ABSTRACT

"He used to fall very deeply in love," Melanie Klein said of Adrian Stokes in the early 1930s. Neither then nor before that had Stokes's wife, Margaret Mellis, been someone with whom Stokes was in love. She was nevertheless very much in love with him by time they married and moved into Little Park Owles where, she said, she had "absolutely everything the heart could desire". She was nevertheless "v. sad" and suffered with "terrible depression" after her parents and younger siblings, Duff Mellis and Ann, visited and then left her alone with Stokes at Little Park Owles in August 1939. Stokes's hopes of honeymooning with Ann at the home of his Old Rugbeian friend, Ian Henderson, then working for the British Foreign Office in Malta, were also dashed since Henderson refused to have them stay there due to the British illegality of their marriage.