Clare Dorothy Arthurs Elstob

Clare Dorothy Arthurs Elstob was the sister of Amy Florence Elstob who is also in the Great War Theatre database. Clare’s birth was registered at Lambeth in October-December 1882; the registration of her death at Kensington in January-March 1972 gives her date of birth as 18 September 1882. Allardyce Nicoll, ‘English Drama 1900-1930’, lists Clare Elstob as the author of ‘Ria’s Luck’ (August 1910), ‘Her Kingdom’ (January 1912), The Whirligig of Time’ (January 1912), ‘The Borgia’ (with Marguerite Storr, June 1917), ‘The Tragic Muse’ (January 1918) and ‘Three Months’ (with Marguerite Storr, March 1918). The last three plays are in the Great War Theatre database. The Daily News (London), 2 March 1920, described Clare as an ‘actress and playwright’, and The Era, 26 January 1921, referred to her as ‘that clever actress’, but evidence for her acting career is hard to find in the British Newspaper Archive. Her playing of Topsy in ‘a series of Moving Costume Tableaux, illustrating “Uncle Tom’s Cabin”’, directed by her sister Amy, ‘in its elfin mischief and vivacity, was really admirable’ (The Stage, 3 January 1895). She appeared in ‘Monte Cristo’ at the Queen’s Theatre, Dublin (The Stage, 9 August 1906). She performed in her own one-act play ‘Ria’s Luck’ at the Studio Theatre (The Stage, 1 February 1912). She acted in the War Time Players’ production of Shakespeare’s ‘Taming of the Shrew’ at the Margaret Morris Theatre, Chelsea (The Era, 20 June 1917). And she was a member of the Actresses’ Franchise League (The Era, 12 February 1910). Both Clare and her sister Amy supported the Women of All Nations Exhibition at Olympia in September 1909. They and Miss Leslie Blake ‘will bring along their “Butterfly Competition,” which was so successful at the Actors’ Orphanage Fête’; and they were among the ‘ladies who have done good service in selling tickets, &c.’ (The Referee, 27 June and 12 September 1909). In 1920 Clare published a novel ‘To Be A Woman’. The Sheffield Daily Telegraph, 6 December 1920, commented that ‘Miss Elstob lives in a wonderful old cottage in Kensington which backs on to Mr. Bonar Law’s house. Her novel deals with the “Artmongers” of Chelsea, though she anxiously points out that none of her characters are really taken from the famous, and would-be-famous, of that quarter’. The Era, 26 January 1921, noted that ‘several of its scenes - or episodes - are in sundry theatrical, variety, and art-studio circles’. But The Scotsman, 24 January 1921, might have been reviewing a different novel when it wrote of ‘the touching, and in no sense improbable, picture this story draws of the sufferings and degradations of the wife of a North of England mechanic of these days, whose husband abuses her and turns her out of his house; so that, after many depressing ups and downs of necessitous adventure, she drifts to London, works as a bus conductor, punching a ticket for her indifferent husband during an air-raid, and at last finding friends to help her through troubles that might have made a less spirited creature go under past recall’. In 1922 Clare and Agnese de Llana published ‘an amusing, but instructive book, entitled, “The Autobiography of a Racehorse” ... The writers show they possess an intimate knowledge of the racehorse and present it in an attractive form, after the manner of “White Fang,” Jack London’s famous annual [sic] novel’ (Sunday Illustrated, 9 July 1922). The book’s full title is ‘The Autobiography of a Racehorse By “Grey Velvet”', who tells its story in the first person. The 1939 Register shows Clare Elstob, born 18 September 1889 (or 1881?), unmarried, a writer, novelist and playwright, living at Pennlands Farm(?), Eton, Buckinghamshire with, among others, Agnese G K (or H) Severn [formerly de Llana], born 13 January 1889, a writer.