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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 November 2024
Very little is known of Edna Nixon’s life, except for a few scant biographical facts provided by her daughter, Shirley Weber, together with what can be gleaned from William Orton’s autobiographical novel, The Last Romantic (1937). (See the Introduction to William Orton below, p. 401.) She was nineteen-year-old Edna Smith when she met KM in 1910, through her then boyfriend, William Orton. KM entered their orbit like a bright shooting star and hung around in scintillating, sparkling fashion for several months, before disappearing from view, never to return. According to her daughter, Shirley Weber, Edna became
fascinated by her [KM’s] totally unconventional way of life – or ‘life style’ […]. She described her to me as beautiful & wearing her dark hair à la Trilby with a fringe & falling over her shoulders, which at the time was rather daring it seems. She would go thus to the Promenade concerts & make the acquaintance of strange men – or rather, men who were strangers. I believe that after about 6 months she tired of my mother & abruptly ended the friendship as they met one day in the street, by telling her they would never meet again. My mother was upset at the time & apparently destroyed all her letters, however one did survive. […] Eventually my mother was to remember her fondly & I quote from a letter she wrote to a friend in 1928:
‘At nineteen my love affair came to an end, for various reasons, one being Katherine Mansfield who rather took a fancy to my lover & myself. She played with us both for a little & then went on her way. She was a beautiful, wonderful creature, and I never bore her any grudge’.
In The Last Romantic, Orton becomes ‘Michael’, KM ‘Catherine’ and Edna ‘Lais’. Journal entries and letters by ‘Catherine’ were, according to Orton, direct transcripts from KM. Catherine describes Lais thus:
Little Lais came. I met her and brought her home. I think she was happy: She made me feel eighteen. What very pretty hair! I expect I shall see her quite often and take her to concerts and I am sure I shall take her to the National Gallery.
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