c o v e r s t o r y
Pursuing the Femme Identity
by Andrea Spoehrer

f e a t u r e s
Revealing the "psuedo-invert"
Una, Lady Troubridge
by Alison Phipps
Ashes in the Paint
by Michelle Bancroft

c o l u m n s
Health
by Dr. Lipstick
Wealth
by Ms. Moneygrrl
Sex
by SexySuzi
Advice
by Victoria
Fashion
by Dara
Femme Perspective
by Kenya
Butch Perspective
by D

Publisher's Note
Letter from the Editor
Contribute to Femme

Radclyffe Hall's book The Well of Loneliness has been touted as "the first lesbian novel", and much has been written about her role in the development of lesbian identity. However, little is known about the woman who, as Hall's partner for most of her life, was a major force behind the writer's career and a fascinating person in her own right. Una Troubridge has rarely been discussed separate from her status as the other half of this notorious couple.

Una's feminine identity, marked in contrast to the masculinity of Hall, is of particular interest to femme lesbians. Nevertheless, we would be mistaken to impose the modern categories of "femme" and "butch" on either of these women. Both were openly homosexual, identifying as "inverts" (a term which had been brought into the emerging discourse on sexuality by the theories of sexologist Havelock Ellis). But while we can see many obvious similarities with the butch-femme couple, it is important not to appropriate these on behalf of an identity that did not exist within the language of the time. It is enough to say that lesbian femmes are likely to feel a strong connection with Una Troubridge.

The following short sketch of Una's life will highlight some of her achievements and the problems against which she struggled, most of which are largely unknown because she has almost always been subsumed under the heading of her more famous other half. This is an attempt to grant Una Troubridge her own story.

Una Troubridge was born Una Elena Taylor in 1887, and was brought up in Kensington, London, in an upper middle-class family. Lovat Dickson, biographer of Radclyffe Hall, paints a picture of the type of upbringing she had. "The family life was built on beauty, wit and style", and there was a high standard of achievement to live up to for both Una and her sister Viola. Una was a pupil at the Royal College of Art, and after she graduated set up a sculpture studio until her career was cut short by the death of her father in 1907. After this event, marriage was essential for financial reasons. Her choice was naval captain Ernest Troubridge, a widower some 25 years older than Una, who proved unable to make her happy. She despised the lifestyle of a navy wife, and the marriage was not a successful one.

In 1915, against the backdrop of this failed marriage, Una met "John" Radclyffe Hall properly for the first time. John was at the end of a long-standing affair with Una's cousin Mabel Batten, a celebrated beauty of early twentieth century Britain. But upon meeting Una the connection was immediate - Lovat Dickson terms the subsequent period and its events a "courtship dance", in language which will sound familiar to members of today's butch-femme community. After the death of Mabel Batten Una and John decided to live together, and a partnership began which was to last until the end of John's life, and would even outlast her death.

Lovat Dickson, in his biography of Hall, calls Una Troubridge John's "little beloved". However, even though the literature is sparse, it is plain enough that she was a great deal more than that. She was a living contradiction of Havelock Ellis' belief that the feminine or "passive" invert was merely "the pick of the women whom the average man would pass by". Dickson characterises her as a Lady in the old-fashioned sense of the word - elegant, educated and dignified - and points out that many of the officers in the navy fell head over heels for Captain Troubridge's wife. It is also a little known fact that the Irish poet WB Yeats was very taken by Una's attractiveness. "Mrs Troubridge was so witty and pretty, so daring and clever, did sculptures and painted and sang like a bird."

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