Cicely Hilda Farmer

Cicely Hilda Farmer (1870 – 7 May 1955) was a New Zealand-born British novelist and travel writer.

Cicely Hilda Farmer
Farmer in 1913
Born	1870 (1870) One Tree Hill, Auckland, New Zealand
Died	7 May 1955(1955-05-07) (aged 84–85) Chelsea, London, England
Nationality	British
Occupation	Novelist
Spouses	Warington Baden-Powell ​ ​ (m. 1913; died 1921)​ Montagu Monier-Williams ​ ​ (m. 1927; died 1931)​
Relatives	Baden Powell (father-in-law) Monier Monier-Williams (father-in-law)

She was born in One Tree Hill, Auckland in 1870, the daughter of James and Julie Farmer.^[1]

Warington Baden-Powell, founder of the Sea Scouts, came ashore in New Zealand when his father Prof Rev Baden Powell died, and retrained there as a lawyer specialising in maritime law.^[1] He met Farmer in Auckland and they became secretly engaged in 1893.^[1] Farmer was presented at court in London as a debutant in 1893, and returned to New Zealand, where she spent much of her time until she married in 1913.^[1] She and other members of her family, however, regularly visited St Andrews, Fife, where they lived at Brownlees, a nearby farm.

20 years after becoming engaged, she married Warington Baden-Powell at All Saints Church, Knightsbridge (now the Russian Orthodox Cathedral of the Dormition of the Mother of God and All Saints) on 13 September 1913.^[2] Her wedding dress of white silk satin, made by Reville and Rossiter of Hanover Square, is in the permanent collection of the V&A in London.^[2] Also included are the train, shoes (by C. Moykopf, Burlington Arcade), stocking, gloves and a headdress of white ostrich plumes for when it was worn for a May Court in 1914.^[2]

Château Royal de Collioure in 2005, her home from 1927 to 1931

Baden-Powell died in 1921. In 1927 she married Montagu Sneade Faithfull Monier-Williams (1860–1931), British surgeon, expert figure skater and writer, a widower with two children, and the son of Monier Monier-Williams.^[3][4][5] After the wedding they retired to an artistic commune at the Château Royal de Collioure in Collioure in the French Pyrenees close to the Spanish border, where he was a keen viticulturist.^[5]

Artemis Weds was reviewed by The New York Times.^[6]

In 1939, by deed poll, she renounced the surname Monier-Williams and was henceforth Cicely Hilda Baden-Powell again.^[7] At the time, her address was Milden House, Dixwell Road, Folkestone, Kent.^[7]

She died in Chelsea, London on 7 May 1955, and was buried in the Farmer family plot at St Andrews Cathedral's Eastern Cemetery, St Andrews, Fife, Scotland, alongside her first husband.^[8]

Publications

Novels

• The Painted Show, 1924
• Waters of Fayle, 1925
• The Bending Sickle, William Morrow, New York, 1931
• Anna, Faber and Faber, London, 1931
• Artemis Weds, William Morrow, New York, 1932, dust jacket by Paul Wenck.^[9]

Non-fiction

• Dragons and a Bell, 1931 (about a trip through China, Malaysia, Burma, and Sri Lanka)
• Sunrise Over India, Victor Gollancz, 1934 (another travel book)