Anna Wickham - Early Life

Early Life

She was born in Wimbledon, London, and brought up in Australia in a rather disordered existence, mostly in Brisbane and Sydney. Her pen-names imply an Australian self-identification: 'Wickham' was after a Brisbane street; it followed her use of John Oland for her first collection, which alludes to the Jenolan Caves in New South Wales.

She returned to London in 1904, where she took singing lessons and had a drama scholarship (at the future RADA, just founded). She pursued her singing in Paris in 1905 with Jean de Reszke, the Polish tenor.

In 1906 she married Patrick Hepburn, a London solicitor with interests in Romanesque architecture, and later astronomy. They had four sons, but the marriage had constant difficulties. They lived first in central London, then in family houses in Hampstead: Downshire Hill from 1909, and then from 1919 a house on Parliament Hill which would be her permanent home.

She invested a great deal in motherhood for her first two children, and also became involved in the contemporary philanthropic movement concerned with maternal care, at St Pancras Hospital. She was in a private mental hospital in 1911 for a period of about six weeks, after a voyage to see her father in Ceylon, and a visit from her mother (both parents were still resident in Australia).

Read more about this topic:  Anna Wickham

Famous quotes containing the words early and/or life:

    No two men see the world exactly alike, and different temperaments will apply in different ways a principle that they both acknowledge. The same man will, indeed, often see and judge the same things differently on different occasions: early convictions must give way to more mature ones. Nevertheless, may not the opinions that a man holds and expresses withstand all trials, if he only remains true to himself and others?
    Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749–1832)

    The advantage in education is always with those children who slip up into life without being objects of notice.
    Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)