Mary
Valentine Ackland
was
born in 1906. Educated at a convent school she was
briefly married to Richard Turpin. Nancy
Cunard introduced Ackland to Sylvia
Townsend Warner and
the two women lived together for the rest of their lives. Ackland
wrote poetry and in 1933 published
Whether A Dove or Seagull with
Warner.
Ackland, a member
of the Communist Party, worked as a journalist
and contributed articles to Daily
Chronicle,
New
Statesman, Time
and Tide, Daily Worker
and Left Review.
Ackland
was a strong opponent of the British government's non-intervention
policy during the Spanish
Civil War.
In 1936 Ackland and Sylvia
Townsend Warner went
to Barcelona
and worked
for the British medical unit supporting the Republican
Army.
The following year the two women went to Madrid
and
Valencia
as part
of the British delegation to the Second Congress of the International
Association of Writers for the Defence of Culture.
During
the Second World War Ackland worked as a civil
defence clerk. In 1949 Ackland wrote about her relationship with Warner,
For Sylvia, An Honest Account
(published for the first time in 1985). Mary
Valentine Ackland
died in 1969.
(1)
Valentine Ackland, Daily Worker (21st July, 1937)
There has never been a Congress like this before.
More than sixty delegates
from all countries met together in the front line held by the fighters
for freedom and intellectual liberty - Madrid. Gathered there as honoured
guests of the Republican government of Spain, we discussed the present
phase of the World War from our various national points of view and,
as always, from the unanimously agreed decision to combat fascism
as Intellectual Enemy No.l.
Going by car from Valencia
to Madrid we stopped for lunch at a small village. During the fine
meal spread for us we heard a crowd of children gathered outside the
hall. They started to sing and sang us the war songs of Spain, 'Riego's
Hymn' and the 'International'.
After exchanging shouted
greetings with them, when we came to embark again for the journey,
we found their mothers waiting to greet us with handshakes, embraces,
tears. These women told us that they were refugees from Badajoz and
Madrid, sacked villages and towns. ('My husband was shot in the massacre
at Badajoz ... I am alone here, I
and my child, we have no one left ...') They thanked us with tears
for coming to Spain, telling what we must write when we returned -
what we must say
- and always ending up with, 'Viva La Republica!', 'Viva
los Intelectuales!'
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