Ida was born in Penge on the Southern outskirts of London on 18 May 1875 while her parents were on holiday visiting the Hallileys there. Ida Limouzin grew up in Moulmein in Lower Burma.
She became an assistant mistress in the girls' department of a boys' school in Naini Tul, a hill station over 6,000 feet in the North-West Province of India.Naini Tul, was a popular summer resort for Europeans and a retreat for the provincial government in the hot season. There she met Richard Blair. He was 39 and still a lowly Sub-Deputy opium agent while Ida was 22. He was a staid, somewhat philistine British colonel while Ida was a high spirited, vivacious woman with a lively intelligence. He was over 6 ft tall with clear blue eyes and rather chubby cheeks. She was dark and pretty with a ready smile and an exotic taste in dress.
They were married at Church of St John in the wilderness on 15 Jun 1897, with Ida's sister Blanche as bridesmaid. The move to the sweltering, disease-ridden district of Gaya must have been something of a shock. Children
She passed away on 19 March 1943 of a heart attack, age 67.
"Perhaps the best bit of luck that Richard Blair had was his marriage. He married in 1896, at the age of 39, Ida Mabel Limouzin who was 21. She ahd been born in Penge near London, then a semi-rural, new residential suburb (as painted by Camille Pissarro). Her mother was English and her father French, and she had lived most of her life until marriage in Moulmein, Burma, where her father kept up a business, founded by his father, as teak merchant and boat-builder, but later lost much of his money speculating in rice. Her mother, a woman of strong character and considerable intelligence, was still very much alive when her grandson, Eric Blair, went to Burma in 1922. Ida Blair, eighteen years younger than her husband, was a more lively, unconventional, widely read and in every way a more interesting person (all her grandchildren agree)."
"Ida Blair took their two young children back to England, as was then quite common, some time in 1904. They settled temporarily in a house called Ermadale in Vicarage Road, Henley-on-Thames, in Oxfordshire, leaving it in April 1905 for another, slightly larger, rented home, The Nutshell, Western Road. Richard Blair did not see them again until 1907, when he was given three months' leave on his final promotion from Sub-Deputy Opium Agent, second grade, to Sub-Deputy Opium Agent, first grade. Avril was conceived at this time. He returned to Monghyr before she was born and did not rejoin his family until his retirement, four years later. This arrangement would not have been thought of as anything extrodinary. Nearly all 'Anglo-Indians' (the British in India) saw the advantages of bringing up even younger children in England despite, it was a commonplace to note, the inevitable fall in the standard of living and of services, the perennial servant problem. From now on Ida Blair kept house with a non-resident daily, neither a cook nor a parlour-maid even, thus doing much of the work herself, an arragement that she perhaps thought a fair price to pay for the greater liberty of being 'home' (if nowhere in particular) at last. Such years of seperation enabled Ida to prepare a good home for her husband's eventual retirement. Perhaps there were also specific worries about Eric's health that kept Mrs. Blair in England."
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Joseph Limouzin