Robert Graves
Nancy married the poet Robert Graves in 1918. The following year Graves started as a student in Oxford. The couple lived in a cottage on Boars Hill in Oxford which they rented from the author John Masefield. In 1920, in partnership with a neighbour, The Hon. Mrs Michael Howard, Nancy set up a small grocer's shop, next door to the Masefields' house. Alarmed by the tourists it attracted, Mrs Masefield opposed its takeover by an Oxford firm, and the project collapsed after six months, leaving heavy debts settled only with the help of friends and family. In disgust, Graves and Nancy moved to the village of Islip, the other side of Oxford.
A lifelong feminist, Nancy used to cycle to Oxfordshire villages and set up a stall to explain to women how to use contraception, when it was still illegal. Her open-mindedness led her to accept a triangular relationship, and from early 1926 Laura Riding lived with her and Graves in London The marriage eventually broke down, as Graves increasingly favoured Riding, leaving Nancy to bring up the four children of the marriage alone, in a succession of locations, including Cumberland and a further spell on Boars Hill. Nancy and Graves legally divorced in 1949.
Read more about this topic: Nancy Nicholson
Famous quotes containing the words robert graves, robert and/or graves:
“The award of a pure gold medal for poetry would flatter the recipient unduly: no poem ever attains such carat purity.”
—Robert Graves (1895–1985)
“I’ve yet to meet a writer who could change water into wine, and we have a tendency to treat them like that.”
—Michael Tolkin, U.S. screenwriter, and Robert Altman. Larry Levy (Peter Gallagher)
“Cole’s Hill was the scene of the secret night burials of those who died during the first year of the settlement. Corn was planted over their graves so that the Indians should not know how many of their number had perished.”
—For the State of Massachusetts, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)