Gabrielle Vallings
Gabrielle Vallings (28 August 1886 – 1969) was a singer and novelist. She was the author Charles Kingsley's literary executor, and she completed the writer Lucas Malet's last novel after Malet's death.
Biography[edit]
Gabrielle Francesca Lilian Mary Vallings was born in Hythe, Kent, England, one of nine children of James Frederic Vallings, vicar of Sopley,[1] and Louisa Cadogan Chanter. She was a grand-niece of the novelist Charles Kingsley, who made her his literary executor,[2] and a second cousin of his daughter Mary St Leger Kingsley, a writer better known by her pen name Lucas Malet.[3]
Vallings was adopted by the much older Malet while still a teenager.[3] It appears that Vallings may have been briefly engaged to Norman Sladden, a naval officer, in 1916, but there is no record of her ever marrying.[4] Vallings and Malet lived together until Malet's death in 1931, traveling frequently to France. Malet encouraged Vallings to develop her creative abilities, first as a singer and then as a writer.[3]
Vallings, a soprano, trained to be an opera singer,[3] but it appears her career never took off as there are few records of public performances. She had begun performing by 1914, when a critic noticed her "pleasant soprano voice [and] fine feeling for musical expression" but advised further training.[5] In 1919, she sang at a celebrity-studded pageant in honor of the centenary of Charles Kingsley's birth.[6]
In 1916, Vallings published Bindweed, the first of her dozen novels, several of which had socialist themes.[3] Bindweed, which the London Times called "a powerful first novel",[7] centers on the travails of a young opera singer who does not know that she is of illegitimate birth.[8] Her second novel, Tumult (1916) features a cast ranging from Australian sheep ranchers and French aristocrats to the Greek god Pan.[9]
Vallings completed Malet's last novel, The Private Life of Mr. Justice Syme, after the author's death in 1931, and it was published in 1932.[10]
Selected books[edit]
- Bindweed (1916)
- Tumult (1917)
- The Whispering City (1922)
- Earth Fires: A Pastoral Tragedy (1926)
- Deepwater Farm (1934)
- Jude Penny (1934)
- The Silent Monk (1935)
- The Tramp of the Multitude: A Labour Triptych (1936)
- Jury Four (1938)
References[edit]
- ^ "St. Augustine's Missionary College". Historic Canterbury website. Retrieved 13 August 2017.
- ^ Thorp, Margaret Farrand. Charles Kingsley, 1819-1875. Princeton University Press, 2015, Preface.
- ^ a b c d e Hall, Donald E., ed. Muscular Christianity: Embodying the Victorian Age. Cambridge University Press, 2006, pp. 199-200.
- ^ "Literary Gossip from London". The Press, vol. 52, issue 15655, 29 July 1916.
- ^ Illustrated London News, vol. 54, April 11, 1914, p. 610.
- ^ "Charles Kingsley Centenary Pageant ". The Redpress of the Past.
- ^ The [London] Times, 5 Sept. 1916, p. 20.
- ^ "Books and Authors". The Living Age vol. 294 (July–September 1917), p. 640.
- ^ "Our Booking Office". Punch, vol. 156, 1 January 1919.
- ^ "Lucas Malet © Orlando Project". The Orland Project website. Retrieved 2017-08-12.