ABSTRACT
Reflecting on the year 1910 and the departure of Masefield from her life, Elizabeth noted, ‘A new friend & very devoted is Octavia Wilberforce. She is interesting & far more gifted than anybody knows except me. She can go far if she makes up her mind.’ They had met in early July of the previous year. Elizabeth was spending the weekend with the Buxtons and the twenty-oneyear-old Octavia, a friend of young Phyllis Ponsonby, came to lunch. Elizabeth’s diary doesn’t mention this, yet Octavia, writing in her seventies, recalled it as ‘a turning point in my life’. The famous novelist wore a suit ‘the colour of speedwell which matched her beautiful deep-set eyes’ and ‘It was a case of hero-worship at first sight’.1
