Alice Askew

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Alice

Alice Askew, née Leake (18 June 1874 – 6 October 1917) along with her husband, Claude Askew (27 November 1865 – 6 October 1917) were British authors, who together wrote "over ninety novels, many published in sixpenny and sevenpenny series, between 1904 and 1918".

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Alice

Claude was born on 27 November 1865 at No. 4 Holland Park, Kensington in London and christened Claude Arthur Cary. He was the second son and youngest of five children of Fanny Georgiana Charlotte Askew, née Browne (1830–1900) and Rev. John Askew, M.A. (1804–1881). Claude's older sisters and brother were: Amy Ellen Cary Askew (10 June 1857 – 29 April 1945), Isabel Emily Florence Askew (16 November 1858 – 30 October 1928), Mabel Fanny Mary Askew (23 February 1861 – 21 August 1941), and Hugh Henry John Percy Cary Askew (18 September 1862 – 14 April 1949). Claude Askew was educated at Eton College – an 'Oppidan' (non-scholarship pupil) in Rev. Charles James' House, 'The Timbralls', Slough Road, near Windsor, then in Buckinghamshire (transferred to Berkshire in 1974). He entered in September 1879 and left in July 1883. It was probably during this period — certainly after 1877 and before 1883 — when Claude was taken on a holiday to Vevey (between Montreux and Lausanne) on Lake Geneva, where he met the future King Peter I of Serbia – then in exile in Geneva. "I was a small boy, spending my holidays with my people at Vevy on the Lake…Citește mai mult

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A PICTURESQUE WEDDING: “There was a large and fashionable congregation on Tuesday afternoon at Christ Church, Lancaster Gate, to witness the marriage of Mr. Claude Arthur Cary Askew, second son of the late Rev. John Askew, M.A., to Miss Alice Jane de Courcey Leake, only surviving daughter of the late Lieut.-Colonel Henry Leake, late 44th and 70th Regiments, and of Mrs. Leake, 3, Westbourne Street, Hyde Park. The bridegroom, who is the proprietor of the Anglo-American Exchange, of London, New York, and Paris, has a host of friends and acquaintances among American visitors now in London, many of whom were present at the ceremony. ....” At the time of their marriage, Claude Askew was living at 4D Hyde Park Mansions in the borough of Marylebone; while Alice Leake was still living with her mother at No. 3 Westbourne Street, where she had been born. Claude was also given as residing there at the time of the 1901 Census (March 31). However, by the time of the birth of their first child, they were together at his flat, 4D Hyde Park Mansions, where their son Geoffrey was born on 12 April 1901. By the time of the birth of their daughter,…Citește mai mult

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... A vivid impression of Flanders at this time (the end of November) has been recorded by Alice and Claude Askew, who as members of Dr. Hector Munro's Red Cross Ambulance Corps went to the front to distribute woollen comforters, cigarettes, coffee and chocolates: "Up at Furnes the cold was terrible. The picturesque old town has been shelled twice, but as yet no great damage has been done, and the doctors and nurses working up at the Field Hospital—once a college—are hoping that their hospital may be spared, for this hospital, with its hundred beds and capable band of workers, is doing splendid service. ... Mr. Seeker was operating in the theatre—a patient had just been brought in from the trenches and immediate operation was necessary. A few oil lamps supplied the only illumination; the room was in complete shadow save round the operating table. Outside the wind howled and moaned, and firing could be heard in the distance. We felt very close to the naked heart of war. ... The whole thing seems unreal—the torn road—those blurred lines of men—the distant gun fire. The effect is that of a dream. We have seen the grim and terrible side of…Citește mai mult

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Claude's body was never recovered but on 29 October the body of a woman was "found on the seashore at Porto Karboni on the island of Korčula" by a local fisherman. In fact her body had fetched up in a small cove on the inland side of a smaller island called Zvirinovik – just in front of the fishing village of Karbuni (as it is now spelled) – near the town of Blato. On the following day her body was examined by the authorities and, from various letters and telegrams that were found about her person, identified as that of the "well-known English lady writer Alice Askew of London." She was buried that same day 30 October 1917 at Karbuni, where a stone cross was erected there, bearing the following inscription: ALICE ASKEW / englezka spisateljica / donesena morem 29 / a pokopana / komissionalno / 30 oktobra 1917 - (roughly translated from the original Croatian: "ALICE ASKEW / English writer / delivered up from the sea 29 / and buried / by commission / 30 October 1917"). Since then the cove, where her body was found, has been marked on maps with the name: 'U.' – short for uvala…Citește mai mult

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Alice

Alice was born on 18 June 1874 at No. 3 Westbourne Street, near Hyde Park in London, England; and christened Alice Jane de Courcy on 5 August 1874 at the church of St. Michael and All Angels in Paddington, London. She was the eldest daughter of Jane Leake, née Dashwood (1844–1912) and Lt-Col. Henry Leake (1829–1899). At the time of her birth he was a captain, on half pay, late of the 70th (Surrey) Regiment of Foot. She had two younger siblings: Henry Dashwood Stucley Leake (17 Feb 1876 – 2 June 1970), and Frances Beatrice Levine Leake (27 May 1878 – 29 Aug 1884). It has been said that she began writing solely or almost entirely "for her own amusement" before her marriage but she did have one short story published under her own name alone (or rather initials), "A. J. de C. L." = 'Alice Jane de Courcy Leake': 'A Modern-Day Saint', which appeared in 1894 in Belgravia of London.

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Alice

Marriage and partnership Miss Alice Leake and Mr. Claude Askew were married on 10 July 1900, at Christ Church, Lancaster Gate, London.

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RUDOLPH DE CORDOVA sketches in Woman at Home the activities of several famous wives and their husbands. Mrs. Ayrton, Lady Huggins, and Madame Curie, together with their husbands, were discoverers in the realms of science. The bulk of the article is, however, devoted to co-workers in the field of literature. Mr. and Mrs. Askew, Mr. and Mrs. Williamson, Mr. and Mrs. Egerton Castle, and Mr. and Mrs. Leighton will be familiar, through their work, to the novel reader. Mr. and Mrs. Askew had only had one story each published before their marriage. They went on working along their own individual lines for about a year:— Mr. Askew was doing a lot of writing for Household Words, which was then under the proprietorship of Mr. Hall Caine, and naturally Mrs. Askew took a great deal of interest in it. About a year after they had been married it occurred to them that it would be pleasant to work together, since their tastes were so strikingly similar. They began with short stories, in which they have been as successful as they have been prolific, and contributed practically a new story every week to Household Words. A little later they thought they would…Citește mai mult

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"... Both Claude Askew and his future wife were clearly temperamentally suited not only to each other, but to the literary life itself, since both, as it were dived into it at the first opportunity. The son of a country clergyman, Claude was sent to Eton (1879-1883), and there wrote a play in blank verse. His first paid work was a short story for Jerome K. Jerome’s doomed twopenny weekly To-Day (it nearly doomed Jerome at any rate, after an expensive libel action forced him to sell his interest or go to the wall). Alice ... wrote solely for her own amusement, before recalling Dr. Johnson's celebrated (to writers) dictum that 'no man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money' and joining forces with Askew in the late 1890s. Her one published effort, before they married in 1900, 'A Modern-Day Saint', appeared in Belgravia. Once married, Askew himself began selling as much as he could to Dickens's old paper Household Words (then edited by the fiery Manx novelist Hall Caine), Alice soon joining him in the cerebral mechanics of plotting stories, then in the actual physical labour of writing. Their method of collaboration was simple. If Claude thought of…Citește mai mult

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Alice and Claude Askew in 'The Great War' Possibly the first instance of the Askews becoming actively involved anywhere near any of the actual fighting of the First World War, would be when they had both volunteered to help out with the Munro Ambulance Corps at Furnes in Belgium. They must have been there for some of the time between 18 October 1914 and 15 January 1915. This we learn from A War Nurse's Diary: Sketches from a Belgian Field Hospital by a 'World War I Nurse', published by The Macmillan Company, New York, 1918 (pp. 49–50). As the unnamed nurse wrote:—

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... We lived in Furnes from October 18th to January 15th. All the time we were in Belgium we were never out of hearing of the constant boom and thunder of artillery, and at night the sky was afire with the battle going on to the east of us, about three miles away. Our life was a complex thing to describe; there was a constant coming and going of outsiders. People came to Furnes to see things---great people. The college being large and other accommodation in the town nil, we put them up, and they were our guests for the time being. Attached to us was a most interesting body of people, "The Munro Ambulance Corps." Dr. Munro was its chief. He is now Sir Hector Munro. With him, driving ambulances, were many well known people; just a few names I remember---Lady Dorothy Feilding, the eldest son of General Melisse, head of the Belgian R. A. M. C., Dr. Jellett, the Dublin gynæcologist; Claude and Alice Askew, the novelists (since drowned in a submarine attack); Miss McNaughton, authoress; Mrs. Knocker and Miss Chisholme; Mr. Hunt of Yokohama and Mr. Sekkar, a great sport and our good friend. All their ambulances…Citește mai mult

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Much later - The Times edition of 15 October 1917, in their obituary for 'Major and Mrs Askew', mentioned that the authors of "The Shulamite" had spent some six months in Serbia before the retreat and wrote with sympathy and real knowledge of Serbia and the Serbian character. Claude Askew had been given the honorary commission of a major in the Serbian army. Following the 'Great Serbian Retreat' (see: Serbian Campaign), when the bulk of the Serbian army had been evacuated to the Greek island of Corfu, Alice and Claude Askew both returned to England, which they reached by April 1916. By sometime in May, after finishing and arranging the publication of The Stricken Land, Claude was back with the Serbian army – now at Salonika, where he was working out of its Press Bureau but Alice remained in London to give birth to her third child, who was born towards the end of July 1916. She also spent the time in England soliciting support for the relief work with Serbia but in October she returned to the theatre of war and was with Claude in Salonika until about the end of April of the following year, when she went…Citește mai mult

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Deaths Sometime before the end of September 1917, the Askews were on leave together in Italy – very likely in Rome, where they were hoping to meet up with their two older children. They probably left Rome on the last day of September to return to Corfu. Claude had sent a letter, dated Rome, September 30 (1917), to his older brother Hugh Askew in London, in which he wrote: "We are leaving here to-night to return to Corfu." They most likely travelled from Rome directly to the southern port of Taranto in Apulia, where they could embark on the Italian steamer Città di Bari bound for Corfu. It has been reported that the Città di Bari left Taranto on 4 October to stop en route at the nearby port of Gallipoli - also in Apulia, from where it departed for Corfu at 6:30 in the evening of the next day. Then during the early hours of 6 October 1917, when it had almost reached its destination – "about 37 miles from Paxo" (or Paxoi), which lies just south of Corfu – the Città di Bari suffered a fatal torpedo attack from a German submarine, SM UB-48, under the command of…Citește mai mult