Sylvia’s constitution, too, was weak she suffered from chronic migraines since she was a teenager, possibly a physical symptom of stress and repression from her puritanical upbringing. The Welles’ daughter Carlotta had also left school for her health, to spend time in the healing, countryside sunshine. She left a strict, Swiss, all-girl’s school to live with a family in the north of France. She had very little formal schooling in her youth, as her family moved between France and rural New Jersey. She didn’t grow past five foot two, and she had a nervous, restive energy. She had a sharply sculptured face and lively brown eyes, sparkling like a child’s even into her adulthood, or so Ernest Hemingway would say. Sylvia was always physically afraid of men. Her mother, on the other hand, taught her young daughter never to let a man touch her. Sylvia changed her own name in her adolescence, probably in homage to her father Sylvester. She was the middle of two sisters: Mary Hollingsworth “Holly” Morris and Eleanor Elliot, who would adopt the stage name Cyprian. In 1887, Sylvia was born Nancy Woodbridge Beach to a Presbyterian minister and his unstable wife in Baltimore, Maryland. Final assignment for TC358 Auto/Biographical Studies.
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