Bello:
hidden talent rediscovered
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Contents
Edith Olivier
Dedication
Preface
BOOK I
PREAMBLE
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
BOOK II
PREAMBLE
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
BOOK III
PREAMBLE
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Edith Olivier
Without Knowing Mr Walkley
Edith Olivier (1872–1948) was born in the Rectory at Wilton, Wiltshire, in the late 1870s. Her father was Rector there and later Canon of Salisbury. She came from an old Huguenot family which had been living in England for several generations, and was one of a family of ten children. She was educated at home until she won a scholarship to St Hugh’s College, Oxford. Her first novel, The Love Child, was published in 1927 and there followed four works of fiction: As Far as Jane’s Grandmother’s (1928), The Triumphant Footman (1930), Dwarf’s Blood (1930) and The Seraphim Room (1932). Her works of non-fiction were The Eccentric Life of Alexander Cruden (1934), Mary Magdalen (1934), Country Moods and Tenses (1941), Four Victorian Ladies of Wiltshire (1945), Night Thoughts of a Country Landlady (1945), her autobiography, Without Knowing Mr. Walkley (1938) and, posthumously published, Wiltshire (1951).
Dedication
For
KITTY and EVELYN RAWLENCE
and other friends
who remember with me the old Wilton days
There are several people whom I should like to thank for their help to me in bringing out this book. Miss Helen Waddell allowed me to use her beautiful translation of Fredugis’s ‘Lament for Alcuin’ from her Mediaeval Latin Scholars. The interesting photograph by Lewis Carroll (The Rev. C. L. Dodgson), of Dante Rossetti playing chess, is reproduced by kind permission of Major C. H. W. Dodgson; and the Officers of Court Pembroke and Montgomery of the Ancient Order of Foresters allowed me to photograph, specially for this book, the mid-Victorian banner which was so often carried through the Wilton streets when I was a child. I thank the Lamb family: Henry, who made the drawing for this book, and Henrietta and Felicia, who entertained me, while I was sitting, with their enchanting conversation. I have not succeeded in tracing the present owner of Sir William Richmond’s study of Lord Pembroke’s head, and I am printing it from an excellent reproduction possessed by Miss Elizabeth Mitchell and Mrs. Smith, who generously lent it to me for this purpose.
No less than five of my illustrations are from photographs taken for me by Dr. Tibor Csato; and I thank my sister-in-law, Esther Olivier, for letting me use the water-colour of Blea Tarn which she possesses. The Trustees of the British Museum have been particularly kind about the model of Stonehenge by Mr. Henry Brown; and I glow with gratitude to Rex Whistler, whose drawing perpetuates, far better than any writing, the memory of delightful talks in my Long Room. E.O.
The Daye House, Wilton
18 March 1938
BOOK I
WILTON RECTORY
PREAMBLE
THE HOUSE AND GARDEN
From a childhood at Wilton Rectory there comes a legacy which lasts through life. The broad, beneficent Georgian building of deep red brick stands only a few yards from the main street of the little town; yet, behind the house, one steps into the garden to see, beyond it, nothing but orchard land, a glimpse of water, meadows prankt with grey-green willows, and, in the distance, the downs topped by the Vesey Trees. On the right, a little path bordered by clipped and pointed yews leads to the great Romanesque church built in the ’ forties of the last century by Lord Herbert of Lea and his mother, the Russian Lady Pembroke. It stands high on a broad terrace.
The house was there before the church, and old Mr. Moore of Wilton told me that his grandfather remembered its being built, about 1790, by the owner of the factory which then stood on the site of the present schools. This man possessed excellent and very restrained taste, and his buildings in West Street are extremely satisfying, perhaps because he himself was not easily satisfied. The semicircular wall and gateway which lead to the school have their own beauty, but they also show an unusual sense of proportion in relation to the street. This quality evidently belonged to their builder. When his own house was in building. Mr. Moore’s grandfather one day saw him stand in prolonged contemplation of its walls, which had then risen about two feet from the ground. They were not on the site of the present house, but stood almost flush with the street.
‘No’, he said. ‘I don’t like it’.
The walls were taken down, and the building was recommenced in its present position. It now stands upon great cellars—high stone rooms of the same size as those on the ground floor—and when I had heard this anecdote from Mr. Moore, I began to think that there might also be vast secret crypts hidden underground where the first house was to have stood. The idea was romantic and terrifying. Our own cellars were frightening enough, but who lived in those other cellars beyond?
The thought of them increased the exaggerated size already possessed by the haunts of one’s childhood. There they lay, unknown, on the other side of the cellar walls we saw.
