On 1st March that year she married Samuel Ferguson, an electrical engineer, a widower with two grown-up sons; she was to have no children of her own but established good relations with Bobbie and Alan Ferguson.  By 1947 Samuel was chairman of various companies making electrical accessories; Ruby seems to have acted as a director and secretary of at least one of them, despite the continuation of her literary work, which Sam supported.  In the 1948-9 edition of The Author’s and Writer’s Who’s Who she was living at Aldersyde, Wilmslow, Cheshire, and listed her recreations as “travel, country life, hotel keeping”; her ‘special subjects' were “English History & Literature, Country Home Management”.  In the St. Hilda College Register of 1948 her ‘war work’ was listed as the British Red Cross Society.  She also continued to be an active member of the Methodist church.

 

She published no novels between 1937 and 1944, but after that they continued to come at fairly regular intervals, dovetailing in with the Jill books.  These were enormously successful, and were written for the four daughters of Bobbie Ferguson, Ruby’s step-grand-daughers - the eldest three of whom apparently appear in the books as the bouncing April, May and June Cholly-Sawcutt!  The two younger girls were particularly keen riders, competing at Olympia and in three-day-eventing.

 

In 1952 the Fergusons moved to Jersey, where they had been holidaying, apparently for the tax benefits as well as because they (or perhaps Sam) were attracted to island life.  Despite an allegation that she hated the sea, Ruby in fact does seem to have liked Jersey, and continued to lead a full life, writing, playing the piano, painting, playing bridge and being involved in the hotels her husband was now owning.  Sadly she developed breast cancer and died on 11 November 1966; Samuel died three years later.  Both are buried in St Brelade’s churchyard.

 

One last point.  Most of Ruby Ferguson’s adult novels are nothing out of the ordinary, and the ones I have read mostly specialise in a fair amount of gloom and doom.  But look out for Apricot Sky, which is a glorious romp through the summer of a West Highland family and contains some children who might be straight out of the Jill saga.

 

(1)  blurb on paperback edition of Lady Rose and Mrs Memmary (1959)

(2)  blurb on Apricot Sky (1952)

 

As Ruby C. Ashby:
1926  The Moorland Man

1927  The Tale of Rowan Christie

1928  Beauty Bewitched

1931  Death on Tiptoe

1932  Plot Against a Widow

1933  He Arrived at Dusk

1934  Out Went the Taper

 

As Ruby Ferguson (adult novels)

1937  Lady Rose and Mrs Memmary

1944  The Moment of Truth

1946  Our Dreaming Done

1948  Winter’s Grace

1951  Turn Again Home

1952  Apricot Sky

1954  The Leopard’s Coast

1956  For Every Favour

1957  Doves in my Fig-Tree

1957  The Cousins of Colonel Ivy

1962  The Wakeful Guest

1965  A Woman with a Secret

1967  Children at the Shop

Ruby Ferguson 2