[Memorial bust of Naomi Margaret Haldane Mitchison]
Compiled via the efforts and contributions of Many....
Transcribed and presented to the web....
Introduction: I found the following via the
outstanding internet resource, Wikipedia. There was enough material on the following family
to encourage me to simply establish a link to the data. That would have been easier, but
I am familar enough with the resource and others on line, as well, to know that what is available to
access today, may not be so on the morrow. So for the entertainment of my living relatives
and my descendants, I am providing the articles herewithin. I almost titled these pages, "Royalty,
Mariners, Preachers and Aethists" or "Science, the X-factor" or "Education teaches that it is okay to change
your mind" but as you may have noticed, I simply refer to it as Naomi Haldane... aka... the woman
who helped to proof read, Lord of the Rings, for her friend, the author thereof. She herself
was, among other things, a prolific writer; a Great Grand-daughter of the Evangelist,
James Alexander Haldane and
daughter of the man who invented gas masks, John
Scott Haldane, as well as sister of the man who coined the phrase, "Clone"...
John Burdon Sanderson Haldane. Naomi Margaret Mitchison, CBE (née Haldane; 1
November 1897 Edinburgh, Scotland – 11 January 1999 at Carradale) was a Scottish novelist and
poet. She was appointed CBE (Commander of the Order of the British Empire) in 1981; she
was also entitled to call herself Lady Mitchison, CBE since 5 October 1964 (but never
apparently used that style herself). Childhood and Family Background Naomi Margaret Haldane was the daughter and younger
child of the physiologist John Scott Haldane (1860 – 1936) CH, FRS and his wife (Louisa) Kathleen
Trotter. Naomi's parents came from different political backgrounds, her father being a
Liberal and her mother from a Tory and pro-imperialist family. However, both families were
of landed stock, and the Haldane family had been feudal barons of Gleneagles since the 13th century,
but were nevertheless known for their achievements in other spheres. Today, the best known
member of the family is probably Naomi's elder brother, the biologist Jack (JBS) Haldane (1892 – 1964), but
in her youth her paternal uncle, was better known. He being, Richard Burdon Haldane, 1st
Viscount Haldane, twice Lord Chancellor (from1912-1915 under Herbert Henry Asquith, and in 1924 during
the first Labour government of Ramsay Macdonald). Naomi was educated at the Dragon School, Oxford
and began a science degree at the University of Oxford, but gave this up to become a VAD nurse
during the First World War. She returned to her studies after catching scarlet fever, and
restarted her studies in science (as a home student) at what is now St Anne's College, Oxford. In 1916 Naomi married the barrister Gilbert Richard
Mitchison (23 March 1894– 14 February 1970), who was a close friend of her brother Jack. He
was then on leave from the Western Front of World War I, and like her, he came from a well-connected
and wealthy family. Her husband became a QC, then a Labour politician, and eventually a Life
Peer as Baron Mitchison in August 1964. They had seven children. Dick and
Naomi Mitchison's four sons were Geoffrey (1918-1927, who died of meningitis) Denis (born 1919) later
a professor of bacteriology, Murdoch (born 1922), and Avrion (born 1928), both professors of
zoology. Their three daughters were Lois, Valentine, and Clemency (who died in 1940
shortly after her birth). They lived from 1939 at Carradale House at
Carradale in Kintyre, where Naomi died in 1999. Literary Career:
By Colleen Cahoon, of Texas
[Naomi Margaret Haldane's Family Tree]
[Naomi Margaret Haldane Mitchison in the 1920's]
Mitchison was a prolific writer, completing more than 90 books in her lifetime, across a multitude of styles and genres. These include historical novels such as her first novel The Conquered (1923) a story set in 1st century BC Gaul during the Gallic Wars of Julius Caesar, and her second novel Cloud Cuckoo Land (1925) set in 5th century BC Ancient Greece during the Peloponnesian War. Her best work is considered The Corn King and the Spring Queen (1931) which treats three different societies including a wholly fictional one, and also frankly explores themes of sexuality (daring for its day).
Later works included more historical novels The Bull Calves (1947) about the 1745 Jacobite Rising and The Young Alexander the Great (1960). Mitchison also turned to fantasy such as Graeme and the Dragon (1954; Graeme was her grandson through Denis); science fiction such as Memoirs of a Spacewoman (1962) and Solution Three (1975); non-fiction such as African Heroes (1968), together with children's novels, poetry, travel and a three-volume autobiography.
Undoubtedly her most controversial work, We Have Been Warned was published in 1935 and explored sexual behaviour, including rape and abortion. The book was rejected by various publishers, was extensively rewritten to make it more acceptable to publishers, and was still subject to censorship.
After her husband's death, Mitchison wrote several memoirs, published as separate titles between 1973 and 1985. She was also a good friend of the writer J.R.R. Tolkien and she was one of the proof readers of The Lord of the Rings.
Activism:
Mitchison, like her brother, was a committed Socialist in the 1930s. She visited the Soviet Union in 1932, and wrote We Have Been Warned about her experiences during that trip. The book was not successful, nor was her fictionalizing of stories about Jews living under the Nazi regime in Germany and Austria. She stood unsuccessfully as Labour candidate for the Scottish universities in 1935, at a time when universities were allowed to elect MPs. Eventually, as her political candidacy and her pro-Left writings both failed, she gradually became disenchanted with the Left. In 1939, when World War II broke out, Dick and Naomi Mitchison moved to Carradale in Scotland where they spent the rest of their lives.
Mitchison's advocacy continued in other ways. She acted a spokeswoman for the island communities of Scotland, and became an advisor to the Bakgatla tribe of Botswana.
Mitchison was a Life Fellow of the Eugenics Society. She was also a vocal campaigner for women's rights, advocating birth control, and was also active in local government in Scotland (1947 – 1976). Her own lack of knowledge about birth control (as stated in her memoirs) led to her interest in the causes of birth control and abortion. Mitchison helped found the first birth control clinics in London. Today, she is best known for her advocacy of feminism and her tackling of then-taboo subjects in her writing.
Later Life:
On 5 October 1964, Dick Mitchison was created a life peer as Baron Mitchison of Carradale in the County of Argyll on retirement for his political work. His wife, Naomi, thus became Lady Mitchison (as the wife of a Life Peer), but apparently chose not to use the title. Her husband died in 1970, but Naomi remained active as a writer well into her eighties. She was appointed CBE (Commander of the Order of the British Empire) in 1981. Continuing to write into her eighties, she died at Carradale at the age of 101. She was survived by her three younger sons (all scientists) and her two elder daughters, and by several other descendants.
Then I (Colleen Cahoon, in case you are wondering...) found the following article, on Naomi, by Iain Lundy, which I appreciated, as well, for revealing more of Naomi's personality.
Naomi Mitchison's century of life and love, words and wisdom, by IAIN LUNDY.
WHEN Lady Naomi Mitchison died at the age of 101 she was mourned as the doyenne - the "grand old lady" - of Scottish literature. In a life that spanned the 20th century she wrote more than 80 novels - from historical to science fiction to children’s books - and she was remembered as a woman who championed the causes of the people of the west coast of Scotland.
Those who knew her - and there were many hundreds from every corner of the world - remember a woman of supreme intellect, a radical and free thinker, a gracious hostess, someone who possessed knowledge and mischief in equal measure. She was all these things and a lot more. But to regard Naomi Mitchison as simply another author is to miss out on a fascinating life story, one that is crying out for a Hollywood scriptwriter.
In her book of memoirs entitled Among You Taking Notes, she wrote: "It is always a bore being ahead of one's time". She was most certainly a woman ahead of her time - but never boring. How many other 20th-century Scots have been adopted as adviser and tribal mother to an African people?
She was born into a dynasty - the Haldane family - in 1897. Her father was the noted physiologist John Scott Haldane, and her uncle Richard Burdon Haldane was Lord Chancellor in the first Labour government of Ramsay MacDonald. (He was later created Viscount Haldane of Cloan.) Although born in Edinburgh, she spent most of her school years in Oxford. It was a life of extreme privilege; there were servants to look after her and as a young teenager she was presented at court. In 1916 she married Gilbert "Dick" Mitchison, a member of an equally well-to-do family who was on leave from the wartime battlefields of northern Europe.
The marriage was not quite "arranged" but it suited both families very well. Dick Mitchison was removed from active service during the First World War, turned to politics and became a Labour MP. Naomi passionately shared his desire to make the world a better place in the wake of the war and both were members of the left-wing Fabian Society.
Mitchison, at age 92, is full of life after receiving an Honorary Doctorate of Letters at Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, in 1990.
The Mitchison's marriage followed a philosophy of open sexual freedom within a committed marriage. The family home in the Hammersmith section of London was the venue for large parties which, during the 1920s and 30s, were considered outrageous. The regular guests included authors Aldous Huxley and EM Forster.
"She was Bohemian, a child of the 20s, she had an open marriage and sexual freedom, taking off corsets, not wearing brassieres long before the 1960s," notes Mitchison biographer Jill Benton, a professor at Pitzer College in California. "She believed herself to be part of an intellectual elite and felt empowered to do and be any way she felt."
The disapproval of London society persuaded Naomi to move to the small Argyll village of Carradale, on the Kintyre peninsula, where she bought the local mansion, Carradale House. Typically she threw herself into local community life and served as a member of the former Argyll County Council from 1947 to 1964. She became a self-appointed spokeswoman for the people of the western isles who she believed were often unfairly treated.
By this time she was an established author in a variety of genres. She wrote political and historical novels, books about her beloved Scotland and science fiction. Her books that touched on racism in South Africa were banned in that country during the apartheid regime, as was she. Mitchison also wrote children's literature, largely because she felt there was a need to educate young minds about the dangers of nuclear power.
Mitchison warms to an audience at the National Library of Scotland in 1989.
Her most controversial effort was her 1935 book We Have Been Wanted, which explored sexual behaviour, including rape and abortion. The work was rejected by several publishers.
In the early 1960s one of the young students that Mitchison had let out her attic bedroom to was a young African man, destined to become Lynchwe ll, Chief of the Bakgatla Tribe, whose people lived in Botswana and South Africa. When - in 1966 - Botswana emerged as an independent republic out of what was formerly the British Protectorate of Bechuanaland, Lynchwe had succeeded to the title and turned for advice to the woman who had made such an impact on him as a student.
The young chief, whose Western education helped him into a position as a diplomat to Washington, rewarded Mitchison by giving her the title of Mmarona - honorary grandmother of the tribe.
Naomi Mitchison - who was known as Nou to her friends - was still campaigning and marching against nuclear establishments well into her 80s and 90s. Benton, the biographer, got to know her at that time, saying:
"She was an amazing person, even at that age she travelled with just a knapsack and a pair of sandals."
Biographies of Mitchison:
Naomi Mitchison: A Biography by Jill Benton (London: Pandora, 1990)
The Nine Lives of Naomi Mitchison by Jenni Calder (Virago, 1997)
Autobiography:
Mitchison's autobiography is in three parts.
Small Talk: Memories of an Edwardian Childhood (1973)
All Change Here: Girlhood and Marriage (1975) - published together as: As It Was: An Autobiography 1897-1918 (1975)
You May Well Ask: A Memoir, 1920-1940 (1979)
Novels:
The Conquered (1923)
Cloud Cuckoo Land (1925)
The Laburnum Branch (1926)
The Fairy who Couldn't Tell a Lie (1927)
Anna Comnena (1928)
Black Sparta (1928)
Nix-Nought-Nothing (1928)
The Hostages (1930)
The Corn King and the Spring Queen (1931)
Boys and Girls and Gods (1931)
The Prince of Freedom (1931)
Powers of Light (1932)
The Delicate Fire (1933)
We Have Been Warned (1935)
The Fourth Pit (1936)
An End and a Beginning (1937)
The Blood of the Martyrs (1939; reprinted in 1989)
The Bull Calves (1947)
The Big House (1950)
Travel Light (Faber and Faber, 1952; Virago Press, 1985; Penguin Books, 1987; Small Beer Press, 2005)
Graeme and the Dragon (1954
The Land the Ravens Found (1955)
To the Chapel Perilous (1955)
Little Boxes (1956)
Behold your King (1957)
The Young Alexander the Great (1960)
Memoirs of a Spacewoman (1962)
Ketse and the Chief (1965)
Friends and Enemies (1966)
Big Surprise (1967)
Family at Ditlabeng (1969)
Don't Look Back (1969)
Far Harbour (1969)
Sun and Moon (1970)
Cleopatra's People (1972)
Sunrise Tomorrow: A Story of Botswana (1973)
A Life for Africa: The Story of Bram Fischer (1973)
Danish Teapot (1973)
Oil for the Highlands? (1974)
Solution Three (1975) (with Susan Merrill Squier)
All Change Here (1975)
Snake! (1976)
Two Magicians (with Dick Mitchison, 1979)
The Vegetable War (1980)
Mucking Around (1981)
Not by Bread Alone (1983)
Early in Orcadia (1987)
Images of Africa (1987)
As It Was (1988)
The Oath-takers (1991)
Sea-green Ribbons (1991)
The Dark Twin (with Marion Campbell, 1998)
Collections:
The Brave Nurse: And Other Stories
When the Bough Breaks and Other Stories (1924; reprinted by Pomona Press, 2006)
Barbarian Stories (1929)
Beyond This Limit: Selected Shorter Fiction of Naomi Mitchison (1935)
Cleansing of the Knife: And Other Poems (poems) (1979)
What Do You Think Yourself: and Other Scottish Short Stories (1982)
A Girl Must Live: Stories and Poems (poems) (1990)
Plays:
The Price of Freedom. A play in three acts (with Lewis Gielgud Mitchison, 1931)
Non-fiction:
Return to the Fairy Hill (1966)
African Heroes (1968)
The Moral Basis of Politics (1971)
The Africans: From the Earliest Times to the Present (1971)
Small Talk (1973)
Margaret Cole, 1893-1980 (1982)
Among You Taking Notes... (1985)
Rising Public Voice: Women in Politics Worldwide (1995)
Note on her Title:
She apparently never used it in life. Her title came from her husband, who was made a Life Peer in 1964. Naomi Mitchison was not properly entitled to be called Lady Naomi Mitchison (although The Guardian and some other news sources make or perpetuate this error), but was rather Baroness Mitchison of Carradale formally, or less formally Lady Mitchison. She apparently preferred to be known as Naomi Mitchison. Her grandchildren and great grandchildren called her Nou. They often went to Caradale along with the rest of the family for huge family gatherings and holidays.
References:
External Links:
Biographical profiles for Naomi Mitchison
Literary Encyclopedia detailed entry which says she had seven children and that she received her CBE in 1981
Guardian obituary, which states she had six children, and that she received her CBE in 1985
Spartacus entry
The Scotsman biographical profile for Naomi Mitchison
another entry from Canongate publishers
Interview 15 April 1989 with Naomi Mitchison, focusing on her Arthurian novel "To the Chapel Perilous" (1955)
Learn about [ Margaret Haldane, ]
my Great, Great, Great-Grandmother.
Learn about [ Naomi's Great-Grandfather, James Alexander Haldane. ]
Learn about [ Naomi's Brother, "Jack", JBS Haldane. ]