The Peanut Factory

We're so pleased to share a short extract from Deborah Price's fascinating new memoir The Peanut Factory about living in squats in South London in the late 70s during the emerging counterculture movement. 'Squat life was sex, drugs and punk rock but it wasn’t all fun and games. The Peanut Factory shows Deborah navigating a male-dominated scene, moving every few months and living with drug dealers, sex workers, people on the run and working-class kids like her. Despite the chaos, the squatters were a family. They were kids creating their own rules. Making art. Living life on the fly. The Peanut Factory is an ode to the youthful rebellion of the 1970s and to London itself.'

The Railton Road squat was occupied by a crowd of gay men who co-existed happily with the local community and during the riots were at the barricades on the front line, chucking bricks with the best of them. Getting my hair cut was exciting and as far removed from a normal hairdresser as it could be. For a start, the house was always full of people.

‘It’s a knocking shop,’ explained Conor, the hairdresser. ‘If boys don’t have a room, they come here. We feel it’s a public service.’ There did seem to be trails of slightly sheepish men coming up and down the stairs at all times of the day and night.

Secondly, there was no mirror in the room, so I was never quite sure what was being done until it was finished. ‘Ta-da’ Conor would say and show me his handiwork in a small hand mirror.

The first time I went I was feeling adventurous and fed up with the traditional long hair with fringe that I had had since my teens. With my foray into new music and abandonment of the hippy look, I had inched the length up, but it still wasn’t anything very interesting.

Conor raised an eyebrow as I settled into the chair and put a grubby towel round me and sprayed my crop with water. 

‘Oh, just do whatever,’ I said.

‘Shall I dye it as well?’ 

I paused to think.

‘It’ll take a while,’ he said. 

I had the whole day and Conor had a minion who was making tea, so I threw caution to the winds.

‘Oh go on then,’ I said.

‘I’ll have to go quite short to get rid of this perm. Is that OK?’

I nodded, speechless. It felt like the end of an era.

When he was finished, all that I knew was that everything felt light and I smelt of bleach. There seemed to be a lot of hair on the floor and I felt like Jo March in Little Women. I paid and squinted in the hand mirror and spent the whole journey home trying to see my reflection in the bus and shop windows. I couldn’t see very clearly. I thought one or two people gave me a bit of a look, but I wasn’t sure.

I got home and clattered down the stairs to see if Tessa was in.

‘Oh, my good God,’ she said. ‘Come into the light in the kitchen.’ 

Desperate to find out what the haircut looked like? Visit the Guts Publishing website to buy The Peanut Factory and read more about Deborah herself: https://www.gutspublishing.com/the-peanut-factory

The Gateways Club

The Gateways Club, just off Chelsea’s Kings Road in London, was the longest surviving lesbian club of the 20th century, open from 1931 to 1985. It also became the most famous, when it featured in the 1968 Hollywood movie, The Killing of Sister George, where real life club members came out on screen, dancing cheek to cheek in front of millions, before gay liberation ever hit the headlines.

In her book, From the Closet to the Screen - Women at the Gateways Club 1945-85, Jill Gardiner shares the stories of 80 women who went there. They include the author, Maureen Duffy, whose best-selling 1966 novel The Microcosm, immortalised the club, and grew out of interviews with its members; Maggi Hambling, the artist, who arrived on New Year's Eve, dressed as Bonnie, then changed her costume to Clyde at midnight; sociologist Mary McIntosh, who wrote 'The Homosexual Role', and Pat Arrowsmith, the peace campaigner, who listed the Gateways as her club in Who’s Who.

But how did anyone ever find the Gateways in the early days when clubs didn’t advertise and many a young woman grew up thinking she was the only one in the world who felt this way?

It was 1963. I hadn’t identified myself as a lesbian. I persuaded my boyfriend to go to this weird pub in Soho full of drag queens. There was this woman sitting opposite me with her boyfriend. A couple of drinks later, I suddenly found myself asking her if she had ever wanted to go to a queer club. She said, ‘Funnily enough, yeah.’ Our boyfriends looked pretty gob-smacked. The next week, she and I went back to Soho and found the Huntsman in Berwick Street. It was an eye-opener to me, full of people boasting how much they’d nicked that day. At about 3am an axe came through the door. There was some sort of gang conflict going on. It was mayhem, and the police arrived, at which point all the same-sex partners dancing switched to the opposite sex. I found myself dancing with a bloke called Bobby.   -  Marion

Through her visit to the Huntsman, Marion found the Gateways.

That was my introduction to the gay world, and although it was exciting I knew I wasn’t going to meet anyone like me. A lot of the women in the Huntsman said they’d been in children’s homes and were living off the streets. The femmes were often on the game and one of the aspirations of the younger butchy types was to become a pimp.

The Huntsman during the day became an ordinary cafe called the Coffee Pot. After we’d had a big raving session one night, I was still there in the morning, having a pot of coffee when this young woman came in, Sasha, and she knew some of the people I was with. She was gay: I couldn’t believe it. She was setting up her own business as a couturier and had been to a material shop nearby, and she knew some of the people I was with. She had lots of eye make-up and bouffanted dark hair and was dressed very trendily.

Sasha introduced me to the Gateways. I remember Gina [one of the owners] sitting at the bottom of the stairs, in a black dress, and I was impressed that she looked very sophisticated. There was a man in a suit behind the bar, and Greta said, ‘That’s Ted, that’s Gina’s husband’, and I just couldn’t work it out. Smithy [often assumed to be Gina’s lover] was there too, a woman with fair cropped hair, polishing glasses.

I was excited that there must be lots of people like myself around who had ordinary jobs. I was struck by the ordinariness of everybody - they just looked like a cross section of women you would see walking around the streets. I identified as a hippy at the time. I had long hair, jeans and purple boots with Cuban heels: slightly more ‘unisex’ than most people there.

Someone came up to me and said that blonde Archie had sent her over. Archie was  very good-looking but a bit frightening. She’d sent over to find out if I was butch or femme. I said I didn’t know and I got a message back saying, that I ought to make my mind up soon or I might find myself in a bit of trouble.   -  Marion 

© Jill Gardiner

From the Closet to the Screen is available at:

Gay’s the Word bookshop in London (who deliver almost anywhere worldwide)

City Books in Hove   

BFI Shop 

Wrong-turned

Here's a moment of high drama from Hearts and Minds. The inky Weird Sisters highly recommend Jay Taverner's well-researched historical novels in the Brynsquilver series. They're all an excellent read. We suggest you dive in!

By the time Hope reached the end of the last row of cabbages, down by the bottom hedge, Parsley’s shadow was longer than the little cat herself, sitting upright on the path with ears cocked. Hope leaned her hoe on the hedge and looked out over the gate. Bron was not coming, then; she had chosen the shorter but steeper road home, round Bryn. Pushing back the rush of loneliness which came with the thought, Hope shook out her skirt and set off down the slope. The goats were loud in protest in the lower field: it was more than time to bring them in for milking.

Crossing the old field, where the grass still needed resting, she heard something that stopped her dead. It was the cry she had heard this morning - but now it was clearly human. It came from the old goat shed. Hope turned, and began to run.

She pulled open the sagging door, then found herself suddenly sprawled on her back in the grass, the wind knocked out of her and her right cheek exploding into pain. She grabbed ineffectually at a bare foot that ran over her chest, but had scarcely heaved herself on to her knees when the fleeing figure collapsed with a howl into the grass. For a moment Hope knelt there foolishly, shaking her head to clear it, before she stood up and walked cautiously towards the girl who had flung her aside.

The face that turned towards her was filthy and blood-streaked, but the eyes were blazing. The girl struggled to get up but fell back, her face contracted with pain.

“You need not run away,” said Hope, “I won’t hurt you.” She stretched out a hand, but the girl flinched away and flung up an arm to shield her face. Then the narrow, distended body arched in a spasm of pain and she turned her face to bite the grass. Hope could see clearly now why she had not been able to run away: she was in labour - deep in, and a failing labour, if Hope was any judge. She was covered in mud, her skirt bloody and torn as if by desperate hands. The memory of the earlier screams came to Hope with dreadful clarity. She must have been in the shed all day.

Hope bent and took her gently by the shoulders. “Look at me,” she said firmly. “You must let me be your friend. I have some skill in this.” But not as much as Bell has, she thought desperately. Why aren’t you here? I knew I would need you...


Four hours later the girl was weaker, but no nearer to the birth of her baby. She lay before the fire on a straw pallet spread with Hope’s old shawl. Between her fierce, futile pains she lay more and more still, far gone in exhaustion. Hope was exhausted herself; her small experience of birthing had been no preparation for this. The old women of these hills kept their power over their daughters by making this their mystery, and even Bell, trusted wise-woman for all other ills and ailments, was not their first choice for a childbed. Hope had delivered children, two or three, and had helped Bell with a dozen more; but she had seen nothing like this deathly straining for hour after hour, with nothing coming but blood. She knew much more about goats; she had turned back-facing kids, though nannies were feeble things, and still might die on you. This girl seemed unlikely to do that, after all she had so far endured; but Hope did not know how to help her.

She was standing, irresolute, at the foot of the stair, when the door opened suddenly and a tall, slightly stooped figure was outlined against the red and gold of the sinking sun.

“Bron! Thank God!”

Bron looked startled. “What’s the matter?”

Before Hope could answer, the girl screamed. Bron’s eyes widened; she stood, frozen, as the girl thrashed on the floor. Hope thought suddenly, she has never seen this. How could she, living all her days on a hill farm so far from other human dwellings, and no mother, no women there, only her father and brother since she was a child? Bron was staring, horrified; for a desperate moment Hope thought she might turn and go. She felt a great need to keep her, to have company, however little help it might be. Words tumbled out of her.

“I think the babe is turned wrong,” she said. “It won’t come. And I don’t know how to help her, I…” She stopped and ran her hand through her hair. “I don’t know what to do, Bron.”


Bron’s eyes had not left the writhing body on the floor. Hope could not tell what she was thinking. Then, still without speaking, Bron crossed to the hearth and knelt down. She took the see-sawing head between her hands; she was making a little crooning noise, between whistling and humming. She was not flung off, or bitten; the flailing body relaxed, and the hands that reached up held on, thin brown fingers gripping into Bron’s old jerkin as if it were the last handhold in the world. Bron stroked the matted black hair out of the girl’s eyes, then gently, and still making the same reassuring, wordless noise, ran her large red hands over the swollen belly. “Wrong-turned, yes,” she said, “and wedged so. I must turn it, or it will kill her. Hold her, if she will let you.”

All those words left unsaid

Constance Wilde died on 7th April 1898. Inevitably linked for all time with the scandals of her famous husband Oscar, Constance's tumultuous interior life is imagined by Rohase Piercy in her novel The Coward Does It With A Kiss.

The curtain is moving in the breeze … it comforts me, like the rocking of a cradle.  Green, with turquoise motif – what are they?  Flowers?  Dragons?  I always loved green.  These are decadent curtains; you would not find them in an English hospital. The colours absorb the pain a little, and I find some ease.

Well, it is over; and the nuns who nurse me are  kind, and bring me morphine for the pain, and do everything for my comfort.  They have laid me on my side today, and I cannot move without help, so I watch the light move slowly across the window, and the curtain stirring where they have opened it a little to let in fresh air.  Faint voices drift up from the grounds below; a bell tolls in the distance.  I remind myself that you, Oscar, suffered worse things in prison.

If I could go back – oh, a long way back in my life, I could make all things as new as this new morning.  This must be what a newborn baby sees, light and movement, the edge of a curtain dancing in the breeze.  And all sound is muffled.

I have short, jagged periods of sleep, and when I wake the bedclothes are drenched in sweat.  In my dreams I hear people shouting, aiming words at me like sharp, black beads.  What are they saying?  Next time I awake, I will try to make sense of it.  Is it just my name that I hear, repeated over and over?

Constance!  Constance!  Constance!

*****

I remember you called my name, and I ran out of the house, out of the front door and across the street to the beach; there were carriages, and pedestrians on the street turning to stare, and families on the beach.  This was Worthing, not Babbacombe; there were no nooks and crannies in which to hide.

I walked along the Esplanade, wringing my hands.  My agitation drew curious glances, but I kept my head down and walked to the pier, and to the end of the pier, and then all the way back to the house.  You were there in the little front parlour, alone.  I tried to dash past, to go up to my room, but you ran out and caught me by the arm.

“Constance.”

“Let me go, Oscar.”

“Constance, I have got to talk to you.”

“I don't want to talk.  Leave me alone.”

“Constance please.  Come in here, please, the children will hear.  Just one brief word, I beg of you.”

I followed you into the room, and you closed the door.  Wearily I sat down upon the sofa.

“Where are they?”

“Gone.”

“Gone where?”

“Away. Does it matter? Constance, please listen.  I am sorry that you saw what you did.  I am sorry that I allowed Bosie to bring him here.  It will not happen again, my dear;  please try to put it out of your mind.”

“What will not happen again, Oscar?”

“Well, this – this intrusion into your domestic life.  I have told Bosie he is not to bring any more of his - friends to this house.  Really, the last thing I want to do is to upset you, Constance.  I promise to be more careful ...”

“More careful?  Careful to keep your sordid life out of sight, is that what you mean?  You do realise, don't you, that our children could have walked past that door at any moment?”

“No!  I mean yes, I suppose that is what I mean, and no, I made sure the boys were out with Fräulein Zeigler, or I would never ...”

“I see.  May I go now?”

“Constance, please try to understand.”

“Oh, I understand perfectly well, Oscar.  You are not sorry for what you and Bosie are doing, but you are sorry that I saw you do it.  You will not promise to give up your unsavoury companions and activities, but you will try to keep them out of my way.  Oscar, I don't know exactly what age that young man was, but he cannot have been more than fifteen at most.  Have you absolutely no sense of responsibility?  In a few years' time your own sons will be that age – does that not even give you pause for thought?”

You sighed, a long, shuddering sigh, and held your head in your hands.  At last you said quietly:  “But you knew, Constance.”

“I knew about you and Bosie, but not about this.  Where do you meet these boys, Oscar?  Do you do this in London?  Of course you do, how stupid of me.  You introduced me to that boy Edward Shelley, when I came home unexpectedly and found him in the house.  How can you – how can you corrupt the young like this, when you have children of your own?”

You blushed deeply, and murmured something inaudible.

“What?” I asked sharply, “What did you say?”

“I do not corrupt them, Constance.  There are boys that I know, but they are already hardened little … they are already leading that life, Constance, it is how they earn a living.”

“Oh, I see.  So you are kindly providing employment for the poor.”

“I did not say that, Constance.”

“Where do you meet them?  On the streets?”

“My dear, you don't want to know all this.”

“But I do!  I do!  I have a right to know, I demand to know.  Where do you meet them?  Do you bring them to our house on a regular basis, when I am away?”

“No!  I have a friend called Alfred Taylor.  He lives in Little College Street.  He – arranges introductions.  We go out for meals, to hotels … there.  That is all.  Now you know.  What are you going to do, Constance?  Are you going to divorce me, and take the boys away?”

You sounded so hopeless, so desolate, that I raged inwardly at my inability to keep pity at bay.

“No, of course not.  What would I have to gain by dragging our children's name in the mud?”

“Your freedom, my dear.  A new husband, perhaps.”

I was furious at having the tables turned on me at a time like this.

“What?  It is you who want freedom, not I!  Well, you have it.  You have always taken it, anyway.  Consider yourself free to do as you wish.  And I do not want a new husband.”

That was true.  I would have given anything, there and then, to have my old husband back, the husband I had courted so shyly and married so proudly only a decade ago.  Not this debauched and lascivious stranger.

“Constance, I know that Arthur Humphreys is in love with you.”

“Don't talk nonsense, he's a married man,” I said, and left the room.

I lay on my bed and sobbed until I was nearly sick.  I remembered with revulsion my romantic indulgence of your friendships, and the spell cast over me, in the early days, by Bosie.  I bit my nails to the quick, and damned him to Hell a thousand times.  I thought of Ada Leverson, that wily old Sphinx on her pedestal; she knew you for what you were and revelled in it, and by watching you as I had done I felt that I'd brought myself down to her level.  As for you, Oscar – well, I planned my revenge in this way and that, and swore that I would make you suffer.  

When I came to myself, I found that you'd left for Brighton; and there was still the blood on my lips of all those words left unsaid, crying out for vengeance.

The boys had been clamouring to go out.  They wanted to know where Bosie was – he'd arrived out of the blue as was his wont, apparently completely oblivious to his father's threats and determined to muscle in on our family holiday, as always.  They wanted to go to the beach with you both, but I had no idea where you were so I sent them on a sedate afternoon walk with Fräulein Zeigler.  Poor dears, this was not turning out to be a happy holiday for them; they were restless and demanding, estranged by school and unable to settle.  

When you came in to find the parlour empty, you must have assumed I'd gone with them; but  I was in the kitchen, checking the supplies, suspecting that the local cook we'd engaged was not above a little domestic pilfering.  I found nothing amiss however, and after a while I made my way upstairs to lie down; as I passed the open door of the room I'd reluctantly allotted to Bosie, I saw you.

You were kneeling before a young boy lying on the bed, leaning over him, your fingers twined in his hair.  With your free hand you were loosening his clothes, quickly, deftly, while Bosie sat poised on the edge of the bedside chair, watching with a greedy, hateful expression on his face.  The boy slid his arm around your neck, and pulled you down to him.  You kissed first his lips and then his throat, moving slowly down his body.

I should have backed away, quickly and silently, but I stood in the doorway for some time and watched you quite calmly, until Bosie looked up and saw me.  I have never seen anyone's eyes become quite so round with shock.  I turned and ran back down the stairs, along the passage to the front door, and out into the street.  I heard your voices calling me:  “Constance!  Constance!  Constance!”

‘Now, I've really come to be myself. I always wished to get to this point, where I could talk about everything.’

This week we're honoured to share Jane Traies' account of how she became involved in collecting stories from the Lesbian Immigration Support Group. Published to celebrate International Women's Day, they sharply illustrate the horrors faced by lesbian and bisexual women escaping persecution - and the difficulties of proving their cases when claiming asylum here. Please buy the book - Free To Be Me - proceeds go towards supporting the work of the LISG.

 ‘FREE TO BE ME’

In the spring of 2017, I received an email from a volunteer with the Lesbian Immigration Support Group in Greater Manchester called Sorrel. She told me they were supporting a Ugandan woman whose claim for asylum on the grounds of her sexual orientation had been rejected by the Home Office, because they did not believe her to be a lesbian. Among the reasons given for not believing her were: that she had been married, that she had been apparently heterosexual until quite late in her life, and that she and her lesbian partner had not lived together. Of course, many older lesbians have such a life story, so I was surprised at what I then took to be simply old-fashioned ignorance on the part of the Home Office (I know now that it was typical of their hostile approach to LGBTQ+ asylum-seekers). 

Clearly, this African grandmother did not fit the Government’s stereotype of what a lesbian ought to look like. Grace, the woman seeking asylum, was working with her solicitor to put together a fresh claim to the Home Office; Sorrel had heard of my life history work with British lesbians born before 1950, and wondered if there were case studies in my previous research that could be used to support Grace’s new claim? Would I be prepared to contribute an ‘expert statement’ about the trauma and difficulty of coming out as an older lesbian? From the brief details of Grace’s story that Sorrel had given me, I could already see that many aspects of her experience were mirrored in the life-stories I had collected in the UK. Of course I would write for her!

Sorrel also told me that Grace was now 71 years old. So Grace and I are the same age. I sat at my computer, thinking about the differences between Grace’s life and mine, and understanding my own privilege in new ways. Whatever difficulties I had faced in the past because of my sexual orientation, they paled into significance beside Grace’s struggles. I am an educated white woman with a good pension, living in a country which now has laws to protect LGBTQ+ people. I’m also fortunate to be able to engage in research work that gives me immense personal satisfaction. The opportunity to use some of that privilege to help someone else was an unlooked-for gift. 

And that was how I came to meet not only Grace, but also some of the other members and volunteers from LISG. We had plenty of time to get to know each other in the months that followed, because Grace’s fresh claim for asylum was also refused in its turn. It was more than another two years before she was finally granted ‘leave to remain’ in the UK. During that period, I learned a good deal about the asylum system in the UK and also about the admirable work of LGBTQ+ asylum support groups up and down the country. Of these, the Lesbian Immigration Support Group in Greater Manchester is one of only two dedicated solely to helping lesbians and bisexual women. 

It seemed to me, as I got to know them, that the work of the group and the lives of its members were exactly the kind of subject that oral history exists to preserve. I tentatively proposed the idea of an oral history of LISG. By this time, I knew several of the group members personally and had met others at Grace’s appeal hearing and at the 2019 lesbian summer festival, LFest. I hoped that these shared experiences had begun to create a context of familiarity and trust between us, that would enable us to work together. 

LISG currently has about 30 members, supported by half a dozen volunteers. Under normal circumstances, there is a LISG meeting once a month. This is a sociable occasion as well as a business meeting and always includes sharing food. Most of the members are in social housing in various outer suburbs of Manchester and many were fairly isolated even before the pandemic, so the monthly meeting is a much-valued gathering. In the first week of January 2020, I attended this meeting for the first time, to talk about the idea of making a book based on the oral histories of some of the women in LISG. I shared my hopes that such a book would do three things: raise awareness of the particular issues faced by lesbian women claiming asylum on the grounds of their sexual orientation; publicise the work of LISG; and, potentially, raise funds to support the group’s work. At the end of the meeting, the group voted in favour of going ahead with the project and ten women said they would be interested in taking part.

I then needed to find a suitable place to carry out the interviews: somewhere sufficiently private, and as cheap as possible since the project was unfunded. A few days’ queer networking on social media led to the offer of free accommodation at the LGBT Foundation in Manchester’s gay village. This very generous gesture was particularly welcome since most of the women were already familiar with the building: it is home to several asylum support and LGBTQ social groups which they had engaged with previously. It also meant that our only immediate expenses would be paying the women’s bus fares into central Manchester. (The subsistence benefit paid to people seeking asylum – the Asylum Support Rate – was slightly raised in 2020 to £39.60 a week, which means that the asylum seeker is surviving on £5.66 a day. At the time of our project, the return fare from the outer suburbs into central Manchester was £6.00.)

In the last week of January, I returned to Manchester and carried out seven interviews. They were emotionally challenging, both for the researcher and for the narrators. Many of the stories were distressing: women told of physical and sexual abuse, rape, forced marriage, mob violence and murder. Many tears were shed during the interviews; sometimes there were gaps in which we had to stop the recorder, make coffee and talk about something completely different. In spite of this, I was struck by the absolute determination of the women to speak out in this setting. Mary, for instance, whose experience had been particularly horrific, wept quietly and continuously throughout her interview. I reminded her at several points that she was free to stop, but she pressed on in spite of the tears running down her cheeks. She explained that not being able to talk about what had happened to her was part of the past she felt she had escaped: ‘Now, I've really come to be myself. I always wished to get to this point, where I could talk about everything.’

By the time of my second trip to Manchester in early March, concern about the spread of the new coronavirus Covid-19 was already widespread. I had planned a third visit two weeks later but by then the whole country was in lockdown and, reluctantly, I had to abandon it. But by then thirteen women had told me their stories and there was enough material for our book.

The pandemic lockdown was stressful for all the group members, many of whom were already struggling with poor mental health and found enforced social isolation very difficult. In June, the much-missed monthly meeting was resurrected via Zoom, and was joyously welcomed. I also realised how important the LISG WhatsApp group became during this time – not only to inform members about practical developments, but also for the flurry of greetings and loving wishes which appeared each day.

On 25 May, George Floyd, an unarmed black man, was killed by a white police officer in Minneapolis. The chilling video footage of his last minutes spread rapidly via social media; ‘Black Lives Matter’ protests erupted across the world. Almost all the current members of LISG (and a few of the volunteers) are women of colour; the majority are black. At this terrible time, the members of LISG responded with an outpouring of love and affirmation for each other, sending many messages, including video clips illustrating the beauty and power of black women. The role of our project in making marginalised black voices heard suddenly had a new context. Against this background, I started transcribing and editing the interviews.

Making the book ‘Free To Be Me’ became my ‘lockdown project’. With the help of the wonderful Helen Sandler at Tollington Press, the book was completed in just under a year. It is to be published on International Women’s Day 2021. All profits from this book will go to support the work of LISG. Please buy it, and tell your friends about it. 

(Buying direct from the publisher or the author https://www.tollingtonpress.co.uk/free.html  means that more of the money goes to LISG.)

'But is Constance understanding? Is she not just docile and rather ignorant?'

Well, dear readers, the Blog is lingering in the 1890s because this week we've had another anniversary: Oscar Wilde's birthday, 16th October. He's famous for his witty plays and stories, his Aesthetic lifestyle, and (of course) has become a gay icon and martyr. Sometimes people forget he had a wife and two sons. 

                                    

His spouse, Constance has often been sidelined by Wilde's biographers as a dull 'mumsy' figure to be pitied or disdained. Our own Rohase Piercy's The Coward Does It With A Kiss challenges this view with a fascinating, insightful fictional 'autobiography'. We discover not only that Mrs Wilde was far more than a dutiful wife and mother but also, perhaps, what she really knew about her husband.

It's 1891. Let us join Constance as she passes by the drawing room in the Wildes' exquisite House Beautiful and accidentally eavesdrops on Oscar and his friends.

                                                        _________________________________

And now let me test your memory, Oscar. Let me see whether I cannot conjure up your past for you better than you can yourself. Voices in the drawing room – Lionel Johnson’s, Robbie’s, John Gray’s, and yours; June sunlight in the passageway outside; tinkling glasses, laughter, and the smell of Alexandrian tobacco.

‘Oh! No, Oscar, this is too much. How, after Dorian – it will be going from the sublime to the ridiculous. Besides, you cannot base a whole play upon the unrequited lust of an Israelite princess, not in this day and age.’

‘Why ever not? The West End Theatre, my dear Lionel, thrives on unrequited lust. Look at any play you care to mention, and you will find that lust is the very pivot upon which the action turns!’

‘Yes, but a Biblical theme …’

‘Oh, lust is a very Biblical theme! And anyway, I intend to make her Persian rather than Israelite. Poetic licence, my dear, the prerogative of Genius. The Israelites had no appreciation of sin.’

‘No, they quite disapproved of it, I’m told -‘

‘Whereas the Persians toasted the delights of the flesh in sugared wine, offered in chalices of jade and silver by sloe-eyed boys with dusky skin and rose-leaf lips …’

‘Robbie, what utter drivel. What do you know of Persia?’

‘As much as you, I dare say, Dorian. I was merely offering a humble tribute to the exquisite style and taste

of our host here.’

‘A very poor imitation then. And please don’t call me Dorian.’

‘Mr Gray then, if we must be formal …’

‘Oh Oscar really, can’t you stop him?’

‘Stop him? But why? He is so charming with vine leaves in his hair. At least he had the foresight to arrive suitably arrayed in leafy clusters, whereas you and Lionel are both constrained to borrow from me.’

‘At half past eleven in the morning?’

‘It is gone noon, I assure you. Let us toast the glorious noon with some more of this golden nectar. Lionel?’

‘Oscar, how can I refuse you?’

‘Never try. John?’

‘It is just gone half past eleven. I looked at my watch not five minutes ago.’

‘I will not have to do with guests who consult their watches in my presence. But if you insist, let us look

at mine – there, you see – the bawdy hand of the dial is e’en now upon the prick of noon.’

‘Oh, really!’

‘The Immortal Bard’s words, not mine! And am I not right? You see how time flies when you are listening

to me? And now, are you going to drink some more of my sherry?

‘Oh, very well …’

‘There’s no need to be so ungracious about it dear, just because I was right and you were wrong. Petulance does sometimes become you, but not today. Today, let all be sweetness and light! Robbie, my sweet goblin, what have you been doing this morning? How came you thus to anticipate us? Robert, it is too tiresome when you giggle like that instead of replying to my questions. How can I discuss with you the delicious wantonness of Salome when you sit there gurgling like an overflowing waste pipe? I shall be forced to conclude that you need the services of a plumber … oh really, what a vulgar sense of humour. Do try and pull yourself together dear, and let us converse about serious matters. What were we just discussing?’

‘Lust, Oscar.’

‘Oh, surely not!’

‘Persia. The West End Theatre.’

‘The sins of both are the same …’

‘Hic sunt poma Sodomorum – your words, I believe Lionel – ah, the Cities of the Plain! Yes, it was just such a cradle that rocked Salome …’

‘I really don’t see why. Dorian, perhaps, but a Persian princess?’

‘There is a little of the Persian princess in most of us, don’t you think?’

‘Oh Oscar, how perceptive of you! I’ve been trying to keep it a secret!’

‘Not in you, Robbie. A Persian princess would have more dignity. She certainly would not sit huddled at one end of a divan smirking tipsily to herself at half past – whatever it is in the morning. And you have never answered my question. Where have you been?’

‘Nowhere! I arose from my downy couch and came straight here to you. Last night, however -‘

‘Ah, no, I don’t want to hear it. Never refer to the night before! That should be a golden rule amongst all who take pleasure seriously.’

Laughter. The chink of glasses as more sherry is poured. You are determined to keep centre stage, as always.

‘So now seriously, Oscar. You have delighted us all with your subtlety in two wonderful stories which no-one else would have had the audacity to write, let alone publish – I mean The Portait of Mr W. H. and Dorian, of course – and now you announce that you will fling aside the mask of double entrendre to reveal – what? A wanton girl and a reluctant prophet? Don’t you realise how you will have disappointed us all?'

‘I have no doubt that my Salome will be a great disappointment to the shallow-minded, to those concerned only with the particular and not with the delicious conglomeration of the universal.’

‘Meaning?’

‘Meaning the sins of the flesh, dear boy! A veritable feast! The apples of Sodom and the apples of Eden, served at the same banquet! There is the rest of the human race to consider, after all.’

‘As to that, I really neither know nor care. That is an opinion on which we must part company, I think.’

‘So soon? My poor John, you have your whole life ahead of you, and you will find the world a hard, inhospitable place when they expel you from Eden.’

‘You think I am going to change? Or compromise my nature? Because I can assure you, Oscar – ‘

‘No, no, I am merely saying that an artist must take his material from the whole of human experience. Especially if he is to produce West End plays.’

‘Ah, there you have it. You compromise, in order to please the vulgar masses.’

‘Certainly I wish my talents to have universal acknowledgement. Genius cannot thrive in a backwater.’

‘A backwater! You disappoint me, Oscar.’

‘What! Because I am reluctant to leave my house, my family, my Art, and elope with you to some seedy little lair in Bayswater?’

‘There’s no need to refer to that. I take back any such proposal. I am disappointed because you mean to have your cake and eat it too.’

‘I most certainly do! I would consider it foolish and unimaginative not to!’

‘Oh! So you consider us all to be foolish, and unimaginative?’

‘Of course he does not, John, stop trying to provoke him. You are determined to create a deliberate misunderstanding …’

‘Am I?’

‘Yes, and don’t adopt that peevish tone with me. Life is a rich tapestry, and Oscar is the richer for bring blessed with children, and an understanding wife.’

‘Thank you Robbie. Your vine leaves become you. I do consider myself blessed.’

‘But is Constance understanding? Is she not just docile, and rather ignorant?’

‘Constance, docile? You would not say that if you knew her!’

There is a edge to your laughter; and I meanwhile am trembling with rage. Beneath that golden exterior, John Gray is every bit as ugly as his namesake’s hidden portrait. Docile and ignorant! And he so fawning and flattering to my face!

‘Oh, so she knows, does she, where you spend the nocturnal hours?’

‘I would consider it demeaning both to my wife and to myself to discuss such matters. We have an excellent understanding. She pursues her interests, and I pursue mine.’

‘Oh come on, Oscar. You mean that she consoles herself with good works in Whitechapel, and plays at Liberal politics with eccentric old women!’

‘John.’

‘It is all right, Robbie dear. It takes more than a little petulance to upset me. I am not Basil Hallward, and he is not Dorian, as he so rightly says. Now let us forget these petty quarrels and speak of Salome. I can promise you, you will not be disappointed, whatever you may think of the subject matter. It is to be written in French …’

‘In French! Ah, so this is the outcome of your sojourn in Paris!’

‘But of course! No artist can visit that delightful city without bathing in the spring of inspiration that bubbles up from its very foundations … ah, it is the cradle of Decadence. Salome was conceived in Paris, and I shall return thither to attend her birth.’

‘I thought you said she was rocked on the Cities of the Plain!’

‘And so she shall be, Lionel my dear. One generally rocks the baby after it is born .. at least, that is my experience. But as for the Cities of the Plain, surely Paris is one of them? Yes, I shall go back in the autumn.’

This is news to me. I had hoped your long absences were over for this year. The whole of February and March, and most of May – and you did not write very often.

And yes, I already harbour suspicions as to where you spend the ‘nocturnal hours’. They are not the suspicions I once harboured, and I have allowed myself to feel grateful for that; to feel fortunate, even, in comparison with other neglected wives … 

Docile, and ignorant! Only Robbie has any true respect for me … why can you not find another friend like him?

I have not been to Paris since our honeymoon.

I tread carefully on the stairs, past the half-open door, on my way to the sanctuary of my room. The sunlight has moved; a shadow steals across the upper landing. Just before I retreat from earshot, Lionel Johnson is saying –

‘Oh by the way Oscar, there is a young cousin of mine who would very much like to meet you. He’s just up at Oxford from Winchester, and he claims to have read Dorian nine times running! He’ll be in London for part of the Summer vacation …’

'This is how we disappear from history ...'

Now You See Me 

Jane Traies

Enjoy this extract from Now You See Me, a collection of life stories from older lesbians across the UK, recorded by Jane Traies over nearly a decade. The stories are told in the women's own words and vividly recreate a time when being a lesbian meant either hiding your true identity or paying the price for breaking society's rules. But there is plenty of joy here too: whether snogging to Dusty Springfield songs, or cruising women by bicycle. The personal is still political in this moving and inspiring book.

One day, early in the Second World War, a lorry full of prisoners-of-war trundled down the main street of a small market town in Middle England on its way to deliver the men to their work on local farms. The County Secretary of the Women’s Land Army watched it from her office window, and took particular note of the driver. Perched up in the cab of the lorry in shirt and cravat, her beret at a jaunty angle, the only woman driver employed by the War Agricultural Committee was certainly an unusual sight. Aged twenty-two, with a preference for wearing breeches and a passion for motor-cars, Joan had left her respectable middle-class family far away and earned her living in a string of non-traditional jobs. She had tried to join the armed forces when war broke out; judged medically unfit, she was now determined to help the war effort in other ways, and driving was what she did best. The Secretary of the WLA who watched her so intently that morning was a respected local figure: a forceful unmarried lady of good breeding, she was well known for her powers of persuasion. And she had plans for that young driver. 

Which was how Joan, though entirely unqualified for the job in question, was persuaded not only to leave the ‘War Ag’ and join the Land Army, but to become the Warden of the local ‘milkers’ hostel’. For only six pounds a week, she was to be responsible for recruiting, training, supervising and deploying dozens of young women from all over the country who would be sent to local dairy farms to fill the places left by men called away to fight. It was a challenge, but Joan rose to it with characteristic enthusiasm, teaching the girls to pass their proficiency exams as well as to milk cows and ride motorbikes. One day, she heard reports of a particularly good milker, equally skilled with hand and machine, working on a nearby farm that was soon to be sold. Joan drove out to see if she could persuade the girl to come into the hostel when her employment ended. Slipping quietly into the milking parlour, she watched from the shadows as a shy, dark-haired teenager expertly milked out her cow. The pail was brim-full, the milk frothy: the girl was clearly exceptional. Joan recruited her on the spot.

I can tell you that much of the story, because later in her life Joan wrote and spoke very entertainingly about her Land Army days, including that moment in the milking parlour when she first met Peggy. But the story of their lives after that, of the sixty-plus years they were to live and work together, was never told; which is why I have not used their real names in this account, and why the rest of their story is not included in this collection. Like so many women of their generation, ‘Joan’ and ‘Peggy’ never publicly acknowledged the nature of their relationship. Both are dead now; their long love story was not acknowledged at either of their funerals, and is known only to a handful of their friends. This is how we disappear from history.

I was born in 1945, so I’m a generation younger than Joan, but I’m still old enough to remember the time when it was quite usual for lesbian and gay people to live their whole lives in the closet. I have seen how secrecy can become a habit that is impossible to break, even when social attitudes change: many lesbians of my own generation, too, have a history of not telling all, and therefore of being invisible to the outside world. Even among those who appear in this book, not all have felt able to use their real names. For some, being part of this collection has been an act of real courage, an act of coming out. Others, as you will discover from their stories, have been out for years. Our stories are all different. 

Queer history and why women's life stories matter

Thinking about queer history,

and why women’s life stories matter

by Jane Traies

In 2017 we celebrated 50 years since the Sexual Offences Act 1967 passed into law and homosexual acts between men were – at least in part – decriminalised. Last year, 2019, we celebrated the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall riots in New York, which are widely regarded as the birth of the gay rights movement.

And, when I say ‘we’ are celebrating these events, I don’t just mean the LGBTQ community. A strange and wonderful thing has happened in much of Europe and the US in the 21st century: our queer history has suddenly gone mainstream Everyone wants a bit of it. Everyone wants to be part of the cool, liberal, equalities-supporting society we have recently become. And that’s great.

But, as the story of half a century of progress and liberation begins to harden into a generally-accepted historical narrative, it is important not to let LGBTQ history become homogenised, as if the story was the same for all of us. It wasn’t; and this is why individual life stories remain an important tool in the proper understanding of our shared past. 

Lesbian relationships were never illegal, and so do not figure much in the story of 1967. Neither does the story of that iconic night outside the Stonewall Bar give lesbians much air-time. In fact, they don’t get much of a mention in many gay histories. They were always there, of course, and subject to the same social stigma as gay men; but their lives – like those of so many other women at the time – were ‘hidden from history’ then, and have to some extent continued to be so. My oral history research with lesbians born before 1950 has revealed some of the ways in which, in the second half of the 20th century, the lives of lesbian and bisexual women differed from those of gay men. We were never illegal – but we were second-class citizens nonetheless, in many ways.

The stories I collect offer a forceful reminder that the experience of stigma and discrimination is always gendered. For the women who tell me those stories, homophobia was always inflected by the institutionalised sexism of the time. In 1960s Britain a lesbian faced not only the opprobrium of society towards homosexuality in general, but also all the barriers to women’s equality shared by her heterosexual sisters. A woman without a man was still at a serious social and economic disadvantage, and that disadvantage was doubled for lesbian couples, where both partners shared the female fate of low incomes and limited job prospects. Equal pay and equal opportunities were still a decade away, and there was no redress against unfair dismissal on the grounds of either gender or sexual orientation. In 1967, women could not obtain mortgages, or take out hire purchase agreements unless a male relative signed the contract. Married women’s incomes were still taxed as if they were their husbands’ property. A lesbian was considered an ‘unfit’ mother who could – and often did – lose custody of her children if her sexual orientation was discovered. 

In the second half of the twentieth century, then, lesbians still faced the ‘double whammy’ of homophobia and institutionalised sexism. Their experiences remind us that a truly intersectional and nuanced view of history is one that takes into account not only LGBTQ people’s collective difference from the mainstream, but also the diversity of experience within the LGBTQ ‘community’. Personal histories are a key tool in this project: they remind us of the individual humanity of every teller and of the intersecting influences that make each of us, straight or gay, unique. 

So that’s why I do what I do.

Jane Traies

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Lives-Older-Lesbians-Sexuality-Identity/dp/1349717649

Now You See Me: Lesbian Life Stories: Amazon.co.uk: Jane Traies, Jane Traies: Books http://ow.ly/U1V830qKE3F