Lettice D'Oyly Walters

Walters was born in Dorchester, Dorset, England on September 24, 1880"Lettice Harmar" (1880). England & Wales, Civil Registration Birth Index, 1837-1915. London, England: General Register Office. Volume 5a, p. 311. Available at: [http://Ancestry.com Ancestry.com]. Retrieved July 8, 2022. to Colonel Charles D’Oyly Harmar (1844-1922) and Alice Mary, née Byas (1848-1924).“Charles D. Harmar” (1891). Census return for Ramridge House, Weyhill, Penton Grafton, Andover, Hampshire. National Archives, Kew: RG 12/964, folio 13, p. 3. Available at: [http://findmypast.com Findmypast]. Retrieved July 8, 2022."Charles D’Oyly Harmar," "Alice Mary Byas," Marriage registration: 1876, Kingston, Surrey, Volume 2a, p. 369. England & Wales, Civil Registration Marriage Index, 1837-1915, London, England: General Register Office. [http://Ancestry.com Ancestry.com], Retrieved July 8, 2022. Her siblings were:"Chas. Doyley Harmar" (1881). Census return for Wollaston Villas, Dorchester All Saints, Dorset. National Archives, Kew, 1881: piece 2110, folio 28, p. 28. Available at: [http://Ancestry.com Ancestry.com]. Retrieved July 8, 2022."Phillis Harmar" (1901). Census return for Ramridge House, Weyhill, Penton Grafton, Andover, Hampshire. National Archives, Kew: RG13/1115, folio 9, p. 9. Available at [http://Findmypast.com Findmypast]. Retrieved July 8, 2022.

• Fairlie Harmar (1876–1945), painter, Viscountess Harberton
• Charles D'Oyly Walters (1878-1963), later Major D’Oyly Harmar, Royal MarinesBirth: “Charles D'Oyly Harmar” (1878). England & Wales, Civil Registration Birth Index, 1837-1915. London, England: General Register Office. Volume 5a, p. 351. Death: “Charles D'o Harmar” (1963). England & Wales, Civil Registration Death Index, 1916-2007. London, England: General Register Office. Volume 5b, p. 1510.
• Phillis Cowlard, née Harmar (1889-1966).“Phillis Harmar” (1889). England & Wales, Civil Registration Birth Index, 1837-1915. London, England: General Register Office. Volume 1a, p. 544. Phillis was painted by Fairlie Harmar circa 1930.“Phillis Cowlard” (1889). England & Wales, Civil Registration Death Index, 1916-2007. London, England: General Register Office. Volume 6b, p. 99.

Walters spent her first twenty years in Ramridge House, a one-hundred-acre estate in Weyhill, Hampshire, where she was educated by a governess. Her sister Fairlie studied at the Slade School of Fine Art. Her brother was educated at Winchester College before enlisting with the Royal Marines.

D’Oyly Walters is often referred to as Irish; however, there is no evidence that she ever lived in Ireland, nor were her parents Irish.

File:Mrs._Huth_Jackson,_John_Singer_Sargent_1907.jpg

Lettice married Australian banker Lewis Huth Walters (February 24, 1872 – November 24, 1941) in Weyhill, Hampshire June 1, 1901."Approaching Marriages." Clifton Society [Bristol, England], May 2, 1901, p. 9.{{Cite book |last=Walters |first=Frederick |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=zUoWAAAAYAAJ&dq=lettice+d%27oyly+walters&pg=PA74 |title=The Family of Walters of Dorset [and] Hants |publisher=Gill |year=1907 |location=London |page=74}} Initially living in a flat at 12A Evelyn Mansions, S. W. London,"Fredk. Huth & Co.," Supplement to The London Gazette, February 23, 1912, p. 1437. the couple later moved to 5 Swan Walk, Chelsea, London.{{Cite book |title=Boyle's Fashionable Court and Country Guide and Town Visiting Directory |publisher=Printed and sold by Eliza Boyle and Son |year=1924}} Lewis shared a partnership in the old London establishment Frederick Huth & Co. with his cousin Frederick Huth Jackson. Frederick's wife Caroline Huth Jackson, society hostess, was painted by John Singer Sargent in 1907. Over time, Lewis became a major art collector, specializing in prints, drawings, and decorative art.{{Cite web |title=Lewis Huth Walters |url=https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/term/BIOG50295 |access-date=July 12, 2022 |website=The British Museum}}

Their only child, Michael Heriot Huth Walters was born 1909.{{Cite web |title=Michael Heriot Huth Walters {{!}} Artist {{!}} Royal Academy of Arts |url=https://www.royalacademy.org.uk/art-artists/name/michael-heriot-huth-walters |access-date=2022-07-13 |website=www.royalacademy.org.uk}} From an early age, he was interested in astronomy.{{Cite journal |title=Obituary, Michael H. H. Walters |journal=The Observatory |date=1934 |volume=57 |issue=June, 1934 |pages=197–98|bibcode=1934Obs....57..197. }} After studying at King's College, University of Cambridge, he won a visiting fellowship to Princeton University. He died of a heart attack on March 26, 1934, at the age of 25.{{Cite web |title=Biographies T - Z {{!}} Institute of Astronomy |url=https://www.ast.cam.ac.uk/about/history/biographies.t.-.z |access-date=2022-07-13 |website=www.ast.cam.ac.uk}} Lettice solicited a series of poems and tributes from friends and family, and published them privately through the Swan Press in a small book simply titled Michael (1935). This was her last recorded publication. She died February 3, 1940, having returned to Redenham (Appleshaw), Hampshire, leaving her estate to her sister Phillis.{{Cite web |title=England and Wales, National Index of Wills and Administrations, 1858-1957 |url=https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:QPLJ-Z6H9 |access-date=July 12, 2022 |website=Family Search}}

Lewis died of a heart attack in 1941."Obituary: Mr. L. H. Walters." Chelsea News and General Advertiser, December 5, 1941, p. 3. His collection of prints and drawings was sold by Christie's in 1942 and appear in the catalogs of major museums around the world, such as the J. Paul Getty Museum, the British Museum, and the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge.

The first of Walters's publications was a collection of her own poems titled Speedwell: Dreams and Desires (1917). A reviewer praised Walters for “simple, musical, and gracefully turned pieces.”"Poetry." The Scotsman [Edinburgh], August 6, 1917, p. 2. Another review noted that Walters was a “master of passionate language,” although the reviewer was shocked by her “very decidedly sensuous conception of Love.”"Volumes of Verse: Speedwell." Aberdeen Press and Journal, August 28, 1917, p. 5. Likewise, her volume Forty-Five Poems (1924) received commendation for “exquisite artistry,” the reviewer comparing the work to “a summer brook flowing over green things"; this review referred to Walters as a male author."Poetry and Plays." The Scotsman [Edinburgh], October 30, 1924, p. 2.

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Intended for the Christmas market of 1920, the illustrated anthology The Year's at the Spring contains 63 poems by 39 authors, as well as 12 full-page color plates and over a dozen black and white tail-piece illustrations by the Irish artist Harry Clarke. There is no record of Walters having met Clarke in person; the collaboration was managed through the auspices of London publisher George Harrap.Helmers, Marguerite (2019). "Other Worlds in The Year's at the Spring". In Angela Griffiths, Marguerite Helmers, Roísín Kennedy, eds., Harry Clarke and Artistic Visions of the New Irish State. Newbridge, Ireland: Irish Academic Press, 2019. p. 207. {{isbn|1788550455}}

The title of the volume comes from a song in the verse drama Pippa Passes (1841) by Robert Browning: “The year's at the spring / And day's at the morn.” In his introduction to the anthology, the poet, bookseller, and editor Harold Monro commented that the anthology was “readable” because it didn't deal with “big themes” of the day, such as the recently concluded First World War and ongoing action related to Women's Suffrage. Yet a number of contributions were from war poets, among them Rupert Brooke ("The Soldier"), Edward Wyndham Tennant (“Home Thoughts in Laventie”), Julian Grenfell (“Into Battle”), and Robert Ernest Vernéde (“A Petition”). The anthology also includes a number of women poets, such as Mary Coleridge, Frances Cornford, Queenie Scott-Hopper, and Charlotte Mary Mew.

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The Studio praised the book as “attractively got up” and singled out Clarke as “an artist of marked individuality, and the imaginative faculty which he possesses in a high degree is well shown in these drawings.”{{Cite journal |date=1921 |title=Review: The Year's at the Spring |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=3J9AAQAAMAAJ |journal=The International Studio |volume=73 |pages=82–84}} Clarke's biographer Nicola Gordon Bowe posits that unillustrated versions of the text marketed as An Anthology of Recent Poetry (1920) were sold prior to the release of the illustrated gift book in order to offset copyright permissions for the poetry and fees for the illustrations.{{Cite book |last=Bowe |first=Nicola Gordon |title=Harry Clarke: The Life and Work |publisher=History Press |year=2012 |isbn=978-1845887421 |location=Dublin, Ireland |pages=343}} The poetic contents of The Year's at the Spring and An Anthology of Recent Poetry are identical.

For the anthology Irish Poets of To-day (1921), Walters collected 78 poems drawn from previously published work of 34 writers. She dedicated the collection to George William Russell (pseudonym Æ), who contributed six poems to the book. The book includes seven poems by William Butler Yeats. Three executed leaders of the Easter Rising are represented by their poetry: Joseph Plunkett, Patrick Pearse, and Thomas MacDonagh. As with The Year’s at the Spring, she included several female poets, among them Eva Gore-Booth, Winifred Letts, Dora Sigerson, and Katharine Tynan. The work was not reviewed extensively, and one reviewer noted it only included minor poets and sentimental verses."Irish Poets of To-Day" [Review], Montrose Standard [Angus, Scotland], September 16, 1921, p. 6.

In 1926, Lettice, her son Michael, and printer, engraver and painter Maureen Patey Eyre Proudman established the Swan Press, listing the Walters' home address at 5 Swan Walk, Chelsea. The press published no new work, but reissued previously published material. The Sybil Campbell Library, which owns many of the books, notes that Swan Press “produced limited editions, usually of 100 numbered copies, in fine print, handset in a variety of typefaces by L.D.O. Walters and M.P. Eyre, hand pressed by H. Gage-Cole on handmade paper, bound by hand, examples of fine craftsmanship.”{{Cite web |title=The Swan Press {{!}} Organisations {{!}} RA Collection {{!}} Royal Academy of Arts |url=https://www.royalacademy.org.uk/art-artists/organisation/the-swan-press |access-date=2022-07-19 |website=www.royalacademy.org.uk}} Margaret Roake writes, “Since the foremost aim of the Swan Press was the production of fine typography, there was no standard format to the volumes. Each came in a size, typeface and style appropriate to the particular subject.”Roake, Margaret (2005). "The Swan Press Collection." Sybil Campbell Library Monograph Number 4. [https://sybilcampbellcollection.org.uk/scc/images/stories/downloads/SwanPress.pdf] Swan Press ceased publication with the memorial volume Michael for Michael H. H. Walters. Contributors to the memorial received a copy of Swan Press's edition of Ten Fables by Robert Lewis Stevenson, illustrated by Rachel Russell (1928).{{Cite web |title=Swan Press Robert Louis Stevenson Ten Fables with Twenty One Illustrations by Rachel Russell 1928 |url=https://www.gosenrarebooks.com/book/swan-press-ten-fables-with-twenty-one-illustrations-by-rachel-russell-1928/ |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200927002328/https://www.gosenrarebooks.com/book/swan-press-ten-fables-with-twenty-one-illustrations-by-rachel-russell-1928/ |url-status=usurped |archive-date=September 27, 2020 |access-date=2022-07-19 |website=G. Gosen Rare Books & Old Paper, ABAA & ILAB |language=en-US}} Swan Press's editions were presented to the Sybil Campbell Library in memory of Michael Heriot Huth Walters. According to the library, “no public repository has records of the Swan Press.”

Speedwell: Dreams and Desires (London: Erskine MacDonald, 1918)

Turquoise (London: Sands & Co., 1919)

The Year’s at the Spring: An Anthology of Recent Poetry (London: G. G. Harrap & Co., 1920). A book with a similar title, The Year's at the Spring: An Anthology of Best-Loved Poems (Dublin: Gill & MacMillan, 2013), was published with a new table of contents, deleting many of the original selections, adding poems by Irish writers, and listing Harry Clarke as the author.{{Cite book |url=https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/902627057 |title=The year's at the spring : an anthology of best-loved poems |date=2013 |others=Fiona Biggs, Elisabeth Golding, Harry Clarke |isbn=978-0-7171-5822-5 |location=Dublin |oclc=902627057}}

Irish Poets of To-Day; an Anthology (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1921)

A Complete Guide to Wiltshire (London: Sach & Co., 1921)

Poems (London: C. W. Daniel, 1922)

Forty-Five Poems (London: Selwyn & Blount, 1924)

Michael, A Volume of Poems and Tributes to the Memory of Michael Heriot Huth Walters (London: Swan Press, 1934)

• Fairlie Harmar
• Harry Clarke
• The Year’s at the Spring

{{wikisource|works=or}}

• [https://archive.org/search.php?query=lettice%20d%27oyly%20walters Works by Lettice D'Oyly Walters] at Internet Archive
• Works by Lettice D'Oyly Walters at Project Gutenberg
• [https://sybilcampbellcollection.org.uk/scc/index.php/scc-occasional-papers Swan Press Collection], [https://sybilcampbellcollection.org.uk/scc/index.php Sybil Campbell Library Collection], University of Winchester
• [http://www.pentongraftonparishcouncil.org.uk/history.html Ramridge House], at the Penton Grafton Parish Council website

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Category:20th-century English poets

Category:1880 births

Category:1940 deaths

Category:Artists from Dorset

Category:Book artists

Category:English women poets

Category:Huth family

Category:People from Dorchester, Dorset

Category:Women book artists

Category:Writers from Dorset