Cynthia Stockley was born Lilian Julian Webb in London in 1862. In 1896 she moved to Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). Her first marriage was to P.G.W. Stockley of the Rhodesian police. She later married Colonel Pelham-Browne, a Rhodesian pioneer veldt farmer. She had nearly 20 novels and collections of short stories published before, sadly, she committed suicide in 1936.
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Cynthia's penmanship is atrocious
Cynthia's penmanship is atrocious
Click any of the images below for publishing details and to see additional images of the novels.
Click any of the images below for publishing details and to see additional images of the novels.
Cynthia Stockley—A Sketch
Cynthia Stockley—A Sketch
MRS. STOCKLEY is one of the few writers on South Africa who can claim as her own, by birth and upbringing, that mad bad land of sunshine and sorrow, and she makes the claim as boastfully as any American chanting his "Sweet Land of Liberty," or exiled Irishman remembering wistfully the green shores of Erin; and this, although for her as for all who have dwelt long there, Africa is a country peopled with ghosts and haunted by memories that time cannot rob of bitterness.
Of Irish parentage, "Cynthia Stockley" was born in Bloemfontein in the year 1876, and lived there for the first twelve years of her life, under much the same conditions she has described in her novel Poppy. Poppy's childhood was her own—with many poignant and dramatic incidents left untold. She achieved her education mainly in the "School of Life," and took an early "Degree in Misery."
One part of her life, however, she is always glad to look back upon—a period of two years when she lived with a very wise and beautiful-souled woman, Sister Maria, an English-Church nun, and aunt of the Minister for Native Affairs in the present Union Government of South Africa. By permission, this good woman had detached herself from her Community in order to devote herself more closely to the sick and needy of the native population, and with her the subject of this sketch taught and tended the colored lepers, who were not then isolated, except that the huts they inhabited were upon the outskirts of the Native Quarter.
A vivid memory remains of an open-air confirmation of lepers, followed by the celebration of the Holy Communion; an afternoon of blatant, brazen sunshine and sapphire skies in the flat veldt beyond the town of Bloemfontein; a half-ring of seated men and women, chanting with the wailing melody of native voices one of the grand old hymn tunes; some little leprous children crawling in the sunshine and playing happily with the ants; at a short distance behind an old broken-down wagon Bishop Knight-Bruce robing himself in the same glory of ecclesiastical embroidery and color as he would have assumed to lay hands upon the children of kings; Sister Maria, old and beautiful with radiant eyes, seated upon an empty paraffin-tin, drawing from the concertina in her hands strains of triumph and gladness; the Communion set out with linen and rich lace upon an old packing-case; and a line of figures with uplifted faces distorted and scarred by the "silvery Death," but full of awe and wonder, waiting breathlessly for the mysterious laying on of hands and a draught from the "Cup of Life."
In the meantime "Cynthia Stockley" pursued the uneven course of her education, for though able to speak Basuto and Zulu like a native, and Dutch like a Boer, she had an instinct that these accomplishments would be of little use to her in the civilized world she meant some day, by hook or by crook, to know; therefore, under the guidance of Sister Maria, she studied French and German, and incidentally was encouraged in a curious taste she evinced to "write things down." The old nun used to tell her she possessed a fine sense of the dramatic, and the budding authoress was dimly grateful for the praise, but she used to wonder rather forlornly whether such a sense would ever make up to her for not having been born pretty!
Later she lived in Kimberley, and from there as a girl of seventeen she travelled to Mashonaland, being the first girl to set out alone on that wild and rough journey of nearly six hundred miles. In these days, the trip is almost as simple and comfortable as the route from Paris to Monte Carlo, but in 1893 the path laid down by Cecil Rhodes's "boys" to the newest bit of Empire was beset with perils and full of strange adventures for the inexperienced, and of these our subject got her share. Adventures came and ate out of her hand, as Richard Harding Davis has it, but being of those to whom adventure is as the breath of life she fed them gaily and whistled for more.
Arrived at Fort Victoria, she was just in time to wave farewell to the Victoria Column off to subjugate Lobengula, the King of the Matabele—Alan Wilson and his band of brave comrades who fell at Shangani, among these being the authoress's brother-in-law, Captain Harry Greenfield.
At the end of the Matabele war she went with her sister to live in Fort Salisbury, where for some time she enjoyed the distinction of being the only girl in a place teeming with attractive men and tempered by charming married women.
At Salisbury in 1895 the authoress married Philip George Stockley (second son of Colonel H. W. Stockley, Royal Artillery), an officer of the Mashonaland Mounted Police, and made her home for a time in Umtali where her husband was in command. There she lived through the Bad year of '96—the Black year that no Rhodesian can recall without a shudder, when from tranquil prosperity the country was suddenly convulsed from end to end with dreadful happenings. Rinderpest, that incurable cattle plague, broke out, all the farmers and traders were ruined, and the wide veldt reeked with the odor of dead beasts. The Drummond Castle went down with a number of Rhodesians on board. News of the Jameson-raid disaster came from down-country, and the nightmare tidings that "Dr. Jim" lay under sentence of death in Pretoria Gaol, while Cecil Rhodes sat at Groot Schuur tasting defeat for the first time in his great career. As a crowning horror, the Matabele, backed this time by the Mashonas, rose in a second rebellion and murdered the white people wherever they were to be found isolated or in small numbers. That was Rhodesia's dark hour; hardly any one escaped personal grief, and general suffering and sorrow came home to all.
When the rising was finally quelled and people returned at last from the laagers to their homes, Mrs. Stockley found hers ransacked and ruined, with garments and family treasures flung to the four winds. The bedroom-huts (for nearly every one lived in thatched huts) resembled the floor of New York Customs House after the officials have been enjoying themselves with the baggage of homecomers from Europe: linings and draperies had been torn from the walls, every cushion and bed had been stabbed to pieces by assegais, pictures and china smashed to atoms. The hideous aroma of dead ox that hung over all was traced to the drawing-room where a rinder-pest-smitten beast had pushed his way in and lain down in the centre of the floor to die. Umtali was never actually attacked by the Mashonas, who waited to see how things went with the Matabele, and when things went ill decided to remain neutral; but they had a pleasant habit of going out in little bands and doing all the damage they could to the property of the whites.
Reflecting that for a time she had borne as much as she could stand of "roughing it," and for the sake of her little baby daughter, Mrs. Stockley now left Rhodesia with about fifty other people, all seeking health and a little respite from a too strenuous life. She settled in Natal, and whilst there circumstances decreed that instead of returning to Rhodesia she should face the problem of earning her own living. Began then her career as a journalist, her first work being for the Natal Witness, the Government official organ, and consisting of articles on the personalities of members of the Legislative Assembly as seen from the visitors benches in the House. Quite a creditable income was to be made in South Africa those days by a woman journalist with a sense of humor and a ready pen; but ambition cried for greater things, and in '98 Mrs. Stockley left the land of her birth and set out for the England of her dreams.
Alas! She found London already packed full of women writers with ambitions, few of them making the income she had left behind her in Natal. It was no easy thing to find a footing among the crowd, but by dint of "sticking to her job" she wedged in at last, and began to get stories and articles into such papers and magazines as Black-and-White, Pick-me-up, Temple Bar, The Idler, and To-day, besides being London correspondent to several South African papers.
In the intervals of writing, and for purposes of "copy" and experience generally, she also went on the stage at about this time—was with F. R. Benson's Shakespearian Company throughout his London season at the old Lyceum in 1900, and also travelled through England and Scotland with a Drury Lane drama. She was engaged to understudy the leading lady, but after the first few weeks it came about that she played the "star part" throughout the leading towns, until the Company started for Ireland, when for a curious reason of her own she dropped out of the bill and returned to London. Possessed by a passion for Ireland and all things Celtic, Mrs. Stockley is yet afraid to look upon the sad face of that fair land. She owns a small Irish property, but has never seen it, and for fear of losing any of the beautiful dreams of the adored land of her ancestors she has resolved never to set foot on Irish soil.
Looking upon an acquaintance with "men and cities" as a writer's most valuable asset, Mrs. Stockley has always spent her money, as fast as she made it, in travel, and in this way has visited America, Norway, France, Italy, Russia, and Holland. Her permanent home is in Paris, but she has also a hut in Normandy, and sometimes lives in a Martello Tower in one of the Channel Islands.
Her first long novel was Poppy which won an agreeable success on both sides of the Atlantic and is still selling gaily. It is also in the act of being dramatized in New York by Mr. John Ritter and Mr. Ben Teal, for production during the coming season. Her new book, The Claw, whose lines are laid in early Rhodesia, has just been published simultaneously in New York and London.
Jessica Salmonson created a number of great webpages dedicated to Cynthia Stockley. Click the links below to visit Wayback Machine archived versions, and enjoy them. I have learned much from Jessica's well-documented research and opinion.
1. About Cynthia Stockley and Her African Romances
2. Alphabetical Annotated Bibliography of the works of Cynthia Stockley
3. Nash's Magazine's editors' preface to the first installment of Ponjola
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