Juliet Soskice

Life

She was the daughter of Francis Hueffer and Catherine Madox Brown, and younger sister of the novelist Ford Madox Ford who was born in 1873. After her father died in 1889, there were changes in the household. The legal position was that Charles Rowley and Theodore Watts acted as trustees.

Juliet lived in London with Lucy Madox Brown, her mother's older half-sister and her husband William Michael Rossetti. Her mother went to live with Ford Madox Brown, her father, with her sons Ford and Oliver. The houses were two doors apart.

Juliet was therefore brought up with the Rossetti children, including Olivia, Gabriel Arthur and Helen. In the early 1890s she and Ford knew Edward Garnett and his sister Olive, the children of Richard Garnett. The Hueffer, Garnett and Rossetti families were close, and in London's St Edmund's Terrace near Regent's Park were at times in the 1890s neighbours.

In her youth Juliet was known as a musician. She later turned to literature. The relationships between the families evolved: Juliet remained close to the Rossettis, but her brothers didn't, and the Rossetti children protected their political activities, anarchist and socialist, from casual attention. The brothers also distanced themselves from the Garnetts and their Surrey home at Limpsfield, which they found too closely aligned to the Fabian Society. Juliet's future husband David Soskice entered this circle through the Garnetts finding him a house near Limpsfield Chart in 1898.