ABSTRACT
Lady Maude Herbert grew up surrounded by a loving family, luxury and a succession of the illustrious to grace each house party. A mixture of ancestries endowed Lady Maude with memorable features: dark intense eyes and dark swept-back hair contrasted with an ivory complexion more Russian than English in effect. It is clear that social constraints imposed on the young couple precluded intimacy, as Hubert Parry was the first to acknowledge, and these same constraints allowed Maude to remain his ‘Fairie Queene’, a perfect unruffled object for her lover’s romantic projections. Parry’s letters throughout the courtship may be ardent but they are often superficial, showing little understanding of the complexity of Maude’s character. The realities of childbirth and illness must have forced Maude into serious thinking. She evolved a positive policy towards Parry’s emerging roles as composer, musicologist and academic.
