May 1915 - Manuscript title Spring 1915
Let us remember Spring will come again
To the scorched, blackened woods, where the wounded trees
Wait with their old wise patience for the heavenly rain,
Sure of the sky: sure of the sea to send its healing breeze,
Sure of the sun. And even as to these
Surely the Spring, when God shall please,
Will come again like a divine surprise
To those who sit today with their great Dead, hands in their hands,
eyes in their eyes,
At one with Love, at one with Grief; blind to the scattered things and
changing skies.
June 1915
Who thinks of June's first rose today?
Only some child, perhaps, with shining eyes and rough bright hair will
reach it down
In a green sunny lane, to us almost as far away
As are the fearless stars from these veiled lamps of town.
What's little June to a great broken world with eyes gone dim
From too much looking on the face of grief, the face of dread?
Or what's the broken world to June and him
Of the small eager hand, the shining eyes, the rough bright head?
31.5.1915: First bombs from
Zeppelin airships dropped on London - Hence
veiled lamps?
1.6.1915:
The Egoist included "Two Notes. 1. On H.D. 2. On
Imagism" by
May Sinclair in which she defended imagism against Harold
Monro's criticisms.
9.6.1915
Letter from
May Sinclair to Charlotte Mew: "About the Imagists - I'm not so
stupid, really, as I seem. Remember, I'm defending H.D. against what I know
to be an unfair and rather spiteful attack from a writer who isn't fit to
lick her boots. H.D. is the best of the Imagists (You'll observe that I
don't say very much about the others)... I am not stupid, and I can feel
poetry even if I cannot understand it; but I have a catholic taste, and I
see that these young poets are doing something that at its best is
beautiful, and it is intolerable that they should meet with ridicule and
contempt because they are not doing something else... I know one poet whose
heart beats like a dynamo under an iron-grey tailor-made suit (I
think one of her suits is iron-grey) and when she publishes her
poems she will give me something to say that I cannot and do not say of my
Imagists". (Quoted
Suzanne Raitt 2000 page 197)
15.6.1915 Death of
Fanny Mew. Her memorial in St Pauls reads
|
In memory of FANNY MEW eldest daughter of Richard and Fanny Mew. Born
November 11th 1866. Died June 15th 1915.
Photograph by Kevin McCoy, the
St Paul's Barton webmaster
|
November 1915 As her poems
The Changeling and
The Farmer's Bride
were in the programme of readings at the
Poetry Bookshop, Charlotte Mew
attended. When she arrived. she was asked "Are you Charlotte Mew?" and
replied "I am sorry to say I am".
Many years ago, buying, as was my custom, a copy of
The Nation
one Saturday
morning, I opened it eagerly to see if there might be a poem, and was
electrified to find printed there
The Farmer's Bride. This poem I
immediately committed to memory, and a year or two later repeated it with
enthusiasm to Harold Monro, who had
recently opened the Poetry Bookshop,
with the avowed intention of publishing the work of young poets and
presenting them to a large audience.
At his suggestion a letter was written to Charlotte Mew in care of
The Nation asking whether or not she had other poems, or a number of
poems that
could be got together to form a book. Charlotte Mew responded very kindly
to the tentative suggestion, but with her characteristic lack of confidence
declared that no one would want to read them if they were published.
However, she sent another poem,
The Changeling, which, she remarked,
might or might not be liked as much as The Farmer's Bride. This poem
also
made an immediate impression, and I wrote to her saying that I proposed to
read both the poems at the Bookshop on a Tuesday or Thursday evening, on
which days there were always readings of poetry at six o'clock in the
evening. Charlotte Mew was told that there would also be a number of other
interesting new poems read and was asked whether she would care to be
present. She replied that she would do her best to be there.
So on that Tuesday evening in far away November 1915 Charlotte Mew came to
the Poetry Bookshop for the first time. Let me try to describe her.
The
Bookshop itself was a small room about twelve feet square, lined from floor
to ceiling with books, and opening on to a dark slummy street off
Theobald's Road in Bloomsbury. There would be a number of people wandering
about looking at the shelves before going up to the reading room.
The
reading room itself was a converted workroom that had been originally used
by the gold-beaters who occupied a large part of the street: and the gentle
thud, thud, of their gold-beating hammers rang in the ears of all those who
lived there, from morning to night, every day.
At about five minutes to six
the swing-door of the shop was pushed open and into the room stalked
Charlotte Mew. Such a word best describes her walk. She was very small,
only about four feet ten inches, very slight, with square shoulders and
tiny hands and feet. She always wore a long double-breasted top-coat of
tweed with a velvet collar inset. She usually carried a horn-handled
umbrella, unrolled, under her arm, as if it were psychologically necessary
to her, a weapon against the world. She had very fine white hair that
showed traces of once having been a warm brown. Her eyes were a very dark
grey, bright with black lashes and highly arched dark eyebrows. Her face
was a fine oval, and she always wore a little hard felt pork-pie hat put on
very straight. The whole time she was speaking she kept her head cocked at
a defiant angle.
When she came into the shop she was asked: "Are you
Charlotte Mew ?" and her reply, delivered characteristically with a slight
smile of amusement, was: "I am sorry to say I am". She invariably adopted
this self-depreciatory manner when meeting strangers, and invariably spoke
as if those who addressed her expected her to defy them. As she got
accustomed to a person this defiance vanished completely, and no one could
be more warm-hearted and witty in her talk and in her friendship. After
that evening at the Poetry Bookshop a close friendship sprang up between
us.
|
Poetry Bookshop Rhyme Sheets. Penelope Fitzgerald 1988 (page 286) says that
numbers 1 to 7 of the Rhyme Sheets (2d coloured) were hand coloured by
Alida Klementaski and Charlotte Mew. I am not clear what she
bases this on.
10.11.1915 Royal Assent for the
1915 Naval and
Military War Pensions
Act which established local War Pensions Committees.
Charlotte Mew visited on behalf of her local committee.
December 1915
Richard Aldington's Images 1910-1915 published
by The Poetry Bookshop (8d). White paper wrappers with a hand coloured
illustration by John Nash on top cover. (Woolmer 1988: A12)
Penelope Fitzgerald 1988 (page 168) says the
hand colouring was done by
Alida Klementaski and Charlotte Mew. There is no indication how
she knows this.
14.12.1915 Letter from Charlotte Mew to Harold Monro. "A few weeks
since" he had suggested a book of her poetry. The day before he had
suggested only half the ones supplied be published in the spring and then
the rest a year later. Charlotte wrote "I still think it would be better...
that the verses should come out altogether in a small volume... For, as I
told you, these verses hang together for me, and mark a period..."
22.12.1915
Peter Mew born on the Isle of Wight
27.12.1915
Letter from
May Sinclair to Charlotte Mew from 1 Blenheim Road, NW.
[Alida Monro Collection -
Mary Davidow 1960 pp 312-313] - [Harold Monro] "sold 260 copies
of
Richard Aldington's Images the other day, and Richard has
not the strong human appeal that you have."
Marjorie Scott was 17 in December 1915 "My mother told me
the
detailed story when I was about 17 and asked why we never saw Charlotte"
(Marjorie Watts:
Memories of Charlotte Mew, PEN Broadsheet no 13,
Autumn 1982, quoted Penelope Fitzgerald 1988 page 138)
|
February: Compositor refuses to set blasphemous prostitute poem - May:
Charlotte's book of poems (The Farmer's Bride) published -
May Sinclair and Charlotte diverge over war, and, possibly, over sex -
December: Death of Daniel Oliver
|
Alida Monro 1953 says that a small firm of printers in
Clerkenwell agreed to print The Farmer's Bride and galleys had been
delivered when the printer's son arrived to explain that "the compositor,
who was a Methodist, had said that he could not set up Madeleine in
Church as he considered it to be blasphemous".
9.2.1916 Letter from Charlotte Mew to
Harold Monro: " I think your printer must be the spiritual
brother of
the Editors who refused Ken because they "believed in the
segregation of the feeble-minded" and after this, one can't expect the
advocates of early marriages to buy the Farmer's Bride!"
[The typed copy in
Mary Davidow 1960 has Editors. The quotation in
Alida Monro 1953 (page xviii) has editor. This is then
cited by Penelope Fitzgerald 1988 pages 41 and 267 as saying
"the first editor to see
Ken rejected
it on the grounds that the magazine..."]
10.2.1916 Letter from Charlotte Mew to Rolfe Arnold
Scott-James listed in the
Buffalo Collection
4.3.1916 Letter from Charlotte Mew to
Harold Monro [
Buffalo Collection -
Mary Davidow 1960 p.316]
9.3.1916 Letter from Charlotte Mew to
Harold Monro [
Buffalo Collection -
Mary Davidow 1960 p.317]
12.3.1916 Letter from Charlotte Mew to
Harold Monro [
Buffalo Collection -
Mary Davidow 1960 p.318]
17.4.1916 Letter from Charlotte Mew to
Harold Monro [
Buffalo Collection -
Mary Davidow 1960 p.319]
16.5.1916 Letter from Charlotte Mew to
Harold Monro [
Buffalo Collection -
Mary Davidow 1960 pp 319-320]
May 1916
A collection of Charlotte Mew's poetry under, the collective title The
Farmer's Bride, published by the
Poetry Bookshop, London. This
contained (with year of first publication or writing when known and
highlighting those that may not have been published
previously)
The Farmer's Bride (1912) -
Fame (1914) -
The Narrow Door
- The Fête
(1914) -
Beside the Bed
(Written before 29.7.1913)
-
In Nunhead Cemetery (written by
July 1913) - The Pedlar (1914) - Pêcheresse (1914) - The
Changeling (1913) -
Ken (written by
July 1913)
- Â Quoi Bon Dire
(external web
copy)
- The Quiet House (written by
July 1913) -
On the Asylum
Road -
Jour Des Mortes -
The Forest Road (written
1914?)
-
Madeleine in Church (1915?). -
Exspecto Resurrectionem (1913).
"To ------.
He asked life of thee; and thou gavest him a
long life; even for ever and ever"
Val Warner 1981 p.xiv suggests that the dedication here is to
Henry Herne Kendall. Penelope Fitzgerald 1988 (page 164) suggests that
it is to Lucy Harrison. It
could also be a
general war-time dedication - A literary
empty tomb.
The first edition of The Farmer's Bride was a different size and
shape to
the, better known,
1921 and
1929 editions.
Slate green
paper wrappers. Price 1/-
Advertisements inside front and back wrappers
1000 copies printed. Only 500 bound at first.
500 were subsequently (not before
April 1917) issued as a "second edition" in blue paper wrappers.
This had "Second edition" printed on the top wrapper and the advertisments
were changed.
Woolmer 1988: A16a
|
This grey picture from Woolmer
1988: A16a
|
|
The cover illustration is by Claude Lovat Fraser
[external link]. This is scanned from the 1921 edition.
|
28.5.1916 Letter from Charlotte Mew to
Harold Monro Thanks for her six copies of The Farmer's
Bride [
Buffalo Collection -
Mary Davidow 1960 p.321]
29.7.1916 Letter from Charlotte Mew to
Harold Monro The Farmer's Bride is "going dead". "I am
truly sorry if you are to be landed with 850 'remainders'"
[
Buffalo Collection -
Mary Davidow 1960 p.321]
4.8.1916
Letter from
May Sinclair to Charlotte Mew. This ends "Always affectionately
yours, May Sinclair".
[Alida Monro Collection -
Mary Davidow 1960 p.322]
Mary Davidow (1960)
reproduces no letters to or from Charlotte Mew (with anyone) from this
point until 3.7.1918
Suzanne Raitt (2000 page 190) says there is no (known)
communication between Charlotte Mew and May Sinclair after February
1916 (Which is clearly a mistake). "Their relationship may conceivably
have ended with a dramatic bedroom
scene (although not, as Boll believes, in
May 1914); but it is much more likely that it simply fizzled
out."
May Sinclair 9.8.1916 and
16.8.1916 "Clinical Lectures on Symbolism and Sublimation"
Medical Press.
Suzanne Raitt (2000 page 194) says these was "discussions of the
English translation of Jung's volume Psychology of the Unconscious
(1912). The endnotes to the lectures make it clear that in the preceding
months and years much of her reading had been in Freudian and Jungian
psychoanalysis (she read German)"
25.8.1916
Letter from
May Sinclair to Charlotte Mew, quoted by
Suzanne Raitt (2000 page 152) "I can't imagine anything more
awful than... the state of mind that doesn't believe [in the war], and that
can imagine that anything that's been thought and written (within the last
twenty years, anyhow) more important than the winning of the War!"
17.12.1916 Birth of
Penelope Knox, who was to write the second detailed biography of
Charlotte Mew.
A lover of books: the life and literary papers of Lucy Harrison by
Amy Greener. London: J.M. Dent. It includes an essay on the
English Catholic poet Francis Thompson (1859-1907). This is a book of over
300 pages. The British Library Catalogue also lists an 11 page pamphlet
published 1967 "Lucy Harrison, 1844-1915" [With plates, including
portraits] by Lucy Harrison herself. Published York: William Sessions
Marjorie Scott was 18 in December 1916
She would tell stories of her encounter with some war widow or pensioner
during her visits on behalf of the
War Pensions Committee. I remember the
zest with which she once described her arrival in some back street slum,
and her knocking at the door, only to be faced by a harridan, with a man's
cap worn back to front and a heavy bobbly shawl, towering above her and
demanding what she wanted. When told the name of the woman who was sought,
the harridan turned and went half-way up the flight of stairs, shrieking in
her strident voice, "Tell the lidy upstairs there's a person 'ere who wants
to see 'er". Or again of the scene in Somerstown when a whole crowd of
dirty little boys were playing War in the street, fighting and pummelling
each other, vociferously demanding to be "the prisoner". This unfortunate
was placed in a sack and dragged and bumped along the pavement to the
cheers of the other boys. (Alida Monro
(1953 page xiv)
Somerstown is the area to the north of the Euston Road, near Euston station
- That is, just north of where Charlotte Mew lived. A "person" at the door
and a "lady" upstairs would put Charlotte in a lower class to the person
she was visiting.
|
|
Mrs Mayer keeps Charlotte informed -
February: Charlotte turns down an invitation to read her poems to the
Tomorrow Club - June: Dawson Scott writes about a poem -
December: death of Samuel Chick, the son - Marriage of Elsie Chick to
F.F. Blackman
|
Alida Monro (1953), pages xviii to xx, finds it "difficult" to
explain what she sees as Charlotte Mew's small output of literary work in
her life - given her talent. She says "From the very first she found a
ready market for her stories - the poems were
a later development of her talent... I think myself that as she
grew older she no longer had the power of concentration required to sit at
a desk for hours at a time, that she lost interest in story writing which
had been her main work until about 1916, after which she wrote no
more prose at all and very little verse. The sustained prose work dwindled
from the long stories printed in Temple Bar in the
'nineties" [Actually from 1898 to
1905, when the magazine folded?] "to short studies and
occasional essays in the early 1900s, and then to odd poems, and slowly
work came to a standstill...
She herself attributed her small output to the difficulties of domestic
life, doing the housekeeping and looking after "Ma", and the constant
interruptions when she sat at her desk -
Jane, the factotum" [general servant - does everything] "who was
with her
for years, knocking on the door to ask if she should 'finish up' the rice
pudding for her dinner? and should she run out for some kippers? or would
Miss Lottie mind going herself?"
Alida Monro's draft for her
memoir, (BL Add MSSS 57755?) gives the name as "Jane Elswick" -
Not "Jane Elnswick" as in
Penelope Fitzgerald
1988 (See page 274 and index). "Elnswick" does not appear to
exist anywhere on the internet (apart from here) and I have not found a
Jane Elswick in the censuses that could possibly be this person
C. A. Dawson
Scott began promoting the idea of The To-Morrow Club (for
tomorrow's writers) "early in 1917". It was to provide a meeting place for
new writers where they could also listen to informal talks from established
writers. She wrote to both groups about the proposal. One of those she
asked to talk was Charlotte Mew (see below). - Watts - See also
PEN website
26.2.1917 Letter from Charlotte Mew to
Catherine Amy Dawson Scott.
Charlotte is not able to read to her club. - [BF CADS 1914]
Dear Mrs. Scott
I don't remember your asking me to read The Farmer's Bride when it came
out, to your friends - I'm sure the suggestion didn't reach me - and now I
am so sorry I can't read the poems to your Club.
L'impossible arrange tout. I am quite incapable of it - any public
appearance on any stage.
I expect you are quite pleased to be back on the old swing again - and
oddly enough - when your letter came
Mrs Mayer had just been telling me all
about your big literary party and how well
Madcap Jane is goin 1`zg in the
new edition. Congratulations.
V. Sincerely yours
Charlotte Mew
April 1917 "Second edition" (second 500 of first edition) of
The Farmer's Bride bound in April 1917 or later. -
Only 150 of the first 500 had sold by
29.7.1916.
Siegfried Sassoon's copy was from the second 500. I do not know
which batch
Sydney Cockerell distributed from. If it was the second five
hundred, this would make sense of Florence Hardy thanking Charlotte for a
copy of the "first edition" on
12.12.1918 -
Possibly one of Charlotte's original six.
May 1917 The Old Huntsman, and Other Poems
by
Siegfried Sassoon, published by Heinemann, London. Second
edition, August, 1917; new American edition, May 1918 New York: E. P.
Dutton & Company. The London edition was dedicated to Thomas Hardy.
Title poem plus 35 war poems plus 33 lyrical poems from before the war.
Michael Thorpe (1966, p.15) estimates that about a third of the
war poems were "written in the spirit of Happy Warriorism". Some are very
bloodthirsty. There is more realism in the other war poems.
(Titles on Wikisource)
14.5.1917 Letter from John Galsworthy to Catherine Dawson Scott in
which he says her idea [for a Tomorrow Club] is a good one. [Soon after?]
he agreed to speak at a club meeting. "At first we met in an unattractive
room in the Bedford Hotel... Soon, however, we found a ... room on the
first floor at 65, Long Acre... and this was hired every Thursday evening.
Sappho appointed herself 'Fixtures Secretary' and undertook to find a
subject, speaker and Chairman every week. She continued to do this for the
next five or six years...The Tomorrow Club was immediately popular... "
"The effect of exposure to temperatures at or above 100C. upon the
substance (vitamin E) whose deficiency in a diet causes polyneuritis
in birds and
beri-beri in man" by Harriette Chick and Margaret E. Hume
Proceedings of the Royal Society, B, Vol.90, 1917
"The distribution among foodstuffs (especially those suitable for the
rationing of armies) of the substances required of the prevention of
(A)
Beriberi and (B) Scurvy" by Harriette Chick and Margaret E. Hume
Transactions of the Society of Tropical Medicine and
Hygiene, July 1917. Vol.10, no.8, pp 141-178
June 1917
Sydney Cockerell meeting with
Dorothy Hawksley at 2 Primrose Studios, Fitzroy Road, Chalk
Farm, probably after the exhibition of her symbolic picture Le
Réve associating the sufferings of France with the crucifixion.
Dorothy lived at different addresses in London after Primrose Hill: 1a
Melina Place, St John's Wood NW8 seems to have been her first telephone
ABEercorn 3593, from 1930 to 1933 - 39 Holland Park Road, Holland Park, W14
Telephone WEStern 7918, from 1934 to 1940 - 44 Redcliffe Gardens, Earl's
Court, SW10 FLAxman 6028 from 1950 (or earlier) to 1964 - 88 Kensington
Park Road, W11 BAYswater 9705 in 1966 and 1967. (See
Christian, J.
2005 p.6)
24.6.1917 Letter from Charlotte Mew to
Catherine Amy Dawson Scott. -
[BF CADS 1914]
9 Gordon Street.. W.C 1
June 24th 1917
Dear Mrs Scott
If adjectives are powerless, I'm afraid there's nothing to be done with
people deaf to the Sacred Call and to whom the prospect of being 'snowed
under' is a tranquil one - with - let us hope - some sense of humour and
proportion still breathing gently beneath the drift.
People are only 'disappointing' when one makes a wrong diagnosis - but how
comes the sole begetter of a Tomorrow Club to be 'babbling o' green fields'
and yesterdays?
V sincerely yours
Charlotte Mew
Of course its nice to know that up to June 21, 1917, you still liked the
old jingle! CM
25.7.1917 May
Sinclair "The Spirits,
Some Simpletons, and Dr Charles Mercier" [Review of Charles A. Mercier,
Spiritualism and Sir Oliver Lodge] -
Medical Press.
8.8.1917 Correspondence from May Sinclair and
Oliver Lodge in
Medical Press.
Autumn 1917
May Sinclair A Defence of Idealism: Some
Questions and Conclusions Macmillan in London and New York. This
contained a chapter on psychology and psychoanalysis. She describes the
unconscious as "the haunted world below our waking consciousness".
(page 8, quoted page 135 of
Suzanne Raitt 2000)
She also said that, for her, the "theory of
sublimation is the one thing of interest and value that
Professor Freud and professor Jung have contributed to Psychology" (page 5,
quoted page 229 of
Suzanne Raitt 2000) (Date
Suzanne Raitt 2000, p.203)
May Sinclair's A Tree of Heaven was
also published in 1917, by Cassell in London and Macmillan in New York
8.12.1917 Death in Buxton of
Samuel Chick the son, aged 49. Buried at Buxton Cemetery on
10.12.1917 Family Bible (Watts
boxes).
14.12.1917 Birth, Rhode Island, USA, of
Mary Celine Davidow, who was to write the first detailed
biography of Charlotte Mew.
20.12.1917
Elsie Chick married
Francis Frost
Blackman at Haven Green Chapel, Ealing. This is the last
marriage recorded in the
Family Bible (Watts boxes).
Frederick Frost was 51 years old. Elsie was 35. Their son,
Peter F. Blackman, may have been born between 1918 and 1923. See also
1937 -
1948 -
1958 -
1977 -
1979 -
1986 -
2001 -
2006 -
Elsie's London University Card suggests that she moved from
Samuel Chick (the father)'s home at Park Hill to
34 Storey's Way, Cambridge. Residential accommodation for the
University (Churchill
College) was built there before and after the war. See external link to
"typical example"
|
June: Florence Hardy thanks Sydney Cockerell for The Farmer's Bride
-
July: Sydney Cockerell correspondence begins - September: correspondence
with Florence Hardy begins - November: Sylvia Parsons ill - December:
Charlotte a guest of the Hardys in Dorset - General Election, but Charlotte
not entitled to vote - Armistice - December: Florence Hardy promoting
Charlotte's poetry
|
In 1918, an
Elsie Blackman published "Notes on the B text MSS
of Piers Plowman" in the
Journal of English and Germanic Philology
17: pages 489-546, including a diagram. Content: Introduction.- The
relationship of the extant B-text mss.- Estimate of the
value of the existing B-text mss.- Reconstruction of the B-text. In 1927 an
Elsie Blackman wrote a review in the
Review of English Studies pages
237-239. Whilst the Journal is USA based, the Review is UK based.
Sydney Cockerell
gave or lent copies of The Farmer's Bride to various poets. As a
result
Charlotte met Thomas Hardy
(December 1918) and Siegfried Sassoon
May 1919. [Surviving
letters show that Cockerell
communicated with Thomas Hardy, Wilfred Scawen Blunt and A.E. Houseman
about copies of the book. He introduced Sassoon to Charlotte, but may not
have provided him with her work]
22.6.1918 Florence Hardy to Sydney Cotterell, thanking him for the
book of poems by Charlotte Mew. - [BF]
Alida Monro told
Mary Davidow in
August 1958 that
Sydney Cockerell "attended several of the
poetry readings at 35
Devonshire Street in the hope of meeting Charlotte Mew; but at
none of these did she appear. Cockerell then requested" [Alida] "a
manuscript copy of the title poem The Farmer's Bride"
(Mary Davidow 1960, page
82)
[Berg Collection catalogue says it has 128 letters from Sydney
Cockerell to Charlotte Mew from 5.7.1918 to
19.1.1928 and
128 letters from Charlotte Mew to Sydney
Cockerell from 2.6.1917 (??) to
27.1.1928
Wednesday 3.7.1918 Letter from Charlotte Mew to
Sydney Cockerell:
[Berg Collection -
Mary Davidow 1960 p.322]
"Dear Sir:
Miss Klemantaski tells me you would
like a MS copy of
The Farmer's Bride which I have much pleasure in
sending you. Faithfully yours, Charlotte Mew."
5.7.1918 Letter from
Sydney Cockerell
to Charlotte Mew
[Berg Collection -
BF]
8.7.1918 Letter from
Sydney Cockerell
to Charlotte Mew
[Berg Collection -
BF]
Wednesday 10.7.1918 Letter from Charlotte Mew to
Sydney Cockerell:
[Berg Collection -
Mary Davidow 1960 p.323] She turns down his suggestions for
altering The Farmer's Bride.
11.7.1918 Letter from
Sydney Cockerell
to Charlotte Mew
[Berg Collection -
BF]
17.7.1918 Letter from Wilfred Blunt to
Sydney Cockerell
Returns The Farmer's Bride which Cockerell had left with him, with
comment.
18.7.1918 Letter from
Sydney Cockerell
to Charlotte Mew
[Berg Collection -
BF] - He sends her a letter from Wifred Blunt.
Wednesday 20.7.1918 Letter from Charlotte Mew to
Sydney Cockerell:
[Berg Collection -
Mary Davidow 1960 p.324] - She returns the letter from Wilfred
Blunt, with thanks to both of them.
27.7.1918 Florence Hardy to Sydney Cotterell. Thomas has been
carefully studying Charlotte Mew's poems again. "There is an
extraordinaryily pathetic wail in most of the lines. My husband says he
would like to know her." - [BF]
4.8.1918 Florence Hardy to Sydney Cotterell. Thomas Hardy agrees
with Wilfred Blunt. He dictates his opinion.
Mary Davidow 1960 p.89]
6.9.1918 Letter from
Sydney Cockerell
to Charlotte Mew
[Berg Collection -
BF] - He (still) wants to visit her.
9.9.1918 Letter from A.E. Houseman to
Sydney Cockerell,
returning poems of Charlotte Mew, with comments.
[Adams collection
Mary Davidow 1960 p.324].
9.9.1918 Letter from
Sydney Cockerell
to Charlotte Mew
[Berg Collection -
BF] About visit (below):
Tuesday 10.9.1918 Sydney Cockerell visits at the "Hogarth Studios"
at 4.30
12.9.1918 Letter from
Sydney Cockerell
to Charlotte Mew
[Berg Collection -
BF] - He enjoyed talk on Tuesday.
Wednesday 18.9?.1918 Letter from
Sydney Cockerell
to Charlotte Mew
24.9.1918 Letter from
Florence Hardy
to Charlotte Mew.
[Alida Monro Collection -
Mary Davidow 1960 p.325] -
Max Gate
Dorchester
September 24, 1918
Dear Miss Mew,
I believe that you have heard from our friend Mr Sydney Cockerell of the
immense pleasure your poems have given my husband It is long since I have
known him so engrossed by a book, as by The Farmer's Bride. It now
lies by him on his study table and I have read all the poems to him - some
of them many times - and shall probably read them to him many more times.
.. .He is, as you know, not a young man and he cares to see but few people
now-a-days, but he has expressed a wish to meet you if that should be
possible.
It is a tedious journey to Dorchester from London, and not the time of year
when one cares to go into the country - but if you should ever be near us -
or indeed if you thought it worth while to come that distance to see him,
we should be most delighted to put you up for the night.
Yours very truly,
Florence Hardy
25.9.1918 Letter from Charlotte Mew to
Florence Hardy.
[Berg Collection -
Mary Davidow 1960 pp 325-326] - surprise and pleasure - "My time
is not just now my own". She would like to visit after 12.10.1918.
Late September 1918: Noel Coward told Siegfried Sassoon that he had
"quiet lately read" Sassoon's war poems to "a lady novelist while lying on
the rocks in Cornwall" (Sassoon 1945, p.83)
1.10.1918 Letter from
Sydney Cockerell
to Charlotte Mew [His address 3 Shaftesbury Road, Cambridge]
[Berg Collection -
Mary Davidow 1960 p.326] - 3 Shaftesbury Road, Cambridge was the
Cockerell home address until he moved to Kew after his retirement. - He was
at Max Gate when her letter arrived. Can he continue their talk next week?
13.10.1918 Letter from
Florence Hardy
to Charlotte Mew.
[Alida Monro Collection -
Mary Davidow 1960 p.327] - deferring visit because of Thomas
Hardy being unwell.
About November 1918, Sylvia Parsons, the (about 24 years old)
daughter of
Florence and Clement Parsons, became ill with an illness
from which she
died
eight months later. Her mother wrote (23.7.1919) that Charlotte
"understood her so perfectly. You were her favourite of all visitors
through
that eight months ordeal of hers." "Sylvia loved you so much. She was so
proud of you. She was never tired of declaiming in her own trembling, weak,
ill voice your poems to Nurse. I haven't the right words, but there is a
line like
"But, oh, ma Doue! the nights of Hell" that she used to
emphasize
with her half-playful, half-tragic effectiveness when she was asked how she
was and how she was sleeping...We thought her beginning to recover because
the fever left her - but them she had not the strength to rally. Oh, what a
winter, what a spring and what a summer!... I can't say how much I owe you
during Sylvia's illness." Penelope Fitzgerald (1988 pages 158 and 278. No
reference) identifies the illness as tuberculosis. This is consistent with the night
fevers. If Sylvia had been a victim of the
flu pandemic, I do not think it would have been a long illness.
Young women were particularly prone to
encephalitis lethargica, another disease associated with this
time, but the exchange about sleeping suggests sleepless nights rather than
too
much sleep.
[The letters in
Mary Davidow (1960 pages 334-335) give her name as Silvia. It
appears to be Sylvia in the 1900 Census]
Wednesday 6.11.1918
Cockerell Diaries - BF]: "After going to see
Cayley Robinson's
wallpaintings at Middlesex Hospital... called on Miss Anne Mew and dragged
her to see them... Called on Miss Charlotte Mew to show her a book (Song of
Songs) decorated by Kate. She was naturally delighted with it. She went on
with me to tea at Miss [Klementaski]'s at 4 Millman St.
7.11.1918 First day of
Siegfried Sassoon's
first visit to Thomas and
Florence Hardy at Max Gate. "I had arrived on Wednesday and stayed until
midday on Friday. Both days were bright and frosty" (Sassoon 1945, p.89-93)
Sunday 10.11.1918 Letter from
Sydney Cockerell
to Charlotte Mew
[Berg Collection -
BF] Charlotte has sent him material, including her play and
An Old Servant
Monday 18.11.1918
[Cockerell Diaries - BF] Had tea with Charlotte Mew
Thursday 21.11.1918
[Cockerell Diaries - BF] He took his book of Warrington Taylor's letters
to Charlotte Mew. [George Warrington Taylor (1835-1870) was business
manager of William Morris's firm from 1865]
Saturday 30.11.1918 Letter from
Florence Hardy
to Charlotte Mew.
[Alida Monro Collection -
Mary Davidow 1960 pp 327-328] - Free to receive a visit, but
will understand if Charlotte wishes to wait until Spring or Summer.
Sunday 1.12.1918 Post Card from
Sydney Cockerell
in Amiens, France, to Charlotte Mew
[Berg Collection -
BF]
Monday 2.12.1918 Letter from Charlotte Mew to
Florence Hardy.
[Berg Collection -
Mary Davidow 1960 pp 328-329] "... I should like ... to come
down this Wednesday by the South Western on the 12.30 from Waterloo due at
Dorchester 4:14."
Tuesday 3.12.1918 Letter from
Florence Hardy
to Charlotte Mew.
[Alida Monro Collection -
Mary Davidow 1960 p.329] She expects to be at the station to
meet Charlotte...
Wednesday 4.12.1918:
[Cockerell Diaries - BF] "Called on [Charlotte Mew] who had gone to the
Hardys for the night. Had a talk with her sister Anne."
Wednesday 4.12.1918: Charlotte Mew's visit to Thomas and Florence
Hardy at Max Gate in Dorset. It was described in a letter from Florence
Hardy to Sydney Cockerell which some biographers have (perversely)
described as unsympathetic (or "cold") to Charlotte. "Pathetic" means
exciting sympathy. It did not acquire its derogatory colloquial meaning
until later in the twentieth century:
"... What a pathetic little creature! One longed to be kind to
her and look after her. And she was not silent -- talked all the time. We
never had anyone here who talked so much... T.H. talked very kindly to her,
and read her some of his poems. But she is not his type of woman at all. he
prefers a woman like
Mrs Inglis -- whom he declares he likes best of all my
friends, and whose departure he is always lamenting (as I do). But poor
Miss Mew is so pathetic. I made her stay two nights instead of one
when I found how she liked being here -- and would gladly have kept her a
month had it been possible. She has genius, I think." (Quoted by Mary
Davidow, page 92, from
Viola Meynell's 1940 collection, page 300)
10.12.1918 from Charlotte Mew to
Florence Hardy
[Berg Collection -
Mary Davidow 1960 p.330]:
"No doubt this
thin old green book ought to be a fat pink one... And please, if
you like, keep
The Road to the Sea. I'm sure there's a typed copy
somewhere."
A copy of The Farmer's Bride
(1916) inscribed to Florence Emily Hardy from Charlotte Mew,
December 1918, from the
Hardy library, was sold in 1938 [MG Sale/307]. It is in the Albert A. and Henry W.
Berg Collection, New York Public Library.
Another copy, with a note apparently in hand of FEH's sister Eva Dugdale,
is in the
Purdy collection at Yale. This may be the copy FEH received from
Sydney Cockerell
in 1918: LEFH , 142-4, 146. [Sotheby's 6-7 Nov. 2001/42; seen at Adams]
12.12.1918 Letter from
Florence Hardy
to Charlotte Mew.
[Alida Monro Collection - Mary Davidow 1960 pp 330-331] - Thanks her for the
valued gift of
"the
first edition of your poems" and the MS. Hopes she will be able
to visit in the summer and
stay longer. Would like to visit her in London. Hopes "that the business
about letting your house has been satisfactorily settled".
14.12.1918 UK General Election -
election results - This was the first General
election in which all men over 21 could vote, and in which (some) women
over 30 could vote. Charlotte Mew did not register to vote for this or the
1922 election, but was registered
in 1923 -
(Val Warner, 1997, p.xii) - This has been taken to
suggest a lack of interest, but Charlotte does not appear to have been
entitled to register.
The law entitled someone in "occupation" of
certain premises. If this means legal occupation (owner or tenant) then
Charlotte's mother obtained the right to vote, but not the daughters.
Charlotte first registered to vote after
her mother's death.
22.12.1918 from Charlotte Mew to
Florence Hardy
[Berg Collection -
Mary Davidow 1960 p.331]:
"have been rather rushed among other things, getting our new people in, on
a little heap of sweeps and 'chaos' and whitewashers. And I would much
rather you didn't return the
Englishwoman's
verses; at best, it's only a bit of nothing one can send!"
22.12.1918 Florence Hardy to Sydney Cotterell. "I am begging
everyone to read her poems, and have given away several copies". Mentions
the possibility of a Civil List Pension - [BF]
|
February: Death of Dorothy Chick - March: Siegfried Sassoon begins to
prepare a birthday tribute for Hardy from 40 poets - April: second edition
of The Farmer's
Bride suggested and Charlotte thinks of holidays -
May: Charlotte recalls enthusiasm for Jefferies and Vaughan -
Sassoon comes to tea. June: Daily Herald book review/s
(?). July:
death of Sylvia Parsons - Chapbook provides outlet for new poems,
beginning with Sea Love - August: Cockerell wants to see the Hardy
poem - September: The
Cenotaph - Cousin
Gertrude Mary to become Sister Mary Magdalen - October: Death of Frances
Wood (Chick) - Song for Hardy and The Athenaeum - Children's dreams
and fairy tales
|
Voices a monthly poetry magazine edited by Thomas Moult, published
London : Chapman & Hall Ltd., 1919-1921. Review of
The Farmer's Bride 1921. Thomas Moult went on to publish
the
"Best Poems of..." annuals, which included Charlotte Mew in
1922.
Germany: The Weimar Republic started with the election of a National
Assembly on Sunday 19.1.1919.
Sunday 2.2.1919 Letter from
Sydney Cockerell
to Charlotte Mew
[Berg Collection -
BF] Invitation, tickets to hear [John William] Mackail on Ruskin
Wednesday 26.2.1919
Dorothy Chick died, aged 31 years, at 21 Endsleigh Street. This
is the same address that her sister, Frances, died at
later in the same year. Dorothy was interred at Perivale on
3.3.1919 (Family Bible: Watts
boxes). - See
above - One of Dorothy's "greatest friends"
was a Baptist medical missionary in a remote part of India. She returned
from India about a year after Dorothy's death and visited Samuel and Emma
at Ealing. Her story at the disappointment felt when a parcel from home
contained illuminated texts rather than luxuries led Samuel Chick to
institute the anonymous sending of Christmas luxuries to fifty missionaries
all over the world through the Baptist Missionary Society - From "Barnabas
- The son of consolation"
(Margaret Tomlinson p.81)
about March 1919:
Siegfried Sassoon conceived the idea of a birthday tribute to
Thomas Hardy from younger poets. "Having disclosed the plan to Mr Gosse,
who welcomed it warmly, I set to work as organising secretary, with him,
Walter de la Mare, and Sir Henry Newboldt as the presiding committee. About
forty representative writers of all generations were asked to contribute an
autograph poem. To each of them was sent a sheet of superlative hand-made
paper, and Roberts Bridges undertook to write a short foreword. While
putting all this into effect I needed advice, and found an ideal
collaborator in
Sydney Cockerell, who knew Hardy well... (Sassoon 1945, p.148)
Cockerell's request to Charlotte that Sassoon visit
(8.5.1919) may have
been an effort to persuade her to contribute. The poem she provided appears
to have been Song, which she discussed with Cockerell
in August. It was also published
in October, at about the same time as it was presented to Hardy.
Wednesday 2.4.1919
Siegfried Sassoon's first article in The
Daily Herald as its new literary editor. Wikipedia says
he employed
Charlotte Mew as one of his reviewers.
Sunday 13.4.1919
Letter from
Florence Hardy
to Charlotte Mew.
[Alida Monro Collection -
Mary Davidow 1960 p.332] Lowes Dickinson, Elliott Felkin, and E.
M. Forster have been reading The Road to the Sea
week commencing 7.4.1919: another edition of The
Farmer's Bride suggested
(see below)
Monday 14.4.1919
Letter from Charlotte Mew to
Florence
Hardy
[Berg Collection -
Mary Davidow 1960 pp 332-333]:
"The Road to the
Sea represents to me a middle-aged man speaking, in thought,
to a middle-aged woman whom he had only met once or twice. This last week
there has been a suggestion of another edition of the
Farmer's Bride... I've not seen summer in the country
since 1914...
May 1919 First edition of
The Owl. Thomas Hardy initialled 26 copies that
Siegfried Sassoon took to him at a London hotel. It was about
two months before this that Sassoon conceived the idea of a birthday
tribute. (Sassoon 1945, pp 147-148)
Thursday 8.5.1919 Letter from Sydney Cockerell
to Charlotte Mew (Used by
Mary Davidow, but not reproduced). Sydney Cockerell sends her
some poems that he has found very moving. Mary Davidow (page 92) footnotes
this letter to "Cockerell brought Siegfried Sassoon to tea" [In Anne's Charlotte
Street Studio] "one afternoon". [Berg Collection
-