‘With you I can become the person I
really am – and bearing the grave in mind be buried as such. Dear love
consider yourself kissed’
Mary, 30 October 1944
Mary, 30 October 1944
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| Mary Wesley before her engagement to her first husband, 1936 |
‘I find you brave and amusing,
understanding and beautiful, simple and sophisticated, and I love you.
More than that, I mean to get you’
About her late blooming in literature Mary once told, "Sixty should be the time to start something new, not put your feet up."
Liberated before her time Mary Wesley challenged
social assumptions about the old, confessed to bad behaviour and
recommended sex.She smashed the stereotype of the
disapproving, judgmental, past-it, old person. This delighted the old
and intrigued the young.In Mary's books there are some references to her own life, although
she denied that her novels were autobiographical. Her books usually
take place in or around the everlasting house, the idyllic refuge in the West Country. Other recurring themes such as the dysfunctional family,
the uncertain paternity, the affirmation of illegitimacy, can also be
linked to her own life. In addition, thanks to her flighty youth, sex
would become her trademark though she wrote about what went
on in the head rather than a user's manual.
Mary's family did not approve of her books. Her brother called what she
wrote "filth" and her sister, with whom she was no longer on speaking
terms, strongly objected to The Camomile Lawn, claiming that some of the characters were based on their parents.She had three sons. Her first husband was Charles Swinfen Eady, 2nd Baron Swinfen, with whom she had a son. She had an affair with the Czech war hero Heinz Otto Ziegler, with whom she had a son.Then she had a son with her second husband, Eric
Siepmann.Mary became an author, after Eric's death
in 1970 left her nearly impoverished.
Nine months before her death in 2002, Mary Wesley authorised Patrick Marnham to write her biography and handed him two shoeboxes containing her correspondence with her second husband, Eric Siepmann. Mary Wesley may have died rich and successful, but she achieved this only during the last two decades of her long life; before that she had spent many years living on very little indeed.
The authorised biography (published in 2006) is entitled Wild Mary, a reference both to her childhood nickname and to her sex life as a young woman, when she had many lovers.The biography holds nothing back. As Wesley stated: "It was a flighty generation.... [W]e had been brought up so repressed. War freed us. We felt if we didn't do it now, we might never get another chance."
Mary and Eric met by chance in the Palm Court of the Ritz Hotel on the evening of 26 October 1944.By the time she eventually caught the train back to Penzance two days later they had fallen in love and Eric had declared that he was determined to marry her.Before her death in 2002, Mary told her biographer, 'after I met Eric I never looked at anyone else again. We lived our ups and downs but life was never boring.'
Marnham suggests that through these letters that Mary wrote to Eric, between 1944 and 1964, a decade after Eric's death, reclaimed her voice.
Sources : Amazon, Penguin, The Independent, Wikipedia
Her style has been described as "arsenic without the old lace". Others have described it as "Jane Austen plus sex", a description Mary herself thought ridiculous.English novelist Mary Wesley's (24 June 1912 – 30 December 2002), first work, 'Jumping the Queue,' was published in 1983, when she was 70.The story follows a middle aged widow's struggle with guilt and
self-reproach after the death of her husband and her determination to
jump the queue – commit suicide. it had been turned down
by a succession of publishers on grounds of its "general morbidity"
and "off-beat" characters. Its eventual acceptance encouraged Mary to
continue writing, eventually clocking up ten titles and huge sales.'The Camomile Lawn' became her first commercial success and best known work the following year.Later both books were adaped into TV plays.
About her late blooming in literature Mary once told, "Sixty should be the time to start something new, not put your feet up."
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| Published 2017 |
Nine months before her death in 2002, Mary Wesley authorised Patrick Marnham to write her biography and handed him two shoeboxes containing her correspondence with her second husband, Eric Siepmann. Mary Wesley may have died rich and successful, but she achieved this only during the last two decades of her long life; before that she had spent many years living on very little indeed.
The authorised biography (published in 2006) is entitled Wild Mary, a reference both to her childhood nickname and to her sex life as a young woman, when she had many lovers.The biography holds nothing back. As Wesley stated: "It was a flighty generation.... [W]e had been brought up so repressed. War freed us. We felt if we didn't do it now, we might never get another chance."
Mary and Eric met by chance in the Palm Court of the Ritz Hotel on the evening of 26 October 1944.By the time she eventually caught the train back to Penzance two days later they had fallen in love and Eric had declared that he was determined to marry her.Before her death in 2002, Mary told her biographer, 'after I met Eric I never looked at anyone else again. We lived our ups and downs but life was never boring.'
Marnham suggests that through these letters that Mary wrote to Eric, between 1944 and 1964, a decade after Eric's death, reclaimed her voice.
Sources : Amazon, Penguin, The Independent, Wikipedia
