Golden tea . .

Translucent bubbles grace the topaz brew, Light, like her rippling laughter used to be, And golden, like the moments that we knew.

Warm tea

Warm, like her gentle arms around me bent. Warm, like her fragrant breath upon my cheek, As breast to breast we savored sweet content.

Bitter tea..

Bitter, like her mock farewell to me.

I,

I. searching through the fragments of my dreams, Find solace in my cup of bitter tea."

Volume 1, Number 8, January, 1948

(From a review of an early Radclyffe Hall novel, "The Unlit Lamp") "Regarded strictly as Lesbian literature, The Unlit Lamp is disappointing, for the average clyffe and colleen today (the book was published a quarter century ago) lead a more aware, awakened life than Radclyffe Hall's heroine and her true love. Joan Ogden, the lesbian of Leaside, England, never quite comes to grips with herself, never admits to herself what she is, or perhaps never truly understands. She agrees, when she stops stockstill to consider it, that it is strange that at one time in her life she should contemplate leaving her dependent mother to go and live with another woman. This other woman, Elizabeth Rodney, first Joan's private tutor, later lover to her, realizes perhaps more fully the implication of her emotion.

"Joan is introduced to us at the age of 12. A butchy little tyke, in the words of the authoress 'large-boned and tall for her age, lanky as a boy, with short black hair.' This hair, by hook or crook, she keeps close-cropped.

"The villain of this unhappy book is Joan's mother. No, she never for a moment suspects that her darling is an "unnatural child," there is no outraged denunciation because she has "birthed a blasphemy" or any such twaddle-rot. It is just that Mrs. Ogden is such a thorough going mother, a mother with a capital M. She works at it. She is the epitome of the "mom" that philosopher Philip Wylie so trenchantly criticises. She has eight loving arms, like an octopus, to lavish mother-love on her beloved Joan, and a phoney ill-health which manifests itself in crises to gain a wealth of sympathy from the daughter of whom she deliberately takes advantage. This Mother properly infuriated me, as Radclyffe Hall no doubt meant her to. I would call her a criminal. Petty and self-pampering, she ruined and spoiled the life of her lesbian daughter, whose affection for her not-too-much-older lesbian teacher was consistently thwarted, never brought to fruition.

"Nobody lives happily ever after in this book. It is an unrelieved tragedy, remorselessly descending a spiral staircase to a ghastly conclusion. I don't know whether to recommend it to you or not. Individuals in the audience contemplating matricide or suicide had better steer clear of it. Even if you're in a gay mood it will quickly depress you."

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