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“... My grandmother Ada Leverson imagined that the height of bliss would be to sit in a theatre listening to her own dialogue spoken by ‘real live actors’, and much of her life was spent in trying to finish a play. It was always the same play, but as time drew level with her inspiration and threatened to leave it behind, the characters and dialogue had every so often to be brought up to date by radical alteration before the final curtain was reached ...”

“... Ada Leverson (1862-1933) said she had learned about human nature in the nursery. A little brother got her to help him make a carriage out of two chairs, but when he was taken out in a real carriage he was not in the least interested. Certainly she never under-estimated the human capacity for imagination or for disappointment ...”

“... absurd. An awful New Woman in a divided skirt, introduced by Bosie, writing a pamphlet at Mrs Leverson’s writing-table with the aid of several whiskeys and sodas; her brother, who kept reiterating that “these things must be approached through first principles” ... two other New Women who explained that they were there to keep a strict watch on New ...”

“... in a roly-poly of white buttoned kid. My presenter, the wit and author Violet Wyndham, daughter of Ada Leverson, author of The Little Otleys and Love at Second Sight, was much amused by all this. It was an odd way to spend a day, in the oxcart queue up the Mall to the Palace, in a salon where nerves ran to such a pitch anyone would think we were due to ...”

“... and singular: ‘His associates ... included Oscar Wilde, briefly, and Wilde’s “Sphinx”, Ada Leverson, and her husband. It included, too, William Rothenstein.’ Guided by her personalised Muse, Ms Benkovitz swoops on Beardsley’s character, which, however, gets away. Her claimed ‘attempt to evaluate Beardsley’s character more ...”

“... was struck by an overwhelming sense of catastrophe. Holland traces the story back to 1930 and to Ada Leverson, who – he suggests – probably heard it from Reggie Turner. In her version, ‘a curious, very young, but hard-eyed creature appeared, looked at him, gave a sort of laugh, and passed on. He felt, he said, “as if an icy hand had clutched at ...”

“... strange unrest in novels by the well known (Bennett, Forster, Galsworthy) and the less well known (Ada Leverson, M.P. Willcocks). She points out that, while these novels exposed and tested particular marriages, they did not question the institution itself. In her view, three writers only – Amber Reeves, Olivia Shakespear and Elizabeth von Arnim – did ...”

“... variety: from P.J. Proby (little did he know who he was talking to) to Wyndham’s grandmother, Ada Leverson, to the Krays. His fascination with the Krays was partly because of their mother, who had made them feel ‘special’, and partly because then desire to be famous contained the seeds of their own destruction – a destruction which the glamour ...”

“... Rosa was very young’; that her father was a ‘competent painter’ and a distant relative of ‘Ada Leverson, Oscar Wilde’s Sphinx’ and published several books, ‘including a tribute to his labrador, Pindar: A Dog to Remember’; that Rosa’s husband, Robin, had already lost one wife to cancer; that a different man had once sent Rosa ‘an entire ...”

“... happiest and busiest couple in London. Their two sons were born in 1885 and 1886. Wilde’s friend Ada Leverson, however, in a book published in 1930, wrote about an episode that occurred not long after Wilde was married. He had taken Constance shopping: He waited for her outside Swan and Edgar’s while she made some long and tedious purchases. As he ...”

“... for absolutely ages. AH: How literary was your family? FW: Well, my mother was the daughter of Ada Leverson, who was a friend of Oscar Wilde: he called her the Sphinx. She was very literary. I don’t think my mother would have said she was literary herself, though she did later write books, which were published. My father was much older than my ...”

“... me stay to rehearse, but so beautiful is his nature that he declined at once,’ Wilde wrote to Ada Leverson. Douglas stayed in Algiers until 18 February, and so missed the opening night of The Importance of Being Earnest. His father had planned to be there, however. ‘Bosie’s father is going to make a scene tonight,’ Wilde wrote. ‘I am going to ...”