The most conspicuous layman in the Church, he put his standing to Emily rather grandly. ‘If I had a divorce it would be the greatest misfortune to the Anglican Church since Newman went over to Rome.’ He wrote this from Boston on 16 April 1933 as he proposed a separation, not divorce, to his wife’s family and a lawyer, Mr Bird.
He put it to Emily once more, six months later, that punishment and disgrace would follow a divorce: excommunication, together with estrangement from the clerics who had welcomed his conversion. He would like nothing more than to marry her, but the rulings of the church must come first. Yet if she was to remain a gift of God, what does this mean for the woman who’s the gift? Does she exist in her own right? Emily Hale had no doubt that she did. She took for granted the right to pursue happiness.
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