Series GQB1 - Diaries of Lady Marjorie Pryse (formerly Howell)

Personal diaries of Lady Marjorie Pryse (formerly Howell), 1926-198?, with gaps. It is not known whether diaries for the missing years existed.. The early diaries record her life as a student at the Conservatoire de Paris, 1926-1927, her love affair with the Polish pianist, Auguste de Radwan, and in 1929, her travels in Italy, Hungary, Belgium, Switzerland, Austria and Poland, often naming the venues and other famous musicians that she encountered. The diaries include colourful remarks on the travelling conditions, hotel accommodation, scenery, local inhabitants, operas, art galleries, historical attractions and social events. From 1930 there is evidence of her developing attraction to Sir Lewes Pryse. The remaining volumes, 1930-1987, record mainly Marjorie’s life in Cardiganshire at Gogerddan and Ffynnon Caradog, her marriage in 1938, Sir Lewes’s death and her widowhood from 1946. There are also accounts of further trips to Europe, 1930, 1936-1939, and visits to Shetland, London, and elsewhere in England and Wales. Throughout the diaries there are innumerable comments on her personal friends and acquaintances in Britain and on the continent, both high society and local figures alike. They also reveal her love of the countryside, literature, her own poetry, her emotions and capricious love affairs. The entries of the volumes for 1926-1939 are the most detailed, becoming sparser and more sporadic in the later ones. The diaries for 1937-1958 include (variably) records of milk yields, stock-breeding, farm accounts, notes and Christmas lists.