Frances Mary hodgkins.

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Frances Mary Hodgkins Alison J. Laurie Published online: 12 Oct 2008.

To cite this article: Alison J. Laurie (2001) Frances Mary Hodgkins, Journal of Lesbian Studies, 5:1-2, 27-47, DOI: 10.1300/J155v05n01_03 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1300/J155v05n01_03

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Frances Mary Hodgkins: Journeys into the Hearts of Women Alison J. Laurie SUMMARY. Frances Hodgkins was one of a number of expatriate New Zealanders during the early twentieth century who lived in Britain or Europe, where it was easier to find supportive friendship circles for their lives as artists or as people attracted to their own sex. In this article, I explore the primacy of women in Hodgkins’ life and read this as lesbian and argue that many of these relationships were sexual, from the evidence of her letters, which suggest that she moved in lesbian worlds of work and friendship. I also discuss the financial and emotional support given by her male homosexual as well as her lesbian friends who made her life as an artist possible. [Article copies available for a fee from The Haworth Document Delivery Service: 1-800-342-9678. E-mail address: Website: E 2001 by The Haworth Press, Inc. All rights reserved.]

KEYWORDS. New Zealand women, women artists, lesbian artists, homosexual painters, lesbianism, romantic friendships, Frances Hodgkins, Isabel Field, Dorothy Kate Richmond, Arthur Lett Haines, Cedric Morris

INTRODUCTION My interest in the life and works of Frances Hodgkins (1869-1947) (FH) is from a position of feminist and lesbian auto/biography, with a view to revisioning women’s lives and heteronormative interpretations of them. The title of this paper is taken from an exhibition of FH’s paintings in Wellington, ‘‘Journeys of the Heart,’’ and discusses the journeys which I think FH took into the hearts of women whom she loved and who loved her. [Haworth co-indexing entry note]: ‘‘Frances Mary Hodgkins: Journeys into the Hearts of Women.’’ Laurie, Alison J. Co-published simultaneously in Journal of Lesbian Studies (Harrington Park Press, an imprint of The Haworth Press, Inc.) Vol. 5, No. 1/2, 2001, pp. 27-47; and: Lesbian Studies in Aotearoa/New Zealand (ed: Alison J. Laurie) Harrington Park Press, an imprint of The Haworth Press, Inc., 2001, pp. 27-47. Single or multiple copies of this article are available for a fee from The Haworth Document Delivery Service [1-800-342-9678, 9:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m. (EST). E-mail address: [email protected]].

E 2001 by The Haworth Press, Inc. All rights reserved.

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LESBIAN STUDIES IN AOTEAROA/NEW ZEALAND

Is it significant that FH had love relationships with women? Is it relevant to understanding her work as an artist? In this paper, I discuss why FH could not ‘come out’ as a lesbian in a late twentieth century sense, and what ways were open to her, as a New Zealand woman of that period, to conduct love relationships with other women. I intend to move beyond the ‘‘was she or wasn’t she’’ question by placing her life in a lesbian context and by examining how this context assisted her life as a woman artist of the period. Had FH been in relationships with men, she could not have produced a similar body of work. During the early twentieth century, any life open to her as a married woman would have depended upon the type of man she married. Sojourns in artists’ colonies or impulsively wild travels would have been unlikely. Probably her life would have been similar to that of her sister Isabel, also a talented artist, who married Will Field, Member of Parliament for Otaki. Waikanae historian Joan Maclean quotes Isabel’s son Peter Field, explaining that his mother ‘‘painted odds and ends to pay the grocer’s bill’’ (Maclean, 1983, p. 54). Isabel’s energies after marriage were devoted to her husband and children, to circumscribed and limited activities, with few opportunities for the adventures or emotional storms of the heart which might inspire new and different styles of painting. FH’s life was very different from Isabel’s; she did not marry or live with men, and passions and love relationships with women were of central importance to her. This is significant and relevant to understanding her life as a woman artist. I discuss these relationships as suggested by her letters and from descriptions in published biography. I give these letters lesbian readings and regard them as derived from her lesbian experiences, though she was not ‘out’ to her family and was cautious about what she put in writing to her friends. My interpretations produce a lesbian version of FH’s life and shift what Liz Stanley has called the ‘‘kaleidoscope’’ (Stanley, 1987, p. 19) to reveal particular sets of events and evidence to support this version. Feminist theorists argue that all representations are constructed and manufactured within writers’ own minds and expectations and that evidence and events are selected accordingly (Harding, 1991; Maynard, 1994; Reinharz, 1992; Stanley, 1992). As Phyllis Rose (1985) says of auto/biography:


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there is no neutrality. There is only greater or less awareness of one’s bias. And if you do not appreciate the force of what you are leaving out, you are not fully in command of what you are doing. (p. 77) Both male and female biographers of women tend to search for and magnify the importance of male lovers in their subjects’ lives, but many creative women who persevered as artists were women who refused to make men the centre of their lives. Feminist critic Carolyn Heilbrun (1988) points out that many female biographers feel ‘‘unbearable discomfort in the face of ‘unwomanly’ lives’’ and that they often: reinvent the lives their subjects led . . . the choices and unique pain that lay beyond the life stories . . . women who did not make a man the centre of their lives seemed unique, because there were no models of the lives they wanted to live. (p. 31) Dominant patriarchal ideologies suggested to creative women that an artistic career was selfish or inappropriate; it took energy and interest away from the men in their lives, and should either be discontinued or relegated to hobby work done in between serving men’s practical and emotional needs (Woolf, 1928; Greer, 1979; Gerrish Nunn, 1987). In this context, the resolve that FH expressed is revealing, when she wrote to Isabel in June 1895, following her sister’s marriage and move to Wellington in 1883: My painting absorbs me more & more every day. I am slowly settling down to an oldmaidship, and I have only one prominent idea and that is that nothing will interfere between me and my work. (Gill, 1993, p. 37; all following quotes from FH’s letters are from Gill, 1993, unless otherwise noted) This was not without guilt. On 29 October 1901, she wrote to her mother, ‘‘Much as I love this life I feel it is a one-sided and very selfish existence’’ (p. 102). Later in life she wrote to her brother Willie, on 30 June 1942, claiming justification for this selfishness, because she had:


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worked hard--made sacrifices & lived a life dedicated to my work. . . .--I would call it concentration--plus a good deal of selfishness--justifiable in my case I think. (p. 524) Questions that arise here are those of two different marginalities for FH: how, as a woman, she might live as a serious artist, and also how she might live as a lesbian. The early twentieth century was a world in which women could dabble as amateur painters within the private sphere (Greer, 1979; Gerrish Nunn, 1987). It is also probable that women could dabble sexually with other women, provided that men remained central to their lives, and that this too remained within a private sphere. In a world where it was difficult for women either to earn a living as creative artists or to live as lesbians, how did FH manage to do both? Were the homosexual groups in which she mixed supportive of serious artistic endeavour by women? In this paper, I focus on the women in FH’s life and the ways in which they made her physical and creative journeys possible by assisting her with money, emotional support, and sexual passion. I present her in a context of friendships where she consistently chose other homosexually inclined women and men as her closest companions throughout her life. BACKGROUND Biographer E. H. McCormick, regarded in New Zealand gay and lesbian circles as a gay man himself, has described FH’s life as an artist in some detail in several publications, notably in The Expatriate-- A Study of Frances Hodgkins (1954). McCormick promoted FH’s work in New Zealand and also made sure that her letters were preserved. He had access to some of FH’s homosexual contemporaries and did interview them, but did not explicitly write about the possibility that FH may have become an ‘‘expatriate’’ because she was lesbian, as well as because she was an artist, and was unable to find lesbian circles in New Zealand similar to those in England and Europe. It is possible that the term ‘‘expatriate’’ functions in McCormick’s work as a kind of code for New Zealand homosexual men and women who left to live and work overseas. FH left New Zealand three times--in 1901, returning in 1903; in 1906, returning in 1912; and permanently in 1913.


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Born in Dunedin on 28 April 1869, to Rachel Hodgkins and her husband, lawyer and artist William Matthew Hodgkins, FH had four brothers, William, Percy, Gilbert, Frank, and one sister, Isabel. FH attended Dunedin School of Art classes taught by Girolamo Pieri Nerli, and then took pupils herself. Among her closest women friends at this time were May Kenyon, Jenny Wimperis, Katherine Holmes, Ethel McLaren, and other members of a Dunedin women’s club, The Kahanga Club. In 1898, her father died, and, in 1901, she left for England, where she soon became friends with New Zealand artist Dorothy Kate Richmond. She was close to Maud and Grace Nickalls and Gertrude Crompton by 1902, to Gertrude’s friend Rosamond Marshall by 1906, and to Theresa Thorp, Bessie Gibson, Kathleen O’Connor, and Emily Carr by 1911. FH taught painting to support herself financially, and many important lifelong friends were ex-pupils--including Hannah Ritchie (1910) and her friend Dorothy Jane Saunders (1912); potter Amy Krauss (1914); Jean Campbell (1920), Elsie Barling (1923), and Elsie’s friend Dorothy Selby (1927); and art dealer Lucy Wertheim (1929) (McCormick, 1954, 1981). Based on current evidence, I think it likely that FH had love affairs at least with Dorothy Kate Richmond, Jane Saunders, Dorothy Selby, Lucy Wertheim, and Amy Krauss, to whom she remained close at the time of her death on 13 May 1947, aged 78. As she grew older, she probably became less interested in passionate relationships. Winifred Nicholson told feminist interviewer June Opie that FH claimed: . . . after one was 60 one could get clear of emotional relationships and the difficulties of making them work and then one could really settle down to painting. She felt she was free . . . detached from other human beings. (Opie, 1969, p. 56) THE HOMOSEXUAL CONTEXT Was she or wasn’t she? Many lesbians of the present in Aotearoa/ New Zealand are interested in who was or was not a lesbian in this country. Finding lesbians in the past provides us with pleasure. It connects us to earlier individuals and groups in this country and helps us to understand how present Aotearoa/New Zealand lesbian cultures and identities developed. However, FH did not think and could not


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have thought of herself or her friends as lesbians in a post 1970s sense. It is most doubtful that she would ever have used the term. As an adult in the early twentieth century, FH lived after sexology discourses had become common knowledge. She would have been familiar with contemporary ideas about sexual tastes as discussed in artists’ communities. She first came to Britain in 1901, in the same year as Oscar Wilde’s death, when British homosexuals lived in the aftermath of his public disgrace. British writer and former parliamentarian H. Montgomery Hyde (1972) quotes Wilde’s literary friends, exclaiming that ‘‘He makes no secret of it . . . he admits that he is a homosexual’’ (p. 165), and his friend and biographer Frank Harris described the hasty exodus of ‘‘cultured aesthetes’’ from London to Paris following the Queensberry trial (p. 172). It was obvious to British male homosexuals of the 1890s that the 1885 Labouchere Amendment to the Crimes Act meant private life would henceforth have to be conducted very privately indeed. How homosexual women responded to this varied, but the medical writings of Havelock Ellis and of Sigmund Freud, which suggested that women could also be inverts, meant that many became even more secretive and cautious (Faderman, 1991). FH’s contemporary countrywoman Katherine Mansfield internalised the negative attitudes resulting from the Wilde disgrace, writing to an unnamed recipient in 1909: Did you ever read the life of Oscar Wilde . . . picture his exact decadence? . . . In New Zealand . . . I was constantly subject to exactly the same fits of madness as those which caused his ruin . . . this is my secret from the world. . . . (Collected Letters, O’Sullivan and Scott (eds.), 1984, pp. 89-90) In Britain, FH moved in homosexual art circles which would have been accepting of her sexuality and among people who supported her desire to become a serious painter. She was a close friend of male homosexual painters Arthur Lett Haines (1894-1978) and Cedric Morris (1889-1982) and knew others in their homosexual circles--for example, writer Geoffrey Gorer (1905-1985)1 and his friend Arthur Elton (1906-1973) (Gill, 1993, p. 427). FH wrote to her friend Dorothy Selby in March 1931 about the start of her friendship with singing teacher Norman Notley (1891-1980) and singer David Brynley, his companion:


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. . . Elsie’s [Barling] 2 friends ‘Norman and David’--I at last know their names--were here last week end--took Amy and self to a film at Swanage--cheery friendly pair. (p. 465) Gill notes that Notley and Brynley owned a cottage in Corfe Castle, and cites a 1951 letter from David Brynley to E. H. McCormick describing a party in the 1940s at which: . . . our late friends, Philip and Lady Ottoline Morrell . . . were present. They were admirers of Frances who loved meeting them at our house . . . Frances was greatly impressed by Lady Ottoline’s beauty, warmth and intellectual awareness. (p. 485, n. 39) Lady Ottoline Morrell held gatherings which homosexuals and bisexuals from Bloomsbury attended--including Katherine Mansfield, though it seems she and FH never met. Haines and Morris were important friends for over thirty years and often assisted FH when times were hard. Opie writes that they told her: . . . At the age of 63 she was found in her basement studio with the water and light turned off: she had pawned everything and was lying in bed covered in newspapers. ALH rescued her, motored her down to his mother’s house in the country, fitted her up and set her to work. (Opie, 1969, p. 55) McCormick writes that Morris, who became a leading painter of the post-war generation, did what he could to help FH become established as a painter--arranging art exhibitions, proposing her membership in the influential Seven & Five Society (seven painters and five sculptors), and helping her meet St. George’s Gallery director Arthur Howell, who exhibited and sold her paintings (McCormick, 1981, pp. 104-107). British gay art critic Emmanuel Cooper describes Morris and Haines’ lifetime relationship and their circles of homosexual friends, including Jean Cocteau and Gertrude Stein in Paris, Christopher Wood (1901-1930)2 in Treboul, Brittany, and Bloomsbury’s Duncan Grant (1885-1978). Cooper comments that: . . . the artists and writers who formed the Bloomsbury group . . . discussed questions of sexual taste and were accepting of male and female homosexuality. (Cooper, 1986, p. 143)


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However, he warns that outside this circle, homosexuality was seen as: an appalling perversion . . . this attitude would not have encouraged either Lett Haines or Morris to make ‘‘public’’ their ‘‘private’’ lives. The separation had to be maintained. (Cooper, 1986, p. 155) Although female homosexuality was not against the law, discriminatory social attitudes meant that most women in lesbian relationships kept their private lives secret. The Maud Allan ‘‘Cult of the Clitoris’’ case of 1918, when the dancer unsuccessfully sued MP Noel Pemberton Billing for implying that she was a lesbian and a spy for the Germans, resulted in widespread negative publicity. Gay writer Philip Hoare comments, ‘‘With Billing publicly vindicated, any possible display of homosexual feeling was now more proscribed than ever’’ (Hoare, 1997, p. 203). Following this case, the 1921 attempt to criminalise lesbianism3 was passed in the Commons, but defeated in the Lords, because Lord Birkenhead said there was not ‘‘. . . one scintilla of evidence . . . there is any widespread practice of this kind of vice,’’ and Lord Desart claimed: . . . you are going to tell the whole world . . . there is such an offence, to bring it to the notice of women who have never heard of it, never dreamed of it. (Hyde, 1972, p. 204) Becoming publicly known as lesbian in this climate was an option only for wealthy women, such as writers Radclyffe Hall or Natalie Barney, and painters Romaine Brooks or Hannah Gluckman. There was no theoretical or political framework in existence at this time to suggest that there would be any purpose or value in coming out publicly. The personal is political, and coming out of the closet strategies of the 1970s (Radicalesbians, 1972; Young, 1972) were remote ideas decades away in a future which most people living in the early twentieth century could not have imagined. Even Hall thought long and hard about becoming known publicly as an invert before she wrote The Well of Loneliness (Troubridge, 1961). Cooper suggests that many lesbians found it easier to express their sexuality ‘‘. . . away from the confining and defining attitudes of their homes and families, building creative lives in other countries, particu-


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larly in Europe’’ (Cooper, 1986, p. 87), giving FH’s move from New Zealand as an example. However, FH was a working artist who needed to sell paintings in order to survive, and who experienced poverty. Cooper says she spent much time attempting to survive financially, in contrast to wealthy women who could ‘‘. . . afford to lead eccentric life styles . . . with little regard to sales of their work’’ (Cooper, 1986, p. 87). FH needed to develop a professional and respected reputation among the movers and shakers of the art markets. For many people, it was strange enough that she was a single woman artist. Had she become known as a lesbian artist, this could have ended her acceptance among the purchasers of paintings and the purveyors of popular opinion. Curator Jill Trevelyan points out that Arthur Howell was at first disappointed to find that the paintings he admired were done by a woman of nearly sixty (Trevelyan, 1993, pp. 17, 21). Art historian Pamela Gerrish Nunn, discussing FH’s ‘‘arrival’’ as an artist, says that factors complicating this were gender and age, because ‘‘the aging female’s only niche was that of eccentric old biddy’’ (Gerrish Nunn, 1990, p. 89). Other reasons, too, mitigated against FH identifying as a lesbian. Philosopher Michel Foucault and others have theorised sexual identity as emerging from nineteenth century sexology discourses. Prior to this, Foucault claimed that same-sex behaviours were regarded as an habitual sin, not as a personal identity (Foucault, 1978). Some women in twentieth century same-sex relationships rejected sexology discourses and ideas of sexual identity and also the label lesbian. Contemporary artist Djuna Barnes insisted that she was ‘‘never a lesbian--she had only loved Thelma Wood’’ (Herring, 1995, p. 255), and Cooper says she saw their relationship as ‘‘special to them rather than any corporate identity . . . Many lesbians . . . were critical of the conventions and posing often involved in being openly lesbian’’ (Cooper, 1986, p. 157). Further, documenting same-sex relationships is difficult because women or their biographers may have deliberately hidden these histories.4 Adding to the problem are biographers who acknowledge women’s friendships, but deny that they were passionate or sexual. Linda Gill (1993), in her introduction to her excellent edited collection of FH’s letters, says three-quarters are written to women, reflecting her


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‘‘passionate delight in the beauty of women,’’ but argues that it cannot be known whether FH was celibate or gave her emotions sexual expression . . . She wrote of and to Miss Richmond in the language of love, a usage sanctioned by the tradition of romantic friendship between women, and not neccessarily indicative of any closer relationship. (Gill, 1993, p. 5) American scholar Lillian Faderman has argued for celibate ‘‘romantic friendships,’’ and has claimed that ‘‘in an era when women were not supposed to be sexual, the sexual possibilities of their relationship were seldom entertained’’ (Faderman, 1985, p. 414). British sociologist Liz Stanley has commented that Faderman’s view defined as lesbian ‘‘only a very narrow set of genital sexual relationships’’ (Stanley, 1992, p. 196). British theorist Sheila Jeffreys has argued that the history of heterosexuality did not require proof of genital contact and that women might have discovered genital sex through ‘‘passionate embraces’’ (Jeffreys, 1989, pp. 22-27). American philosopher Marilyn Frye has asked why lesbian sex should be likened to heterosexual sex at all, and has questioned what could be counted as sex (Frye, 1990, p. 110). I think FH and her contemporaries in passionate and romantic relationships probably did have genital sex. However, prioritising sexual relationships over other kinds of love relationships may be problematic. American psychologists Esther Rothblum and Kathleen Brehony, in their book on ‘‘Boston Marriages’’ (1993), include examples of passionate but asexual primary relationships among selfidentified lesbians which are as intense and important as sexual connections. Putting FH’s life in context, many of her close associates were either homosexual or homosexually inclined, so that she was certainly a participant in private homosexual worlds. Even today, homosexuality is still regarded by many as an activity which has no place in the public sphere, but which should remain within private life, suppressed and made invisible (Laurie, 1987, p. 143). After lesbian-feminism and gay liberation, many gay men and lesbians have taken their sexualities into the public sphere; but there are still powerful societal messages that tolerance will be strained if the public world is forced to confront lesbian existence.

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DOROTHY KATE (‘‘DOLLA’’) RICHMOND, 1861-1935 McCormick (1981) suggests that the friendship between FH and Dorothy Richmond started at Norman Garstin’s 1901 art-classes in Caudebec-en-Caux, France, after FH (aged 32) left New Zealand and Richmond (aged 40) had resigned as art mistress at Nelson College for Girls to study in Paris. Their meeting was initiated by Richmond, who wrote on 19 June that ‘‘I am looking forward to meeting you with real joy . . . I think companionship doubles the pleasure and halves the sorrows of life’’ (McCormick, 1954, pp. 58-59). After Garstin’s school, they travelled together to Paris, Italy, Tangier, and London (complete with Richmond’s rubber bath). FH wrote to her mother Rachel on 2 June, ‘‘the most delightful part . . . is that Miss Richmond is coming with me’’ (p. 92); on 14 July, she wrote that ‘‘I am a lucky beggar to have her as a travelling companion’’ (p. 93); and on 7 August, she wrote that: . . . Miss Richmond has decided not to go to England so we shall not lose sight of each other even for a few weeks. I have grown so fond of her, I don’t know how I am ever going to let her go, she is one of those people whom you want always with you. (p. 94) FH wrote to Kate Rattray on 27 August that Miss Richmond was ‘‘. . . the dearest woman with the most beautiful face and expression I think I have ever seen’’ (McCormick, 1954, p. 58) and to Rachel that the other students called Miss Richmond ‘‘The Divine Lady’’: When I am particularly down Miss Richmond comes and tucks me up. . . . [she] goes to England today it is very sad saying goodbye to a face like hers even for a short time. I wish you could see her . . . at night with a black dress with a crimson fichu . . . I . . . have insisted on her wearing it every night. (p. 96) To her married sister Isabel, she wrote on 6 November: Miss R’s . . . letters are poems . . . She is the dearest piece of perfection I have ever met and unlike most perfection not in the least tiring to live up to . . . We were to have started for San Remo today but I felt too seedy to travel . . . in cases like this we congratulate ourselves we have no husbands to consider. (pp. 104-105)


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FH had a close relationship with her family and wrote frequently. She could not have deleted all references to Richmond in her letters-and, indeed, writing about her travels with an older woman companion as chaperone may have been intended to reassure her family of the respectability of her life. I read these letters as carefully constructed, with her natural delight and joy at having Richmond with her bursting through in some of the quoted extracts. On their return from Europe in 1902 after a joint exhibition in Newlyn, the two women lived in Cornwall. Then, for the first time in over a year, they would ‘‘dwell sundered.’’ FH stayed in London with Miss Robertson and Miss Cargill from Dunedin (McCormick, 1954, p. 70), while Richmond went to Invernesshire, Scotland, to see Constance Charlotte Astley (1851-1935), a woman who was ten years older than her. She had met her in 1897 when Astley was visiting New Zealand with her friend Margaret Shaen and had stayed with her before in 1900.5 FH and Richmond had both stayed with Astley in 1901 at San Remo, when Astley was being treated for tuberculosis, and FH wrote to Richmond from France in July 1902: . . . I was indeed sorry to hear of the return of Miss Astley’s trouble . . . It does not look as if Scotland was quite the best place for her does it? Please give her my love. . . . & tell her I didn’t in the least grudge you to her. At first I felt a little furious . . . but slept over it & calmed down. . . . I don’t see much of Maud [Nickalls] nowadays. She is very much taken up with Miss Crompton and they paint and ride a lot together. (p. 132) Here, FH seems jealous of Astley, but anxious to reassure Richmond that her own friendship with Maud Nickalls is not a love affair, as Nickalls is so involved with Crompton. But she could not resist informing her mother on 28 July that ‘‘Miss Richmond is still in Scotland--nursing her sick friend Miss Astley. . . . It is horrid without her’’ (p. 133). Then, on 30 September, she wrote in some detail to Isabel: Miss R. and I go to London in a fortnight & after that our ways be separate--I don’t know what I am going to do without her--we have taken a long time to consider what is best for us both. She has only another year & must make the most of it & she feels she must get more studio work--so Mr. Garstin with the knowledge full upon him that he was breaking up our happy home conscien-


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tiously advised [her] to go back to Penzance--I am sure it is for her good--& she wld be unselfish enough to give her time up to me & go wherever I wanted if we didn’t put pressure on her and insist on her considering her own interest. So . . . I shall be alone once more. (p. 139) By 1903, FH was in Tangier, where on 7 March she wrote to Richmond: of course I know that you would rather nurse one of her [Miss Astley’s] empty envelopes than read the outpourings of my innermost soul--however I mustn’t expect too much. (p. 156) From these letters, it is clear that FH was well aware of Richmond’s love affair with Constance Astley from 1898 until 1901, when she had become involved with FH, and of its continuation at the time of writing this letter. Deciding on what was ‘‘best for us both’’ reads to me as a typical triangular relationship, in which nobody can quite decide how to resolve the impasse. However, on 23 March 1903 FH threw caution to the wind and wrote impetuously to Richmond: My Dearest D. K. R. Come to Tetuan--come--catch the next steamer, cancel all engagements, chuck the studio let everything go to the winds only come without a moments delay . . . There is only one crumple in the rose leaf & that is that you are not here . . .--but you must come. (p. 157) What is the rose leaf? Was this a code used between them? Richmond did not travel to Tangier, and FH left for London a few weeks later, writing to her mother on 1 May: It was very delightful to see Miss Richmond again--we are very comfy here & have 2 bedrooms and the use of Miss Weltons cosy sitting room. It is a sort of ladies club. (p. 164) In December 1903, they returned to New Zealand together and, during 1904-1906, established a studio on the corner of Lambton Quay and Bowen Street, Wellington, in a disused carriage house


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(McCormick, 1954, p. 92) belonging to the possibly homosexual Alexander Turnbull. They gave a joint exhibition in 1904 at MacGregor Wright and Co.’s Art Gallery and also took a few pupils. One was Edith Kathleen Bendall (1880-1986), later Mrs. George Robison, who was Katherine Mansfield’s lover in Wellington during 1906-1908 (Laurie, 1988). McCormick says that Bendall told him that FH, ‘‘. . . though ‘stimulating’ as a teacher, was also ‘unconventional’ and ‘far beyond her’’’ (McCormick, 1954, pp. 96-97, n. 14). During this period, FH, now aged 35, announced her engagement to English journalist and writer Thomas Boughton Wilby, aged 34. She had met him briefly on the ship Ophir during its short passage between England and Cairo in November-December 1903. They became engaged by post a year later (December 1904) and broke it off in 1905 (McCormick, 1954, pp. 98-99; Gill, 1993, pp. 175-176). FH seems never to have met him again after the brief shipboard encounter. McCormick claims it was ‘‘one of the unhappiest periods of her life . . . she seems to have sought in Miss Richmond’s company the consolation of friendship and perhaps relief from the inquisitive eyes of a small city’’ (p. 101). It seems to me that this improbable engagement was one way to distract the inquisitive eyes of the small city from her relationship with Richmond. But the relationship did not hold her in New Zealand. After holidays together in Paraparaumu and Rotorua, FH left Richmond and New Zealand on the Tongariro in January 1906. Having arrived in England, she wrote to her mother Rachel on 4 March that she would ‘‘contrive to have someone with me till Miss Richmond comes, if she does come but I do not want to ask or persuade her. It is for her to decide & I think if I were in her place I should stay where I was’’ (p. 183), and on 29 August she wrote that her new companion Miss Hill was ‘‘a nice elderly woman . . . rather resembling Miss Richmond in face & manner & she and I have decided to join forces for a while’’ (p. 192). As FH’s letters were shared around the family and with Richmond, this may have been a covert message to Richmond about a new lover. Further letters to or from Richmond may exist which could shed more light on their relationship, but current sources suggest to me that their love affair ended in 1906, when Richmond was 45 and FH 37. FH returned to New Zealand in 1912, stayed for nearly a year, and saw Richmond, but I doubt they rekindled their passion.


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From 1907 until her retirement in 1924, Richmond taught in Wellington at Samuel Marsden Collegiate School for Girls. She established a studio in Hill Street, became a successful artist, and was head of the Academy of New Zealand for two years. She died in Wellington in 1935, aged 74. She found ways to live as a lesbian and to work as an artist in Aotearoa/New Zealand. Possibly, her experiences of poverty with FH in Europe decided her against the kind of life that FH embarked upon, and, at 45, she probably wanted and could achieve a sufficiently comfortable and satisfying existence even in Wellington. OTHER LESBIAN LOVERS AND FRIENDSHIP CIRCLES FH’s English circles included many lesbians. She had love affairs with some of these women and enjoyed close friendships with others--though always on her own terms. One close friend was art dealer Lucy Wertheim, of whom Gill (1993) comments: although a generous benefactor . . . she ignored the boundaries Hodgkins had drawn and was sharply . . . rebuffed. FH did not allow financial dependence to imply any other kind of dependence. (p. 6) McCormick (1981) calls Wertheim FH’s ‘‘wealthy Manchester friend’’ and says that in the summer of 1929, when FH was in Sussex, she would arrive at the cottage with her chauffeur and in her ‘‘kindly, queenly manner whisk Frances off to her summer home on the south coast or her flat in Regent’s Park’’ (p. 109). Wertheim assisted FH financially and emotionally. Two of her most important friends were Dorothy Jane Saunders and Hannah Ritchie. FH called Saunders by her middle name, ‘‘Jane,’’ perhaps to distinguish her from Dorothy Richmond. She met Hannah Ritchie in 1911 at the summer art school at Concarneau, France, and Jane Saunders in 1912, when both attended a class at St. Valery-surSomme. They were both art teachers at Manchester High School for Girls (Gill, 1993, p. 323, n. 21), and are the subjects of FH’s ‘‘Double Portrait,’’ 1922. I see this painting as emphasising individual independence within an open relationship; this may have been the result of FH becoming lovers with one or both of them. She was in Manchester from 1923-1927, where Ritchie and Saunders assisted her financially.


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They also helped her obtain paid work at the Manchester Calico Printers’ Association, where she designed fabrics at five hundred pounds a year, in 1925. This job lasted only a few months, but was important, as it allowed her to remain in England (McCormick, 1954, pp. 206-207). She left Manchester for good in 1927 (Gill, 1993, p. 401), but remained close friends with Ritchie and Saunders. In 1923, FH met Dorothy Selby, an amateur painter and head of a secretarial college. Gill (1993) describes Selby as remaining a close friend because she was ‘‘a practical sensible woman who made no demands’’ (p. 6). Selby appears to have been in a relationship with art teacher Elsie Barling (1883-1976). The three women were lifelong friends (Gill, 1993, p. 370). During the summer of 1927, at Treboul, FH painted together with her homosexual circle of friends. These were Hannah Ritchie and Jane Saunders, Dorothy Selby and Elsie Barling, Cedric Morris and Arthur Lett Haines (Gill, 1993, p. 402). Selby helped FH financially at this time, and FH wrote to thank her, saying: . . . I was asleep when you slipped away silently this morning. . . . and at once the house felt lonely . . . Impossible to thank you enough for the fat wad of notes--far too much--how generous! (p. 402) I see Selby as possibly a lover and certainly a main lesbian confidante, as FH seems to have been relatively open about her sexual tastes in the surviving letters to Selby. She gossiped about Daphne du Maurier on 21 December 1931: Dear Selby, . . . I enclose you a picture . . . The large white house on the right belongs to Sir Gerald du Maurier. . . . his rather beautiful son-daughter lives here, Daphne, & is [a] rather disturbing feature in the extremely homely little village. She will wear male attire--very attractive but theatrical--wh. she is not, I believe, only merely literary. (p. 446) I see this letter as clear evidence of a lesbian world and reality about which Selby and FH gossip. There appears to be some kind of understood code here--Daphne isn’t ‘‘theatrical,’’ i.e., lesbian, just literary, i.e., eccentric--though oddly enough a ‘‘son-daughter,’’ or cross-dresser, which does not make her homosexual in FH’s eyes.


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FH and Selby gossiped a great deal about Ritchie and Saunders, who may have ended their primary relationship by 1931, when FH wrote to Selby on 25 June: . . . Jane Saunders (after she has de-janed herself from Hannah the Forlorn) wants to come and work with me but I can’t take her on--I am . . . no longer equal to such a strain. (p. 442) Two years later, she wrote to her on 3 September 1933: Haven’t heard how Hannah & her lady German doctor are getting along--Hope lady doctor hasn’t eaten poor Hannah . . . one feels somehow that savagery must be latent in all Germans--seeing how they rally to that arch Savage Hitler. (p. 459) Relationships in this private lesbian world were clearly known about and gossiped over. On 7 August 1939, 70-year-old FH could gossip to Selby that: . . . Jane’s girl friend aged 40 has gone off to Italy with a younger girl friend aged 20. . . . One of those infatuations difficult to explain & disastrous in its reactions--Jane however, is behaving well having done all she humanly can to save the situation has now faced up to it & is looking brighter and happier than I ever remember her . . .--a bit of an actress perhaps. (p. 487) On 23 December 1941, she wrote to Saunders with a comment about a new lover (Elizabeth Shaw?): ‘‘Don’t try to write letters to me or strain on your leash more than you can avoid’’ (p. 520), and the following year, June 1942, warned her that: . . . painting reduces one to tears & misery--peaks of ecstacy . . . depending on . . . how long you can stay alone. . . . you have to be pretty self-contained and strong-minded and very selfish. IS it worth the sacrifice? (p. 525) Writing to Saunders again on 4 January 1943, FH mentions Elizabeth Shaw by name: ‘‘I . . . reply to your urgent, ardent wholly delightful letters, both yours and E’s--they warm the cockles of my heart.’’ Gill comments in a note that Shaw (‘‘Jane Saunders’s friend’’) wanted to buy an FH painting for Jane as a gift (p. 543).


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FH moved to Corfe Castle, Dorset, in 1941, writing to Saunders on 15 April 1941 (after Manchester was bombed): ‘‘I am going down to that rather Hellish bit Corfe Castle where AK [Amy Krauss] still remains God Bless her unbombed and unscarred’’ (p. 510). She remained close to potter Amy Krauss until her death. McCormick (1954) says Krauss was ‘‘an old friend . . . and a resting place several times in the past’’ (pp. 235-236). Perhaps she was a current or ex-lover, but there are no letters confirming this, and FH or others may have destroyed them. For example, on 10 June 1946, she wrote to Selby saying: ‘‘Amy is back again . . . I enclose her letter . . . tear it up when read’’ (p. 568). Many other more revealing letters may have met the same fate. If FH’s lesbianism was in a private closet, the paper trails she did leave have now brought her relationships into the public world. CONCLUSION Disregarding lesbian passions as central to the life of a creative woman such as FH misses the influences which informed her work and the layers of meanings within. It also hides the ways in which FH and other women of the past could have conducted lesbian relationships and the reasons that some of them felt they could not live in New Zealand. As is the case elsewhere, FH and other lesbians of her time from Aotearoa/New Zealand became expatriates and lived in Europe, where they could be freer and could find lesbian or gay circles. How these women were able to surmount difficulties and live as they wished provides important insights into the origins of our present lesbian identities and communities, as well as examples of how women find ways to make passionate journeys. Passion drives women to step outside of heteronormativity and to take tremendous and dangerous risks. No intellectualising about homosexuality would have caused Frances Hodgkins to begin an affair with Dorothy Richmond-her motivation was clearly desire and passion. In 1901 there were no ‘‘political lesbians’’ nor were there homosexual politics to encourage FH to bring lesbianism from a private closet into the public sphere. Rather, two different marginalities--being a woman artist and being a lesbian--meant she lived a life working on the boundaries. This was possible only through the support of her lesbian and gay friends. Their


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emotional and financial support enabled her to live both as a serious woman artist and as a lesbian. Their generosity, particularly that of Dorothy Selby, Lucy Wertheim, Jane Saunders, and Hannah Ritchie, meant she was able to remain in England. The art connections of Haines and Morris, among others, brought her work to the attention of important people in the art world, enabling her to be recognised as a serious artist. The homosexual and lesbian networks of early twentieth century Britain assisted Frances Hodgkins with money, emotional support, and reciprocal sexual passion, so that she could live and work as she wished, in spite of social difficulties and various forms of discrimination. NOTES 1. Geoffrey Gorer wrote The Life and Ideas of the Marquis de Sade in 1934, and knew lovers Margaret Mead and Ruth Benedict (Gill, 1993, p. 427, n. 26). 2. In 1930, Christopher Wood killed himself as a result of opium addiction acquired during his homosexual friendship with Jean Cocteau (Cooper, 1986, p. 142). 3. Scottish Tory MP Frederick Macquisten moved that the Labouchere Amendment be applied to women with a new clause ‘‘Acts of Gross Indecency by Females’’ in the new Criminal Law Amendment Act. Passed by the Commons 148--53 on 4 August, the amendment was rejected by the Lords on 15 August on a motion by Lord Malmesbury. 4. See Doris Faber (1980), The Life of Lorena Hickok, ER’s Friend, William Morrow, for a discussion of how the author sought to have ER’s letters to LH restricted before she decided to write this book. 5. Constance Charlotte Astley, Micro-MS-0920, Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington.

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O’Sullivan, Vincent and Margaret Scott (eds.) (1984). The Collected Letters of Katherine Mansfield v. 1 1903-1917, Oxford, Clarendon Press. Radicalesbians (1972). The Woman-Identified Woman, in Karla Jay and Allen Young (eds.), Out of the Closets, Voices of Gay Liberation, New York: Douglas Links. Reinharz, S. (1992). Feminist Methods in Social Research, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Rose, Phyllis (1985). Writing on Women: Essays in a Renaissance, Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press. Rothblum, Esther D. and Kathleen A. Brehony (eds.) (1993). Boston Marriages, Romantic but Asexual Relationships Among Contemporary Lesbians, Amherst: The University of Massachusetts Press. Stanley, Liz (1992). The Auto/biographical I--the Theory and Practice of Feminist Auto/biography, Manchester: Manchester University Press. Stanley, Liz (1987). Biography as microscope or kaleidoscope? the case of ‘‘power’’ in Hannah Cullwick’s Relationship with Arthur Munby, Women’s Studies International Forum 10(1), pp. 19-31. Stanley, Liz (1992). Romantic friendship? some issues in researching lesbian history and biography, Women’s History Review 1(2). Trevelyan, Jill (1993). Frances Hodgkins, Wellington: Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa. Troubridge, Una (1961). The Life and Death of Radclyffe Hall, London: Hammond. Young, Allen (1972). Out of the closets, into the streets, in Karla Jay and Allen Young (eds.), Out of the Closets, Voices of Gay Liberation, New York: Douglas Links.

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The Mary Allen Engle Award.

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Hodgkins lymphoma of bone - a rare case report.

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First rounders podcast: Mary Tanner.

QnAs with Mary C. Waters.

THE MARY ALLEN ENGLE AWARD.