Naomi Haldane,
the daughter of a physiologist, John Scott
Haldane, and the sister of John
Haldane ,
was
born in Edinburgh on 1st November, 1897.
Her mother, Kathleen (Trotter) Haldane, was a suffragist,
who published the memoir, Friends and Kindred.
After being educated
at Dragon School she moved to Oxford University
to science but left in 1915 to become a VAD
nurse during the First World War. In
1916 she married Gilbert Mitchison,
while he was on leave from the Western Front.
During her life
Mitchison published over 70 books. This included historical novels
and short-stories such as The Conquered
(1923), Cloud Cuckoo Land (1925),
Black Sparta (1928), The
Corn King and Queen Queen (1931) and The
Blood of the Martyrs (1939).
Her novel, We
Have Been Warned (1935), that dealt with abortion and birth
control was censored. A socialist and
active member of the Labour Party, she took
part in many political campaigns, including helping her husband to
get elected to the House of Commons. Mitchison
was also a regular contributor to the feminist journal, Time
and Tide and the New
Statesman.
Mitchison, who
mainly lived in Carradale on the Mull of Kintyre after 1937, wrote
three volumes of memoirs, Small Talk
(1973), All Change Here (1975)
and You May Well Ask (1979). Her
diary covering the Second World War, Among
You Taking Notes, was published in 1985.
Later books included
a book about her travels in five continents, Mucking
Around (1981), A Girl Must Live
(1990) and The Oathtakers (1991). Naomi
Mitchison died, aged 101, on 11th January, 1999.
(1)
Naomi
Mitchison wrote
about why she became a VAD
in her autobiography All
Change Here (1975)
In 1915, with Dick away I became more and more
impatient with Oxford and my own non-involvement. Girls I knew had
gone to do 'war work'; one or two were even in munitions factories.
And at least I had passed first aid and home nursing examinations
and what was more Sister Morag Macmillan had chosen me as the one
to whom she could teach massage, feeling the hands of half a dozen
girls and rejecting them before taking me on. Whether she knew I had
some capacity as a healer which might be brought out is something
else again; had she sensed that she would wisely have
said nothing about it.
I nagged and nagged and
finally went off to be a VAD nurse at St. Thomas's along with May
Douie, an Oxford friend whom I did not know very well. I had no idea
what a hospital was really like; I doubt if I had ever been inside
one. Our friends
and relations would never find themselves in a hospital; they went
to nursing homes, especially the Acland at Oxford, though there might
well be arrangements there for almost free treatment in certain cases.
Some nursing homes or small, special hospitals were quite well endowed.
So St. Thomas's was something of a shock; the size, the long, clattering
corridors and staircases and the huge, undivided wards. Everything
was, no doubt, sanitary, but there were no frills.
Of course I made awful
mistakes. I had never done real manual household work; I had never
used mops and polishes and disinfectants. I was very willing but clumsy.
I was told to make tea but hadn't realised that tea must be made with
boiling water. All that had been left to the servants.
Once when lifting a heavy
patient my collar stud flew out and my stiff collar opened. Oh, dear!
At that time we all wore stiff white cuffs, collar and belt into which
we stuck our scissors, so much needed for bandages, dressings and
sewing. One's blue skirt was ankle length with a long white apron
over it. I ought to have had a proper uniform coat to go out in, but
my mother had economised on that, thinking my own old one would do
as well, but again I got an official scolding.
(2)
Naomi
Mitchison,
All Change Here (1975)
Probably by the summer of 1915 many of the best
sisters and nurses from St Thomas's had been drafted off to base hospitals
and ambulances; we VADs were the lowest of the low in the pecking
order, and those who had been trodden on were happy to tread on us.
We were seldom told what was wrong with the patients and the one and
only Sister who did tell us and took some trouble to explain the treatment
got increased loyalty and intelligent service. I was somewhat upset
at being put into a VD ward and experienced a kind of moralising dislike
for the patients, as well as being extra careful over sterilising
basins and thermometers.
The other thing which
I found upsetting was to see a patient with his eyes closed and throat
heavily bandaged, with a policeman in full uniform sitting next to
him. The patient was of course a suicide attempt and this was a crime.
Was he arrested as soon as he was conscious? I never knew. Both disappeared
from the ward. One thing missing was the blood transfusion apparatus
which is now so common in an accident ward that one takes it for granted.
(3)
Lena Jeger, The
Guardian (13th January, 1999)
The
Mitchison house at Hammersmith was famous for its parties in happy
or anxious times. The guest lists covered the widest spectrum - the
Huxleys, Wyndham Lewis, the Coles, Postgates, Laskis, Stracheys, E
M Forster, A P Herbert, Gertrude Hermes; and always there were the
unknown protégés, refugees and strange lost foreigners
from all over the world.
This
generous style of hospitality continued at their home at Carradale
in Argyll. The large house gathered in all kinds of waifs and strays
among the famous and unreproached scroungers; and then the Mitchison
grandchildren and great-grandchildren joined the mix. Naomi's wartime
diary, Among You Taking Notes (1985), is a vivid description
of that period, and of her own pivotal role in it.
Fortunately,
Mitchison was blessed with an incomparable gift of concentration.
The typewriter on her desk in the crowded drawing-room at Carradale
was always uncovered and she would work there busily while the guests
played Scrabble, strummed guitars, a fisherman came about the salmon,
a ghillie to consult about skinning a deer, or just somebody asking
what was for supper.
Often
Mitchison was writing letters. She gave generously of her time and
trouble to people all over the world, known and unknown, including
those who sent their beloved (but useless) manuscripts. Or to people
like the poet Stevie Smith, who wrote out of the blue and began a
long correspondence and lasting friendship. The uneasy young W H Auden
treasured her letters - or, rather, he loved getting them (he never
kept letters once he'd read and answered them).
Mitchison
was able to write anywhere, which helped because - as a compulsive
traveller - she could get on with her writing on planes or in trains.
She went to the US in the 1930s, because she was worried about sharecroppers;
to Vienna in 1934 when the Nazi-era storm clouds gathered, and she
smuggled letters from endangered people to Switzerland in her knickers.
(4)
Neil Ascherton, The
Guardian (17th January, 1999)
With a Victorian faith in progress, she worked
incessantly and often physically. Among other things, she was a political
fire-brand, energetic farmer, Argyle county councillor and relentless
freelance journalist. She discovered that the best way to get an article
published was to appear in an editor's office and hold his nose to
the type script. Not all enjoyed this.
On
the Manchester Guardian and later the Scotsman, I was
often deputed to receive her, if not actually fend her off. She knew
why a junior reporter was talking to her, but was so friendly and
fascinating that I always promised that her piece would go in. Not
all were good, but most were: the trouble of was, she wrote so many.
There
was a Fabian, Shavian flavour to her energy, she could have belonged
to the 'Fellowship for a new Life'. In the post war years, Carradale
became a sort of intellectual mecca for leftish men and women lucky
enough to get an invitation. Her tribe had increased enormously, and
in summer the house sheltered countless Mitchison descendents and
friends. In the quiet drawing room, great minds hid behind newspapers
or doctoral theses while armies of children poured past the windows
or fought ping pong tournaments: this was a happily informal house,
but private thought was not to be interrupted.
She
was wise, having lived through much personal turmoil, and brave: somebody
who lived out her feminism in days when love and freedom could carry
grim penalties. But above all I will miss her fearless confidence.
If
intelligent people shouted long and loud enough at governments, she
believed, truth would prevail. She often did prevail. For the rest
of us not raised in an age of reason, it is harder.
Last
updated: 7th July, 2002
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