre Fox helped the WSPU organise a demonstration in London. Members carried banners with slogans such as "We Demand the Right to Serve", "For Men Must Fight and Women Must work" and "Let None Be Kaiser's Cat's Paws". At the meeting, attended by 30,000 people, Emmeline Pankhurst called on trade unions to let women work in those industries traditionally dominated by men.

By 1917 she had developed a very strong anti-German position. In one speech she argued: "We had to make a clean sweep of all persons of German blood, without distinction of sex, birthplace, or nationality." In the 1918 General Election she stood as an independent candidate in the Richmond constituency. During the campaign she argued that people of German birth should be deported from the country. She later recalled that "my own distrust of party politics made me chary of turning in this direction, and I preferred to stand as an Independent, going down with all other women candidates on this occasion, save one."

In 1922 she gave birth to a son. The father was Dudley Elam, who was already married to another woman. She now added "Elam" to her name by deep poll. According to Elizabeth Crawford: Having little interest in motherhood, arranged for a nanny to bring up her son. He was 9 years old before he realised that she was his mother."

Norah Elam now joined Flora Drummond and Elsie Bowerman to establish the Women's Guild of Empire, a right wing league opposed to communism. Drummond's biographer, Krista Cowman, pointed out: "When the war ended she was one of the few former suffragettes who attempted to continue the popular, jingoistic campaigning which the WSPU had followed from 1914 to 1918.... She founded the Women's Guild of Empire, an organization aimed at furthering a sense of patriotism in working-class women and defeating such socialist manifestations as strikes and lock-outs." She was also active in the Anti-Vivisection Society.

In the early 1930s she was living in Chichester with Dudley Elam. She was also an active member of the Conservative Party until she defected to the British Union of Fascist (BUF) in 1934. Her husband became an unpaid receptionist at the BUF's National Headquarters whereas Norah became the BUF County Women's Officer for West Sussex. She was also a regular contributor to BUF publications for the next six years.

It was not long before Norah Elam became very close to Oswald Mosley. The author of Femine Fascism: Women in Britain's Fascist Movement (2003) has pointed out: "Elam's status in the BUF and the sensitive tasks with which she was entrusted offer some substance to the BUF's claim to respect sexual equality. While, in principle, the movement was segregated by gender and women in positions of leadership were meant to have authority only over other women. Elam was quite evidently admitted to Mosley's inner circle."

In November 1936 Norah Elam was one of ten women the British Union of Fascists announced would be candidates in the next general election. Elam was selected to fight the Northampton constituency. Mosley used Norah's past as one of the leaders of the Women's Social and Political Union to counter the criticism that the BUF was anti-feminist. In one speech Norah Elam argued that her prospective candidacy for the House of Commons "killed for all time the suggestion that National Socialism proposed putting British women back in the home".

The outbreak of the Second World War reduced support for the British Union of Fascists. On 22nd May 1940 the British government announced the imposition of Defence Regulation 18B. This legislation gave the Home Secretary the right to imprison without trial anybody he believed likely to "endanger the safety of the realm". The following day, Norah Elam, Mosley, and other leaders of the BUF were arrested. On the 30th May the BUF was dissolved and its publications were banned.

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/Wdacrefox.htm

There is not doubt that technology is dramatically changing book publishing. As a result of the creation of an impressive e-book reader, the Kindle, we will now see a sharp fall in the number of titles from traditional book publishers. The fact that Kindle is owned by the world’s largest bookseller, Amazon, will increase the speed of this process. For example, most authors receive a maximum royalty of 10%. However, if you charge less than £9.99 for your e-book on Amazon, the author receives a 70% royalty. It is now possible for everyone to have their books on the JFK assassination published on e-books.

What the Kindle is not very good at is producing visual images. The best solution for this is to put these on your website (the latest versions give access to the internet).

In the short-term I think that these changes will increase the market for books that look more like comics and magazines. David Talbot has recently launched a new publisher called Pulp History. The first two titles are Devil Dog (Smedley Butler) and Shadow Knights (Special Operations Executive). I am very impressed with this format and it will be interesting if he plans to bring out a book on the JFK assassination.

http://pages.simonandschuster.com/pulphistory/home

Texas was the epicenter, well actually Dallas, for the extreme right in the 1960's, and as much as I would like to deny it is true, little or nothing has changed.

The most disgusting aspect of the Tea Party/Republican lovefest, was taking a thoroughly rational Obama Administration economic policy, and the Republican's and their media cronies morphing that into a rallying cry for the lowest common denominator.

Economic experts are fairly much in agreement, [unless they work for or are cited by Fox News] that reasonable spending is the biggest single stimulus

to extricating a nation from a "severe recession" the policy the Obama Administration used had even began to see an easing of the unemployment figures

which is confirmation that the measures which had been taken were having a tangible effect.

So, in essence, the Republican's throttled the Democrat's by sensationalizing, and distorting the facts regarding that the Administration was doing the very thing,

economically speaking they were supposed to do, by virtue of sound economic policy.

Unless you think "voodoo economics" was historically proven to be a great success. [Clue; It wasn't]

In essence, the Republican's throttled the Dem's in the Congressional races and the Governor's races, with the Dem's lone victory, if it can even be called that

being the non-election of the most extreme Tea-Party candidates. In reality, the latter is simply a victory of common sense.

And I will not give them the satisfaction of repeating their names.

Many conservatives are in denial about the fact that "new ideas" does not mean "new levels of hate-speech."

If you have heard the latest garbage on the politico's talkshows, the next step is either to impeach Obama. for what, didn't make sense to me, but when did

making sense become a criteria, to "shutting down the government, literally if Obama's health care reform is not overturned."

Which all goes to prove, to some degree, collective "deep-thinking" in America has been going to the sewer for some time now,

Irrespective of ones political affiliation, fostering hate, anger, distrust and a false populism that exists only in the media, isn't a recipe

for Democratic government, but it is a great way to destroy a culture.

You are right Robert that the only way out of this crisis is by increased public spending. UK currently has a government that is making massive cuts to public spending. It will not work of course. You only have to look at Ireland to see what happens when you do that. Their problems now are so great that they seem to be doomed. The cutting of public spending in other countries is making it so difficult for Obama's policies to work.

Do we have any supporters of the Tea Party on the Forum? I would be very interested in hearing how their economic policies would work?

In January 1896 Beatrice Webb and Sidney Webb invited Charlotte Payne-Townshend and George Bernard Shaw to their rented home in the village of Stratford St Andrew in Suffolk. Shaw took a strong liking to Charlotte. He wrote to Janet Achurch: "Instead of going to bed at ten, we go out and stroll about among the trees for a while. She, being also Irish, does not succumb to my arts as the unsuspecting and literal Englishwoman does; but we get on together all the better, repairing bicycles, talking philosophy and religion... or, when we are in a mischievous or sentimental humor, philandering shamelessly and outrageously." Beatrice wrote: "They were constant companions, pedaling round the country all day, sitting up late at night talking."

Shaw told Ellen Terry: "Kissing in the evening among the trees was very pleasant, but she knows the value of her unencumbered independence, having suffered a good deal from family bonds and conventionality before the death of her mother and the marriage of her sister left her free... The idea of tying herself up again by a marriage before she knows anything - before she has exploited her freedom and money power to the utmost."

When they returned to London she sent an affectionate letter to Shaw. He replied: "Don't fall in love: be your own, not mine or anyone else's.... From the moment that you can't do without me, you're lost... Never fear: if we want one another we shall find it out. All I know is that you made the autumn very happy, and that I shall always be fond of you for that."

Michael Holroyd has pointed out in his book, Bernard Shaw (1998): "Charlotte had an apprehension of sexual intercourse... Over the next eighteen months they seem to have found together a habit of careful sexual experience, reducing for her the risk of conception and preserving for him his subliminal illusions... Charlotte soon made herself almost indispensable to Shaw. She learnt to read his shorthand and to type, took dictation and helped him prepare his plays for the press."

Beatrice Webb recorded in her diary that Charlotte Payne-Townshend was clearly in love with George Bernard Shaw but she did not believe that he felt the same way: "I see no sign on his side of the growth of any genuine and steadfast affection." In July 1897 Charlotte proposed marriage. He rejected the idea because he was poor and she was rich and people might consider him a "fortune-hunter". He told Ellen Terry that the proposal was like an "earthquake" and "with shuddering horror and wildly asked the fare to Australia". Charlotte decided to leave Shaw and went to live in Italy.

In April 1898 Shaw had an accident. According to Shaw his left foot swelled up "to the size of a church bell". He wrote to Charlotte complaining that he was unable to walk. When she heard the news she travelled back to visit him at his home in Fitzroy Square. Soon after she arrived on 1st May she arranged for him to go into hospital. Shaw had an operation that scraped the necrosed bone clean.

Shaw's biographer, Stanley Weintraub, has pointed out: "In the conditions of non-care in which he lived at 29 Fitzroy Square with his mother (the Shaws had moved again on 5 March 1887), an unhealed foot injury required Shaw's hospitalization. On 1 June 1898, while on crutches and recuperating from surgery for necrosis of the bone, Shaw married his informal nurse, Charlotte Frances Payne-Townshend, at the office of the registrar at 15 Henrietta Street, Covent Garden. He was nearly forty-two; the bride, a wealthy Irishwoman born at Londonderry on 20 January 1857, thus a half-year younger than her husband, resided in some style at 10 Adelphi Terrace, London, overlooking the Embankment." George Bernard Shaw later told Wilfrid Scawen Blunt: "I thought I was dead, for it would not heal, and Charlotte had me at her mercy. I should never have married if I had thought I should get well."

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/Jshaw.htm

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/WshawC.htm

In 1913 Christabel Pankhurst published "The Great Scourge and How to End It". She argued that most men had venereal disease and that the prime reason for opposition to women's suffrage came from men concerned that enfranchised women would stop their promiscuity. Until they had the vote, she suggested that women should be wary of any sexual contact with men. Dora Marsden criticised Pankhurst for upholding the values of chastity, marriage and monogamy. She also pointed out in The Egoist on 2nd February 1914 that Pankhurst's statistics on venereal disease were so exaggerated that they made nonsense of her argument. Marsden concluded the article with the claim: "If Miss Pankhurst desires to exploit human boredom and the ravages of dirt she will require to call in the aid of a more subtle intelligence than she herself appears to possess." Other contributors to the journal joined in the attack on Pankhurst. The Canadian feminist, R. B. Kerr argued that "her obvious ignorance of life is a great handicap to Miss Pankhurst" (16th March, 1914) whereas Ezra Pound suggested that she "has as much intellect as a guinea pig" (1st July, 1914).

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/WpankhurstC.htm

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/WmarsdenD.htm

Rosamund Grosvenor, the daughter of Algernon Henry Grosvenor (1864-1907), was born in September 1888. Her grandfather was Robert Grosvenor (1801-1893), who was the 1st Baron Ebury. She was educated at Helen Wolff's school for girls, in Park Lane. Other pupils at the school were Violet Keppel and Vita Sackville-West. While at school she began an affair with Vita, who was 4 years her junior. Rosamund wrote to Vita: "Promise not to sit next to me tomorrow. It is not that I don't love you being near me, but that I cannot give my attention to the questions, I am - otherwise engrossed." Vita recorded in her diary "What a funny thing it is to love a person as I love Roddie (Rosamund)".

Later she wrote: "Oh, I dare say I realized vaguely that I had no business to sleep with Rosamund, and I should certainly never have allowed anyone to find it out". Vita admitted that the relationship was "almost entirely physical, as to be frank, she always bored me as a companion.

Under pressure from her mother, Victoria Sackville-West, Vita became engaged to the diplomat Harold Nicholson. He became concerned about her relationship with Rosamund. He was puzzled by Rosamund's subservient attitude to Vita. He mentioned this in a letter to Vita, who replied: "It is a pity and rather tiresome. But doesn't everyone want one subservient person in your life? I've got mine in her. Who is yours? Certainly not me!"

Vita later wrote in her autobiography: "It did not seem wrong to be... engaged to Harold, and at the same time so much in love with Rosamund... Our relationship (with Harold Nicholson) was so fresh, so intellectual, so unphysical, that I never thought of him in that aspect at all.... Some were born to be lovers, others to be husbands, he belongs to the latter category."

In 1910 Rosamund went to stay with Vita Sackville-West in Monte Carlo. Vita later recalled that "Rosamund was... invited by mother, not by me; I would never have dreamt of asking anyone to stay with me; I would never have dreamt of asking anyone to stay with me; even Violet had never spent more than a week at Knole: I resented invasion. Still, as Rosamund came, once she was there, I naturally spent most of the day with her, and after I had got back to England, I suppose it was resumed. I don't remember very clearly, but the fact remains that by the middle of that summer we were inseparable, and moreover were living on terms of the greatest possible intimacy.... Oh, I dare say I realized vaguely that I had no business to sleep with Rosamund, and I should certainly never have allowed anyone to find it out, but my sense of guilt went no further than that."

Rosamund became jealous of Vita's relationships with Harold Nicholson, Violet Keppel and Muriel Clark-Kerr, the sister of Archibald Clark-Kerr. Rosamund wrote to Vita: "Oh my sweet you do know don't you. Nothing can ever make me love you less whatever happens, and I really think you have taken all my love already as there seems very little left." After one love-making session she wrote: "My sweet darling... I do miss you darling one and I want to feel your soft cool face coming out of that mass of pussy fur like I did last night."

According to Nigel Nicolson: "Her (Vita) mother's fastidiousness and her father's reluctance to discuss any intimate subject with her deepened her sexual isolation. With Rosamund she tumbled into love, and bed, with a sort of innocence. At first it meant little more to her than cuddling a favourite dog or rabbit, and later she regarded the affair as more naughty than perverted, and took great pains to conceal it from her parents and Harold, fearing that exposure would mean the banishment of Rosamund."

Rosamund eventually realised that there was no future in her relationship with Vita and she became engaged to a 38 year old army officer, Reginald Raikes. She eventually married Captain Jack Lynch in 1924.

Rosamund Grosvenor Lynch was among those killed on 30th June, 1944, when a V1 Flying Bomb fell on the Savoy Chapel. A few days later, Vita Sackville-West wrote: "It has saddened me rather, that somebody so innocent, so silly and so harmless should be killed in this idiotic and violent way."

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/WgrosvenorR.htm

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/Jsackville.htm

Violet Keppel, the elder daughter of Alice Keppel, was born on 6th June 1894. Keppell was the mistress of Edward VII but it was later established that her real father was Ernest William Beckett (1856–1917), the Conservative MP for Whitby.

Violet was educated by a French governess and at Helen Wolff's school for girls, in Park Lane. Other pupils at the school were Vita Sackville-West and Rosamund Grosvenor. Violet described Vita as "tall for her age, gawky, dressed in what appeared to be her mother's old clothes."

While at school Vita began an affair with Rosamund, who was 4 years her junior. She then turned her attention to Violet. They spent a great deal of time at Vita's house, Knole House, near Sevenoaks. They also went on holiday to Pisa, Milan, and Florence together in 1908. The love affair came to an end when Vita married Harold Nicholson in 1913.

Vita was briefly engaged to Lord Gerald Wellesley before he married Dorothy Ashton. She had a more serious attachment to Julian Grenfell, who was killed during the First World War. In April 1918 she resumed her affair with Vita Sackville-West. Vita later wrote: "She lay on the sofa, I sat plunged in the armchair; she took my hands, and parted my fingers to count the points as she told me why she loved me... She pulled me down until I kissed her - I had not done so for many years."

The lovers travelled around Europe and collaborated on a novel, Challenge (1923), that was published in America but banned in Britain. During this period her marriage came under great pressure but as T. J. Hochstrasser points out: "However, this crisis in fact proved eventually to be the catalyst for Nicolson and Sackville-West to restructure their marriage satisfactorily so that they could both pursue a series of relationships through which they could fulfil their essentially homosexual identity while retaining a secure basis of companionship and affection."

Violet came under pressure from her mother, Alice Keppel, to bring an end to her affair with Vita Sackville-West. Reluctantly she married Denys Robert Trefusis, an officer in the Royal Horse Guards, on 16th June 1919. She did so on the understanding that the marriage would remain unconsummated, and she was still resolved to live with Vita. They resumed their affair just a few days after the wedding. The women moved to France in February 1920. However, Harold Nicholson followed them and eventually persuaded his wife to return to the family home.

Violet Trefusis moved to Paris where she become the lover of Princesse Edmond de Polignac (formerly Winnaretta Singer), daughter of the inventor of the sewing machine and heir to a massive fortune. Cyril Connolly said she had "magnificent’ eyes working in close support of her smile to produce an ironical, rather mocking expression" with a voice that was "low and quite bewitching, equally at home in French and English and seldom rising above a husky murmur". She rarely saw her husband, Denys Robert Trefusis, who died of tuberculosis in 1929.

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/Wtrefusis.htm

In the early 1920s Vita Sackville-West became romantically involved with Virginia Woolf. Vita's nephew, Quentin Bell, later recalled: "There may have been - on balance I think that there probably was - some caressing, some bedding together. But whatever may have occurred between them of this nature, I doubt very much whether it was of a kind to excite Virginia or to satisfy Vita. As far as Virginia's life is concerned the point is of no great importance; what was, to her, important was the extent to which she was emotionally involved, the degree to which she was in love. One cannot give a straight answer to such questions but, if the test of passions be blindness, then her affections were not very deeply engaged."

Mary Garman and Roy Campbell, met Vita Sackville-West in the village post office in May 1927. She invited them to dinner with her husband, Harold Nicolson. Other guests included Leonard Woolf, Virginia Woolf and Richard Aldington. Mary wrote to William Plomer about the dinner party: "Vita Nicolson appeared, and in her wake, Virginia Woolf, Richard Aldington and Leonard Woolf. They looked to me rather like intellectual wolves in sheep's clothing. Virginia's hand felt like the claw of a hawk. She has black eyes, light hair and a very pale face. He is weary and slightly distinguished. They are not very human." In September 1927 Vita began an affair with Mary Garman. Mary wrote: "You are sometimes like a mother to me. No one can imagine the tenderness of a lover suddenly descending to being maternal. It is a lovely moment when the mother's voice and hands turn into the lover's."

Later that month, Vita Sackville-West offered the Campbells the opportunity to live in a cottage in the grounds of Sissinghurst Castle. They accepted but later Roy Campbell objected when he discovered that his wife was having an affair with Vita: "It was then that we entered the most comically sordid and silly period of our lives. We were very stupid to relinquish our precarious independence in the tiny cottage for the professed hospitality of one of the Stately Homes of England, which proved to be something between a psychiatry clinic and a posh brothel."

When Campbell was in London he told C.S. Lewis of the affair he replied: "Fancy being cuckolded by a woman!" According to Cressida Connolly: "Roy was a proud man, and this remark so punctured his pride that he returned to Kent in a towering rage. A terrified Mary took refuge at Long Barn, where Dorothy Wellesley sat up all night with a shotgun across her knees." Campbell had a meeting with Vita Sackville-West about the affair. Afterwards he wrote: "I am tired of trying to hate you and I realize that there is no way in which I could harm you (as I would have liked to) without equally harming us all. I do not dislike any of your personal characteristics and I liked you very much before I knew anything. All this acrimony on my part is due rather to our respective positions in this tangle."

It was agreed that the affair would come to an end. However, Mary Garman found the situation very difficult and wrote to Vita: "Is the night never coming again when I can spend hours in your arms, when I can realise your big sort of protectiveness all round me, and be quite naked except for a covering of your rose leaf kisses?" When Roy Campbell went into hospital to have his appendix out, the relationship resumed.

Virginia Woolf was very jealous of the affair. She wrote to Vita: "I rang you up just now to find you were gone nutting in the woods with Mary Campbell... but not me - damn you." It is believed that Woolf's novel Orlando was influenced by the affair. In October 1927 Virginia wrote to Vita: "Suppose Orlando turns out to be about Vita; and its all about you and the lusts of your flesh and the lure of your mind (heart you have none, who go gallivanting down the lanes with Campbell) - suppose there's the kind of shimmer of reality which sometimes attaches to my people... Shall you mind?"

Vita Sackville-West replied that she thrilled and terrified "at the prospect of being projected into the shape of Orlando". She added: "What fun for you; what fun for me. You see, any vengeance that you want to take will be ready in your hand... You have my full permission." Orlando, was published in October 1928, with three pictures of Vita among its eight photographic illustrations. Dedicated to Vita, the novel, published in 1928, traces the history of the youthful, beautiful, and aristocratic Orlando, and explores the themes of sexual ambiguity.

After reading the book, Mary Garman wrote to Vita: "I hate the idea that you who are so hidden and secret and proud even with people you know best, should be suddenly presented so nakedly for anyone to read about... Vita darling you have been so much Orlando to me that how can I help absolutely understanding and loving the book... Through all the slight mockery which is always in the tone of Virginia's voice, and the analysis etc., Orlando is written by someone who loves you so obviously."

Vita also wrote several sonnets about Mary. These appeared in King's Daughter (1929). After the book was published she wrote to her husband, Harold Nicolson: "It has occurred to me that people will think them Lesbian... I should not like this, either for my own sake or yours."Roy Campbell responded to the affair by writing the long satirical poem, The Georgiad. The poem caused a furore in the literary world as Campbell castigated the Bloomsbury Group. This included Vita who he described as the "frowsy poetess" in the poem:

Too gaunt and bony to attract a man

But proud in love to scavenge what she can,

Among her peers will set some cult in fashion

Where pedantry may masquerade as passion.

Roy Campbell wrote to his friend Percy Wyndham Lewis: "Since The Georgiad (I hear) the Nicolson menage has become very Strindbergian. Each accusing the other for it and smashing the furniture about: but they are rotten to the core and I don't care about any personal harm I have done them - I take their internal disturbances as a justification of The Georgiad."

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/Jsackville.htm

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/Jwoolf.htm

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/SPgarmanM.htm

It was reported in yesterday's Guardian that Binyamin Netanyahu defied Obama with his policies in Israel to boost the chances of his Republican allies in Congress.

i think its propaganda on the right and incompetence on the left. the left government seems to be more concerned with social issues, the economics of the heartland are really bad. the fierce and immoral propaganda seems to have been ignored by the left. maybe we will stop hearing the bogus socialism charge. i am beginning to think socialism means anybody who cares in the least for anybody but themself.

Viryually all elections are based on economic factors. In the last three years six million Americans have fallen below the poverty line. Official unemployment is close to one in ten. Two and a half million people have had their homes repossessed and living standards are dropping. Most importantly of all, despite a massive increase in public spending, the recovery appears to be on the verge of going into reverse.

Although these problems started under Bush, it is clear that Obama has failed to halt the economic decline. This is an impossible task. We have the same problem in the UK and the rest of Western Europe. (Although our welfare systems is protecting us better from the economic fall-out than the US.) We are all faced with the same economic problem, the takeover of manufacturing by the low-wage economies and a reluctance of those with money, to invest in the home economy.

The problem for the US is that the solution to the problem (increased government control of the economy) is unacceptable to large sections of the American population. Therefore, economic decline will continue. Even so, I still think Obama will win in two years time because the Tea Party group will only weaken the Republicans and I suspect they will be unable to come up with a candidate who is able to beat him.

In 1917 William Orpen was commissioned to paint two British Flying Aces: Arthur Rhys-Davids and Reginald Hoidge. Within a few weeks, Rhys-Davids was killed in action. You can see the paintings here:

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/FWWdavids.htm

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/FWWhoidge.htm

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/ARTorpen.htm

Meanwhile... here we are a month on and it seems to be a case of 1 step forward, 2 steps back, step sideways, go to step forward, hesitate, after you, no after you...

The performance against Newcastle was an almighty step back - all the way back to the Wolves debacle last season. Our inability to pass the ball to another West Ham shirt in the second half was literally breath-taking.

Since then there's been a bit of progression. We've progressedin the League Cup and put up a much better fist of it at Arsenal.

Now, we're being told that Grant has 3 days to save his job. I'm hoping that is just paper talk as I've never believed chopping and changing the manager is good practise.

I do hope they don't sack Grant. Except for the terrible performance against Newcastle (I think they are an under-rated team) they have been much better over the last six weeks. He would have got a draw against Arsenal if he had not brought on Faubert for the last few minutes. The real problem that we have got is that there is not one really bad team in the premier league this season. I hope more than believe that we will finish fourth from bottom and will win the Carling Cup.

Greg,

Do you think so? I've been disappointed with Obama's performance, but is it enough to drive people to the likes of Sarah Palin?

As in the UK the people of the US seem disillusioned with mainstream politicians. The Tea Party candidates seem both politically and economically, illiterate.

Stella Browne was an active member of the Freewoman Discussion Circles. Talks included Edith Ellis (Some Problems of Eugenics), Rona Robinson (Abolition of Domestic Drudgery), C. H. Norman (The New Prostitution), Huntley Carter (The Dances of the Stars) and Guy Aldred (Sex Oppression and the Way Out). Other active members included Grace Jardine, Harriet Shaw Weaver, Edmund Haynes, Harry J. Birnstingl, Charlotte Payne-Townshend Shaw, Rebecca West, Havelock Ellis, Lily Gair Wilkinson, Françoise Lafitte-Cyon and Rose Witcup.

In 1913 Stella Browne, joined forces with George Ives, Edward Carpenter, Magnus Hirschfeld and Laurence Housman to establish the British Society for the Study of Sex Psychology. The papers she gave to the society, included "The sexual variety and variability among women and their bearing upon social reconstruction" (1915).

Browne published Studies in Female Inversion in 1918: "This problem of feminine inversion is very pressing and immediate, taking into consideration the fact that in the near future, for at least a generation, the circumstances of women's lives and work will tend, even more than at present, to favor the frigid (sexually repressed) and next to the frigid, the inverted types. Even at present, the social and affectional side of the invert's nature has often fuller opportunity of satisfaction than the heterosexual woman's, but often at the cost of adequate and definite physical expression. I think it is perhaps not wholly uncalled-for, to underline very strongly my opinion that the homosexual impulse is not in any way superior to the normal; it has a fully equal right to existence and expression, it is no worse, no lower; but no better."

According to her biographer, Lesley A. Hall: "Browne emphasized the need for women to speak about their own experiences. In both principle and practice Stella was a convinced believer in free love, known to have had various lovers, certainly some male, and possibly some female, though these cannot be reliably identified."

Browne, a member of the Malthusian League, campaigned strongly for birth control and abortion. She was also a member of the Divorce Law Reform Union, the No-Conscription Fellowship, the Humanitarian League, the Fabian Society, the Labour Party and the Communist Party of Great Britain.

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/WbrowneST.htm

Ted Sorensen was perhaps the greatest writer of political rhetoric in modern times. However, like almost all the "Best and Brightest" who surrounded President Kennedy, he was hardly a profile in courage on the subject of the assassination.

When David Talbot was researching his book Brothers, Sorensen told him that the events in Dallas were still too difficult for him to discuss. Could anything be more absurd? An employee who is still unable to talk about his boss's murder, which happened some four decades ago? If JFK was as dear to him as his writings invariably maintain, then he ought to have been somewhat concerned about the circumstances of his death. Didn't all those years of public controversy and mystery, the best selling books, radio shows and HSCA hearings, intrigue this stalwart soldier of Camelot just a little bit?

Sorensen's attitude towards "conspiracy theories" was establishment 101: he proclaimed himself an "agnostic" on the subject, but said he'd "never seen any evidence" to indicate the Warren Commission's findings were in error.

It's too bad that his political convictions never lived up to those beautiful, stirring words.

This is what he said about the assassination in his book, Kennedy (1965):

He (Kennedy) would not have condemned the Dallas police, the FBI and the Secret Service. Certainly there were limitations on their ability to guard an active, strong-willed President in a free society, and certainly to this President his agents were deeply devoted. Yet we can never be certain what prevented a more alert coordination of all the known facts on the Kennedy route and the potential Kennedy assassin.

He would not, finally, have doubted the conclusions of guilt pronounced by the Warren Commission. Certainly the members and staff of that Commission deserve the highest praise for their painstaking investigation and report. Yet, in the Commission's own words, "because of the difficulty of proving negatives to a certainty, the possibility of others being involved ... cannot be established categorically"; and thus we can never be absolutely certain whether some other hand might not have coached, coaxed or coerced the hand of President Kennedy's killer.

Personally I accept the conclusion that no plot or political motive was involved, despite the fact that this makes the deed all the more difficult to accept. For a man as controversial yet beloved as John Kennedy to be killed for no real reason or cause denies us even the slight satisfaction of drawing some meaning or moral from his death. We can say only that he died as he would have wanted to die-at the center of action, being applauded by his friends and assaulted by his foes, carrying his message of reason and progress to the enemy and fulfilling his duty as party leader.

He regarded Dallas' reputation for extremism as a good reason to include it on his schedule, not a good reason to avoid it. For, with all his deep commitments, Kennedy was fanatical on only one subject: his opposition to fanatics, foreign as well as domestic, Negro as well as white, on the Left as well as the Right. He was against violence in foreign relations and in human relations. He asked his countrymen to live peacefully with each other and with the world. Mental illness and crime, racial and religious hatred, economic discontent and class warfare, ignorance and fear of this world's complex burdens, malice and madness in the individual and society-these are the causes contributing to the atmosphere of violence in which a President may be assassinated-and these are the very evils which John Kennedy strove most often to root out.

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKsorenson.htm

Interesting article in today's Guardian about the writing of Kennedy's resonant inaugural address of January 1961.

The speech is now acclaimed as one of the classics of American political rhetoric, fit to stand with the outpourings of Daniel Webster, Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt. Almost every schoolchild of the 1960s was brought up on that speech, with its key invocation, "Ask not what your country can do for you – ask what you can do for your country. My fellow citizens of the world: ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man."

It was characteristic of Sorensen's modesty, and of his wit, and no doubt of his boredom with the subject, that when – many years after Kennedy's assassination in November 1963 – an interviewer asked him what his part had been in the writing of that speech, he replied: "Ask not!"

It is agreed that several gifted hands, including that of Adlai Stevenson, contributed to it, and that Kennedy dictated it to his secretary, Evelyn Lincoln, on a plane, using a draft written for him by Sorensen. The dispute centres on how much Kennedy used that draft.

In 2005, two rival scholars, after poring over the speech and its antecedents line by line and almost word by word, came to two opposite conclusions. Thurston Clarke proclaimed that new evidence showed that Kennedy was indeed the author. Richard J Tofel, on the other hand, an executive at the Wall Street Journal, found that Kennedy was responsible for no more than 14 of the speech's 51 sentences, and that "if we must identify" one man as the author of the speech, "that man must surely be not John Kennedy but Theodore Sorensen". It seems, though, that the famous "ask not" trope itself had its origin in Kennedy's years at the Choate school, a boarding establishment in Connecticut, whose headteacher liked to urge his pupils to ask "not what Choate does for you, but what you can do for Choate".

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/nov/01/theodore-sorensen-obituary

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKsorenson.htm

In 1956, John Kennedy won a Pulitzer Prize for his book, Profiles in Courage. Rumours began to circulate that the book had actually been written by his friend, Ted Sorensen. The following year, the investigative journalist, Drew Pearson, wrote: "Jack Kennedy is the only man in history that I know who won a Pulitzer prize on a book which was ghostwritten for him." Kennedy fiercely denied it, and Sorensen signed an affidavit confirming Kennedy's story that the book was all his own work. According to the historian, Godfrey Hodgson: "Later Kennedy offered, and Sorensen accepted, a substantial sum as his share in the proceeds of the book."

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKsorenson.htm

The Egoist: An Individualist Review began in January 1914. Dora Marsden used the journal to attack the leading members of the Women Social & Political Union. In 1913 Christabel Pankhurst published The Great Scourge and How to End It. She argued that most men had venereal disease and that the prime reason for opposition to women's suffrage came from men concerned that enfranchised women would stop their promiscuity. Until they had the vote, she suggested that women should be wary of any sexual contact with men. Marsden criticized Pankhurst for upholding the values of chastity, marriage and monogamy. She also pointed out in The Egoist on 2nd February 1914 that Pankhurst's statistics on venereal disease were so exaggerated that they made nonsense of her argument. Marsden concluded the article with the claim: "If Miss Pankhurst desires to exploit human boredom and the ravages of dirt she will require to call in the aid of a more subtle intelligence than she herself appears to possess." Other contributors to the journal joined in the attack on Pankhurst. The Canadian feminist, R. B. Kerr argued that "her obvious ignorance of life is a great handicap to Miss Pankhurst" (16th March, 1914) whereas Ezra Pound suggested that she "has as much intellect as a guinea pig" (1st July, 1914).

Marsden continued to criticize the WSPU. On 15th June, 1914, attacked Emmeline Pankhurst for being under the control of a small group of rich women: "Mrs Pankhurst required at the outset, for the sake of backing, women with money and with some capacity: when she obtained these she drew the limiting line which would keep out women with accepted followings and too much ability: that is unless they came with ashes in their hair, repentance in one hand and passivity in the other. Then on the principle of the Eastern potentate who illustrated the practice of good government by lopping off the heads of all the stalks of grain which grew higher than the rest, she by one means or another rid her group of all its members unlikely by virtue of personality, conspicuous ability, or undocile temper, to prove flexible material in the great cause. The gaps thus made she filled up with units of stock size."

Ezra Pound wanted the The Egoist to become more of a literary journal. In early 1914 he persuaded Dora Marsden to serializeA Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, an experimental novel written by James Joyce.

In the summer of 1914 Dora Marsden handed over the editorship of the The Egoist to Harriet Shaw Weaver. She now assumed the role of contributing editor. This allowed her to concentrate on her philosophical research and writings. However, both women were concerned by the poor sales figures of the journal. After briefly reaching 1,000 copies it had now fallen to a circulation figure of 750.

In The Egoist on the 1st June, 1915, Dora Marsden argued the "delayers of peace are those who would temper down the ferocity which would wage war only at its deadliest". Marsden also supported conscription. In the journal she claimed that "everything which militates against the British Empire becoming a military camp until victory is assured is treason". Marsden believed that arming the male population would lead to revolution. She suggested that "men who have prepared themselves to defend their country will find themselves better equipped to defend themselves".

Marsden's biographer, Les Garner, has pointed out: "Revolutionary Socialists might have sympathized with this but had a far more rigorous attitude to the war. Like Lenin, they saw the war largely as a battle between German and British capitalism for trade, markets and profit. The only benefit they envisaged was that by increasing economic and social crisis within the warring countries, class consciousness and thus the revolution would be hastened. Arming the workers as soldiers would help to this end. But this position envisaged the arming of a class not a hotch-potch of disparate individuals. It saw the war in economic terms and not merely as a clash of national interests, a sort of Egoism writ large. Dora's analysis clearly did not fit this position - or indeed any other. She was alienated from the liberal suffragist pacifist view and also from the jingos. Once again, she was on her own."

In January 1916, Harriet Shaw Weaver argued that despite poor sales she was determined to continue supporting the journal. "It has skirted all movements and caught on to none.... The Egoist is wedded to no belief from which it is willing to be divorced. To probe to the depths of human nature, to keep its curiosity in it fresh and alert, to regard nothing in human nature as foreign to it, but to hold itself ready to bring to the surface what may be found, without any pre-determination to fling back all but unwelcome facts - such are the high and uncommon pretensions upon which it bases its claims to provenance."

James Joyce failed to find a publisher for A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. The owner of journal, Harriet Shaw Weaver agreed to establish the Egotist Press and the book was published in February 1917. The book was praised by critics such as H. G. Wells but failed to sell.

In January 1919 The Egoist: An Individualist Review began the serialization of Joyce's Ulysses. However, sales of the journal had fallen from 1,000 in May 1915 to 400 and Harriet Shaw Weaver, decided to bring the journal to an end.

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/Jegoist.htm

Dora Marsden appealed to readers of "The Freewoman" to help fund a new magazine. Teresa Billington-Greig and Charlotte Payne-Townshend Shaw both sent money. Lilian McErie also contributed: "No paper has given me keener pleasure than yours. Its fearlessness and fairness made all lovers and seekers after truth respect it and love it even while differing from many of the opinions expressed therein."

In February 1913 Dora Marsden met Harriet Shaw Weaver, who had just inherited a large sum of money from her father. As Les Garner, the author of A Brave and Beautiful Spirit, pointed out: "They were in many ways totally unsuited - on the one hand, the rebellious, radical intellectual and on the other, the quiet, modest, unassuming and orderly Weaver. Yet they took an immediate liking towards each other - Weaver impressed by Dora's intelligence and indeed, her beauty, and Dora by Harriet's keen but systematic approach to the re-launch of the paper. Dora had originally just wanted a chat but they ended up in effect having a business meeting while all the time establishing their mutual respect and admiration".

The New Freewoman was launched in June 1913. The journal, published fortnightly, was priced at 6d but readers were asked to pay £1 in advance for 18 months' copies. Dora Marsden wrote in the first edition: "The New Freewoman is not for the advancement of Women, but for the empowering of individuals - men and women.... Editorially, it will endeavour to lay bare the individual basis of all that is most significant in modern movements including feminism. It will continue The Freewoman's policy of ignoring in its discussion all existing taboos in the realms of morality and religion."

Harriet Shaw Weaver put up £200 to fund the magazine and this gave her a controlling interest in the venture. Dora Marsden was editor, Rebecca West assistant editor and Grace Jardine (sub-editor and editorial secretary). The women were all employed on a salary of £1 a week. Later, Ezra Pound, became the journal's literary editor.

H. G. Wells welcomed the new magazine: "I rejoice beyond all measure in the revival of The Freewoman. Its policy even at its worse was a wholesome weekly irritant." Benjamin Tucker said "I consider your paper the most important publication in existence." Winifred Leisenring, the secretary of the Blavatsky Institute, argued that the journal "will educate women and men to think in terms of true freedom, and show them that real individuality exists apart from all our accepted standards."

Elizabeth Crawford pointed out that "Marsden... continued her attack on the Pankhursts, using the death of Emily Wilding Davison to highlight her conviction that they were prepared to make use of dedicated individuals, who otherwise were considered as trouble-makers, only when it suited them." Marsden wrote on 15th June, 1913: "Davson's death was merely to give a crowd of degenerate orgiastics a new sensation... Causes are the diversion of the feeble - of those who have lost the power of acting strongly from their own nature."

Dora Marsden and Harriet Shaw Weaver became very close. Dora wrote to Harriet claiming that "you have been a perfect treasure to me and the paper". Harriet wrote back expressing her love for Dora. Rebecca West also enjoyed working under Dora, telling her that she was a "wonderful person, you not only write these wonderful first pagers but you inspire other people to write wonderfully."

The New Freewoman gradually moved away from its feminist origins. George Lansbury complained about Marsden's abandonment of socialism and others disliked the emphasis she placed on individualism. Her critics included Rebecca West who resigned her post in October 1913 having become disillusioned with the direction the journal was taking. Later she admitted she strongly disapproved of Dora's "aggressive individualism" and her "egotistic philosophy". Dora replaced Rebecca with the young poet, Richard Aldington.

At a director's meeting on 25th November 1913, it was decided to change the name of the The New Freewoman to The Egoist. Bessie Heyes complained to Harriet Shaw Weaver about the change of name. "Don't you yourself think that the paper is not accomplishing what we intend to do? I had such hopes of The New Freewoman and it seems utterly changed." The journal lasted for only seven months and thirteen issues. During this time it only obtained 400 or so regular readers.

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/WfreewomanN.htm

In March 1911 Dora Marsden and her close friend, Grace Jardine, went to work for the Women's Freedom League newspaper, The Vote. Marsden attempted to persuade the WFL to finance a new feminist journal. When this proposal was refused, Marsden left. She now joined forces with Jardine and Mary Gawthorpe to establish her own journal. Charles Granville, agreed to become the publisher. On 23rd November, 1911, they published the first edition of The Freewoman. The journal caused a storm when it advocated free love and encouraged women not to get married. The journal also included articles that suggested communal childcare and co-operative housekeeping.

Mary Humphrey Ward, the leader of Anti-Suffrage League argued that the journal represented "the dark and dangerous side of the Women's Movement". According to Ray Strachey, the leader of the National Union of Suffrage Societies (NUWSS), Millicent Fawcett, read the first edition and "thought it so objectionable and mischievous that she tore it up into small pieces". Whereas Maude Royden described it as a "nauseous publication". Edgar Ansell commented that it was "a disgusting publication... indecent, immoral and filthy."

Other feminists were much more supportive, Ada Nield Chew, argued that the was "meat and drink to the sincere student who is out to learn the truth, however unpalatable that truth may be." Benjamin Tucker commented that it was "the most important publication in existence". Floyd Dell, who worked for the Chicago Evening Post argued that before the arrival of The Freewoman: "I had to lie about the feminist movement. I lied loyally and hopefully, but I could not have held out much longer. Your paper proves that feminism has a future as well as a past." Guy Aldred pointed out: "I think your paper deserves to succeed. I will use my influence in the anarchist movement to this end." Others showed their support for the venture by writing without payment for the journal. This included Teresa Billington-Greig, Rebecca West, H. G. Wells, Edward Carpenter, Havelock Ellis, Stella Browne, C. H. Norman, Edmund Haynes, Catherine Gasquoine Hartley, Huntley Carter, Lily Gair Wilkinson and Rose Witcup.

Edwin Bjorkman, writing in the American Review of Reviews, was a great fan of the writing of Dora Marsden: "The writer of The Freewoman editorials has shot into the literary and philosophical firmament as a star of the first magnitude. Although practically unknown before the advent of The Freewoman ... she speaks always with the quietly authoritative air of the writer who has arrived. Her style has beauty as well as force and clarity."

Marsden also attacked the WSPU's strategy of employing militant tactics. She argued that the autocracy of Emmeline Pankhurst and Christabel Pankhurst prevented independent thought and encouraged followers to become "bondwomen". Marsden went on to suggest "the paramount interest of the WSPU was neither the emancipation of women, nor the vote, but the increase in power of their own organisation." On 7th March, 1912, she wrote: "The Pankhurst party have lost their forthright desire for enfranchisement in their outbalancing desire to raise their own organisation to a position of dictatorship amongst all women's organisations.... The vote was only of secondary importance to the leaders... before every other consideration, political, social or moral comes the aggrandisement of the WSPU itself and the increase of power of their own organisation."

The most controversial aspect of the The Freewoman was its support for free-love. On 23rd November, 1911 Rebecca West wrote an article where she claimed: "Marriage had certain commercial advantages. By it the man secures the exclusive right to the woman's body and by it, the woman binds the man to support her during the rest of her life... a more disgraceful bargain was never struck."

On 28th December 1911, Dora Marsden began a five-part series on morality. Dora argued that in the past women had been encouraged to restrain their senses and passion for life while "dutifully keeping alive and reproducing the species". She criticised the suffrage movement for encouraging the image of "female purity" and the "chaste ideal". Dora suggested that this had to be broken if women were to be free to lead an independent life. She made it clear that she was not demanding sexual promiscuity for "to anyone who has ever got any meaning out of sexual passion the aggravated emphasis which is bestowed upon physical sexual intercourse is more absurd than wicked."

Dora Marsden went on to attack traditional marriage: "Monogamy was always based upon the intellectual apathy and insensitiveness of married women, who fulfilled their own ideal at the expense of the spinster and the prostitute." According to Marsden monogamy's four cornerstones were "men's hypocrisy, the spinster's dumb resignation, the prostitute's unsightly degradation and the married woman's monopoly." Marsden then added "indissoluble monogamy is blunderingly stupid, and reacts immorally, producing deceit, sensuality, vice, promiscuity and an unfair monopoly."

Dora argued that it would be better if women had a series of monogamous relationships. Les Garner, the author of A Brave and Beautiful Spirit (1990) has argued: "How far her views were based on her own experience it is difficult to tell. Yet the notion of a passionate but not necessarily sexual relationship would perhaps adequately describe her friendship with Mary Gawthorpe, if not others too. Certainly, her argument would appeal to single women like herself who had sexual desires and feelings but were not allowed to express them - unless, of course, in marriage. Even then, sex, for women at least, was supposed to be reserved for procreation."

Charlotte Payne-Townshend Shaw, the wife of George Bernard Shaw, wrote to Dora Marsden "though there has been much I have not agreed with in the paper", The Freewoman was nevertheless a "valuable medium of self-expression for a clever set of young men and women". However, Olive Schreiner disagreed and argued that the debates about sexuality were inappropriate and revolting in a publication of "the women's movement". Frank Watts wrote a letter to the journal that if women really wanted to discuss sex "then it must be admitted by sane observers that man in the past was exercising a sure instinct in keeping his spouse and girl children within the sheltered walls of ignorance."

Harry J. Birnstingl praised Marsden for raising the subject of homosexuality. He added: "It apparently has never occurred to them that numbers of these women find their ultimate destiny, as it were, among members of their own sex, working for the good of each other, forming romantic - nay passionate - attachments with each other? It is splendid that these women... should suddenly find their destiny in thus working together for the freedom of their own sex. It is one of the most wonderful things of the twentieth century."

The articles on sexuality created a great deal of controversy. However, they were very popular with the readers of the journal. In February 1912, Ethel Bradshaw, secretary of the Bristol branch of the Fabian Women's Group, suggested that readers formed Freewoman Discussion Circles. Soon afterwards they had their first meeting in London and other branches were set up in other towns and cities.

Some of the talks that took place in the Freewoman Discussion Circles included Edith Ellis (Some Problems of Eugenics), Rona Robinson (Abolition of Domestic Drudgery), C. H. Norman (The New Prostitution), Huntley Carter (The Dances of the Stars) and Guy Aldred (Sex Oppression and the Way Out). Other active members included Harriet Shaw Weaver, Stella Browne, Edmund Haynes, Harry J. Birnstingl, Charlotte Payne-Townshend Shaw, Rebecca West, Havelock Ellis, Lily Gair Wilkinson, Françoise Lafitte-Cyon and Rose Witcup.

By the summer of 1912 Dora Marsden had become disillusioned with the parliamentary system and no longer considered it important to demand women's suffrage: "The politics of the community are a mere superstructure, built upon the economic base... even though Mr. George Lansbury were Prime Minister and every seat in the House occupied by Socialist deputies, the capitalist system being what it is they would be powerless to effect anything more than the slow paced reform of which the sole aim is to make men and masters settle down in a comfortable but unholy alliance... the capitalists own the states. A handful of private capitalists could make England, or any other country, bankrupt within a week."

This article brought a rebuke from H. G. Wells: That you do not know what you want in economic and social organization, that the wild cry for freedom which makes me so sympathetic with your paper, and which echoes through every column of it, is unsupported by the ghost of a shadow of an idea how to secure freedom. What is the good of writing that economic arrangements will have to be adjusted to the Soul of Man if you are not prepared with anything remotely resembling a suggestion of how the adjustment is to be affected?"

Mary Gawthorpe also criticised Dora Marsden for her what she called her "philosophical anarchism". She told her that she "was not really an anarchist at all" but one who believed in rank, with herself at the top. Mary added: "Intellectually you have signed on as a member of the coming aristocracy. Free individuals you would have us be, but you would have us in our ranks... I watch you from week to week governing your paper. You have your subordinates. You say to one go and she goes, to another come, and she comes."

Mary Gawthorpe had suffered severe internal injuries after being beaten up by stewards at a meeting. She was also imprisoned several times and hunger strikes and force-feeding badly damaged her health and in March 1912, she was unable to continue working as co-editor of The Freewoman. Marsden wrote in the journal that "we earnestly hope that the coming months will see her restored to health". Although Mary was ill, she had not resigned on health grounds, but because of what she claimed was "Dora's bullying" and her "philosophical anarchism". Gawthorpe returned all Dora's letters and asked her not to write again: "The sight of your letters I am obliged to confess turns me white with emotion and I have acute heart attacks following on from that."

In the edition published on 18th June 1912, Ada Nield Chew created further controversy with an article on the role of women in marriage. She argued that the emancipation of women depended on their gaining economic independence and rejecting the idea that their natural lifelong vocation was domestic and maternal. Ada, a working-class woman with children, added that: "A married woman dependent on her husband earns her living by her sex... Why, in the name of reason and common sense, should we condemn a mother to be a life-long parasite because she has had one or more babies to care for?"

In September 1912, The Freewoman was banned by W. H. Smith because "the nature of certain articles which have been appearing lately are such as to render the paper unsuitable to be exposed on the bookstalls for general sale." Dora Marsden argued that this was not the only reason the journal was banned: "The animosity we rouse is not roused on the subject of sex discussion. It is aroused on the question of capitalism. The opposition in the capitalist press only broke out when we began to make it clear that the way out of the sex problem was through the door of the economic problem."

Charles Grenville wrote to Dora Marsden complaining that the journal was losing about £20 a week and told her he was thinking of withdrawing as the publisher of the magazine. Marsden replied: "You have put money into the paper. I have put in the whole of my brain, power and personality. Without your money I would not have started, without my brain the paper could not have lived and shown the signs of flourishing which it undoubtedly has."

When Edward Carpenter realised the journal was being brought to an end, he wrote to Dora Marsden: "The Freewoman did so well during its short career under your editorship, it was so broad-minded and courageous that its cessation has been real loss to the cause of free and rational discussion of human problems."

The last edition appeared on 10th October 1912. Dora Marsden told her readers: "The editorial work has not been easy. We have been hemmed in on every side by lack of funds. We have, moreover, been promoting a constructive creed, which had not only to be erected as we went along, we had also to deal with the controversy which this constructive creed left in its wake.... The entire campaign has been carried on indeed only at the cost of a total expenditure of energy, and we, therefore, do not hold it possible to continue the same amount of work, with diminished resources, if in addition, we have to bear the entire anxiety of securing such resources as are to be at our disposal."

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Rona Robinson studied at Owens College and in 1905 she became the first woman in the United Kingdom to gain a first-class degree in chemistry.

Robinson went to work at the Altrincham Pupil-Teacher Centre where she taught Science and Mathematics. A fellow teacher was Dora Marsden. The women were both interested in women's suffrage and eventually joined the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU).

In March 1909 Robinson and Marsden resigned from the Pupil-Teacher Centre to become paid organisers of the WSPU. Later that month she was arrested with Emily Wilding Davison, Patricia Woodlock and Helen Tolson, at a demonstration outside the House of Commons. It was reported in The Times: "the exertions of the women, most of whom were quite young and of indifferent physique, had told upon them and they were showing signs of exhaustion, which made their attempt to break the police line more pitiable than ever." Robinson was sentenced to a month's imprisonment.

On 22nd September 1909 Rona Robinson, Charlotte Marsh, Mary Leigh and Laura Ainsworth conducted a rooftop protest at Bingley Hall, Birmingham, where Herbert Asquith was addressing a meeting from which all women had been excluded. Using an axe, Leigh removed slates from the roof and threw them at the police below. Sylvia Pankhurst later recalled: "No sooner was this effected, however, than the rattling of missiles was heard on the other side of the hall, and on the roof of the house, thirty feet above the street, lit up by a tall electric standard was seen the little agile figure of Mary Leigh, with a tall fair girl (Charlotte Marsh) beside her. Both of them were tearing up the slates with axes, and flinging them onto the roof of the Bingley Hall and down into the road below-always, however, taking care to hit no one and sounding a warning before throwing. The police cried to them to stop and angry stewards came rushing out of the hall to second this demand, but the women calmly went on with their work."

As Michelle Myall has pointed out: "The police attempted to move the two women by, among other methods, turning a hosepipe on them and throwing stones. However, Charlotte Marsh and Mary Leigh proved to be formidable opponents and were only brought down from the roof when three policeman dragged them down."

Robinson, Mary Leigh, Charlotte Marsh and Laura Ainsworth were all sentenced to two weeks' imprisonment. On arriving at Winson Green Prison, on 22nd September, she broke the window in her cell in protest, demanding to be treated as a political offender. "Accordingly at nine o'clock in the evening I was taken to the punishment cell, a cold dark room on the ground floor - light only shines on very bright days - with no furniture in it." The four women decided to go on hunger-strike, a strategy developed by Marion Wallace-Dunlop a few weeks earlier. Wallace-Dunlop had been immediately released when she had tried this in Holloway Prison, but the governor of Winson Green Prison, was willing to feed the three women by force.

Mary Leigh later described what it was like to be force-fed: "On Saturday afternoon the wardress forced me onto the bed and two doctors came in. While I was held down a nasal tube was inserted. It is two yards long, with a funnel at the end; there is a glass junction in the middle to see if the liquid is passing. The end is put up the right and left nostril on alternative days. The sensation is most painful - the drums of the ears seem to be bursting and there is a horrible pain in the throat and the breast. The tube is pushed down 20 inches. I am on the bed pinned down by wardresses, one doctor holds the funnel end, and the other doctor forces the other end up the nostrils. The one holding the funnel end pours the liquid down - about a pint of milk... egg and milk is sometimes used."

On her release from prison, Rona attended a meeting at the ballroom, White City, Manchester, when along with Dora Marsden and Emily Wilding Davison she received the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) Hunger Strike Medal from Emmeline Pankhurst.

In October 1909, Robinson, Dora Marsden and Mary Gawthorpe decided to take part in another protest. According to Les Garner, the author of A Brave and Beautiful Spirit (1990): "Dressed in University gowns they entered the meeting and just before Morley began, raised the question of the recent forced feeding of women in Winson Green. There was an uproar, and the three were quickly bundled out and arrested on the pavement." This time they were released without charge.

Votes for Women reported on 8th October 1909: "No one who knows these three women graduates, or who glances at the numerous photographs which have appeared in the Press can fail to be struck with the pathos of the incident. Mary Gawthorpe, Rona Robinson and Dora Marsden are all slight, petite women who made their protest in a perfectly quiet and gentle manner... They are women moreover, who have done great credit to their respective Universities... Yet they are treated as "hooligans"; treated with such roughness that all 3 had to have medical attention, and hauled before a police magistrate and charged with disorderly behaviour."

In 1910 Robinson became a Gilchrist postgraduate scholar in Home Science and Economics at King's College for Women in Kensington Square. She later wrote for The Freewoman and gave lectures at their meetings.

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