The Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady

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March 6: Tonight a Toad was discovered jumping about in the hall; it must have come in through the garden door which has been standing open all day." Crowds of birds came to be fed this morning. There were great battles among the tits over the cocoa-nut, and once a robin got right into it and refused to let the Tits approach, until he had had all he wanted. I don't think the robins really care for cocoa-nut; but they don't like to see the tits enjoying anything, without claiming a share.

One sad thing to note here is that Holden’s book was written over a century ago. I noticed that some of the species which she talks about as being common – birds, butterflies, and flowers – are things which I have never seen anywhere in Britain. In 1911 Edith Holden, at the age of thirty-nine, married Ernest Smith, a sculptor, seven years her junior. [2] Smith became principal assistant to Countess Feodora Gleichen. At the Countess's studio in St James Palace the Smiths associated with leading artists such as Sir George Frampton, sculptor of the statue of Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens, and royal visitors such as King Faisal of Arabia. Edith continued her career as an illustrator; the couple had no children.urn:lcp:countrydiaryofed0000hold:epub:bb35e452-3773-48ef-b7e9-1fc4ec74fe27 Foldoutcount 0 Identifier countrydiaryofed0000hold Identifier-ark ark:/13960/t3fz8330x Invoice 1652 Isbn 0718115813 Lccn 79301513 //r90 Ocr tesseract 5.0.0-alpha-20201231-10-g1236 Ocr_detected_lang en Ocr_detected_lang_conf 1.0000 Ocr_detected_script Latin Ocr_detected_script_conf 0.9733 Ocr_module_version 0.0.13 Ocr_parameters -l eng Old_pallet IA-NS-2000261 Openlibrary_edition It is promised that in The Edwardian Lady, Taylor has ‘established this fascinating story with the inclusion of a previously hidden chapter’ of Edith’s. In this, her first biography, Taylor follows the trajectory of Holden’s life, from her childhood in the West Midlands, to London. Oct 14: Walked to Catherine de Barnes to get some Dogwood berries, which I knew were plentiful in the hedges about there.

April 1: I went to a little spinney to see a large bush of the Great Round-leaved Willow, which is a perfect picture just now, covered all over with great golden catkins, that light up the copse like hundreds of little fairy lamps." I first got Edith (Holden) Smith’s The Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady, asa gift, and then later found this biography to compliment the diary. It’s inspired me to create my own country diary of the animals and flora of the place where I live. Every month I read the month that it is, in her diary which is organized by months. I’m currently up to June.

Before the death of Edith's mother Emma in 1904, the Holden family had become Spiritualists. The Holdens held regular Spiritualist seances at home in Olton, with the intention of communicating with the spirit of their deceased wife and mother. Edith and her four sisters were instrumental in assisting their father with these communications, which culminated in 1913, when Edith's father published them in his own diary, entitled Messages from the Unseen, only weeks before his own death.