There’s plenty of Cornish history still to be unearthed, and some of it might surprise you. Here, we look at the under-discussed queer literary legacies.
Bryher
The Isles of Scilly are studded along the southwestern English coastline, like jewels in the national landscape. Bryher is the smallest of them all. With barely any roads, the island is a mass of rolling green hills, rugged caves and sandy beaches.
Annie Winifred Ellerman was born in 1894 to a wealthy family in Margate, but throughout their teens, they took lengthy summer holidays in Cornwall. The Cornish coastline immediately enamoured Ellerman, but it was the unspoiled beauty of Bryher that captured their heart.
This love ran so deep that Ellerman legally changed their name by deed poll to Bryher in 1920. The name stuck for life; in their 1962 memoir, ‘The Heart of Artemis’, they wrote: “If like a plant we can draw life from a particular soil, I have drawn mine from the islands.”
The name change was seemingly about more than just reverence for the coastline. Records show that Bryher asked never to be referred to with feminine pronouns, and that they spoke about a sense of inner masculinity in a way which fascinates today’s queer scholars.
Bryher’s decades-long relationship with poet Hilda Doolittle, who wrote under the pseudonym H.D., is similarly well-documented. The Yale University archives contain digitised versions of hundreds of letters, detailing their intimate, lifelong companionship.
Both H.D. and Bryher were acclaimed writers, scholars, artists, and avant-garde thinkers who mixed within the upper echelons of high society.
They cumulatively challenged what it meant to be seen and thought of as a woman. Still, Bryher described H.D. as a lifeline, a source of endless creative inspiration and a shield from their family’s pressures to fit the societal mould of femininity.
These are stories of queer trailblazers, and they maintain firm roots in Cornwall.
The early 1900s were a time of transformation along the southwestern coast. Granite quarries were being closed down, and the Cornish Mineral Railway was acquired and rebranded as the Great Western Railway in 1896.
Before long, wealthy tourists and well-heeled artists spent extended summers in the area, building close-knit networks along the way.
In particular, the pebbled beaches and picturesque cottages of Lamorna Cove became an unlikely cultural hub in the 1910s and 1920s, thanks to the creation of an artists’ colony.
Famed painters including Samuel John Birch, who took to calling himself Lamorna Birch, and Alfred Munnings were part of this colony, but there was a lesser-known contingent of queer, forward-thinking artists, too.
Gluck
Like Bryher, a handful of these artists chose to drop their given names and adopt androgynous pseudonyms. One legend of Lamorna is the artist known as Gluck, in their own words, “no prefix, suffix, or quotes.”
Gluck was so opposed to feminine terms like ‘Miss’ that they resigned from their role as vice-president of an art society because the letterhead referred to them as ‘Miss Gluck’.
Born to a wealthy family in 1895, Gluck moved from London to Cornwall in their twenties and started studying art, quickly earning acclaim for their early portraits of flowers.
Before long, they were creating self-portraits. From Gluck dressed in sharp, tailored suits with cropped, dark hair to Gluck standing alongside their lover Nesta Obermer. This was a landmark depiction of both same-sex desire and gender non-conformity in modern art.
Gradually, researchers are fleshing out the lesser-known interpersonal dynamics of these networks. The 2021 short film ‘Queer Cornwall’ opens with an excerpt of a 1949 letter written by artist Ithell Colquhoun, which details an intricate web of queer relationships, such as sculptor Marlow Moss, who later went only by Marlow, and her partner Netty Nijhoff, herself a writer and translator.
Writers flocked to Cornwall too, finding inspiration in the landscapes and mythology of the area.
John Heath-Stubbs
Groundbreaking poet John Heath-Stubbs spent years in the 1950s living in Zennor, which he described in a 1989 interview as “an extraordinarily barren place, treeless, with empty tin mines.”
Here, he grew fascinated by the legend of Zennor’s patron saint, Senara. “There was a story that she defended her father from a serpent or dragon by interposing herself,” he recalls.
“The serpent bit off her breast, and she was provided miraculously with a golden breast.” According to another legend, her father bundled her into a barrel and set her adrift because he didn’t want a daughter.
Heath-Stubbs was openly gay and used his translation skills to retell other queer histories. He translated work by the Greek poet Sappho, bringing the Sapphic longing of her work to new readers.
Virginia Woolf
Virginia Woolf’s family holidays in St Ives left a lifelong mark on her psyche, to the extent that she fictionalised them in her 1927 novel ‘To The Lighthouse’, which she described as “easily [her] best book.”
It’s a meandering and contemplative read, but the motif that recurs throughout is the real-life image of the Godrevy Lighthouse, a beacon looming in the distance of the St Ives horizon.
“For the great plateful of water was before her,” wrote Woolf, “the hoary lighthouse, distant, austere, in the midst.”
Woolf’s devotion to Cornwall has led writers worldwide to follow in her footsteps, seeking to articulate the beauty that inspired (in Woolf’s own words) one of her greatest novels.
Dig deeper, and you’ll find other references to queer Cornish history in Woolf’s work. For decades, authors Violet Trefusis and Vita Sackville-West maintained a passionate and tempestuous affair, which almost saw them abandon their respective husbands and elope.
Woolf, another of Sackville-West’s lovers, watched the drama unfold from a distance, silently taking inspiration for perhaps her best-known book, ‘Orlando: A Biography’. In 1927, she wrote to Sackville-West: “Suppose Orlando turns out to be Vita… Shall you mind?”
These love letters have been collated in the book ‘Vita and Violet’, which reveals the extent of their romantic escapades. In Monte Carlo, Sackville-West even dressed up as a man, calling herself Julian.
Cornwall was one of many destinations for their loved-up holidays, and their adventures on the coastline only add to the vast web of queer art history along England’s southwestern coast.
About the author
Jake Hall is a freelance journalist and author living in Sheffield, England. Jake’s first book, ‘The Art of Drag’, was an illustrated deep dive into the history of drag, published by NoBrow Press in 2020. Their upcoming book, ‘Shoulder to Shoulder’, is a history of queer solidarity movements over the last six decades. It is scheduled to be published in May 2024 by Trapeze Books.
For years, Jake has been fascinated by everything from queer culture and histories to fashion, film and climate activism, and they’ve written for publications ranging from ‘Dazed Digital’ and ‘The Independent’ to ‘Refinery29’ and ‘Cosmopolitan’. They’re also a keen book fan and reviewer, publishing regular reviews on their Instagram.
Further reading
- 5 Historic Places that Mark LGBTQ+ Love and Pride
- Pioneers and Rebels: 7 LGBTQ+ People in History
- 7 Inspiring Writers’ Retreats
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