The Girls of Radcliff Hall is a roman à clef novel in the form of a lesbian girls' school story written in the 1930s by the British composer and bon-vivant Gerald Berners, the 14th Lord Berners, under the pseudonym "Adela Quebec", published and distributed privately in 1932.[1] Berners depicts himself and his circle of friends, including Cecil Beaton and Oliver Messel, as lesbian schoolgirls at a school named "Radcliff Hall" (punning on the name of the famous lesbian writer).[2] [3] [4] The indiscretions alluded to in the novel created an uproar among Berners's intimates and acquaintances. Cecil Beaton attempted to have all the copies destroyed.[5] The novel subsequently disappeared from circulation, making it extremely rare. The story is not included in the Berners anthology Collected Tales and Fantasies, but it was reprinted, with some additional explanatory material, in 2000 thanks to the efforts of Dorothy Lygon.[6]
The characters and their real-life selves, according to an annotation in Cyril Connolly's copy of the novel, and endorsed by Robert Heber-Percy with the annotation "How did you guess?", are: Miss Carfax (this choice of name was presumably related to Sibyl Colefax, with whom Berners was acquainted): Lord Berners; Miss MacRogers: Jimmy Foster; Olive Mason: Oliver Messel; Cecily: Cecil Beaton; Daisy: David Herbert; Lizzie: Peter Watson; Millie: Robert Heber-Percy; Yoshiwara: Pavel Tchelitchew; Goussie: Christian Bérard; Helene de Troy: Jack Wilson; Vivian Dorrick: Doris Castlerosse; May: Robin Thomas (USA).[7]
The first edition, but not the second edition, contains the following satirical foreword:[9]
FOREWORDBy the Bishop of Brixton
WHEN first my friend and erstwhile parishioner Adela Quebec invited me towrite an introduction to her little book, The Girls of Radcliff Hall, I mustadmit that I was filled with diffidence. I felt that, for a member of the Church of England,possessing no pretensions whatever to literary taste and above allhandicapped by a complete ignorance of the subject of which the book treats, itwould be a task that lay entirely outside my province.
But after I had finished reading her charming little work, all such diffidencefell from me. Here, I said to myself, is something that has an universal appeal.Nobody, in whatever walk of life, of whatever calling, could fail to be fascinatedby the freshness, the delicious naiveté of this delightful chronicle of a Girls'School, with its charming descriptions of the romantic friendships of its inmates,descriptions that rival in their delicacy of touch, the illustrations of an earlynineteenth century botany book.
Miss Quebec's little volume exhales so fragrant an atmosphere of charm andinnocence that, after reading it, I felt as though I had been walking in a gardenfull of lilies and roses. In fact I was reminded of that exquisite picture by Sargent,'Carnation lily, lily rose', except that here the theme is treated more naivelyand that in the place of Sargent's consummate mastery of technique one findsa fresher, less sophisticated treatment resembling that of Fra Angelico or someother primitive Italian artist.
We follow the development of the various characters in the story with the sameeager curiosity with which we watch the unfolding of the buds in our herbaceousborders, and upon laying down the book we are left with a longing to pursue stillfurther the fortunes of the talented Cecily, the impulsive Lizzie, Daisy and Olive,with their vivid interest in the welfare of the school, Millie the Tomboy, and,above all, the benevolent Headmistress who watches over her little flock withsuch maternal solicitude.
It is sincerely to be hoped that Miss Adela Quebec will gratify us with asequel.