“THE NAKED TRUTH”

Hawera Star, Volume XLVII, 28 January 1928, Page 9

“THE NAKED TRUTH”

WOMAN SCULPTOR ’iS MEMOIR'S. TM it is, indeed, the naked truth which Clare Sheridan tells in “Nuda Veritas, ’ ’ published by Thornton Lutterworth, some of her friends may not be altogether pleased. Airs Sheridan writes with uncompromising candour of people as varied as the Connaught Princesses, her cousin Air Winston Churchill, and Lenin. Her mother, Mrs Aloreton Frewen, was one of three American sisters brought up in Paris, of whom tlie two others, were Mrs 'Leslie, the mother of Shane Leslie, and Lady Randolph Churchill, the mother of AVinston. In childhood, Clare Frewen and her brother Peter were left for some years *to the care of an Alsatian governess, who constantly ill-treated them. “Five years or appalling torture ensued, which have resulted in all kinds

of psychological idosyncraeies." says Airs Sheridan. Airs Sheridan says that in London she and her brother never know when thev entered the drawing room whether bailiffs would be sitting there or not. •Once when Peter and I returned from ,-i walk and rang the door bell it was answered by an unknown man. We protested to our mother: “Mow can voi:, when we are so hard up. engage a new servant?’’ She answered: “Hush! It’s a bailifi I've promised him ten bob and lie’s promised to open the door and dean the mirrors.” The manner in which she became engaged to Wilfred Sheridan is charmingly told. The author was then staving with her aunt Jennie Churchill, and Mr Sheridan was invited to dinner. We had not met for two years. We were both much changed. He was maturcr and more beautiful — was more I experienced and more amusing. Tie askled me my plans. 1 told him: —

“To-morrow I go to Holland." “What for?” “That no longer concerns you! ” “What? Are you going to marry?-’ “You always advised me to.” “But you would be happier in a cottage with me than in a castle with him. ’ ’ “I have always thought so.” And so they became engaged, and after a fashionable wedding they said good-bye to their friends “and were no more seen for five years.” iCaptain Sheridan was killed in the war, and hi s widow was left with two children, and nothing to live on but her pension. Mr s Sheridan found a studio “in an obscure alley,” and there began her work as a sculptor which was afterwards to bring her fame. The sudden gift of £IO,OOO from a chivalrous AmeriI can colonel, who regarded her “as a I kind of heritage left to the nation by la dead patriot,” enabling iMrs Sheridan jtb give up “pot-boiling;” and devote | herself t-o the study of her art.