The Loves of Dorothy Una Ratcliffe

[jacey]

Some of you will already know that back in 1988 when Artisan was a new (and at that time not even full time) singing group, we recorded an album (an LP in those days) called 'Searching for Yorladale' - a series of poems by Yorkshire Dales dialect poet Dorothy Una Ratcliffe set to music by my other half, Brian Bedford. In order to check copyright liability I started to try and trace Dorothy, or DUR as she liked to be known, and found not a salt-of-the-earth Daleswoman, but a south coast (Brighton-born) socialite married into newly rich gentry. Sadly she died twenty years before we discovered her poems, but I became friends with her niece, Ludi Horenstein and also interviewed her wartime secretary and talked to some of her employees and friends. This is the result, most of it heresay.

More on her childhood and her poetry later. This is about her love-life.

In 1909 Dorothy Una Clough (yes, Daddy was a displaced Yorkshireman, born in Scarborough) married Charles Ratcliffe, nephew of and heir to Edward Allen Brotherton, self-made chemical factory millionaire, industrial magnate and aspiring politician, later Lord Mayor of Leeds, MP for Wakefield and eventually Lord Brotherton of Wakefield. One has to wonder how it came about. Originally Dorothy and her sister Pauline met Charles and his younger brother Victor on holiday. Dorothy and Victor paired off and Pauline and Charles. Charles was the heir. We'll never know whether he saw something in Dorothy that made him decide she was the wife he needed, or whether she realised he was the one with the potential for money. It may even have been Pauline and Victor who managed the swap, because after Dorothy and Charles married Pauline and Victor became engaged (sadly terminated by Victor's death in 1916 in the First World War.)

Dorothy and Charles' marriage wasn't disastrous in many ways, but it didn't provide either partner with a lifelong soulmate. In Leeds Dorothy blossomed. She ran a literary magazine, The Microcosm, with Edward Brotherton's encouragement and finance; she became Edward Borotherton's Lady Mayoress in 1913-14, spending time equipping the Leeds Old Pals for the trenches and receiving Belgian refugees (as one of the few French speakers available). Later she encouraged Edward Brotherton to organise a subscription to buy the Wakefield Mystery Plays (The Towneley Cycle) which were up for auction and in danger of going to America, which sadly they did, however as a consolation prize Brotherton bought Andrew Marvell's 'Garden Poems' thus beginning the Brotherton collection of early printed books which now resides in Leeds University Library (The Brotherton Library, but that's another story.)

Edward Brotherton (right with DUR) gave the newlyweds a house in the grounds of one of his chemical factories, which Charles (left) was managing - working his way up in the business. This wasn't good enough for Dorothy, so she auditioned for - and got - a place in the Carl Rosa Opera Company (having been trained by the same teacher as dame Nellie Melba in Paris). Uncle Edward heard about it and outraged that his heir's wife was intending to work for a living and on the stage, no less. He promoted Charles to a new job and a much better house and Dorothy resigned without having sung a note.

The marriage to Charles did not last, though it lingered for 21 years. Charles Ratcliffe remarried after the divorce and I believe had children. Ludi - Dorothy's niece and my primary informant - was always very circumspect because he'd married into very minor royalty. (I don't know the details). The divorce was a scandal, of course, and there were at that time (she thought) still living children of that marriage. However, leaving that aside the family story says that Charles had been playing away from home for many years. (Of course this is Dorothy's story and I don't know what the Ratcliffe family story is, or whether it might differ, but I digress.)

If marriage to Charles had its social advantages it also had a downside. They were married in 1909, but DUR ran home to her parents in 1916, unfortunately having contracted something nasty from Charles, which was cured but left her sterile (her one big regret as she loved children). She was promptly sent back again and through the teenies and twenties spent a lot of time working with Lord Brotherton on various projects. She kept a house on the edge of the Yorkshire Dales as a bolthole and from what I infer probably played away from home a bit herself, mentally if not physically, as she met and had a brief flirtation with the man who was to become her third husband, young West Country scenic photographer Alfred Charles Vowles. She wrote the poem 'Let Love Die Bravely' when she had to give him up for propriety's sake - mostly I gather because of Lord Brotherton's social standing and political career and her own social standing, too, of course.

'Let love die bravely
Beautiful and holy
And never know the ache
Of fading slowly'

It probably says as much about her relationship with Charles as it does about Alfred.

Sometime in the late 20s she met Noel McGrigor Phillips on a cruise which she took with Uncle Edward, and she fell deeply and passionately in love. In 1930 when Lord Brotherton died she felt able to grab her freedom from Charles. Because he was Lord Brotherton's heir Dorothy decided that she would let Charles divorce her, so to give him grounds she and Noel used to go off for really obvious dirty weekends and wait for Charles' private detectives to come and find them at their hotel. But apparently they were such a sweet couple that when the dirty mac brigade arrived the hotel staff used to lie like mad and cover up for them.

Once Charles turned up himself and walked up and down the hotel corridor outside their bedroom singing their favourite song at the top of his voice.

But eventually, named as the guilty party, she got her divorce and married Noel (right) in 1932. There is much to be written about their marriage which I believe was occasionally stormy, but always loving. Two strong characters often struck sparks off each other. Dorothy's niece described Noel as a cross between Clark Gable and a cuddly rhinoceros. Sadly he died suddenly during the Second World War, when they were touring Scotland trying to raise funds to help the people of Greece. He'd sustained kidney damage in the First World War - at Gallipoli - and it had remained a weakness which eventually killed him. On returning to their home in Cumbria, Temple Sowerby Manor, now Acorn Bank, a Natonal Trust property (donated later by DUR), she went to his favourite place, a stream that ran throughthe grounds of their house called Crowdundle Beck, and wrote perhaps her most beautiful poem, 'Croodle Beck' - the stream's local name.

   'T CROODLE BECK
                      by Dorothy Una Ratcliffe
    I sit beside thi Croodle Beck
    Watching its waters flow
    At t'bend where t'willows 'at thou loved
    Stand weeping in a row
    Nearby their roots, a water hen
    Has nested and a blithesome wren
    Perks from an alder. T'warmish sun
    Signals that May Day has begun

    I sit here dreaming on my own
    Not caring for t'wren's twitter
    My heart's a boat that's rudderless
    On t'little waves all-glitter
    T'gay wren chirps on his cheeky song
    As if naught in t'owd world were wrong
    A wind wi' young leaves is a-laiking
    And bonnie things are fair heart-breaking.

    I recollect a dozen springs
    'At crowd this last one out
    When time itsen had gowden wings
    And life held ne'er a doubt
    Thi cherry trees are noo a maze
    Of petalled snow in woodland ways
    Thi beck is mirroring blue skies
    Lad dear nowt lovely really dies

Alfred Vowles (yes, remember him? Here he is on the left.) had remained a family friend - which is what makes me think her original dalliance with him may have been flirtatious but relatively innocent. In fact, his photographic portrait of Noel is one of the best pictures we have of him. A few years after Noel's death Dorothy married Alfred, but unwilling to lose Noel's name of Phillips, Alfred Charles Vowles changed his name by deed poll to Alfred Charles Phillips, so she remained Mrs Phillips for the rest of her life. (Though she always retained Dorothy Una Ratcliffe as her pen name.)

Dorothy and Alfred grew old together. In the mid fifties Dorothy gave her home, Acorn Bank, to the National Trust with an endowment and the Phillipses moved to Anne Street in Edinburgh where Alfred continued to make good use of his camera and Dorothy continued to write and they both continued to get involved in good causes. Alfred bowed out first, dying in the early 1960s. Dorothy moved to a sea front flat in North Berwick and after almost fifty books of poems, plays, character studies and (often fabricated) recollections, had just begun her first novel at the age of 80 when she had two strokes three months apart and died, a grand old woman and still a force of nature.