ABSTRACT
In her unpublished autobiography ‘Whither & How?’ Elizabeth acknowledged her Hedda as the active force which shaped her existence from 1891, adding, ‘Primarily she brought in her train two great friends.’ She had many close friends during her long life but in the 1890s two stood out above all others, providing professional and emotional sustenance to the newly settled American in England. They were William Archer and Florence Bell. What they offered sustained her in different yet equally important ways. She met both of them at the beginning of the 1890s and their deaths in 1924 and 1930 respectively caused more grief than most who knew her could ever have guessed.
