Louise Foxcroft

Louise Foxcroft is a graduate student at Cambridge, where she is finishing a PhD on addiction as a medical condition in the 19th century.

Diary: W.B. Yeats and her great-uncle

Louise Foxcroft, 7 September 2000

My great-uncle Alfred Hollis was in his early forties when he died; he was a bachelor and had never worked. According to my aunt he was always dressed beautifully, quite beyond his means. In the only photograph I have of him he is sporting a rakishly angled, wide-brimmed hat with a feather in its band, a high stiff collar, a waistcoat and long jacket. He is leaning his hip elegantly against his stick and holds a cigarette in his left hand. Parkland stretches behind him. He has written on the picture: ‘the one and only … I took this fifteen years ago.’‘

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