| Cicely Hilda Farmer | |
| Birth Date: | 1870 |
| Birth Place: | One Tree Hill, Auckland, New Zealand |
| Death Date: | 7 May 1955 |
| Death Place: | Chelsea, London, England |
| Nationality: | British |
| Occupation: | Novelist |
| Spouse: | |
| Relatives: | Baden Powell (father-in-law) Monier Monier-Williams (father-in-law) |
Cicely Hilda Farmer (1870 – 7 May 1955) was a New Zealand-born British novelist and travel writer.
She was born in One Tree Hill, Auckland in 1870, the daughter of James and Julie Farmer.[1]
Warington Baden-Powell, founder of the Sea Scouts, came ashore in New Zealand when his father Prof Rev Baden Powell died, and retrained there as a lawyer specialising in maritime law.[1] He met Farmer in Auckland and they became secretly engaged in 1893.[1] Farmer was presented at court in London as a debutant in 1893, and returned to New Zealand, where she lived until she married in 1913.[1]
20 years after becoming engaged, she married Warington Baden-Powell at All Saints Church, Knightsbridge (now the Russian Orthodox Cathedral of the Dormition of the Mother of God and All Saints) on 13 September 1913.[2] Her wedding dress of white silk satin, made by Reville and Rossiter of Hanover Square, is in the permanent collection of the V&A in London.[2] Also included are the train, shoes (by C. Moykopf, Burlington Arcade), stocking, gloves and a headdress of white ostrich plumes for when it was worn for a May Court in 1914.[2]
Baden-Powell died in 1921. In 1927 she married Montagu Sneade Faithfull Monier-Williams (1860–1931), British surgeon, expert figure skater and writer, a widower with two children, and the son of Monier Monier-Williams.[3] [4] [5] After the wedding they retired to an artistic commune at the Château Royal de Collioure in Collioure in the French Pyrenees close to the Spanish border, where he was a keen viticulturist.[5]
Artemis Weds was reviewed by The New York Times.[6]
In 1939, by deed poll, she renounced the surname Monier-Williams and was henceforth Cicely Hilda Baden-Powell again.[7] At the time, her address was Milden House, Dixwell Road, Folkestone, Kent.[7]
She died in Chelsea, London on 7 May 1955, and was buried in the Farmer family plot at St Andrews Cathedral's Eastern Cemetery, St Andrews, Fife, Scotland, alongside her first husband.[8]