Edith Olivier

She describes this in Night Thoughts of a Country Landlady, humorously illustrated by her close friend, the artist Rex Whistler.

George Lord Pembroke and his wife Gety were childless and encouraged the young Olivier children to spend time with them and to play with their nephews and nieces.

[3] When Edith's widower father, Canon Dacres Olivier, retired before the First World War, she and her sister Mildred moved with him to No.20 in Salisbury's Cathedral Close.

So many of the young writers, painters and poets came to her with problems about their work and their lives and they knew that after she had listened intently to their outpourings, her advice would be unprejudiced, wise and Christian.” – Cecil Beaton[6] In her nightly journal – missed only three times: when her brother Harold was killed fighting in 1914, her sister Mildred died from breast cancer in 1923, and her closest friend Rex Whistler was killed jumping from his tank in 1944 – Edith recorded a way of life and a generation that vanished with the outbreak of the Second World War.

She describes the 'Bright Young Things' on the Earl of Pembroke's estate at Wilton and at nearby Ashcombe, Cecil Beaton's house, first discovered by Edith.

[1] It was then that she formed a profound friendship with Rex Whistler[2] and acted as a frequent hostess to an elite, artistic, and social set which included Cecil Beaton, Siegfried Sassoon, William Walton, and Osbert Sitwell.

Laughs so utterly’ Edith Sitwell: ‘bitter against the world in general, and very comprehending towards individuals when she knows about them’ Stephen Tennant: ‘dazzling in his inspired wit and vision’ William Walton: ‘a very domestic man, ready to help in all household emergencies’ Rex Whistler: ‘a reincarnation of Breughel’[8] Her first novel, The Love Child, was published in 1927, and was followed by further novels, biographies including one of Alexander Cruden, and the autobiographical Without Knowing Mr Walkley.

‘If it was an apport left by a passing spirit, I can only say that the sense of humour of those in another world is very different from ours.′ Twice, whilst visiting Land's End, she saw a fortified city some miles out in the Atlantic.

[11] Edith was a published author when she was asked to write the preface to the 1931 fourth edition of the popular An Adventure by Charlotte Anne Moberly (principal of St Hugh's College, Oxford from its foundation in 1886 until 1915) and her successor Eleanor Jourdain.

Jourdain died in 1924 whilst principal, her demise possibly brought on by the criticism she and Moberly received for daring to involve Oxford University in something so unscientific.

David Herbert, second son of Reginald, Earl of Pembroke, recalling her funeral, wrote: ‘As they lowered her coffin into the grave, with swish of wings a pigeon flew up into the sky.