Brontë family "Wuthering Heights" and "Agnes Grey", had launched a rumour that the three novels were the work of one author, understood to be Ellis Bell (Emily). George Smith was extremely surprised to find two gawky, ill-dressed country girls paralysed with fear, who, to identify themselves, held out the letters addressed to "Messrs. Acton, Currer and Ellis Bell". Taken by such surprise, he introduced them to his mother with all the dignity their talent merited, and invited them to the opera for a performance of Rossini's "Barber of Seville". Emily Brontë's "Wuthering Heights" was published in 1847 under the masculine pseudonym Ellis
Clough Williams-Ellis Gang’s mastermind Peggy Pollard (known within the Gang by her pseudonym Bill Stickers) and Williams-Ellis became lifelong friends. In 1929 Williams-Ellis bought portrait painter George Romney's house in Hampstead. Williams-Ellis served on several government committees concerned with design and conservation and was instrumental in setting up the British national parks after 1945. He wrote and broadcast extensively on architecture, design and the preservation of the rural landscape. In 1915 Williams-Ellis married the writer Amabel Strachey. Their son, Christopher Moelwyn Strachey Williams-Ellis (1923-13 March 1944), a Lieutenant in the Welsh Guards, was killed in action in Italy during the Second World