Mary Butts | |
|---|---|
 Photo portrait byBertram Park, 1919 | |
| Born | Mary Franeis Butts (1890-12-13)13 December 1890 |
| Died | 5 March 1937(1937-03-05) (aged 46) |
| Occupation | Novelist |
Mary Franeis Butts, (13 December 1890 – 5 March 1937) alsoMary Rodker by marriage, was an Englishmodernist writer. Her work found recognition in literary magazines such asThe Bookman andThe Little Review, as well as from fellow modernists,T. S. Eliot,H.D. andBryher. After her death, her works fell into obscurity until they began to be republished in the 1980s.[1][2]
Butts was born on 13 December 1890 inPoole,Dorset,[3] the daughter of Mary Jane (née Briggs) and Captain Frederick John Butts. She had a younger brother, Anthony. In later life she and her brother were estranged. Her great-grandfather wasThomas Butts, the friend ofWilliam Blake, the poet and artist.[2] She was brought up at Salterns, an 18th-century house overlooking Poole Harbour (described in her book,The Crystal Cabinet: My Childhood at Salterns), where she became an admirer of the Blake watercolors which her father had inherited.[2] In 1905 her father died; after which she was sent for a boarding school education atSt Leonard's school for girls inSt Andrews (1905–1908).[4] In 1906 her mother sold the Blake paintings and in 1907 remarried. From 1909 to 1912 Mary studied atWestfield College in London, where she first became aware of her bisexual feelings. She did not complete a degree there, but was sent down for organising a trip to Epsom races.[5] She went on to study at the London School of Economics, from which she graduated in 1914.
She became a student of theoccultistAleister Crowley. She and other students worked with Crowley on hisMagick (Book 4) (1912) and were given co-authorship credit.
In 1916, she began keeping the diary which she would maintain until the year of her death.
In the first years ofWorld War I, she was living in London, undertaking social work for theLondon County Council inHackney Wick, and in a lesbian relationship. She then met the modernist poet,John Rodker, a pacifist at that time hiding inDorking with fellow poet and pacifistRobert Trevelyan.[6] In May 1918 she married Rodker, and in November 1920 gave birth to their daughter, Camilla Elizabeth. Butts also adopted Rodker's pacifism.[2] She helped Rodker to set up as a publisher, and through him she met several modernist writers, includingEzra Pound,Wyndham Lewis,Ford Madox Ford,Roger Fry andMay Sinclair.[2] Shortly after the birth of her daughter she began a liaison with Cecil Maitland.
During the early 1920s Butts was mostly in Paris, where she became friends there with several writers and artists, including the painterCedric Morris (a friend of her brother) and the artist, poet, and filmmakerJean Cocteau,[7] who illustrated her book,Imaginary Letters (1928).[8] In mid-1921 she and Maitland spent about twelve weeks atAleister Crowley'sAbbey of Thelema in Sicily; she found the practices there shocking, and came away with a drug habit.[9] In 1922 and 1923 she and Maitland spent periods nearTyneham, Dorset, and her novels of the 1920s make much of the Dorset landscape.[10] In 1923 her book of stories,Speed the Plough and other stories was published; which was followed in 1925 by her first novel,Ashe of Rings (published byRobert McAlmon).[11]Ashe of Rings is an anti-war novel with supernatural elements.[12]
In 1927, she and Rodker were divorced. In 1928, Butts publishedArmed with Madness a novel featuring experimentalModernist writing revolving around theGrail legend. In 1930, she married the homosexual artist, William Park "Gabriel" Atkin or Aitken (1897–1937) (Mary then styled herself Mrs Aitken, but retained her maiden name for her writings). After a time in London and Newcastle, they settled in 1932 atSennen on thePenwith peninsula on the western tip ofCornwall, but by 1934 the marriage had failed.[4][13]
Butts was an ardent advocate ofnature conservation, and attacked the pollution of the English countryside in her pamphletsWarning To Hikers andTraps For Unbelievers.[2]
In 1933, at Sennen, she was introduced to the young novelist,Frank Baker, by George Manning-Sanders. Some time later, when Baker was living at Halamanning Valley with his friend John Raynor, she and Baker met again and became friends. They became members of the congregation ofSt Hilary's church, where Fr.Bernard Walke would produce nativity plays broadcast by the BBC.
Shortly before her death, she was working on a study of emperorJulian the Apostate. She died on 5 March 1937, at the age of forty-six, at the West Cornwall Hospital, Penzance, after an operation for a perforated gastric ulcer. Her funeral was held atSt Sennen's Church, Sennen. Her autobiography,The Crystal Cabinet, was published a few months after her death. Her brother, Anthony, committed suicide in 1941 by throwing himself out of a window.[14]
A portrait of Mary Butts was painted in 1924 byCedric Morris, and a portrait drawing of her was made by Jean Cocteau (reproduced as a frontispiece to her memoir,The Crystal Cabinet).
Mary Butts's papers are held at theBeinecke Library atYale University.[15] A biography,Mary Butts: Scenes from the Life by Nathalie Blondel, was published in 1998.[16]
Many of her books have been reprinted by McPherson & Co:
Mary Butts and [Cecil] Maitland left Cefalú on 16 September after staying about twelve weeks. They had not enjoyed their visit[...] Also, they both came away drug addicts.
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