Reactions[edit]

Lady Diana Manners later wrote that she was a little ashamed of the name, and did not know how it came to be called the Coterie, just as her mother was ashamed of the title of the Souls.[13]


Lady Diana also reported that the group's "...peak of unpopularity was certainly 1914 and 1915." This sentiment was followed by some of their parents, as Raymond Asquith's stepmother wrote to Hilda Harrisson, calling the group "...a rotten social gang...who lead a futile and devastating life."[12] Lady Cynthia Asquith, Raymond Asquith’s sister-in-law, wrote in her diary, "I don't care a damn about their morals and manners, but I do think what – for want of a better word – I call their anti-cant, is really suicidal to happiness."[12]


Two deaths were attributed to the group and their actions, with Gustav Hamel, a Swedish amateur flyer and racing driver crashing his private plane during a flight from France to London, and Denis Anson drowning in the Thames during a late-night swimming party.[14]

Mackenzie, Jeanne (1986). The Children of the Souls: A Tragedy of the First World War. London: Chatto.

(1984). Unquiet Souls: The Indian Summer of the British Aristocracy, 1880–1918. London: Macmillan.

Lambert, Angela