Yes, she was related to the more famous Lizzie “forty whacks” Borden, but Mary’s life is actually more impressive and rather more worthwhile. The origins of this almost under written but revealing and rewarding biography are fascinating in themselves. Jane Conway became interested in Mary Borden while reading poetry and prose about the First World War. She discovered that Mary’s son Michael had lived in the neighbourhood where she had grown up and had even enjoyed a brief romance with her cousin (she found a photograph of them in a family album). She was now fired with biographer’s muse and A Woman of Two Wars is the result.
Mary Borden was born in Chicago in 1886 and died in Warfield, Berkshire, in 1968. She was the daughter of William Borden, a rich businessman, of French descent, and died after an extraordinary life that embraced nursing, writing and support for a series of worthy causes. Tributes poured in from all sides, stressing her warmth, bravery, generosity, service to others, courage, wit and creativity.
Among her friends she numbered George Bernard Shaw, Ezra Pound, EM Forster, Ford Madox Ford and Cyril Connolly, who noted how “exceptionally kind and generous” she’d been to him when he was a young writer; Noel Coward remembered her as “a very valued friend… wise, understanding and kind and intelligent – balanced in her judgements and wonderfully unprejudiced,” and General de Gaulle recorded her achievements in both world wars. The Times obituary compared her novels to those of Edith Wharton.
Mary Borden was educated at Vassar College, toured the world and, in Switzerland, married George Douglas Turner, a Scottish missionary. They had two daughters, but in London she had an affair with Wyndham Lewis. She was a progressive and joined the Women’s Social and Political Union and, under the pseudonym Bridget Maclagan, began writing novels, furthering the cause.
In the spring of 1914 she moved from the Far East to London and found herself unknown, but soon came up with a good publicity wheeze, which as Jane Conway says “surprised and intrigued” a number of people.
A selection of the great and the good were invited to a dinner in Pall Mall to celebrate the 357th wedding anniversary of Mary Queen of Scots, where they were welcomed by a speech from pretty, petite Mary Borden, who told them: “Friends, today is my birthday. I was in London and lonely. I wanted you all to dine with me. But I knew you would none of you dine with me if I said please come and dine with Mary Borden Turner on her birthday…so I found it was the wedding anniversary of another Mary.” She was now where she wanted to be, well placed in the centre of the London social and literary scene, meeting the glitterati of artistic and society life at dinners and house parties.
At the outbreak of the Great War her husband served as an interpreter with the Indian troops in France and, although in advanced pregnancy, Mary accompanied him across the Channel and joined the French Red Cross. The wounded already numbered half a million. She was shocked by what she saw and the experiences permanently affected her writing. A story from this time, The Beach, savagely parallels pre-war life at the casino at Malo-les-Bains with what was now going on at the military hospital there, no longer gamblers and wasters, those who arrived were “wrecks” and “when they take their places at the tables the croupiers, the doctors, look them over. Come closer, I’ll whisper it. Some of them have no faces” but they have a ticket to the casino “like a luggage label. It has your name on it in case you don’t remember your name. You needn’t have a face, but a ticket you must have to get into our casino…” For years in France at her own expense she ran a mobile hospital unit. She fell in love with Edward Louis Spears, a French liaison officer, whom she married at the British embassy in Paris after her divorce. In 1918, she was awarded the Croix de Guerre.
Winston Churchill encouraged Spears and he was elected Liberal MP for Loughborough. Mary continued writing. Flamingo (1928) was a love story. but several books, including The Forbidden Zone (1929) and Sarah Gay (1931) were inspired by the horrors she had observed on the Western Front. The marriage was far from harmonious. Spears followed Churchill into the Conservative Party and subsequently became Tory MP for Carlisle. Mary’s output was impressive and included works on married life and religion.
She also continued her passion for politics and Passport for a Girl (1939) is an interesting account for its time of English attitudes towards and understanding of the rise of Nazism. During the Second World War she ran another mobile hospital, this time in the Middle East, using these experiences in Journey Down a Blind Alley (1946). For the Record (1950) is about spying and Martin Merridew (1952) deals with pacificism.
Adlai Stevenson was her nephew and she often visited the United States. She died of heart failure at her home in Berkshire after an amazingly rich and fulfilling life. She had written down as a child, in words that have, remarkably, survived: “I would like to be a help to God. I would like to be honest, brave and kind. I would like to help the soldiers in war. I would like to do something for my country.”
