Browse Documents (11 total)

Dear Members, Just about the only hiccough in the smooth course of the Unveiling Ceremony occurred during our rehearsal session, before the ‘public’ arrived. The microphone was perhaps not at all that we might have hoped for: however we readers…

Sixty-two years ago, almost to the day - a freezing 25 November 1936 - I arrived at the London docks from Africa and came, without realizing it at the time, to live in the country of my background. I was to live with Alison and Rupert Winser and…

When Mrs. FitzRoy Newdegate died, in her 85th year, George Eliot Fellowship lost not only a Patron but someone whose friendship we had enjoyed for almost 45 years. This gracious lady, born in the last great days of the British aristocracy, was a…

I send you all my greetings once again. The death of the Hon. Mrs. FitzRoy Newdegate represents for all of us the passing of one of the last links with what we now look upon as the expansive and gracious pre-war days of Empire, when the sun always…

Though I am greatly honoured, I was not a little alarmed to be asked to get on my feet and propose this toast. Some frighteningly eminent people have been here before me. What on earth was I to say? However, our Secretary is not just a pretty face,…

Dear Members, Presumably we, who belong to the George Eliot Fellowship, do so because we hold the Lady in great esteem. And, particularly in the last year, her manifold virtues have been widely acclaimed. But at one of the last functions of that…

Dear Members, I have just been directing my first play; if you have sensitive nerves, it is not an occupation I would recommend. If you add the further ingredient that it is a religious piece, then your self-exposure seems total. So you know now how…

There are three of us; and as we pass that young lady seated on a ridge, sketching Hangman’s Head, she eyes us askance, and although politeness keeps in the secrecy of her own bosom the translation of that look, I know how it would run in the…

Dear Members, What a great pleasure it was during May to meet so many Fellowship members who came on the outing to Buckinghamshire, finishing up in my own village of Jordans. As I stood waving the coach away from the Hostel, where we had all had…

It was abitterly cold day in November 1936 when the Dunluce Castle berthed at Tilbury. On board and indeed the last passenger to leave, was a 10 year old boy. Looking back, after forty years, he recalls that he was so cold he was wearing three pairs…

Being elected President of the Fellowship has been a great stimulus in doing what I should have done years ago – what my family calls ‘finding out about Auntie’. The fact that it is great-great-Auntie is neither here nor there; anyway, Auntie by…