Mrs. Aria

Eliza Davis Aria (née Davis; 11 August 1866 – 3 September 1931), known by the pen name Mrs Aria, was an English writer, fashion journalist, editor, socialite and literary salonnière, known for her weekly column ‘Mrs A.'s diary’. Davis is also known for being long-term lover of Henry Irving, from the 1890s until his death in 1905.

Early life

Eliza Davis was born in London on 11 August 1866 to portrait photographer Hyman Davis and his wife Isabella (Bella). She spent her early years in the house attached to her father's Bruton Street, Mayfair studio. She attended Miss Belisario's school and was afterward tutored by Madame Paul Lafargue, the daughter of Karl Marx.

Eliza's seven siblings included several writers: novelist and art historian Julia Frankau (pseudonym Frank Danby) and their eldest brother James (pseudonym Owen Hall), a racing correspondent, theatre critic, and librettist. "While James was still living at home, he brought to the house literary and theatrical figures, including Oscar and Willie Wilde, who would play tennis in a nearby public garden with Julia and Eliza." A younger sister, Florence Collins, published one novel, The Luddingtons (Heinemann 1905), about which Mrs Aria had this to say: "'You are the beauty of the family,' we advised her, and she accepted the verdict as condemning the volume to solitude." Her nephew Gilbert Frankau became a journalist and novelist, and Gilbert's younger brother Ronald Frankau went on the stage.

Marriage and career

In 1884, Eliza married Jamaican-born merchant David Bonito Aria, and gave birth to their daughter the following year, but there was "little of real love between" the couple, and his precarious finances proved a poor match for her view of luxuries as "the absolute necessities of existence," leading to a permanent separation with David Aria's departure for South Africa after five years of marriage.