Action Stockley, Cynthia: The Claw. v1. 8 Nov 2013

[crutledge]

Cynthia Stockley (1862-1936) was a once popular writer to whom time and changing perceptions have been rather unkind. She doesn't even rate a Wikipedia entry of her own.She was born Lilian Julian Webb in London in 1862. In 1896 she moved to Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). Her first marriage was to P.G.W. Stockley of the Rhodesian police. She later married Colonel Pelham-Browne, a Rhodesian pioneer velt farmer. She had nearly 20 novels and collections of short stories published before, sadly, she committed suicide in 1936.

Excerpt
On this visit to Africa, so very far away from her, Betty had unexpectedly held out rather firmly about the necessity of a chaperon, and to please her I had travelled out with a frumpy old German governess we had both known many years, who was visiting Africa to see about some property an uncle had left her in the Transvaal. All the way out I had made it quite plain to Madame von Stohl that I meant to go up to Mashonaland and see my brother Dick, that in fact it was one of my chief reasons for coming to Africa at all; and she never said a word against the idea. But lo! after I had trailed around with her to all sorts of uninteresting places in Cape Colony and the Transvaal she calmly and firmly refused to fulfil her part of the programme and go with me to Mashonaland. She said she was afraid of being eaten by Lobengula, the King of the Matabele.

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