Elinor Mordaunt (Evelyn May Clowes Wiehe)

Background

Evelyn Mordaunt was born on 7 May 1872 at Cotgrave, Nottinghamshire, England and was christened Evelyn May Clowes. She was the fifth of eight children (six of them were boys) of St. John Legh Clowes, gentleman farmer, and his wife Elizabeth Caroline (Bingham) Clowes. She spent her childhood at Charlton House near Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, and her teens near Heythrop, in the Cotswolds.

Education

Mordaunt's parents, who raised eight children, could not afford to send Evelyn to school so her governess educated her. Later Mordaunt took up landscape painting and fabric and wallpaper design, and studied German, Latin, Greek, and shorthand.

Career

In 1897 Evelyn went to the African island of Mauritius as a companion to her cousin Caroline, wife of Sir George Le Hunte. On 18 August 1898 in the Plaines Wilhems district, she married Maurice Wilhemn Wiehe, a sugar planter. On Mauritius, Mordaunt wrote her first book, "The Garden of Contentment," a series of fictional letters based on her memories of England. Suffering from malaria she returned to England. But before the first edition appeared in 1902, under her pen name "Elenor Mordaunt," she had left in the sailing-ship "Loch Katrine" for Melbourne, arriving on 10 June.

In Australia Evelyn made some lifelong friends, initially through Dr. Edith Barrett. Except when incapacitated by illness or injury she refused all offers of help, living in cheap lodgings and earning her keep by sewing blouses and muslin cushions, painting parasols, posters, and friezes and decorating white furniture. She tried her hand at stained-glass window design and for some months ran a small metal workshop. She briefly edited a woman's monthly magazine. Friendship with C. Bogue Luffman led to work designing and building a garden. She lived at his house at the School of Horticulture, Burnley, for some two years from late 1903.

Her next book, "A Ship of Solace," emphasized this trip. Mordaunt remained in Australia for around eight years, working various jobs to provide for herself and her son. "Lu of the Rangers" and "The Rose of Youth" focus on poverty and her experiences there.

Mordaunt's first travel book also depicted her time in Australia. In "On the Wallaby through Victoria," she addresses the economy and social structure of Australia. She includes items of interest in Australia's countryside, including the Aborigines and their customs. One highlight is her look into the lives of girls and women in Melbourne. Unlike women in Great Britain, Melbourne women already had the right to vote and many worked to support themselves and their families. Mordaunt spotlights their often-strenuous jobs, and their salaries, clothes, and reading habits.

While there she wrote "Rosemary: That's for Remembrance" in 1909. On 14 July 1909 she and her son left for England.

Between 1911 and 1923, while caring for her son and working, she wrote more than twenty novels using several pseudonyms but from 1913 principally "Elinor Mordaunt", which she changed by deed poll to "Evelyn May Mordaunt" on 1 July 1915. Employed in a silk factory in Staffordshire, she wrote about that experience in "Bellamy." From her travels through the Balkans, Italy, and Morocco, she wrote several novels, including "Short Shipments." Elinor Mordaunt published over forty volumes, mainly novels and short stories.

Mordaunt's travel-writing career began in earnest in 1923, when she proposed to London's "Daily News" that she travels the world on cargo ships and writes about her journeys for the paper. She was commissioned to explore the islands of the South Pacific and the Dutch East Indies. A two-volume series comprised of "The Venture Book" and "The Further Venture Book" chronicles her travels.

During World War I, Mordaunt lived in Greenwich, London. In the 1920s she bought a house in the south of France but sold it when her travels took her far afield to Central and North America, the Pacific, and Africa. On 27 January 1933 at Tenerife, Canary Islands, she married Robert Rawnsley Bowles, a retired barrister from Gloucestershire.

While in the South Pacific, Mordaunt found each island affected her differently. She discussed the beauty of Fiji and the seventeenth-century clothing style of the Ambon people, who she likened to the painter Rembrandt's subjects. She also struggled with fever and witnessed disease and catastrophe, including the volcano eruption that killed more than 20,000 people and destroyed Saint-Pierre, Martinique. She shared anecdotes from her encounters with cannibals: "Eating a relative, she wrote, may be acceptable on one island but taboo on another." Mordaunt earned the nickname "Dauvolavola," which means "the one who is always writing from Fiji."

Mordaunt's last travel book, "Purely for Pleasure," combines trips to Central America, tropical Africa, and Southeast Asia. Her most disturbing story is about child prostitution in Singapore. With the help of a guide, Mordaunt visited a business that imported young girls from all over the world and traded and sold them like animals.

Evelyn Mordaunt's later books were mainly fiction, most of those inspired by stories from "The Venture Book" and "The Further Venture Book." One of her best-known novels, "Mrs. Van Kleek," features a cast from government officials to missionaries based on people she met traveling. She also published her autobiography, "Sinabada," meaning "Lady King," the name Dutch of East Indies natives gave her.

Evelyn Mordaunt died on 25 June 1942 at the Radcliffe Infirmary, Oxford.

Achievements

• Elinor Mordaunt wrote and published more than fifty books, most of them are popular novels but also including remarkable travel guide books as well as short stories, books for children, and an autobiography. She was also a contributor to numerous articles, magazines and periodical publications, including the London Times.

Works

More photos

• book

  • The High Seas

    (The High Seas is the story of two brothers, Bran and Agar...)

    2017
  • The Goldfish

    (The Goldfish is a strange tale set in the murky underworl...)

    2017
  • Sea Tales of Terror

    (Sea Tales of Terror: Recall; Devil's Rescue; Death of the...)

    1975
  • On the Wallaby Through Victoria

    (Elinor Mordaunt addresses the economy and social structur...)

    1911
  • Blitz Kids

    (Children' story set in South London during the Blitz. Ill...)

    1941
  • Rich Tapestry

    (Also published as "Purely for Pleasure.")

    1932
  • Gin and Bitters

    (Also published as "Full Circle.")

    1931
  • Genius

    (Republished in 2017.)

    1922
  • Mrs. Scarr

    (Mrs. Scarr is a tense and mysterious ghost story set in M...)

    2017
  • The Garden of Contentment 1902
  • A Ship of Solace 1911
  • The Cost Of It 1912
  • Lu of the Ranges 1913
  • Simpson 1913
  • Bellamy 1914
  • The Island 1914
  • The Rose of Youth 1915
  • Shoe and Stocking Stories 1915
  • Before Midnight 1917
  • The Pendulum 1918
  • The Processionals 1918
  • While There's Life 1919
  • The Little Soul 1921
  • Laura Creichton 1922
  • Alas, That Spring! 1923
  • Short Shipments 1922
  • People, Houses & Ships 1924
  • The Venture Book 1926
  • The Further Venture Book 1926
  • The Dark Fire 1927
  • These Generations 1930
  • Cross Winds 1932
  • Mrs. Van Kleek 1933
  • Traveller"s Pack 1933
  • The Tales of Elinor Mordaunt 1934
  • Royals Free 1937
  • Sinabada 1937
  • Pity of the World 1939
  • Death It Is and Others Stories 1939
  • Here Too Is Valour 1941

Personality

Elinor Mordaunt grew up with a love of horses, hunting, and open-air life. An adventurer at heart, she was only happy while traveling.

Physical Characteristics: Elinor Mordaunt was tall like her six brothers, and "stoutly made."

Quotes from others about the person

• "The travel writing of Elinor Mordaunt provides a wry, breathless, often lyrical description of a world that delights the readers with its variations." - Colleen Hobbs.

Interests

• traveling

Connections

Elinor Mordaunt was married to Maurice Wilhemn Wiehe, on 18 August 1898 but the marriage failed. She had a son from that marriage: Godfrey Weston Wiehe but the first two children were stillborn. Then, on 27 January 1933 Mordaunt married Robert Rawnsley Bowles.

Father:

St. John Legh Clowes

Mother:

Elizabeth Caroline (Bingham) Clowes

Ex-husband:

Maurice Wilhemn Wiehe

Maurice Wilhemn Wiehe was a sugar planter at the Plaines Wilhems District, Mauritius.

husband:

Robert Rawnsley Bowles

In Elinor Mordaunt's own words, the marriage "ended in tragedy."

Son:

Godfrey Weston Wiehe

Cousin:

Caroline Rachel Clowes

Friend:

Edith Helen Barrett

Friend:

Charles Bogue Luffman