Brynhild Olivier

Brynhild Olivier (20 May 1887 – 13 January 1935) was one of four sisters noted for their progressive ideas, beauty and associations with both Rupert Brooke and his Cambridge circle of Neo-pagans, as well as the Bloomsbury Group. Born in Bloomsbury, London, Brynhild Olivier was raised and home schooled in Jamaica and Limpsfield, Surrey. Although she had no higher education, she became involved in cultural activities at Cambridge University, through her sisters, who were undergraduates there.

Brynhild Olivier was married twice, first to the art historian, Hugh Popham in 1912, with whom she had three children, including the art scholar, Anne Olivier Bell. Later, she married (Francis) Raymond George Nason Sherrard and had three further children, including the poet Philip Sherrard. Brynhild Olivier died in London from aplastic anaemia in 1935, at the age of 47.

Family of origin

The Honourable Brynhild Olivier, known as Bryn, was the second daughter of Sydney Olivier, 1st Baron Olivier, and his wife, Margaret Cox. Sydney Olivier, whose family was descended from French Huguenots, was a leading Fabian (along with George Bernard Shaw, Sidney Webb, and Graham Wallas), Governor of Jamaica (1907–1913)M.A. Hamilton, "Sidney and Beatrice Webb". Sampson Low, Marston &Co. Ltd., London, 1932. pp. 13-14, 20, 34, 86. and a minister in the first Labour Government of Ramsay MacDonald in 1924 (Secretary of State for India). He was one of ten children and among his brothers were Herbert Arnould Olivier, the artist, and Gerard, father of the actor Laurence Olivier. His sisters included the author, Edith Olivier.

Margaret Cox was one of nine children of Judge Homersham Cox and Margaret Smith. One of Margaret Cox's brothers was Harold Cox the Liberal Member of Parliament, another, the mathematician Homersham Cox. Of her sisters, Agatha Cox married the sculptor Sir William Hamo Thornycroft, while Ethel Cox married Captain Alfred Carpenter, the brother of Edward Carpenter the philosopher.

The Oliviers were one of the founders of what came to be known as the "aristocracy of the left", a group associated with the rise of the women's movement, socialism and the Fabian Society. This group included the author, Edith Nesbit, the Webbs and the Shaws, and had close ties to William Morris and Edward Carpenter. These families, in turn raised a generation of progressive children, such as the Oliviers and the Reeves, whose daughter Amber, the Olivier daughters would encounter at Cambridge. The Shaws, who were childless, saw the Olivier girls as surrogate daughters, and the characters of George Bernard Shaw's Heartbreak House were loosely based on the Oliviers and their "siren" daughters (''see Family tree'').

Childhood and education (1887–1907)

The Oliviers, who married in 1885, had four children:
* Margery (April 1886 – 1974)
* Brynhild (May 1887 – 1935)
* Daphne (October 1889 – 1950)
* Noël (December 1892 – 1969)
Brynhild was born in Bloomsbury, London in 1887 and named after Brynhild, the wise queen and heroine of William Morris's '' Sigurd the Volsung''. Sydney Olivier was a career civil servant in the Colonial Office. In October 1890, when Bryn was three, Olivier received his first posting overseas, leaving his family behind in London. He served for six months as Colonial Secretary (chief administrator) in British Honduras. On his return, the Olivier family were ready for a move from London, and Margaret Olivier had been inspired by Edward Carpenter's Simple Life. They settled near Limpsfield Chart, Surrey, purchasing a cottage which they had previously used as a holiday retreat, converting it into a home, which they named "The Champions". It lay at the foot of the North Downs, overlooking the Weald, and was backed by the dense Chart woods.

Like the other children in the community, the three older girls, Margery, Bryn and Daphne were all home schooled. They were also tutored for nine months in Lausanne to ensure competency in French. Later, the progressive coeducational boarding school, Bedales, in Sussex, became available for the youngest sister, Noël. Soon, like minded people started to settle in the neighbourhood. Among the first were the Peases and the Garnetts, Edward and Constance Garnett and their son, David "Bunny" Garnett. Others included Octavia Hill, the economist J. A. Hobson, the writers E. V. Lucas and Henry Salt and William and Margaret Pye, whose children included Edith, Ethel, Sybil and David. Ford Madox Ford lived there for a while and Margaret Olivier's sister Agatha and her family also moved to Surrey. Eventually the area became a hub of progressive Fabian intellectuals. There, the four Olivier sisters led a free-spirited outdoor life, disdainful of social convention, which later made them very much aligned to the ethos of Rupert Brooke's Neo-pagans, building tree houses, referring to themselves as the ''Reivilo'' tribe, and becoming very athletic in a manner that David Garnett compared to ancient Sparta. He also described them both as "ruthless Valkyries" and as "cruel as savages". Frances Wilson would later describe them as "feral". One woman, hired as a nursemaid to care for the children in 1892 was the future author Gertrude Dix, herself an emancipated woman who described her child rearing philosophy as "principles of freedom", allowing children to learn through experience rather than rules. Dix was a New Woman writer, and this philosophy permeated the culture of Limpsfield. Among other early childhood influences, were G. B. Shaw and H. G. Wells