Writer, artist and occultist, Pamela Colman, ‘Pixie’ Smith was one of the most extraordinary people to ever live in Cornwall.
Born in Pimlico, Pixie was the only child of a New York businessman, Charles Edward Smith, and Corinne Colman, sister of the painter Samuel Colman.
The family resided in Manchester until Pixie was seven years old when they moved to Kingston, Jamaica. When Pixie was fifteen, the family moved to Brooklyn where she studied art during which time her mother died.
She became a freelance illustrator with her work including illustrating works by W.B. Yeats and Bram Stoker and became an orphan when her father died in 1889, just before she reached her legal majority. Pixie returned to England and worked as a theatrical designer with Sir Henry Irving, Ellen Terry and Bram Stoker.
It has been claimed that Ellen Terry nicknamed her ‘Pixie’, a name she loved and retained. In 1907, Pixie had a one woman exhibition in New York but commercial success eluded her. She was already friendly with W. B. Yeats and his painter brother, Jack, who introduced her to, the occultist, Arthur Edward Waite who contracted her to design a modern set of tarot cards.
The result was the 78-card Waite-Smith tarot deck which remains the most commonly used set today. In 1911, Pixie converted to Catholicism and, at the end of World War I, she used an inheritance to buy a house at The Lizard. Turning part of it into a retirement home for Catholic priests bankrupted her and she ended her days living in poverty in Bude.
