A College Girl

A College Girl is a fictional novel written by Mrs George de Horne Vaizey. Darsie’s humdrum life takes a left turn when an ailing elderly aunt invites her to move in. Along the way, Darsie becomes fast friends with an upper-crust family in town, leading to many madcap adventures. After her aunt passes away, Darsie finds out that she has inherited enough money to attend college. She embarks on a life-changing experience at school — and in love. Jessie Bell (1857 – 23 January 1917), later Jessie Mansergh, was an English writer born in Liverpool, who wrote under her married name Mrs George de Horne Vaizey. De Horne Vaizey was the daughter of Scottish insurance broker David Bell, and his wife, Elizabeth Morris Barton, and had six siblings, four brothers and two sisters. She married Henry Mansergh, a cotton broker, in 1883. They had a daughter, Gwyneth Alice, in 1886. She met her second husband, George de Horne Vaizey, on a Mediterranean cruise, which she won in a short story competition. Her son, named George after his father, also became a writer. As her biography at Athelstane Books notes, «She often used her own varied experiences in her books. She used situations from her early life in a large family, her first husband’s addiction and death, and her own illnesses in her novels.» De Horne Vaizey’s daughter Gwyneth, nicknamed Kit, was the inspiration for the character Kitty in her 1902 work «A Houseful of Girls». The author mentions that Gwyneth really did share lessons with a family of five sisters, who «in many ways were like the hook Rendells. Chrystabel is as like as I could make her and they all talk In that funny way, emphasising every second or third word.» De Horne Vaizey was an invalid for many years before her death. The Sydney Morning Herald obituary mentions that she had been «an Invalid, crippled and confined to her bed for years».