Manuscript diary (2 vols.).
[WILDE (Constance).] CASSON (Frances Nora), 1869 -1929. Her autograph diary from 3 November 1892 to 6 August 1894. Two volumes. Quarto. Approximately 434 pages, 80,000 words. Volume I: original half morocco; volume II: original half roan.
Frances ("Fanny") Casson was the daughter of Rev. George Casson, (1810-1898), a retired clergyman living in Torquay. She had threee brothers, Ferdinand ("Ferdie") killed in the Boer War, Hugh Gilbert Casson (later a Brigadier General) and Herbert Alexander Casson of the Indian Civil Service. Frances married the Rev. John Erskine Bowles.
Fanny's diary shows a clergyman's daughter's life in genteel Torquay in the 1890s. Her days are uneventful and filled with the activities one might expect: visiting with her mother, excursions to the town with her girl friends, church-going, Sunday-school teaching to young parishioners, reading (Carlyle's French Revolution, Hamlet, Atalanta, Kidnapped - "I don't think it comes up to Treasure Island"), dressmaking, theatre- and concert-going and looking after the birds she breeds for pin-money. Some entries have an almost heroic banality. "Tidied a drawer", she reports one day, "Tidied two drawers," the next. Numerous names of Torquay residents are mentioned including Lady Harrington, Lord and Lady Teignmouth, Lady Florence Gordon-Cumming, wife of Sir William Gordon-Cumming of baccarat notoriety, and the poet John Drinkwater and his wife, Eva ("I stayed amusing her [Eva Drinkwater] from 4.30 to 6.30. She seemed very cheerful though she has had to lie down flat for 3 weeks. Poor little thing.")
At the time Torquay had some more famous residents. Oscar and Constance Wilde stayed with her friend and distant relation, Lady Mount Temple, at Babbacombe Cliff from mid-November 1892 to the beginning of February 1893. Constance then left for a holiday in Florence while Oscar stayed on, moving in Lord Alfred Douglas and Douglas's tutor Campbell Dodgson. Their lives there are well documented in Wilde's letters. Our diarist, alas, never meets him. However, she does come across Constance Wilde. By May 1893, Constance was unexpectedly back at Babbacombe Cliff. On 21 May Fanny writes, "To church with others 11'ock. Home with Elsie Lay as far as her gate & also with Mrs. Wilde, who is staying here with her Aunt. We were surprised to see her." Two days later, on 23 May, Constance Wilde calls on Mrs. Casson. Earlier in the year, had she known, Fanny might have seen an amateur production of "Lady Windermere's Fan," supervised by the dramatist himself, which opened at the Theatre Royal, Torquay on 2 January 1893. (Nothing much appears to be known of this interesting event.) Fanny does frequent the Royal and she does go out that week, on 3 January to be precise, but dutifully to a lecture by Mr. Harcourt Smith on the Holy Land at the Bath Saloon.
Nine pieces of printed ephemera loosely inserted, mainly for concerts at the Bath Saloon, Torquay, as well as the complete libretto for Gilbert and Sullivan's "Utopia." Volume one lacks spine, covers held by ties, slight damp-staining at head of manuscript; volume two spine defective.
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