{"product_id":"2940013763371","title":"The Letters of Evelyn Underhill","description":"EVELYN UNDERHILL was born in the afternoon of 6 December, 1875 at\u003cbr\u003eWolverhampton. Her father was Arthur--afterwards Sir Arthur--\u003cbr\u003eUnderhill. He was a distinguished barrister and a bencher of\u003cbr\u003eLincoln's Inn, son of Henry Underhill for some time Town Clerk of\u003cbr\u003eWolverhampton; her mother was Alice Lucy Ironmonger. The family home\u003cbr\u003ewas always in London--a pleasant well-to-do home of what used to be\u003cbr\u003ecalled the Tory kind. She was educated there, except for some three\u003cbr\u003eyears (1888-1891) till she was sixteen at a private school at\u003cbr\u003eFolkestone; afterwards in London she went to King's College for\u003cbr\u003eWomen, where she read history and botany.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHer young experience, however, included also the sea and Europe. Her\u003cbr\u003efather was an enthusiastic yachtsman; he was founder and for many\u003cbr\u003eyears Commodore of the Royal Cruising Club. In 1888 she went for her\u003cbr\u003efirst cruise in his yacht Amoretta. The log-book which she kept\u003cbr\u003erecords her learning to sail and to sketch. She became a good\u003cbr\u003esmall-boat sailor-she could race and win prizes; she had all her\u003cbr\u003elife a passion for efficiency.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe family were friends with their neighbours, the Stuart Moores,\u003cbr\u003ewhose yacht often sailed in company with the Amoretta. The Stuart\u003cbr\u003eMoore boys were her chief-almost her only-young companions. A letter\u003cbr\u003ewritten to her mother when she was fourteen says: \"I hope you\u003cbr\u003eenjoyed the Nevilles' dinner-party; have they got an eligible child\u003cbr\u003eas a companion for me? if so, mind you let me know her.\" In that\u003cbr\u003esense she was a lonely child-which not all only children are, for\u003cbr\u003eshe had (it is clear) all her life a great capacity for and\u003cbr\u003eenjoyment of friendship. But two things began during that childhood.\u003cbr\u003eOne was her companionship in activity with Hubert Stuart Moore, who\u003cbr\u003eafterwards became her husband; the other was her own personal\u003cbr\u003eactivity of writing. She had begun this before she was sixteen, for\u003cbr\u003eshe then won the first prize in a short-story competition organized\u003cbr\u003eby the magazine Hearth and Home, and she occasionally followed this\u003cbr\u003estory with others. It was after 1898, when she was twenty-three and\u003cbr\u003eliving with her family in London, that in general her own\u003cbr\u003efriendships began. She moved, though not exclusively, in one of the\u003cbr\u003e\"literary sets\" of the day. She knew Maurice Hewlett, and at his\u003cbr\u003ehouse met Laurence Housman and Sarah Bernhardt. She also became\u003cbr\u003eacquainted with May Sinclair--now too little recollected; for the\u003cbr\u003epresent writer and for others of the then young her novels had a\u003cbr\u003equite unusual attraction; with Arthur Machen--whose interests were,\u003cbr\u003ein some respects, very like her own, though in the expression of\u003cbr\u003ethem she turned rather to actuality and he to myth; with Mrs.\u003cbr\u003eBaillie Reynolds and Mrs. Belloc Lowndes, Mary Cholmondeley and\u003cbr\u003eEvelyn Sharp, Mrs. Ernest Dowson and Mrs. Wilfrid Ward; and with\u003cbr\u003eArthur Symons But her chief friendship was with Ethel Ross Barker,\u003cbr\u003eand this was one of the most intimate of her life; it ended only\u003cbr\u003ewith her friend's death in 1920.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn 1890 she had first gone to France; she wrote of it: \"France is\u003cbr\u003echarming.\" But from 1898 she began a habit of going to Europe with\u003cbr\u003eher mother in the spring of every year-a habit which lasted until\u003cbr\u003e1913. In 1898 they went to Lucerne, Lugano, Como, and Milan; and she\u003cbr\u003ealone went on to Florence. In 1899 she was at Florence again; in\u003cbr\u003e1900 she first saw Chartres; in 1901, Assisi. In 1910 she went first\u003cbr\u003eto Rome. She wrote from Florence during her first (1898) visit:\u003cbr\u003e\"Once you have found it out (what Italian painters are really trying\u003cbr\u003eto paint) you must love them till the end of your days\"; and again:\u003cbr\u003e\"This place has taught me more than I can tell you; it's a sort of\u003cbr\u003egradual unconscious growing into an understanding of things.\" She\u003cbr\u003ewas then twenty-two.","brand":"WDS Publishing","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47152757833968,"sku":"2940013763371","price":2.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/2940013763371_p0.jpg?v=1763598720","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/2940013763371","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}