Elaine Limouzin

Elaine Limouzin appears to be Ellen Kate Limouzin (1870–1950), born in Moulmein in Burma, third daughter of Frank and Theresa Limouzin. If this is correct she is the aunt of Eric Blair, better known as George Orwell, and known by him as ‘Aunt Nellie’. Orwell’s mother was Ida Mabel Blair (née Limouzin), the younger sister of Ellen Kate Limouzin.
Nellie Limouzin was a feminist, a suffragette (there is a photograph of her with the Pankhurst sisters), a writer and an actress: she was said to ‘have trod the boards of music hall stages in London’ as a vaudevillian. She held the lease on the top-floor flat at 195 Ladbroke Grove, where (from 1911 to 1928) she frequently entertained her suffragette and literary friends. As Elaine Limouzin she had appeared in ‘The Disciple’ (by C.K.Munro) at Wyndham’s Theatre in June 1914. Nellie had socialist leanings, she joined the Espranto movement in 1921 and met Eugene Adam (known as Lanti) in 1921/2 and appears to have married him in Paris in 1931. Aunt Nellie appears to have been the person who discovered the cottage known as ‘The Stores’ at Wallington, where Orwell lived between 1936 and 1947. Nellie was a frequent correspondent with Orwell and one of the goats kept by Orwell at Wallington was named ‘Kate’ in her honour. Nellie died in London in June 1950 of a haemorrhage into a tumor of the brain. On the death certificate she is Helene Limouzin-Adam, and it appears she was cremated.
One newspaper reported the death of “Adams, Nellie (née Limouzin), aunt of Eric Arthur Blair (George Orwell)”.

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