User:Michael Goodyear/Rosalind Thornycroft

Rosalind Thornycroft "Ros" (September 1891 – June 1973) was a British artist and illustrator. The third child of the sculptor Hamo Thornycroft, she joined Rupert Brooke's circle of Cambridge Neo-pagans, where she met and married, first, the psychoanalyst Helton Baynes in 1913, and second, the art historian Hugh Popham in 1926. In between these two marriages, she had an affair with D. H. Lawrence and became the inspiration for the character of Constance Reid in his 1928 novel, Lady Chatterly's Lover.

Early life
Rosalind Thornycroft was the third of four children born to Agatha Cox and Hamo Thornycroft in 1891. The family was a distinguished one with many literary, artistic and political connections. Agatha Cox was one of nine children of Judge Homersham Cox (1821–1897) and Margaret Smith (1831–1918), a governess. One of Agatha Cox's brothers was Harold Cox the Liberal Member of Parliament, another, the mathematician Homersham Cox. Of her sisters, Margaret Cox married the diplomat and Fabian Sydney Olivier, 1st Baron Olivier, while Ethel Cox married Captain Alfred Carpenter, the brother of Edward Carpenter the philosopher. Rosalind Thornycroft's father, Hamo Thornycroft, was a noted British sculptor and came from a family of three generations of sculptors. Among his immediate family, one brother was the shipbuilder John Isaac Thornycroft, and his sisters included the artists Mary Alyce Thornycroft, Helen Thornycroft and Theresa Thornycroft, the latter of whom married the war poet Siegfried Sassoon.

Agatha Cox was known for her beauty, and praised by Thomas Hardy, who described her as "the most beautiful woman in England" and considered her his inspiration for the character of Tess, in his Tess of the d'Urbervilles. The Cox girls, Agatha and her sisters, Margaret and Ethel, had a reputation for being the belles of Tonbridge society in Kent, but they were also considered "enlightened" and "rational", resisting the fashion conventions of the time, for instance, refusing to wear bustles. In the artistic circles of the time, in which they moved, there was a progressive loosening of dress convention, and a gradual adopting of the aesthetic movement among women who considered themselves "advanced". Agatha married Thornycroft, sixteen years her senior, in 1884 and the Thornycrofts had four children:
 * Oliver (1885–1956)
 * Joan (1888–1989)
 * Rosalind (1891–1973)
 * Elfrida (1901–1987)

When they were first married, the Thornycrofts lived at Hamo Thornycroft's studio at 2 Melbury Road, Holland Park, London, which was also his family home since 1877. In 1891, with two children and Rosalind on the way, they needed a larger home and acquired a house in Frimley Green, Surrey, about 70 km from Agatha's sister Margaret's home in Limpsfield Chart, Surrey, while retaining Melbury Road as his studio, commuting at weekends (a three hour journey). The Cox grandparents still lived in nearby Tonbridge, and the Thornycrofts and the Oliviers, with their four daughters, the Olivier sisters would spend Christmas there together. The Thornycrofts were involved in many of the liberal movements of the day, including Fabianism, positivism and coeducation. Agatha was determined that her daughters not waste their time on conventional girls' education such as "embroidering paperweights", but at the time there was little alternative. Like her sister Margaret, Agatha designed a rigorous programme of home schooling. She designed a In 1889, the Thornycrofts moved to One Oak at 16 Redington Road in the Frognal district of Hampstead in London so that the girls could attend the newly opened King Alfred School, a coeducational day school, allowing their father to avoid the commute. The children had by now outgrown their mother's ability to homeschool them. The school, which had opened the previous year was one of a number of progressive schools that were appearing at this time along Rousseauesque lines, including Bedales, to which both Oliver Thornycroft and the youngest of the Olivier sisters, Noel, were sent. Hamo Thornycroft was among the founders of King Alfred.

In addition to her schooling, her father taught her the drawing skills that served her well in later life. The Thornycroft children were also exposed to the literary and artistic group known as the Holland Park Circle, which included their father. The other influence was their cousins, the Olivier sisters, once described as "feral". The Thornycroft sisters were described as intelligent, artistic and free spirits.

The two Cox sisters, Margaret and Agatha, had similar unconventional ideas about the education of their daughters. Agatha embraced the ideals of the Rational Dress Society and the Healthy and Artistic Dress Union, eschewing coiffures and stays, favouring loose hair and Liberty smocks. Button boots and garters were also out, while "nature-form" shoes and suspenders were in. The four Olivier sisters led a free-spirited outdoor life, disdainful of social convention, growing up in a circle of progressive Fabian socialist families. In 1907, the oldest, Margery Olivier, went up to Cambridge, followed two years later by her younger sister, Daphne Olivier. Soon all four sisters were engaged in Cambridge activities, and were drawn to Rupert Brooke's informal circle, that came to be known as the Neo-pagans. The oldest Thornycroft, Oliver, also attended Cambridge (Clare College 1903–1908).

Courtship and the Neo-pagans (1907−1913)
Rosalind was sixteen when she met Helton Godwin Baynes (Godwin, 1882–1943), then twenty-five, at a family musical gathering in February 1907. Rosalind was considered a talented musician, singing Wagner with Godwin, and later Mozart arias to D H Lawrence and his wife, while accompanying herself on a spinet.. Baynes (1882–1943) was a medical student at Trinity (1904–1910) and both a rowing and swimming blue, who went on to St Bartholomew's Hospital (Barts) as a house physician. As a close friend of the musical Bax family, he frequented their household on Fellows Road, Hampstead, where he was born. He was immediately struck by the legendary beauty she inherited from her mother, described as a brown-eyed Pre-Raphaelite. David Garnett, who was one of both the Bax and Olivier circle, and DH Lawrence both praised her appearance. Godwin, still a medical student at Barts, was known for his physique, athleticism and joie de vivre, and had many female admirers, and was even engaged for a short time. Arnold Bax's musical and literary circle shared Fabianism with the Olivier circle. Godwin was also struck by Rosalind's unconventionality, which allowed her to spend unchaperoned time with him in his student's quarters in London, in Little Britain, and go away on holidays together.

Godwin had a fine baritone voice, and for a while had studied opera at Dresden, Germany, and at the Bax's he and Rosalind would sing Wagner together, and attend many concerts and performances. Their circle included the Farjeons, Bertie and Eleanor. Bertie would later marry Rosalind's sister, Joan Thornycroft. Among other members was the poet Edward Thomas, whom Godwin treated for depression in 1912. Rosalind had decided she was going to marry Godwin by March 1907 ("By this time I was entirely in love with him ....my future was more or less decided"), and both had introduced each other to their parents. At this time, Godwin was also developing a friendship with David Garnett, and spending an increasing amount of time at the Garnett home (The Cearne) in Limpsfield, where the Olivier sisters also lived. When Godwin met these four sisters, who were known as "The Four Beauties", he immediately decided he was in love with the best known of them, Brynhild Olivier (Bryn, 1887–1935), then twenty-two. Godwin was not only admired by women, he admired women, with a largesse to a degree that his daughter would later describe as his epitaph, and at one stage was pursuing all four sisters.

Neo-pagans


Through the sisters, Godwin and Rosalind became drawn into Rupert Brooke's circle of Neo-pagans. Godwin already considered himself a Neo-pagan, a term coined by the Stephen sisters and the Bloomsbury Group to describe this loose association of young free-spirited left wing intelligentsia, who rebelled against prevailing convention and embraced a simple Bohemian lifestyle.

The core group or inner circle consisted of the four Olivier sisters, Justin Brooke, Jacques Raverat, Gwen and Frances Darwin and Ka Cox. The fringe members or outer circle included David Garnett, Geoffrey Keynes, Sybil Pye and Ethel Pye, Dudley Ward, Godwin Baynes, Rosalind Thornycroft and Ferenc Békássy. Later it would include A. E. H. (Hugh) Popham (1889–1970), a Cambridge diving champion who Bryn would later marry.

In 1909, camping and the outdoor life was coming into fashion, and for undergraduates replacing the reading parties, such as the one Margery and Noël Olivier attended at Bank in the New Forest at Easter that year. Baden-Powell had written Scouting for Boys in 1908, and it had been incorporated into the curriculum of Bedales, Noël Olivier and Oliver Thornycroft's school. Rupert Brooke was much taken by this trend and organised camping trips for his circle, travelling extensively in the summer months in both England and France, where Raverat had a chateau at Prunoy. In July, David Garnett assembled the group at Penshurst, Kent, close to his and the Olivier residence at Limpsfield. The Oliviers were noted for bathing nude, which they referred to as "wild swimming", as illustrated by Gwen Raverat in her Bathers (see image). They and the men would swim in the river, under cover of darkness, illuminated by bicycle lamps. This was an extension of the Bedalian spirit that promoted nude swimming but separated the genders after they turned thirteen. Bryn was usually the camp manager and did much of the cooking, as depicted by Ethel Pye in her painting of the Beaulieu River site in 1910.

Bryn had little interest in long term relationships at that time, although Rupert Brooke was also pursuing all four sisters. Although Brooke suggested she felt an attraction to Godwin in his poem Jealousy, she was also acutely aware that her cousin Rosalind believed she was the intended partner. Godwin assured her he could love both of them at once, but when he proposed, she refused him.

At Easter 1910, the group, including the Oliviers, Jacques Raverat and Popham, went rock climbing at Bethesda, near Snowdon in Wales. Godwin, no longer prepared to wait for Bryn, proposed to Rosalind and was accepted although it was not made official till the following year. At the time, Daphne Olivier, who had also been the subject of Godwin's attention expressed relief and the hope that he would "not let his affctions stray off again". Shortly after, Bryn and Popham became engaged, while Rosalind and Godwin spent part of the summer on the Norfolk Broads sailing with Brooke on a wherry, reciting poetry. Although chastity was one of the ideals the Neo-pagans aspired to, Rosalind and Godwin consummated their relationship once they were engaged.

In the early summer of 1912, having qualified at Barts, enabling him to practice independently, Godwin went to La Salpêtrière in Paris to further his interest in psychology by studying hypnotism, Rosalind accompanying him. Rosalind had started to develop a career as an artist, and in Paris enrolled at the Académie Julian. In Paris, they lived openly as man and wife ("we were a special case by virtue of our perfecr love...we felt we were justified in becoming complete lovers. I did not, however, confess this 'marriage' to Mother").

The Balkan War and Bethnel Green (1912–1913)
Rosalind's first period of separation occurred when the First Balkan War (1912–1913) broke out in October 1912, and in November Godwin volunteered for the Red Crescent Mission, providing medical aid to the wounded and refugees in Turkey, and was briefly a prisoner of war, returning in March 2013.

The Bax family had paid for Godwin's tuition on the understanding that following graduation he would work among the poor. He and Rosalind set up a practice in Bethnal Green, Tower Hamlets, in East London, and invited Godwin's 18 year old younger sister Ruth to join them as a housekeeper, for appearance's sake. There, they rented a house at 30 Victoria Park Square and a nearby corner shop that they converted into a surgery, where Rosalind worked in the dispensary. Rosalind and Godwin's musical tastes included many visits to the Ballets Russes, that was at the time inspiring oriental decor among the studios of Bohemia, and Rosalind had soon filled their home with colourful divans, shawls and cushions. At their Bethnal Green residence they entertained their literary and musical friends and over the summer made plans for their wedding.

Rosalind Baynes (1913–1921)
Rosalind and Godwin were married at St. Nicholas' Church (Church of Ireland) in Galway, Ireland on September 11 1913, in the presence of her parents. After a brief Irish honeymoon, the couple returned to Bethnal Green. In the late winter of that year, the couple moved from London to Wisbech, in the Cambridgeshire fens, as one of the first area panel doctors to be appointed under the new National Insurance scheme (1911). They were welcomed with great ceremony, and set up residence at 27 Old Market, a Georgian house overlooking the old market place, where fairs were held, although his appointment was met by hostility from the existing medical establishment who opposed health insurance. He was able to run his practice from this house, which prospered and soon they were able to hire staff, including the Misses Peckover, a notable local Quaker family. They continued to entertain their circle of friends there but this group was slowly dispersing. Their first child, Bridget Rosalind, was born on 18 July 2014, and the first signs of strain in the relationship appeared shortly after, due to Godwin's admiration of other women.

War (1914–1919)
War was declared within weeks of Bridget's birth, and to Rosalind's distress, Godwin felt his patriotic duty was to serve in the forces, though as a doctor he was not obliged to. In July 2015 he decided to sell the practice, and on 28 December joined the Royal Army Medical Corps (RAMC) as a Lieutenant, and was immediately sent to Aldershot, and from there to the front in France on January 2. By this time they were expecting their second child and Rosalind moved back to Hampstead to be close to her parents. Chloë was born on 25 March but the Zeppelin air raids persuaded her to return to the country, close to Godwin's parents, at The Myrtles (Myrtle Cottage, see image), an eighteenth century brick cottage on Pangbourne Road, Upper Basildon, near Pangbourne, Berkshire. Leave home was infrequent, and on 4 September 1916 he was wounded at the Battle of the Somme and repatriated with trench fever to Osborne House, a convalescent home for officers on the Isle of Wight, and from there to their new home. Six weeks later, after having been cleared for return to service he was posted to nearby Ruislip. But by the end of March 1917 he was again posted to France. By this stage, like Rosalind's relative, the poet Siegfried Sassoon, Godwin's initial patriotism was being replaced with disillusionment. After a further two brief leaves, Godwin was posted to the eastern front in October, serving in Bombay, India and in from the summer of 1918 Mesopotamia, and was not to return for two years. The war took a major toll on many marriages, including that of Rosalind's cousin Bryn. Rosalind herself was also disillusioned about Godwin's "free and easy ways" and the state of her marriage and had connected with a friend from her Hampstead days, Kenneth Hooper. While in Bombay, Godwin received a letter from Rosalind that she was expecting a baby by him, and that the marriage was now over in her opinion. In fact she had spent the night of 13 October 1917 with Hooper at the Savoy Hotel, two days after Godwin's ship sailed. Jennifer Nan was born in July 1918. Godwin returned to England on 5 January 1919.

Divorce (1919–1921)
On Godwin's return, his parents tried to persuade Rosalind to reconcile, while admitting that they knew about his "free and easy ways". D.H. Lawrence, who had been on the fringe of their circle in later years, also suggested to Godwin that divorce was too unpleasant, and he and Rosalind should just live free and separate lives. However the divorce went ahead, and would linger on till granted in April 1921. It was, as Lawrence implied, very messy. Given Rosalind's family status, and the rarity of divorce then, the details were widely reported, with correspondence between Rosalind and Hooper being read aloud in court. Rosalind took the role of the guilty party, to protect her husband's reputation and career, citing Hooper as co-respondent, and providing all the evidence necessary to prove adultery, the only legal grounds for divorce at the time, while Godwin did not contest it. The media described Rosalind as a "feminist" and "a woman of rather advanced views".

The Thames Valley: The Farjeons and the Lawrences (1919–1920)
Meanwhile, Rosalind was developing a firm friendship with both Lawrence and his wife Frieda. They had met through her sister Joan's husband, Bertie Farjeon and his sister Eleanor, when the Lawrences came to live nearby, at Chapel Farm Cottage in Hermitage, Berkshire, through the Farjeons, who had a cottage in the area, Spring Cottage in Chapel Row, near Bucklebury, adjacent to the Bucklebury Common. At this difficult time in her life, she was spending an increasing amount of time with her sister, who was equally artistic, and at the end of June Rosalind became a house-sitter for her sister, who was away for a month, while the Lawrences, who had been obliged to leave Hermitage moved into The Myrtles on 28 July, and spent increasing amounts of time with Rosalind and her children. The Farjeons returned, and Rosalind came back to The Myrtles, but asked the Lawrences to stay on for a while. On 29 August, the Lawrences moved to Grimsbury Farm, Long Lane, Hermitage with Cecily Lambert and Violet Monk, till 12 September, when they were able to return to the Cottage. During this time, Rosalind, Lawrence and their friends entertained many literary figures, including Katherine Mansfield and Aldous Huxley.

Italy (1920–1924)
D. H. Lawrence was convalescing from Spanish influenza that he had contracted in the spring of 1919 and they were planning to move to Italy to escape much of the controversy he had aroused, and suggested she should take the children and their nurse, Ivy Knight to Florence to escape the unpleasantness, which like so many of her peers, she did, the Lawrences having left a little earlier. Frieda left on 15 October to visit family in Germany and Lawrence on November 14, having refused to join her in Germany, their marriage having become somewhat tempestuous. Lawrence played an active role in organising Rosalind's move, and arranged to meet her on arrival. In January, Rosalind and the children travelled by train from Charing Cross to Turin (a 22 hour journey) and from there to Florence. Initially Lawrence arranged a pensione, the Pensione Balestri, overlooking the Arno, where Lawrence had stayed. Meanwhile the Lawrences had moved south to Rome in December. From there she moved to the fifteenth century Villa La Canovaia in the San Gervasio neighbourhood, below Fiesole, which she described as follows: ... on the first bluff of hill as one goes up from Florence to Fiesole and looks across to the city. It is an ancient villa which before the war had belonged to a German count, and which was furnished very beautifully in the late 14th century style ... In the arcaded courtyard were lemon and orange trees, and in the garden cypresses, cactuses, roses, vines, wisteria, and lizards, tortoises, nightingales, cicalas and fireflies.

After moving south from Florence, the Lawrences undertook to examine a house in the Abruzzi, Rosalind's father had recommended as potentially suitable for her. Arriving just before Christmas 1919, via an extremely rugged route through the mountains, they found it thoroughly unsuitable, and advised Rosalind accordingly. This adventure was later re-created in The Lost Girl (1920). On 16 August 1920, the Lawrences were in Milan and Frieda again left to visit her mother in Baden-Baden, while he went to Florence on 1 September at Rosalind's invitation. That month, while she was away, escaping the heat, in the Appenines Rosalind's house suffered some damage, and the agent arranged for her her to move further up the hill to the Villino Belvedere, Fiesole. Lawrence arrived in Florence on September 2nd, and the next day Rosalind suggested Lawrence stay at La Canovaia, and they started spending increasing amounts of time together, eventually becoming intimate (12 September). He was six years her senior and she had the fierce independence, strength and frankness that Lawrence admired in women, including Frieda. Lawrence departed for Venice on 28 September, on receiving a letter from Frieda, that she was returning to Italy, and joined her there. Lawrence and Rosalind Thornycroft never saw each other again, but did continue to correspond. Rosalind Thornycroft has been described as the most perfect of all the women of Lawrence's acquaintance, in terms of her "beauty of character, mind and appearance", and David Garnett had also called her "almost too perfect".

The affair was immediately followed by a spate of some of his finest poetry, that was both erotic and contained numerous allusions to Rosalind with plays on her name. Rosalind became the basis for Constance Reid in Lawrence's Lady Chatterly's Lover (1928). The resemblance, both physically and in terms of her circumstances, alerted her sister Joan, on reading the novel, in which she appeared as Hilda, though often the references are exchanged between the sisters. The resemblance is more clear in earlier versions of the novel, such as John Thomas and Lady Jane (1927), and in particular certain details he removed prior to publication. It is thought that she was also the inspiration for his Aaron's Rod (1922), on which he had worked at La Canovaia. Lawrence regarded Rosalind, and her life story as somewhat of a muse, and at one stage had proposed to Herbert Farjeon that they write a play together, based on Rosalind.

1920 Frieda to Baden baden to mother, where Rosalind and 3 children and nurse were corresponding since 2019 , DHL Villa La Canovaia, 3 Sept, RB at Villino Belvedere, Fiesole affair on Sept 12 outburst of poetry departed 29th - Venice (Worthen 231-4) Garnett's flowery praise p232

Eleanor in Italy Fascism

Rosalind and the children remained in Italy for four years, waiting for the scandal of the divorce to fade.

Rosalind Popham (1926–1970)
Rosalind and Hugh were married at Richmond South on 11 January 1926

Hugh falls in love with Rosalind (Watling 264), reconnect at party in February 1925 - spent night, Hugh extricate's from Joan blended 3 thornycrofts and 3 oliviers of Bryn at Caroline place (Watling 265)

In later life, Rosalind became more conservative, and like her relative, Eleanor Farjeon, embraced Roman Catholicism.

Rosalind undertook commissions to illustrate books, often from her family and friends, such as Eleanor Farjeon's Nuts and May (1925), which includes illustrations of La Canovaia.

In popular culture
Rosalind's portrait was painted by a number of contemporary artists, including Edward Robert Hughes and George Clausen. Her father used her a model, including two cherubs on the altar tomb of Bishop Goodwin of Carlisle (1895) (see image), while George Charles Beresford photographed her in 1913.

Books

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 * (alternative title: Noble Savages. The Olivier Sisters: Four lives in seven fragments)
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 * (alternative title: Noble Savages. The Olivier Sisters: Four lives in seven fragments)
 * (alternative title: Noble Savages. The Olivier Sisters: Four lives in seven fragments)
 * (alternative title: Noble Savages. The Olivier Sisters: Four lives in seven fragments)
 * (alternative title: Noble Savages. The Olivier Sisters: Four lives in seven fragments)
 * (alternative title: Noble Savages. The Olivier Sisters: Four lives in seven fragments)
 * (alternative title: Noble Savages. The Olivier Sisters: Four lives in seven fragments)
 * (alternative title: Noble Savages. The Olivier Sisters: Four lives in seven fragments)
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 * (alternative title: Noble Savages. The Olivier Sisters: Four lives in seven fragments)

D. H. Lawrence

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