- 1980 edition. 1st ed. 223 pages
- Publisher. Collins
- Hardcover. D/j. Large. Photos.
- Condition. Good. Some fading of d/j
Rejecting her traditional 19th-century upbringing as a country clergyman's daughter and being in possession of a private income, Margaret Fountaine set out on a wild and fearless life which took her all over the world. This volume of her diaries reveals her adventures.
Her diaries were unsealed, as stipulated by her, in 1978, 100 years after she had started recording the details of her life. She filled twelve large volumes of leather-bound books with some 3203 pages and more than a million words, displaying a blend of Victorian reserve and startling candour, beginning each year on 15 April with a studio photograph of herself.
At the age of 27, Margaret and her sisters became financially independent, having inherited a considerable sum of money from her father’s brother - Margaret's parents were both from affluent families. She had in 1883, at age 21, become infatuated with Septimus Hewson, a young Irishman and chorister at the Norwich Cathedral. He had been tardy in returning her affection, despite their meeting in Dublin in 1890 following his dismissal from Norwich Cathedral for immoderate drinking. When it became clear that no marriage would ensue, Margaret felt that there had been an understanding between them and that she had been ill-used.
She spent a few days visiting the noted botanist and entomologist Henry John Elwes in 1895, and was inspired to start her own serious collection, leading to her first collecting trip to Sicily. When she visited Damascus for the first time in 1901, she met Khalil Neimy whom she employed as a dragoman (guide and translator). Neimy was a Greek Orthodox Syrian, born of Greek parents in Cairo on 15 July 1877, who had received an education at the hands of American missionaries and had lived in Wisconsin for four years. He subsequently became her constant and helpful companion, despite its soon becoming apparent that he had a wife in Damascus. Thus started an affectionate relationship which would survive 27 years of turbulence, ending only with Khalil’s death from fever on 7 July 1928. Their quest for butterflies led them to Algeria, Spain, the Caribbean, Central America, the Near East, the Far East, Turkey, India, the USA, Fiji, New Zealand, East and West Africa, and the rainforest of Queensland in Australia, where they spent the years between 1914 and 1917.
Fountaine was an accomplished natural history illustrator and had a great love and knowledge of butterflies, travelling and collecting extensively through Europe, South Africa, India, Tibet, America, Australia and the West Indies, publishing numerous papers on her work.
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