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Christabel Marshall

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Christabel Marshall
Edith Craig, Clare Atwood and Christabel Marshall at Smallhythe Place
Born(1871-10-24)24 October 1871
Exeter, Devon, England
Died20 October 1960(1960-10-20) (aged 88)
Tenterden, Kent, England
Resting placeSt John the Baptist, Smallhythe, Kent, England
Other namesJoanna Willett
Alma materSomerville College, University of Oxford
Occupation(s)playwright, author and suffragist
Organization(s)Women's Social and Political Union, Women Writers' Suffrage League, Actresses' Franchise League

Christabel Gertrude Marshall (aka Christopher Marie St John) (24 October 1871 – 20 October 1960) was a British campaigner for women's suffrage, a playwright and author. Marshall lived in a ménage à trois with the artist Clare Atwood and the actress, theatre director, producer and costume designer Edith Craig from 1916 until Craig's death in 1947.[1][2][3][4]

Family

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Born in Exeter, she was the youngest of nine children of Emma Marshall, née Martin (1828–1899), novelist, and Hugh Graham Marshall (c.1825–1899), manager of the West of England Bank. She changed her name on her conversion to Catholicism in adulthood.[5]

Education

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Having taken a BA in Modern History at Somerville College, Oxford,[6] Marshall became the secretary to Mrs Humphry Ward, Lady Randolph Churchill and, occasionally, to her son Winston Churchill.

Career and relationships

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In order to pursue her aim of becoming a dramatist, Marshall went on the stage for three years to learn stagecraft, briefly using the stage name Joanna Willett in 1903.[6] She occasionally worked as secretary to Ellen Terry and travelled to America with Terry in 1907.[7] She lived with Terry's daughter Edith Craig from 1899 to Craig's death in 1947. They lived together at Smith Square, and then 31 Bedford Street, Covent Garden as well as Priest's House, Tenterden, Kent.[8] Their relationship became temporarily strained when Craig received, and accepted, a marriage proposal from the composer Martin Shaw in 1903, and Marshall attempted suicide.[5]

In 1916, Marshall and Craig were joined by the artist Clare 'Tony' Atwood, living in a ménage à trois,[9][10] until Craig died in 1947, according to Michael Holroyd in his book A Strange Eventful History.[1] In 1900, Marshall published her first novel, The Crimson Weed, which takes its title from a transformation of the traditional symbol of the red rose. A feminist, in 1909 she joined the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU), having previously worked for the Women Writers' Suffrage League and the Actresses' Franchise League.[11]

In 1909, Marshall turned her friend[12] Cicely Hamilton's short story How The Vote Was Won into a play,[7] and it became popular with women's suffrage groups throughout the United Kingdom and a "box office triumph."[13] Also in 1909, Marshall joined a WSPU deputation to the House of Commons of the United Kingdom, contributing an article Why I Went on the Deputation to the journal Votes for Women in July 1909. In November 1909, Marshall appeared as the woman-soldier Hannah Snell in Hamilton's Pageant of Great Women, directed by Craig. With Hamilton she also wrote The Pot and the Kettle (1909), and with Charles Thursby,[14] The Coronation (1912). In May 1911 her play The First Actress was one of the three plays in the first production of Craig's theatre society, the Pioneer Players.[11][15] Marshall's plays Macrena and On the East Side were produced by the Pioneer Players, as well as her translation (with Marie Potapenko) of The Theatre of the Soul by Nikolai Evreinov.[16]

Marshall converted to ascetic Catholicism in 1912, in Rome,[17] and took the name St John.[11] She joined the Catholic Women's Suffrage Society, later known as the St. Joan's International Alliance, in 1913.[15] She was arrested for taking part in a deputation to the House of Commons and for setting fire to a letter box.[15]

St John, Edith Craig and Clare Atwood were friends with many artists and writers including lesbian novelist Radclyffe Hall, who lived nearby in Rye.[8] As Christopher St John in 1915, she published her autobiographical novel Hungerheart, which she had started in 1899, and which she based on her relationship with Edith Craig and her own involvement in the women's suffrage movement.[18] It had the subtitle "story of the soul"[19] and explored her sexuality and spiritualism.[20]

St John was also contracted by Ellen Terry to assist on various publications. After Terry's death in 1928, St John published the Shaw–Terry Correspondence (1931) and Terry's Four Lectures on Shakespeare (1932). St John and Craig revised and edited Terry's Memoirs (1933).[21] After Craig's death in 1947, St John and Atwood helped to keep the Ellen Terry Memorial Museum in operation. Some of St John's papers have survived in the National Trust's Ellen Terry and Edith Craig Archive.[22]

Death

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Marshall died from pneumonia connected with heart disease at Tenterden in 1960. Marshall and Atwood are buried alongside each other at St John the Baptist's Church, Small Hythe. Craig's ashes were supposed to be buried there as well, but at the time of Marshall and Atwood's deaths, the ashes were lost and a memorial was placed in the cemetery instead.[23]

References

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  1. ^ a b Holroyd, Michael (2008). A Strange Eventful History: The Dramatic Lives of Ellen Terry, Henry Irving and Their Remarkable Families. Chatto & Windus. ISBN 978-0-7011-7987-8.
  2. ^ Rubin, Martin (23 March 2009). "Supporting cast spoils great leads". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 16 February 2025.
  3. ^ Rudd, Jill; Gough, Val (1 April 1999). Charlotte Perkins Gilman: Optimist Reformer. University of Iowa Press. p. 90. ISBN 978-1-58729-310-8.
  4. ^ Law, Cheryl (31 December 1997). Suffrage and Power: The Women's Movement 1918-1928. Bloomsbury Academic. p. 221. ISBN 978-1-86064-201-2.
  5. ^ a b Cockin, Katharine. (2004) "St John, Christopher Marie (1871–1960)", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, accessed 11 March 2010
  6. ^ a b Carroll, Rachel; Tolan, Fiona (1 December 2023). The Routledge Companion to Literature and Feminism. Taylor & Francis. ISBN 978-1-000-99145-1.
  7. ^ a b Nelson, Carolyn Christensen (25 June 2004). Literature of the Women's Suffrage Campaign in England. Broadview Press. pp. xxxvii. ISBN 978-1-55111-511-5.
  8. ^ a b Cockin, Katharine. Edith Craig (1869-1947): Dramatic Lives, Cassell (1998)
  9. ^ Halberstam, Judith; Halberstam, Jack (1998). Female Masculinity. Duke University Press. pp. 87–88. ISBN 978-0-8223-2243-6.
  10. ^ Ann, Oakley (13 March 2019). Women, Peace and Welfare: A Suppressed History of Social Reform, 1880-1920. Policy Press. pp. 307–308. ISBN 978-1-4473-3262-6.
  11. ^ a b c Crawford, Elizabeth (2003). The Women's Suffrage Movement: A Reference Guide, 1866-1928. UCL Press. p. 614. ISBN 9781135434021.
  12. ^ Clay, Catherine (20 September 2017). British Women Writers 1914-1945: Professional Work and Friendship. Routledge. p. 12. ISBN 978-1-351-95449-5.
  13. ^ Fehlbaum, Valerie (5 July 2017). Ella Hepworth Dixon: The Story of a Modern Woman. Taylor & Francis. p. 154. ISBN 978-1-351-94079-5.
  14. ^ "A Curious Encounter at St Ives · Meanjin · Literacy in Australia · Melbourne University Publishing · Classic English Literature Books · Australian Literary Journals & Magazines". Archived from the original on 2 January 2015. Retrieved 2015-01-12.
  15. ^ a b c "Miss Christabel St John". Database - Women's Suffrage Resources. Retrieved 16 February 2025.
  16. ^ Cockin, Katharine (2001). Women and Theatre in the Age of Suffrage: The Pioneer Players 1911-1925. Palgrave. ISBN 978-0-312-23764-6.
  17. ^ Robinson, Dawn (29 May 2020). Pamela Colman Smith, Tarot Artist: The Pious Pixie. Fonthill Media.
  18. ^ Taylor, Clare L. (2003). Women, Writing, and Fetishism, 1890-1950: Female Cross-gendering. Clarendon Press. p. 57. ISBN 978-0-19-924410-2.
  19. ^ Barrett, Eileen; Cramer, Patricia (1997). Virginia Woolf: Lesbian Readings. NYU Press. pp. 149–150. ISBN 978-0-8147-1263-4.
  20. ^ Lamontagne, Kathryn G. (26 July 2023). Reconsidering Catholic Lay Womanhood: Pious Transgressors in Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Century England. Taylor & Francis. p. 46. ISBN 978-1-000-90602-8.
  21. ^ Ellen Terry, Spheres of Influence, edited by Katharine Cockin, Pickering & Chatto 2011
  22. ^ AHRC Ellen Terry and Edith Craig Archive Database
  23. ^ Rachlin, Ann (2011). Edy was a Lady. Troubador Publishing Ltd. p. 62. ISBN 978-1-78088-012-9.
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