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Olive was a talented illustrator. She worked with William and Mary De Morgan, Wilhelmina Pickering (aka Evelyn Pickering) and Walter Crane. She illustrated fairy stories beautifully. Her drawings are elegant, often amusing, featuring cheeky mischievous goblins... Her godmother was Octavia Hill, the influential social reformer, who wrote her affectionate letters… John Ruskin was a big influence on her. Sydney Blow wrote “One delightful girl I knew, Olive Cockerell, prized a bundle of letters written to her by Ruskin”. Theo described some of her letter to him as "ridiculously Ruskinian". She was regarded as a strong person by her sister Una…she spent much time looking after her melancholic mother Alice, who after her widow's pension had run out lived aboard where it was cheaper to live without having to keep up appearances… After her brother Theo’s wife died in childbirth, she went over to New Mexico to care for her nephew Martin. This wasn’t an easy time for her, and in 1895 she wrote to her brother Sydney : I’m not going to break down…I’m not ill at all…The chief trouble for me is Theo – please don’t tell the following to anyone: I hate grumbling – but you know how he never thinks for me in anything…I never get a word of encouragement or affection. It’s in his nature of course, and he is as you know, absorbed by his work. He’s wonderfully clever, and has splendid theories – and a grand character, but oh! He is hard to live with! Olive stayed because she adored her nephew Martin, but sadly he died of diphtheria aged eight. She was briefly engaged to “a worthless young man” while she was in America “but was saved, just in time, from what would have been a disastrous marriage”… She then returned to England. In 1909 she went into business with her friend Helen Nussey* and together they wrote 'A French garden in England' a sweet little book with beautiful illustrations by Olive. It records the adventures of the two women setting up a market garden - "We are two women, not very robust but accustomed to hard work, who started a French market-garden a year ago with a small capital, two acres of raw field and a year's training in French gardening, but up to then no horticultural experience whatever, and this little book is a record of our experiences, of the mistakes we made and the difficulties we had, no less than of the small successes we achieved and the help we received." The year following the publication of the book Olive died aged only 41. It’s sad her life was cut short, but through the book you can get a sense of who she was and see that she was having an active fulfilling life in the years just before she died. Sydney Cockerell took her ashes to Coniston water where they had spent holidays with Ruskin. Sydney wrote in his diary: ‘My brother Douglas and I took her ashes to lake Coniston, and from Ruskin’s boat consigned them to the somber depths of the crystal clear lake, where one day mine will one day join them’. Publications
*Helen Georgina Nussey (1865-1965) went on to become a leading welfare worker. In 1914 she joined the London School Care Service - set up to ensure all children of school age were fed and clothed well enough to benefit from schooling. On retirement in 1940 she received an OBE for her work for the children of London.
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