Early Life
She was the eldest daughter of Rt. Hon. William Joseph Myles (WJM) Starkie (1860–1920) and May Caroline Walsh. When she was two years of age her father accepted the post of Resident Commissioner of Education for Ireland. Moving to Edwardian Dublin her upbringing was steeped in studies. Her father hired a French governess, Leonie Cora, to tutor his children in French and music. The children became impregnated with everything French, from cooking to Le Printemps catalogues. Enid wrote, "My French governess never stopped talking of France, and she talked with all the nostalgia of the exile." Mlle. Cora had been a pupil of the French pianist and composer Raoul Pugno, and Enid learnt to play the piano, going on to win second medal for two years in succession at Feis Ceoil, the annual music festival in Dublin. She was educated at Alexandra College in Dublin, Somerville at Oxford, and the Sorbonne in Paris.
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“Many a woman shudders ... at the terrible eclipse of those intellectual powers which in early life seemed prophetic of usefulness and happiness, hence the army of martyrs among our married and unmarried women who, not having cultivated a taste for science, art or literature, form a corps of nervous patients who make fortunes for agreeable physicians ...”
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