Mary Wesley facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Mary Wesley

Mary Aline Siepmann CBE (24 June 1912 – 30 December 2002), known by the pen name Mary Wesley, was an English novelist. During her career, she was one of Britain's most successful novelists, selling three million copies of her books, including ten bestsellers in the last twenty years of her life.

Biography

Birth and family

Mary Aline Mynors Farmar was born in Englefield Green, Surrey, the third child of Colonel Harold Mynors Farmar, CMG, DSO, of Orchards, Bicknoller, Somerset, and his wife Violet Hyacinth, née Dalby, granddaughter of Sir William Bartlett Dalby. As a child, she had a succession of 16 foreign governesses. When she asked her mother why they kept on leaving, her mother reportedly told her: "Because none of them like you, darling."

Wesley had a lifelong complicated relationship with her family and especially with her mother, who had a sharp tongue. Following the death of her father in 1961, her mother said: "I'm not going to let that lingering death happen to me. When the time comes I'm going to crawl to the Solent and swim out." Wesley replied with feeling: "I'll help you".

Her 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. Wesley identified the appalling grandparents in Harnessing Peacocks, who bully the pregnant Hebe, as the nearest she came to a portrait of her own parents in old age.

Adult life

Lewis Clive fell in love with Wesley and asked her to marry him. In The Camomile Lawn, the character Oliver Ansty is a fictionalised version of Clive.

Wesley's first husband was Charles Swinfen Eady, 2nd Baron Swinfen, with whom she had a son, Roger Swinfen Eady, 3rd Baron Swinfen; although her son Toby Eady, born in 1941, was initially known as the son of Lord Swinfen, Wesley subsequently admitted his father to be the Czech political scientist Heinz Otto Ziegler. Toby Eady was eventually the literary agent of her biographer Patrick Marnham. She next married Eric Siepmann and with him had a third son, William Siepmann.

In 1970 Wesley was left impoverished by the death of Siepmann, and it was only then that she became an author, turning to writing as a way to restore her finances.

Final years

Only in the last year of her life did she agree to have her biography written. She cooperated fully with Patrick Marnham, on the condition that nothing would be published before her death. She provided her reminiscences from her sick bed, and commented: "Have you any idea of the pleasure of lying in bed for six months, talking about yourself to a very intelligent man? My deepest regret was that I was too old and ill to take him into bed with me." The authorised biography (published in 2006) is entitled Wild Mary.

Late in life Wesley ordered her own coffin from a local craftswoman and asked it be finished in red Chinese lacquer. She kept it as a coffee table for some time in her sitting room. She suggested that she be photographed sitting up in it for a feature in the magazine Country Living, but the idea was politely declined.

She was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 1995. Due to her association with the town Wesley was chosen in 2007 to appear on the 1 Totnes pound note.

Death

Wesley died from cancer on 30 December 2002, aged 90, at her home in Totnes, Devon and was buried beside her second husband in the graveyard of Buckfast Abbey.