C. Gasquoine Hartley or Catherine Gasquoine Hartley or Mrs Walter Gallican (1866/7–1928) was a writer and art historian with a particular expertise on Spanish art. Latterly she wrote about polygamy, motherhood and sex education.
Life
Hartley was born in 1866 or 1867 in Antananarivo in the Merina Kingdom of Madagascar to Reverend Richard Griffiths Hartley and his wife Catherine (née Gasquoine), both from Manchester. Her parents had served as missionaries in Mauritius before they went to Madagascar. Her father left them with a poor financial position when he died in 1870 after the family had returned to Hampshire. Hartley inherited her father's passion for teaching, and she first worked as a teacher in Southport, where she was brought up. She rose to be the headteacher at Babington House, Eltham, Kent in 1894. She left this post to write sometime around 1903. She published Life: the Modeller which was a novel set against her knowledge of art, although its history attracted only minor interest. A second novel, The Weaver's Shuttle, appeared in 1905.
Hartley became the second wife of the journalist and writer Walter M. Gallichan on 9 May 1901. He had written under the name Geoffrey Mortimer. After their marriage her husband wrote under his own name and Hartley assigned her work to "C. Gasquoine Hartley (Mrs Walter Gallichan)", both writing about their leisurely lifestyle. They had a house in Youlgreave in Derbyshire where they put together The Story of Seville which was published as part of The Medieval Towns series of guides. The illustrations for the book were made by Hartley's sister, Elizabeth.
