We do not have photos of two of these four Time and Tide colleagues: can you help? Clara Smith, and Margaret West.
A get together of present and former Time and Tide people: Lorna Concanen Lewis, 32, chauffeur, secretary and friend to E.M. Delafield, referenced in Virginia Woolf’s diary, and later a children’s book writer; Alice Maud Mortimer, also known as Mrs Tom Sewell, just turned 53, journalist and former Time and Tide General Manager; Miss Clara Smith, 51, a Time and Tide proof reader, editor of the recently published Rhondda autobiography “This Was My World”, longtime friend and a co-writer with Theodora Bosanquet, and Miss Margaret West, c46, until very recently a Time and Tide assistant editor and now the press manager of the Woolf’s Hogarth Press.
It is quite likely there was some discussion about “This Was My World” with its editor Clara Smith at the table and otherwise gossip and debates amongst former colleagues all still working in the same milieu. It may also have been an opportunity for Margaret West to smooth over the spat that had recently taken place at her new home at the Hogarth Press over a dog and a Woolf, where Margaret had to slap the wrists of an American literary agent for negotiating a serialisation deal for Virginia Woolf’s forthcoming biography of a dog with Time and Tide, without the Woolfs knowing. More likely it was more of an amusing story than a problem…. though you never know, when your proprietor’s pride has been hurt.
Margaret West and Lorna Concanen Lewis will have known each other well, at this time both living (with eight others) for at least the past 3 years in a typical Bloomsbury Georgian house – Almost four years later Lorna is handling probate for Margaret after the latter’s death at 50.
Can you tell us more about the early life and upbringing of Clara Smith and of Margaret West?
The Dinner Puzzle 